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Tag: israel-hamas war

  • Man killed Muslim boy and wounded woman in hate crime motivated by Israeli-Hamas war, police say

    Man killed Muslim boy and wounded woman in hate crime motivated by Israeli-Hamas war, police say

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    Authorities say a suburban Chicago man has been charged with a hate crime, accused of fatally stabbing a young boy and seriously wounded a woman because of their Islamic faith and the Israel-Hamas war

    BySOPHIA TAREEN Associated Press

    October 15, 2023, 4:31 PM

    CHICAGO — A 71-year-old Illinois man was charged Sunday with a hate crime, accused of fatally stabbing a young boy and seriously wounding a woman because of their Islamic faith and the Israel-Hamas war, authorities said.

    Officers found the 32-year-old woman and 6-year-old boy late Saturday morning at a home in an unincorporated area of Plainfield Township, southwest of Chicago, the Will County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on social media.

    The statement added that the boy was pronounced dead at a hospital and the woman had multiple stab wounds and was expected to survive. An autopsy on the child showed he had also been stabbed multiple times.

    “Detectives were able to determine that both victims in this brutal attack were targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslim and the on-going Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis,” the sheriff’s statement said.

    According to the sheriff’s office, the woman had called 911 to report that her landlord had attacked her with a knife, adding she then ran into a bathroom and continued to fight him off.

    The boy was stabbed numerous times with a knife, according to an autopsy, the sheriff’s office said. The woman had more than a dozen stab wounds and remained hospitalized Sunday and was expected to survive.

    The man suspected in the attack was found Saturday outside the home and “sitting upright outside on the ground near the driveway of the residence” with a cut on his forehead, authorities said.

    He was in custody Sunday and awaiting a court appearance. Authorities said he has been charged him with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, two counts of hate crimes and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

    Authorities did not release the names of the two victims.

    The Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations held a news conference later Sunday with a family member and knew their identities. It said text messages exchanged among family members showed the attacker had made disparaging remarks about Muslims.

    The Muslim civil liberties organization called the crime “our worst nightmare,” and part of a disturbing spike in hate calls and emails since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.

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  • A third-generation Israeli soldier has been missing for over a week. Her family can only wait.

    A third-generation Israeli soldier has been missing for over a week. Her family can only wait.

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    A 19-year-old Israel Defense Forces soldier assured her mother that she was busy but OK in a text message roughly three hours after the Hamas attack started lasted Saturday morning

    ByMICHAEL KUNZELMAN Associated Press

    October 15, 2023, 10:56 AM

    This photo provided by Eyal Eshel shows his daughter Roni Eshel, an Israel Defense Forces soldier who was stationed at a military base near the Gaza border when Hamas attacked on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. “I love you so much,” Eshel told her mother in a text about three hours after the attack started. Her parents haven’t heard from her since. (Courtesy of Eyal Eshel via AP)

    The Associated Press

    Roni Eshel, a 19-year-old Israel Defense Forces soldier, was stationed at a military base near the Gaza border when Hamas attacked last Saturday. Although she didn’t answer her phone when her mother called to check on her that morning, she later texted to say that she was busy but OK.

    “I love you so much,” Eschel told her mother, Sharon, about three hours after the attack started.

    Her parents haven’t heard from her since. More than a week later, Eshel’s family is desperate to know happened to their daughter. Her father, Eyal Eshel, describes the wait for news as “hell.”

    “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to think, actually. Where is she? What is she eating? If it’s cold for her? If it’s hot? I don’t know nothing,” Eyal Eshel said.

    The IDF hasn’t publicly released any names of hostages. Her father says IDF has told them she is considered missing; he believes she has been kidnapped.

    “Otherwise, where is she?” he asked.

    Eshel grew up in a small village north of Tel Aviv. She reported for military service two weeks after finishing school. She was three months into her second year of mandatory military service.

    “It’s part of our life here in Israel,” her father says.

    Roni Eshel was in a communications unit at a base near Nahal Oz. She had returned to the base from a brief vacation on the Wednesday before the attack.

    Eshel was proud to be a third generation of her family to join the Israeli military. Her father, uncle and grandfather also served.

    “She was very happy to serve the country,” her father said.

    Her father said she has planned to travel and enroll in a university after completing her two years of service. But he can’t think about her future while she’s missing. Eyal Eschel says he isn’t sleeping, eating or working while he waits.

    “I’m not ashamed to ask (for) help. Please help us,” he said.

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  • Gaza conditions a ‘complete catastrophe,’ official warns as Israel prepares for imminent offensive | CNN

    Gaza conditions a ‘complete catastrophe,’ official warns as Israel prepares for imminent offensive | CNN

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    Gaza and Jerusalem
    CNN
     — 

    Conditions in Gaza have deteriorated into a “complete catastrophe,” according to one official, with serious shortages of clean water and food as tens of thousands of Palestinians attempt to flee crippling airstrikes and an imminent Israeli ground offensive.

    Israel’s military said Saturday its forces are readying for the next stages of the war, including “combined and coordinated strikes from the air, sea and land” in response to the unprecedented October 7 terrorist attacks by the Islamist militant group Hamas, which controls the enclave.

    At least 1,300 people were killed during Hamas’ rampage in what US President Joe Biden described as “the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust.”

    Further escalation of the long-running conflict now increasingly risks spilling over regionally, prompting the Pentagon to order a second carrier strike group and squadrons of fighter jets to the region as a deterrence to Iran and Iranian proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.

    The clock is ticking for residents fleeing south through the battered streets of Gaza after the Israeli military told civilians to leave northern areas of the densely populated strip.

    More than half of Gaza’s 2 million residents live in the northern section that Israel said should evacuate. Many families, some of whom were already internally displaced, are now crammed into an even smaller portion of the 140-square-mile territory.

    Civilians packed into cars, taxis, pickup trucks and donkey-pulled carts. Roads were filled with snaking lines of vehicles strapped with suitcases and mattresses. Those without other options walked, carrying what they could.

    “We will commence significant military operations only once we see that civilians have left the area,” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CNN early Sunday. “I cannot stress more than enough to say now is the time for Gazans to leave.”

    Even as civilians fled southward, Israeli warplanes continued to blast Gaza over the weekend. Videos showed explosions and bodies along a Gaza evacuation route Friday, as tens of thousands of people abandoned their homes on the advice of the IDF.

    Extensive destruction could be seen on Salah Al-Deen street – a main route for evacuation – in videos authenticated by CNN. A number of bodies, including those of children, can be seen on on a flat-bed trailer that appears to have been used to carry people away from Gaza City.

    The Palestinian Health Ministry said 2,329 civilians have been killed and more than 9,000 injured since the conflict broke out a week ago, with 300 killed in the past 24 hours.

    Casualties in Gaza over the past eight days have now surpassed the number of those killed during the 51-day Gaza-Israel conflict in 2014, according to the spokesperson for the Palestinian Health Ministry.

    Richard Brennan, a World Health Organization official in Cairo, told CNN that 60 percent of those killed in Gaza the last week were women and children.

    Palestinians search for casualties under the rubble in the aftermath of Israeli strikes, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 14.

    Several United Nations agencies have warned that mass evacuation under siege conditions will lead to disaster, and that the most vulnerable Gazans, including the sick, elderly, pregnant and disabled, will not be able to relocate at all. For days, Israel has cut off the Gaza population’s access to electricity, food and water.

    “Despite Israeli announcements suggesting that there are safe areas for people trapped in the Gaza Strip, they are in fact exposed to bombardment throughout the entire territory, including in the south,” said Avril Benoit, executive director of Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

    A growing number of nations, global rights groups and organizations are calling on Israel to respect international rules of war, urging the protection of civilians’ lives, and not to target hospitals, schools and clinics. Jordan’s foreign minister warned that Israel’s actions in Gaza are causing a humanitarian disaster and amount to mass punishment for more than 2 million Palestinians.

    As food, clean drinking water and medical supplies in Gaza run out, there are urgent pleas for humanitarian aid to be allowed in. Footage showed aid convoys continuing to arrive into Egypt’s El-Arish stadium in preparation to enter Gaza through the Rafah land crossing. On the Gazan side, thousands of people are stuck at the crossing, with families telling CNN they have been unable to cross into Egypt.

    Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told CNN Saturday that Egypt has tried to ship humanitarian aid to Gaza but has not received the proper authorization to do so.

    Palestinians who fled south, and those who are still in the north, are rapidly running out of food and water. There is no more electricity, and those with fuel-powered generators will soon live in complete blackout. Internet access, through which residents communicate their plight to the world, is also shrinking.

    MSF’s Benoit told CNN Saturday there is a serious water shortage in Gaza with many people beginning to suffer from severe dehydration.

    “Everyone there feels like they are likely to be collateral damage,” Benoit said. “The health care system there has always been extra fragile and was considered (a) humanitarian chronic emergency for many, many years, and now it’s a complete catastrophe.”

    Palestinians with foreign passports arrive at the Rafah gate hoping to cross into Egypt as Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip continues on October 14..

    Palestine Red Crescent Society spokesperson Nebal Farsakh told CNN the situation in Gaza is “devastating” and though they had been notified by Israel to evacuate Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City, they did not have the means to do so.

    “We are not willing to evacuate because we do not have the means to evacuate our patients,” Farsakh said. “We have around 300 patients at the hospital. Some of them are in the intensive care unit. We have children in incubators. We can’t evacuate them.”

    The World Health Organization said Saturday it “strongly condemns Israel’s repeated orders for the evacuation of 22 hospitals” in Gaza, calling it a “death sentence for the sick and injured.”

    If patients are forced to move and are cut off from life-saving medical attention while being evacuated, they all face imminent deterioration of their condition or death, the WHO said in a statement.

    Health facilities in northern Gaza continue to receive an influx of injured patients and are struggling to operate beyond capacity, with some patients “being treated in corridors and outdoors in surrounding streets due to a lack of hospital beds,” it added.

    Israel, which has massed troops and military equipment at the border with Gaza, said its ramped up offensive will feature hundreds of thousands of reservists and encompass “a wide range of operational offensive plans.”

    In addition to widespread airstrikes, Israel’s army is preparing troops for an “expanded arena of combat,” the IDF said in a statement on Saturday. The preparations have placed “an emphasis on significant ground operations.”

    Hamas has shown a level of military capability far beyond what was previously thought, and a recent CNN investigation found it is probably well-prepared for the next phase of the war.

    exp Family Egypt border Abushaaban interview 101407PSEG2 CNNI World_00002001.png

    Texas woman has family stuck trying to evacuate Gaza

    Complicating an Israeli offensive in Gaza are up to 150 hostages captured by Hamas – including soldiers, civilians, women, children and the elderly – and who are being held in the crowded enclave.

    IDF spokesperson Conricus said it is a top priority to get hostages out of Gaza, despite the difficulty that a dense urban area adds to the fight.

    Pointing to the “elaborate network of tunnels” that Hamas has, he said hostages “are most likely held underground in various locations.”

    “Fighting will be slow. Advances will be slow, and we will be cautious,” he said.

    A picture taken from Sderot shows smoke plumes rising above buildings during an Israeli strike on the northern Gaza Strip on October 14.

    As Israel battles Hamas, it also faces the threat of a wider conflict on new fronts.

    Israel has said it is ready in case there are attacks from neighboring Lebanon or Syria.

    Syria’s military reported late Saturday that an “air aggression” by Israel, originating from the Mediterranean Sea, damaged Aleppo International Airport and rendered it nonoperational.

    Meanwhile, Iran’s Mission to the UN warned on Saturday that if Israel does not stop its attacks on Gaza, “the situation could spiral out of control and ricochet far-reaching consequences.”

    Palestinians, who fled their houses amid Israeli strikes, shelter at a United Nations-run school in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 14.

    The comments came as Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian met with Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Doha, Qatar on Saturday, according to Iran’s official news agency IRNA. The agency said it was the first official meeting between Iranian officials and Haniyeh since surprise Hamas attack on Israel that Hamas called Al-Aqsa storm.

    Hostilities with neighboring Lebanon are being closely monitored internationally, as an escalation could draw the powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah paramilitary group into the conflict.

    For days, Lebanon-based Palestinian militants have launched rockets into Israel, leading to Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory, including Hezbollah positions. Hezbollah has fired back at Israeli border positions with precision-guided missiles.

    On Saturday, Israel returned fire after Hezbollah launched an attack on the disputed territory of the Shebaa farms near the Israel-Lebanon border, with CNN teams on the ground reporting prolonged shelling.

    Mourners also gathered Saturday for the funeral of Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah in southern Lebanon after he was killed when Israel fired artillery into the area where he and other journalists were on Friday. The IDF said it was reviewing the circumstances surrounding the incident on the Lebanese border.

    In response to the regional security situation, the Pentagon has ordered a second carrier strike group – the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower – to the eastern Mediterranean Sea, joining the strike group led by the USS Gerald R. Ford.

    The US warships are not intended to join the fighting in Gaza or take part in Israel’s operations, but the presence of two of the Navy’s most powerful ships is designed to send a message of deterrence to Iran and Iranian proxies in the region.

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  • Live updates | Day 8 of the latest Israel-Hamas war

    Live updates | Day 8 of the latest Israel-Hamas war

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    Israel’s military ordered hundreds of thousands of civilians living in Gaza City to evacuate ahead of an expected Israel ground offensive. The directive came Friday on the heels of what the United Nations said was a warning it received from Israel to evacuate 1.1 million people living in northern Gaza. Palestinians and some Egyptian officials fear that Israel ultimately hopes to push Gaza’s people out through the southern border with Egypt.

    Currently:

      1. People are struggling to flee from northern Gaza while also grappling with a growing water crisis after Israel stopped the flow of resources to the Gaza Strip

      2. No decision on a ground offensive has been announced, although Israel has been massing troops along the Gaza border

      3. An Israeli shell landed in a gathering of international journalists covering clashes on the border in southern Lebanon on Friday, killing one and wounding six

      4. The war has claimed at least 3,200 lives since Hamas launched an incursion on Oct. 7

      5. United States Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has assured Israel: “We have your back”

    Here’s what’s happening in the latest Israel-Hamas war:

    WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is sending the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean to support Israel.

    U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the additional carrier was being sent “as part of our effort to deter hostile actions against Israel or any efforts toward widening this war following Hamas’s attack on Israel.”

    The Eisenhower will join the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group, which is already sailing near Israel, to bolster U.S. presence there with a host of destroyers, fighter aircraft and cruisers.

    The Eisenhower deployed from its homeport of Norfolk, Va., Friday. Having two carriers in the region can provide a host of options.

    They can disperse and serve as primary command and control operations centers, to cover a wide swath of area. They can conduct information warfare. They can launch and recover E2-Hawkeye surveillance planes that provide early warnings on missile launches, conduct surveillance and manage the airspace.

    Both ships carry F-18 fighter jets that could fly intercepts or strike targets. They also have significant capabilities for humanitarian work, including an onboard hospital with medics, surgeons and doctors, and they sail with helicopters that can be used to airlift critical supplies in or victims out.

    WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is sending the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean to support Israel, two defense officials told The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss the move ahead of its announcement.

    The Eisenhower will join the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group, which is already sailing near Israel, to bolster U.S. presence there with a host of destroyers, fighter aircraft and cruisers.

    The Eisenhower deployed from its homeport of Norfolk, Va., Friday. Having two carriers in the region can provide a host of options.

    They can disperse and serve as primary command and control operations centers, to cover a wide swath of area. They can conduct information warfare. They can launch and recover E2-Hawkeye surveillance planes that provide early warnings on missile launches, conduct surveillance and manage the airspace.

    Both ships carry F-18 fighter jets that could fly intercepts or strike targets. They also have significant capabilities for humanitarian work, including an onboard hospital with medics, surgeons and doctors, and they sail with helicopters that can be used to airlift critical supplies in or victims out.

    — By Tara Copp

    BEIRUT — Hamas announced early Sunday that three of its members from Lebanon had been killed after crossing the border from Lebanon into Israel and clashing with Israeli forces.

    The group said in a statement that its militants had “inflicted losses” before being targeted by Israeli airstrikes.

    Since the outbreak of the latest Hamas-Israel war on Oct. 7, there have been sporadic border clashes between Israeli forces and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, and with Palestinian armed groups in Lebanon including Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

    BEIRUT — A Syrian opposition war monitor and a pro-government media outlet say Israel’s military has attacked the international airport of the northern city of Aleppo, putting it out of service.

    Al-Watan daily said the Saturday night strike hit the runway of Aleppo airport — putting it out of service just hours after it was fixed following a similar Israeli strike on Thursday.

    The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported that the strike also hit the runway at Aleppo airport.

    The attack on Aleppo airport came shortly after a rocket was reportedly fired from Syria into the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

    On Thursday, Israeli struck the runways in Aleppo and Damascus International Airport. Aleppo was fixed within a day before it was again targeted Saturday.

    There was no immediate comment from Israel’s military, which rarely confirms such strikes.

    A planeload of World Health Organization supplies has landed at Egypt’s el-Arish airport and is destined for Gaza when humanitarian access across the border is possible, the U.N. said Saturday.

    The cache includes enough basic essentials for 300,000 people and enough trauma medicines and materials for 1,200 wounded, the U.N. said in a release. It called for opening the Rafah border crossing immediately to humanitarian deliveries.

    “The critically injured, the sick and the vulnerable cannot wait,” the world body said.

    TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli military says it is striking targets in Syria after air raid sirens went off in two villages in northern Israel and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

    In a statement, the military did not say what set off the sirens. It said it was firing artillery to strike back.

    The incident is the latest in a continued flare-up along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon and Syria after an unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israeli communities set off a war with Israel.

    TEL AVIV, Israel — The relatives of Israelis taken captive by Hamas are demanding Saturday that the militant group allow in medicine to hostages who require it, saying their loved ones are suffering.

    “Every day without her medication is torture. She’s being tortured,” said Yifat Zailer, who said her kidnapped 63-year-old aunt has Parkinson’s disease. She was taken along with several other family members, Zailer said.

    In its assault on southern Israeli communities, Hamas militants captured dozens of Israelis and some foreign or dual nationals, including children, women and the elderly, dragging them into the Gaza Strip.

    Israeli military spokesman Read Adm. Daniel Hagari said Saturday Israel had so far identified 126 captives. Their fate becomes more complicated as Israel continues its bombardment of Gaza.

    BERLIN — The German army will start evacuating its citizens from Israel with military airplanes. German news agency dpa reported that two A400M military transports were on their way from Germany to Israel on Saturday evening and further flights were planned, according to the German defense ministry.

    In recent days, the German government helped with the evacuation of around 2,800 German citizens and their family members from Israel following Hamas’ attack on the country a week ago.

    So far, they were predominantly flown out by civilian airplanes or brought across the border to Jordan by buses. German carrier Lufthansa stopped its scheduled flights from Israel at the beginning of the week, but it deployed a limited number of evacuation flights which ended on Saturday.

    More than 100,000 residents of Israel hold dual German and Israeli citizenship.

    BEIRUT — Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group says one of its fighters was killed during an exchange of fire with Israeli troops on Saturday.

    Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV identified the dead fighter as Ali Youssef Alaaeddine. It gave no other details, saying his death happened “during the Zionist aggression on south Lebanon today.”

    Alaaeddine is the fourth Hezbollah fighter killed since tensions increased along the Lebanon-Israel border following the deadly attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on southern Israel Oct. 7. The war has since claimed at least 3,200 lives.

    ISTANBUL — The son of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan participated in a large pro-Palestinian march in Istanbul on Saturday. Bilal Erdogan was accompanied by former Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu and former speaker of Turkish parliament Mustafa Sentop.

    “Let us make clear our side, we should at least let our feelings be heard,” Erdogan told The Associated Press.

    The crowd of over 1,000 people carried Palestinian and Turkish flags while chanting slogans criticizing Israel and the United States.

    Speaking to the AP, Sentop said, “Everyone with a conscience, regardless of race or religion, are displaying their sentiments toward this genocide.”

    TOKYO — Japan’s Foreign Ministry says a Japanese government-arranged charter flight carrying eight Japanese nationals in Israel departed from Tel Aviv and was expected to arrive in Dubai on Sunday.

    Fifty-one other Japanese nationals were separately evacuated by South Korea’s military aircraft, along with 163 South Koreans and six Singaporeans.

    About 1,250 Japanese nationals were in Israel as of October 2022, according to government data.

    BEIRUT — Lebanon’s state news agency says Israeli shelling of a Lebanese border village killed a man and his wife.

    The shelling occurred during an exchange of fire along Lebanon’s border with Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli troops.

    National News Agency said Khalil Hachem and his wife, Rabad Akoum, were killed in the shelling of the Lebanese border village of Chebaa.

    Hezbollah said its fighters struck several Israeli military positions in the disputed Chebaa Farms and Kfar Chouba hills in the afternoon. It added that hours later, Hezbollah gunmen fired rockets and shells toward an Israeli position in the area inflicting damage.

    JERUSALEM — The Israeli military says it has prepared a “coordinated” offensive in the Gaza Strip involving air, ground and naval forces.

    In a statement on its website Saturday night, the army said it is “preparing to implement a wide range of offensive operative plans.”

    Israel has ordered roughly half of Gaza’s population to evacuate their homes ahead of an expected ground offensive in response to a brutal cross-border Hamas attack.

    Israel has not said when the offensive will begin.

    BEIRUT — A top official with the militant Hamas group says the people of Gaza will not migrate from the strip to Egypt.

    In a televised speech Saturday, Ismail Haniyeh said that “all the massacres” will not break the Palestinian people.

    “There will be no migration from Gaza to Egypt,” he said, adding that “our decision is to stay in our land.”

    Haniyeh said Israel suffered a “strategic strike” and that last week’s attacks by Hamas that have killed more than 3,200 are an indication the end of Israel’s occupation is near.

    Haniyeh said the aim of Hamas is to liberate the land and set Palestinian prisoners free, and that the blockade in Gaza be lifted.

    GAZA CITY, Gaza — Medical officials say an estimated 35,000 have crammed into the grounds of Gaza City’s main hospital, seeking refugee ahead of an expected Israeli ground offensive.

    Mohammad Abu Selim, general director of Shifa Hospital, confirmed that massive crowds had thronged the building and the courtyard outside. Shifa is the largest hospital in the entire Gaza Strip.

    “People think this is the only safe space after their homes were destroyed and they were forced to flee,” said Dr. Medhat Abbas, a Health Ministry official. “Gaza City is a frightening scene of devastation.”

    The Israeli military has ordered roughly half of Gaza’s population, including all of Gaza City, to evacuate as it prepares to send in ground forces.

    Israel has been bombing Gaza into rubble for the past week, killing more than 2,200 and counting in response to a cross-border Hamas attack.

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  • In first call with Palestinian president Abbas, Biden discusses support for humanitarian aid to Gaza

    In first call with Palestinian president Abbas, Biden discusses support for humanitarian aid to Gaza

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    RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — President Joe Biden on Saturday spoke with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urging the leaders to allow humanitarian aid to the region and affirmed his support for efforts to protect civilians.

    The weekend calls in Washington came ahead of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s announcement that the U.S. was moving up a second carrier strike group in support of Israel. Secretary of State Antony Blinken intensified diplomatic outreach across the Middle East and beyond to rally an international response to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from expanding.

    The broad U.S. efforts reflect the international concern about the number of civilians at risk and the potential ramifications of a prolonged war as Israel told Gaza residents to move south and Hamas urged people to remain in their homes. The Biden administration has not publicly urged Israel to restrain its response after the Hamas attack a week ago, but has emphasized the country’s commitment to following the rules of war.

    Addressing a Human Rights Campaign dinner Saturday in Washington, Biden linked the humanitarian crisis in Gaza to different versions of hate that he said must be stopped.

    “A week ago we saw hate manifest another way in the worst massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” Biden said, citing the 1,300 lives lost in Israel as well as “children, grandparents alike kidnapped, held hostage by Hamas.”

    “The humanitarian crisis in Gaza — innocent Palestinian families and the vast majority that have nothing to do with Hamas — they’re being used as human shields,” he said. “We have to reject hate in every form.”

    Blinken met with Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan in Riyadh before stopping in the United Arab Emirates as he sought ways to help civilians trapped in between the fighting and to address the growing humanitarian crisis.

    He also called his Chinese counterpart as Palestinians struggled to flee from areas of Gaza targeted by the Israeli military before an expected land offensive.

    Austin as well on Saturday spoke with Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, stressing the importance of safeguarding civilians. Austin offered updates on U.S. efforts to boost air defense capabilities and munitions for Israeli forces that he noted were aimed at stemming escalation of war, according to a readout of the call.

    Austin said the Biden administration was sending the additional carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean. The Eisenhower will join the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group, which is already sailing near Israel, to bolster U.S. presence there with a host of destroyers, fighter aircraft and cruisers.

    In a statement announcing the deployment, Austin said sending the second carrier was “part of our effort to deter hostile actions against Israel or any efforts toward widening this war following Hamas’s attack on Israel.”

    While Biden has spoken to Netanyahu multiple times since the Hamas attack, Saturday’s call was his first to Abbas, who runs the Palestinian Authority which controls the West Bank. According to a readout of the call, Abbas briefed the president on efforts to bring aid to Palestinian people, particularly in Gaza.

    Biden reiterated to Abbas that “Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination,” according to the readout.

    Biden spoke with Netanyahu to “reiterate unwavering U.S. support for Israel,” according to the readout. He briefed the Israeli leader on regional efforts to ensure civilian access to food, water and medical care.

    The number of U.S. citizens killed rose to 29, U.S. officials said Satutday, and 15 were unaccounted for, as well as one lawful permanent resident.

    Blinken, in his visits with Saudi and UAE leaders, also cited the need for humanitarian assistance and safe passage from those who wish to leave Gaza as he spoke to Arab audiences from their home turf, where his hosts put that issue at the top of their concerns.

    An Israeli ground assault would worsen the plight of civilians in Gaza who are without power, fresh water or access to aid. Egyptian officials said the southern Rafah crossing would open later Saturday for the first time in days to allow foreigners out. Israel has advised all Palestinian civilians to flee south to avoid Israel’s continued offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza City.

    Blinken also called Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to seek his country’s help in preventing the war from spreading, asking Beijing to use whatever influence it has in the Mideast. Blinken’s spokesman declined to characterize Wang’s response but said the U.S. believes it and China have a shared interest in the region’s stability.

    In Riyadh, Blinken and Prince Faisal stressed the importance of minimizing the harm to civilians as Israel prepared for an anticipated incursion against Hamas a week after the militant group’s unprecedented attack against Israel.

    “As Israel pursues its legitimate right, to defending its people and to trying to ensure that this never happens again, it is vitally important that all of us look out for civilians, and we’re working together to do exactly that,” Blinken said.

    “None of us want to see suffering by civilians on any side, whether it’s in Israel, whether it’s in Gaza, whether it’s anywhere else,” Blinken said.

    The Saudi minister said the kingdom was committed to the protection of civilians.

    “It’s a disturbing situation,” he said. “It’s a very difficult situation. And, as you know, the primary sufferer of this situation are civilians, and civilian populations on both sides are being affected and it’s important, I think, that we all condemn the targeting of civilians in any form at any time by anyone.”

    A U.S official said Saturday that Washington did not ask Israel to slow or hold off on the evacuation plan. The official said the discussions with Israeli leaders did stress the importance of taking into account the safety of civilians as Israel’s military moved to enforce the evacuation demand.

    The official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the private discussions and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Israeli leaders acknowledged the guidance and took it under advisement.

    The U.S. worked out an agreement involving to allow Americans and other foreigners in Gaza to cross the Rafah border into Egypt, but the crossing remained blocked Saturday, with no sign that those gathered would be allowed through. There are an estimated 500 Americans living in Gaza, but that number is imprecise, officials have said.

    The U.S. State Department on Saturday authorized the departure of nonemergency U.S. government personnel and their family members from the American Embassy in Jerusalem and an office in Tel Aviv.

    Prince Faisal said it was imperative for the violence between Israel and Hamas to end.

    “We need to work together to find a way out of this cycle of violence,” he said. “Without a concerted effort to end this constant return to violence, it will always be the civilians that suffer first, it will always be civilians on both sides that end up paying the price.”

    While in Abu Dhabi, Blinken visited the Abrahamic Family House, a complex consisting of a church, a mosque and a synagogue representing the three Abrahamic faiths. He signed a tile with the words “Light in the Darkness.”

    Blinken returned to Saudi Arabia ahead of an expected stop in Egypt on Sunday. He has already visited Israel, Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain.

    ___

    Baldor reported from aboard a U.S. military aircraft. Associated Press writers Tara Copp, Colleen Long and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed to this report.

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  • Streets ‘reek of blood:’ Gazans run out of time after Israel’s evacuation deadline | CNN

    Streets ‘reek of blood:’ Gazans run out of time after Israel’s evacuation deadline | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been fleeing south through the battered streets of Gaza after the Israeli military told them to leave northern areas of the densely populated strip.

    Parts of the south are becoming even more crowded and overstretched, Gazans say, as waves of Palestinians abandon their homes in the wake of Israel’s statement, which came ahead of an anticipated ground assault by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

    More than half of Gaza’s 2 million residents live in the northern section that Israel said should evacuate. Many families, some of whom were already internally displaced, are now crammed into an even smaller portion of the 140-square-mile territory.

    The IDF said Saturday it would allow safe movement on specified streets between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. local time (3 – 9 a.m. ET). Residents were advised to use this window to move from the northern Beit Hanoun to Khan Yunis in the south – a roughly 20-mile distance of rubble-strewn streets.

    The evacuation statement has been described by rights groups as well as some neighboring countries as a breach of international humanitarian law. Jordan’s foreign minister described it as a “war crime.”

    The UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which was forced to move its central operations from Gaza City to a location in southern Gaza following the Israeli statement, on Saturday described the evacuation as an “exodus,” and said that “nearly 1 million people have been displaced in one week alone.”

    The evacuation advisory came after Israel imposed a complete siege on Gaza in response to a brutal attack launched a week ago by Hamas, which left at least 1,300 dead in Israel.

    At least 2,215 civilians, including 724 children and 458 women, have been killed in Gaza, according to the Palestinian health ministry, as the Israeli military continues to pound the territory.

    Palestinians who fled south, and those who are still north, are rapidly running out of food and water. There is no more electricity, and those with fuel-powered generators will soon live in complete blackout. Internet access, through which residents communicate their plight to the world, is also shrinking.

    Mohamed Hamed, a 36-year-old resident of Gaza City, moved southward to Nuseirat, a refugee camp some five kilometers north-east of Deir al-Balah – which he was told was safe.

    Hamed fled the north with 30 family members, including his extended relatives, four children and his wife, who is over eight months pregnant.

    “In this situation, we’re afraid that she goes into labor, and we wouldn’t know where to go,” he told CNN.

    The family has no access to medical care and are crammed into a single apartment with no electricity, and quickly depleting food and water.

    “There is no electricity, there is no water. Bakeries are working but these are their final hours, as the fuel they need is running out,” he said, adding that “the food we have may last us a day or two.”

    Speaking to CNN by phone, Hamed said that Nuseirat is a small area yet has received large crowds of displaced Palestinians from the north. Drinking water is only available in mineral water bottles, he said, which are dwindling as crowds rush to stock up.

    “Everything in supermarkets and shops was used up,” he said.

    Shelling in Nuseirat is intense, but not as bad as it was in Gaza City, where neighborhoods were “entirely wiped out,” he said.

    Hamed said that the time provided by the IDF for “safe passage” southward may not be enough for vast number of Palestinians that need to flee, and that some Gazans in the north refuse to leave fearing forceful displacement into Egypt.

    For many, that would mean displacement for the second time. The majority of Gaza’s residents today are already refugees from areas that fell under Israeli control in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

    “People are afraid of this, of being pushed to Egypt,” he said, adding that the airstrikes have been “horrifying,” with some areas being targeted for the first time despite the years of conflict between Hamas and Israel.

    But not everyone in Gaza’s north has heeded the IDF’s call to move southwards. Palestinian journalist Hashem Al-Saudi and his family have only moved from east to west of Gaza City, which is among areas the IDF told civilians to evacuate.

    Residents are forced to leave their homes to fill up water tanks, the 33-year-old told CNN by phone, which puts them at risk of being struck by Israeli missiles.

    Food is scarce, he said, and may not last his 11-member family more than three or four days.

    “I say this jokingly, but those who are on a diet are eating more than us.”

    Al-Saudi says that not only do they have nowhere to stay if they moved south, but that the route itself is unsafe. “Even those who moved south were hit by airstrikes,” he told CNN.

    “Nowhere is safe in the Gaza Strip, from Rafah (south) to Beit Hanoun in the north,” Al-Saudi said, adding that everywhere is targeted, including “homes, shelters hospitals and places of worship.”

    “Everyone on this piece of land is targeted by the Israeli military, which from the start did not differentiate between civilian and soldier.”

    CNN has geolocated and authenticated five videos from the scene of a large explosion Friday along a route for civilians south of Gaza City that Israel said the following day would be safe.

    The videos show many dead bodies amid a scene of extensive destruction. Some of those bodies are on a flatbed trailer that appears to have been used to carry people away from Gaza City. They include at least several children. There are also many badly burned and damaged cars.

    It’s unclear what caused the widespread devastation; the explosion occurred on Salah Al-Deen street on Friday afternoon. CNN has reached out to IDF for comment on any airstrikes in the same location.

    “The situation is much worse than what you see on television,” he said. Many bodies remain unidentified, and corpses are being stored in refrigerators not made for storing human remains, Al-Saudi said.

    “Streets are filled with rubble and reek of blood.”

    The Israeli government launched a complete blockade on essential goods entering Gaza earlier this week, prompting warnings from human rights groups who say the siege is in violation of international law.

    Israel, which administers most of the electricity, water, fuel and some of the food inside the Palestinian enclave, already imposes a stringent land, sea and air blockade, but used to permit some trade and humanitarian aid through two crossings that it controls.

    Refaat Alareer, 44, a literature professor in Gaza City, said Thursday – before Israel told Gazans to evacuate – the shelves in his local supermarket are emptying every day. He has been able to buy cans of tinned tuna, adding that he avoided purchasing perishable goods because the lack of electricity means refrigerated food “will rot.”

    Alareer, who lives with his wife and their six children, said his neighbors insist on leaving milk powder on the shelves – so that other parents can feed their own families.

    “I’ve never seen people this disciplined,” he said. “I didn’t buy a single thing that is more expensive than it was last week.

    “(What is) so beautiful about, you know, being in Gaza, being in Palestine, the solidarity.”

    More than half of the residents in Gaza are food insecure and live under the poverty line, according to UNRWA. Alareer warned that blue collar workers, farmers and street vendors “will suffer the most,” from the blockade.

    “We’re bracing for the worst. What happened is extremely genocidal in every sense of the word,” he added.

    Aseel Mousa, a 25-year-old freelance journalist in Gaza, said she is unable to communicate with loved ones in other parts of the enclave, as electricity supplies diminish.

    “We cannot connect with the world,” she told CNN on Thursday. “We hear the bombings, the air strikes and we don’t know where they are exactly.

    “We cannot check up on our relatives who live in different areas of the Gaza Strip, we cannot reach them as there is no internet and there is no electricity.” She said on Friday that she relocated with her family from western Gaza to the south.

    On Friday, Alareer told CNN he and his family see no choice but to remain in the north – despite Israel’s evacuation advisory – because they had “nowhere else to go.”

    “Israel bombs (are) everywhere,” he said.

    Gaza has already been under blockade since Hamas took control of the territory in 2007.

    Egypt imposes a land blockade, while Israel imposes an air, sea and land blockade. The siege was completely tightened after Hamas’ attack on Israel a week ago, and the only remaining route into or outside of the Gaza Strip is the Rafah Crossing, which connects Gaza to Egypt’s Sinai.

    While some aid has arrived in Egypt, it is yet to cross the border, which earlier this week was struck by Israel on the Palestinian side, according to Palestinian and Egyptian officials.

    Egypt on Thursday stressed that its Rafah Crossing was however open, a claim CNN could not independently verify.

    A Palestinian border official told CNN on Saturday morning that concrete slabs were being placed at the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, blocking all gates. The slabs were being placed by a winch visible on the Egyptian side of the crossing, the official said.

    The official added that hundreds of Palestinians with foreign passports have been sat in the streets for hours, waiting to cross. “The gates are closed, and no one is being let through,” he told CNN.

    CNN has reached out to Egyptian officials for comment.

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  • Reuters videographer killed in southern Lebanon by Israeli shelling laid to rest

    Reuters videographer killed in southern Lebanon by Israeli shelling laid to rest

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    KHIAM, Lebanon — A Reuters videographer killed in Israeli shelling of southern Lebanon was laid to rest in his hometown Saturday in a funeral procession attended by hundreds of people.

    Draped in a Lebanese flag, Issam Abdallah’s body was carried on a stretcher through the streets of the southern town of Khiam, from his family’s home to the local cemetery.

    Dozens of journalists and Lebanese lawmakers attended the funeral.

    Abdallah was killed Friday evening near the village of Alma al-Shaab in south Lebanon when an Israeli shell landed on a gathering of international journalists covering exchange of fire along the border between Israeli troops and members of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group.

    The Lebanese army said in a statement Saturday that Israeli troops fired a shell the day before hitting a civilian car used by journalists killing Abdallah and wounding others. The army said that other areas in south Lebanon at the time were targeted by an Israeli helicopter gunship and artillery, including the outskirts of the villages of Marwaheen, Kfar Chouba, Aita al-Shaab and Odaisseh.

    Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry asked Beirut’s mission to the United Nations to file a complaint against Israel over Friday’s shelling, calling it a “flagrant violation and a crime against freedom of opinion and press.” The statement was carried by the state-run National News Agency.

    Israeli military spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht told The Associated Press in Jerusalem on Saturday, “We are aware of the incident with the Reuters journalist and we are looking into it.”

    Hecht did not confirm that the journalists had been hit by Israeli shells, but called the incident “tragic,” adding, “we’re very sorry for his death.”

    Reuters said in a statement that two of its journalists, Thaer Al-Sudani and Maher Nazeh, were wounded in the same shelling, while Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV said its cameraman Elie Brakhya and reporter Carmen Joukhadar, were wounded as well.

    France’s international news agency, Agence France-Presse, said two of its journalists were also wounded. They were identified as photographer Christina Assi, and video journalist Dylan Collins.

    AFP reported Saturday that Assi was in need of blood transfusions at the American University Medical Center in Beirut where she was hospitalized.

    The Lebanon-Israel border has been witnessing sporadic acts of violence since Saturday’s surprise attack by the militant Palestinian group Hamas on southern Israel.

    Journalists from various countries have been flocking to Lebanon to monitor the situation.

    The international watchdog group Reporters Without Borders said Saturday that Abdallah, 37, was the seventh journalist to be killed covering the Israel-Hamas war in a week, including six killed in the Israeli bombardment of Gaza that has followed the deadly Oct. 7 offensive by Hamas.

    The organization said that Abdallah and the others with him were “clearly identifiable” as journalists “according to several sources.”

    Abdallah had worked for Reuters in Beirut for 16 years and had covered other conflicts, including the war in Ukraine.

    A week before his death, he had posted a tribute to Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist with the Al Jazeera satellite channel who was killed while covering an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank, on his social media accounts.

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  • Deadly blast hits Gaza evacuation route after Israel issues deadline | CNN

    Deadly blast hits Gaza evacuation route after Israel issues deadline | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A blast has struck a convoy on an evacuation route in Gaza, killing a number of people including several children, after a stark deadline ahead of a possible Israeli ground assault.

    The IDF told civilians in and around Gaza City Friday that they must move south to avoid being caught up in Israeli military operations and announced a six-hour evacuation window on Saturday.

    Israel has massed troops and military equipment at the border with Gaza, and continued bombarding the densely populated territory in response to the deadly October 7 attacks by the Islamist militant group, Hamas.

    Videos authenticated by CNN showed a scene of extensive destruction following Friday’s blast on Salah Al-Deen street. A number of bodies, including those of children, can be seen on on a flat-bed trailer that appears to have been used to carry people away from Gaza City. There are also a number of badly burned and damaged cars.

    It’s unclear what caused the widespread devastation. CNN has reached out to the IDF for comment on any airstrikes in the same location.

    Even before the evacuation warning, more than 400,000 Palestinians had already been internally displaced by the past week of fighting as conditions worsen inside the bombarded strip.

    But the evacuation statement and the prospect of a potential incursion have been sharply criticized by rights groups, including the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) head, who warned that such a move could bring “catastrophic humanitarian consequences.”

    The IDF announced on Saturday it would allow people to move south “for their own safety” on specified streets of Gaza from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. local time, according to a statement shared by the IDF’s Arabic spokesperson Avishay Adraee on X, formerly known as Twitter.

    The IDF claimed Hamas leaders had already taken measures to protect themselves from strikes in the area.

    It is unclear how widely the messaging has been received on the ground given the current electricity and internet blackout.

    When asked by CNN how this six-hour window has been communicated to citizens in Gaza, IDF spokesperson Maj. Doron Spielman said that “everybody in Gaza City now knows exactly what’s happening.”

    “They’ve been notified in Arabic, in multiple languages on every available platform, both electronic and non-electronic platforms. Everyone in Gaza City knows that they need to go past Wadi Gaza.”

    Spielman confirmed the IDF had dropped leaflets informing people in Gaza about the IDF’s announcement.

    However, CNN has talked to a United Nations Relief and Works Agency school official, a paramedic and a journalist on the ground who were all unaware of this latest advisory on Saturday.

    Palestinians with dual citizenship wait outside Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

    Palestinian-Americans have been waiting for the Rafah border crossing into Egypt to open Saturday, after the US State Department sent out guidance to families Friday telling them that it “may be open” Saturday afternoon.

    “They told everybody to be here at 12, it’s been two hours almost, nobody showed up, nobody is here to open the gates.” Haneen Okal, a New Jersey resident, waiting with her three children, said.

    “People are waiting at the Rafah crossing point but it’s not open and there is no clear direction from the embassy,” said Mai Abushaaban, a 22-year-old from Houston who is in contact with her family at the border.

    CNN has reached out to the State Department and the US National Security Council for comment.

    Palestinians with their belongings flee to safer areas in Gaza City after Israeli air strikes on October 13, 2023.
    Palestinians wait at the Rafah border crossing.
    Palestinians with foreign passports arrive at the Rafah gate.

    More than 2 million Palestinians – including over a million children – live in the 140-square-mile Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated places on Earth.

    Images from Gaza have shown a mass rush toward the south of the coastal enclave beginning Friday. Civilians crammed into cars, taxis, pickup trucks and even donkey-pulled carts. Roads were filled with snaking lines of vehicles strapped with suitcases and mattresses.

    Those without other options walked, carrying what they could. Some have stayed put regardless, telling CNN they felt nowhere was safe.

    Since the evacuation order was issued Friday, Israeli military airstrikes have killed 70 evacuees and injured 200 more, Hamas’ media office told CNN.

    Palestinian medical services and civil defense crews were targeted by an Israeli strike at the site of a rescue operation in northern Gaza on Saturday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Interior and National Security.

    “Occupation forces target civil defense crews and medical services while they were working to rescue martyrs and wounded from the house of the Dahman family in the northern Gaza Strip, early this morning, Saturday,” the ministry said in a statement.

    Some healthcare facilities in the north of Gaza and Gaza City have said they will not be complying with Israel’s evacuation orders, as these “threats effectively act as a ‘death sentence’ for the thousands of injured and patients housed within these facilities.”

    Saturday morning marked one week since Hamas’ unprecedented and bloody attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,300 people and led to the capture of civilian and military hostages now believed to be held in Gaza.

    The surprise attack, widely described as Israel’s 9/11, saw waves of heavily armed Hamas fighters rampage through rural Israeli towns, kibbutzim and army bases.

    In response, Israel ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza, including blocking food, water and fuel, while mounting its heaviest ever airstrikes on the enclave.

    International observers warn the cutoff will see Gaza civilians die by starvation, disease and lack of medical care for the growing numbers of dying and wounded.

    Hostilities spilled over between the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and IDF forces on Saturday in the disputed Shebaa farms, near the Israel-Lebanon border. Israel said it returned fire after Hezbollah launched an attack on the territory – a disputed strip of land between Lebanon and Syria adjoining the Golan Heights, under Israeli control.

    Residents of Gaza City load a car with their belongings as they begin to evacuate on October 14.

    The UN has described the situation in the Gaza Strip as a matter of “life and death,” warning that the clean water supply for the 2 million people there is running dangerously low. The UN also warned of increasing risks of waterborne diseases.

    The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on Saturday called on Israel to not target its shelters in Gaza, warning that many people, including pregnant women and elderly or disabled people, will be unable to flee the area.

    At least 2,215 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza from Israeli strikes, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said in an update Saturday. That toll includes 724 children.

    An overwhelmed hospital in Gaza has resorted to using ice cream trucks from local factories as makeshift morgues to supplement the overflowing hospital mortuaries.

    Dr. Yasser Khatab, a forensic pathologist in al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, said in a video message sent to CNN on Saturday that the hospital in Deir al-Balah is unable to accommodate the increasing number of deceased.

    UN officials were initially told by Israel on Thursday that the relocation of Gaza residents should happen within 24 hours. But Israel has since acknowledged that the mass migration order will take time, and IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said Friday that any deadline “may slip,” adding to the uncertainty swirling.

    Another IDF spokesperson, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, claimed on Saturday that Hamas was trying to stop Palestinian civilians from evacuating “via messages and also checkpoints and stops on the ground,” citing media reports.

    When asked by CNN whether the evacuation order suggested an impending ground incursion, Conricus said the IDF would “assess the situation on the ground” and “see how many civilians are left in the area … Once we see that the situation will be permissible for significant combat operations, then they will commence.”

    The IDF also said Saturday that its fighter jets had struck operational headquarters used by Hamas militants, killing the head of the Hamas Aerial System in Gaza City, who the military claimed was “largely responsible for directing terrorists” during last week’s attack on Israel.

    Israel’s evacuation deadline has raised international alarm and sharp criticism from some rights groups, especially as critical supplies run out and deaths rise in the isolated enclave, from which residents say they have no escape.

    “The order to evacuate 1.1 million people from northern Gaza defies the rules of war and basic humanity,” wrote OCHA head Martin Griffiths in a statement late Friday. “Roads and homes (in Gaza) have been reduced to rubble. There is nowhere safe to go.”

    The territory has been under a land, sea and air blockade enforced by Israel since 2007, with more than half its residents living below the poverty line even before the latest conflict. Now there’s only one corridor left for Palestinians to flee or for aid to enter, connecting Gaza to Egypt – and it’s not clear if that’s even operational.

    Meanwhile, the World Food Programme said it distributed food to 135,000 people in shelters across Gaza on Friday, but warned “humanitarian supplies are running low.”

    OCHA added that most people now have no access to water in the strip. “As a last resort, people are consuming brackish water from agricultural wells, triggering serious concerns about the spread of waterborne diseases,” it said.

    In response, Israel’s ambassador to the UN said on Friday the government is doing “all that we can to minimize civilian casualties” by issuing the evacuation order, and accused the UN of not wanting Israel to “defend itself.”

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  • The Louvre Museum in Paris is being evacuated after a threat while France is under high alert

    The Louvre Museum in Paris is being evacuated after a threat while France is under high alert

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    The Louvre Museum says it is closing for the day and evacuating all visitors and staff after it received a written threat

    ByThe Associated Press

    October 14, 2023, 8:08 AM

    Staff wait after the evacuation of the Louvre museum, in Paris, Saturday Oct. 14, 2023. The Louvre Museum says it is closing for the day and evacuating all visitors and staff after a threat. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

    The Associated Press

    PARIS — The Louvre Museum in Paris is evacuating all visitors and staff and closing early Saturday because it received a written threat. It said the move was linked to the government’s decision to put France on high alert after a fatal school stabbing by a suspected extremist.

    The Louvre communication service said no one has been hurt and no incident has been reported. Paris police said verifications in the museum are underway.

    Alarms rang out through the vast museum in central Paris overlooking the Seine River when the evacuation was announced, and in the underground shopping center beneath its signature pyramid.

    Police cordoned off the monument from all sides, and the underground access, as tourists and other visitors streamed out. Videos posted online showed people leaving, some hurriedly and some stopping to take photos, others apparently confused about what was happening.

    The French government raised the threat alert level and is deploying 7,000 troops to increase security after Friday’s school attack. French authorities say a former student suspected of Islamic radicalization killed a teacher and wounded three other people before being captured.

    The government is also concerned about fallout in France from the war between Israel and Hamas.

    The Louvre, home to masterpieces such as the Mona Lisa, welcomes between 30,000 and 40,000 visitors per day.

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  • Louvre Museum is being evacuated after a threat while France is under high alert

    Louvre Museum is being evacuated after a threat while France is under high alert

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    The Louvre Museum says it is closing for the day and evacuating all visitors and staff after it received a written threat

    ByThe Associated Press

    October 14, 2023, 8:08 AM

    Staff wait after the evacuation of the Louvre museum, in Paris, Saturday Oct. 14, 2023. The Louvre Museum says it is closing for the day and evacuating all visitors and staff after a threat. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

    The Associated Press

    PARIS — The Louvre Museum in Paris is evacuating all visitors and staff and closing early Saturday because it received a written threat. It said the move was linked to the government’s decision to put France on high alert after a fatal school stabbing by a suspected extremist.

    The Louvre communication service said no one has been hurt and no incident has been reported. Paris police said verifications in the museum are underway.

    Alarms rang out through the vast museum in central Paris overlooking the Seine River when the evacuation was announced, and in the underground shopping center beneath its signature pyramid.

    Police cordoned off the monument from all sides, and the underground access, as tourists and other visitors streamed out. Videos posted online showed people leaving, some hurriedly and some stopping to take photos, others apparently confused about what was happening.

    The French government raised the threat alert level and is deploying 7,000 troops to increase security after Friday’s school attack. French authorities say a former student suspected of Islamic radicalization killed a teacher and wounded three other people before being captured.

    The government is also concerned about fallout in France from the war between Israel and Hamas.

    The Louvre, home to masterpieces such as the Mona Lisa, welcomes between 30,000 and 40,000 visitors per day.

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  • A music festival survivor fleeing the attack, a pair of Hamas militants and a deadly decision

    A music festival survivor fleeing the attack, a pair of Hamas militants and a deadly decision

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    KIBBUTZ RE’IM, Israel — The two militants were just ahead of him, spraying gunfire from their motorcycle at passing cars. One militant was driving, the 50-year-old man said, and the other sat behind, shooting at any target he saw. At least one wore body armor.

    “He didn’t see me,” Michael Silberberg said. So Silberberg made a decision.

    He and two friends had already managed to escape the slaughter at the Tribe of Nova music festival, where hundreds of militants from the Palestinian group Hamas had swarmed through crowds, killing at least 260 people and taking an unknown number hostage.

    They survived another attack a few minutes later, with two hiding in a roadside air-raid shelter while the other hid outside.

    Soon after that they were driving away in Silberberg’s car, trying to get far from the massacre, when they saw the motorcycle.

    “I knew it’s either I hit him or I know I die, or other people die, or somebody will die,” Silberberg said.

    So he stepped on the accelerator and slammed into the motorcycle with his four-door sedan.

    The shooter, he said, died immediately. The driver survived, but they left him crawling in the street badly injured.

    “They were neutralized,” Silberberg said.

    The men quickly drove away, with the vehicle’s front end badly dented, the car alarm blaring and smoke billowing from everywhere. They drove like that for 20 minutes until they reached a friend’s house and found safety.

    Silberberg, an Israeli-born German, said he had long been politically liberal, hoping for a peace that gave Palestinians their own homeland.

    “You know: ‘All good. Let’s live all together. Let’s give them the land.’”

    But not anymore.

    “My mind has changed. I’m sorry — I’m not sorry,” he said, sitting in his seafront Tel Aviv apartment where he and his two friends hunkered down after the attack.

    “You can’t make peace with these people,” he said. “They don’t want to coexist with us. They want to kill us.”

    Early Saturday morning, Hamas militants based in the Gaza Strip blasted through the Israeli security fence and streamed into Israel. The attack killed more than 1,300 people in Israel, with subsequent Israeli airstrikes killing more than 1,530 people in Gaza. Israel says roughly 1,500 Hamas militants were killed inside Israel.

    In the days since the assault, Israel has hammered the Gaza Strip with airstrikes as it prepares for a possible ground assault. Israel has also cut off food, fuel and medicine from Gaza’s 2.3 million people, leading aid groups to warn of an impending humanitarian catastrophe. Israel says the siege will remain in place until the hostages are freed.

    The Tribe of Nova festival, held in the semi-wooded fields outside Kibbutz Re’im, just a few miles from Gaza, was one of the first Hamas targets.

    Videos show militants arriving on trucks and motorcycles, with gunmen charging into crowds and firing on people as they tried to flee into the fields.

    Israeli communities near the festival also came under attack, with Hamas gunmen kidnapping people — soldiers, civilians, the elderly and young children — and killing scores of others.

    The carnage stunned Israel, which had not seen bloodshed like this for decades.

    On Thursday, a man who had been tending bar at the festival came back to the scene of the attack. He said he had no choice.

    “I feel I owe them, you know, all the people that were here and murdered,” Peleg Horev told an Associated Press journalist allowed to visit the scene. “I’m alive, I stayed alive. I have to tell their story. Each and every one of them.”

    The bodies have been cleared away from the festival grounds, but the wreckage of the attack is everywhere.

    Bullet-riddled cars, many with their windows shot out, are scattered through the festival area and nearby roads. Clothing spills from broken suitcases. A woman’s shirt remains in a tree where it had been hung to dry. A pair of eyeglasses sit on a windowsill. Ticket booths are pocked with gunfire.

    “Lost and Found” announces a festival poster hanging from a fence. “Camping Area,” says another.

    Leaves blow in a gentle breeze as soldiers patrol the area, occasionally dropping to the ground at the sound of distant gunfire. Security forces worry that militants could attack again, or that some could still be hiding in the fields and brush.

    Peleg escaped by walking for hours, deeper into Israel. He avoided the roads, where many who tried to escape by car were killed when they were stuck behind other vehicles that had come under attack.

    “All of this time you’re hearing gunshots and screaming from afar,” he said. “We just go as far as we can as fast as we can.”

    He is deeply shaken by the reality that he survived and so many others did not.

    “I owe them, really.”

    ___

    McNeil reported from Tel Aviv.

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  • Tens of thousands protest after Muslim prayers across Mideast over Israeli airstrikes on Gaza

    Tens of thousands protest after Muslim prayers across Mideast over Israeli airstrikes on Gaza

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    JERUSALEM — Tens of thousands of Muslims demonstrated Friday across the Middle East in support of the Palestinians and against Israeli airstrikes pounding Gaza, underscoring the risk of a wider regional conflict erupting as Israel prepares for a possible ground invasion in the coastal strip.

    From Amman, Jordan, to Yemen’s capital of Sanaa, Muslims poured out onto the streets after weekly Friday prayers. At Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Israeli police had been permitting only older men, women and children to the sprawling hilltop compound for prayers, trying to prevent the potential for violence as tens of thousands attend on a typical Friday.

    An Associated Press reporter watched police allow just a Palestinian teenage girl and her mother into the compound out of 20 worshippers who tried to get in, some of them even over the age of 50. Young Palestinian men who were refused entry gathered at the steps near Lion’s Gate, their eyes downcast, until police shouted at them and shepherded them out of the Old City altogether.

    “We can’t live, we can’t breathe, they are killing everything that is good within us,” said Ahmad Barbour, a 57-year-old cleaner in a clean white thobe, seething after police blocked him from entering for prayers.

    “Everything that is forbidden to us is allowed to them,” he added, referring to Israelis.

    The mosque sits in a hilltop compound sacred to both Jews and Muslims, and conflicting claims over it have spilled into violence before. Al-Aqsa is the third-holiest site in Islam and stands in a spot known to Jews as the Temple Mount, which is the holiest site in Judaism.

    Police later fired tear gas in the Old City and east Jerusalem. The Palestinian Red Crescent said its medics treated six wounded people, with at least one beaten up by officers, the organization said.

    In Baghdad, tens of thousands gathered in Tahrir Square in the center of Iraq’s capital for protests called by the influential Shiite cleric and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr.

    “May this demonstration … terrify the great evil, America, which supports Zionist terrorism against our loved ones in Palestine,” al-Sadr said in an online statement.

    Across Iran, a supporter of Hamas and Israel’s regional archenemy, demonstrators protested. In Tehran, the country’s capital, they burned Israeli and Ameircan flags, chanting: “Death to Israel,” “Death to America,” “Israel will be doomed,” and “Palestine will be the conqueror.”

    “The Palestinian people are fed up, now your idea is to destroy Gaza, the houses of the people,” Iran’s hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi said in a speech in the country’s southern Fars province. “The people of the world and Palestine will cause trouble for you.”

    In Yemen’s Sanaa, held by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels still at war with a Saudi-led coalition, live television footage showed demonstrators crowding streets and waving Yemeni and Palestinian flags. The rebels’ slogan long has been: “God is the greatest; death to America; death to Israel; curse of the Jews; victory to Islam.”

    After prayers in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, some worshippers stepped on American and Israeli flags, in a sign of disrespect. Protests there broke up peacefully, though other larger ones were expected later in the day.

    “Stop bombing Palestine!” shouted one of the demonstrators, Ahmed Raza. “Stop killing innocent Palestinians!”

    ___

    Associated Press writers Abdulrahman Zeyad in Baghdad, Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.

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  • US defense secretary is in Israel to meet with its leaders and see America’s security assistance

    US defense secretary is in Israel to meet with its leaders and see America’s security assistance

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    TEL AVIV, Israel — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived Friday in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv to meet with senior government leaders and see firsthand some of the U.S. weapons and security assistance that Washington rapidly delivered to Israel in the first week of its war with the militant Hamas group.

    Austin is the second high-level U.S. official to visit Israel in two days. His quick trip from Brussels, where he was attending a NATO defense ministers meeting, comes a day after Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in the region on Thursday. Blinken is continuing the frantic Mideast diplomacy, seeking to avert an expanded regional conflict.

    Austin is expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, and the Israeli War Cabinet.

    His arrival comes as Israel’s military directed hundreds of thousands of residents in Gaza City to evacuate “for their own safety and protection,” ahead of a feared Israeli ground offensive. Gaza’s Hamas rulers responded by calling on Palestinians to “remain steadfast in your homes and to stand firm” against Israel.

    Defense officials traveling with Austin said he wants to underscore America’s unwavering support for the people of Israel and that the United States is committed to making sure the country has what it needs to defend itself.

    A senior defense official said the U.S. has already given Israel small diameter bombs as well as interceptor missiles for its Iron Dome system and more will be delivered. Other munitions are expected to arrive Friday.

    Austin has spoken nearly daily with Gallant, and directed the rapid shift of U.S. ships, intelligence support and other assets to Israel and the region. Within hours after the brutal Hamas attack across the border into Israel, the U.S. moved warships and aircraft to the region.

    The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group is already in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and a second carrier was departing Friday from Virginia, also heading to the region.

    Austin declined to say if the U.S. is doing surveillance flights in the region, but the U.S. is providing intelligence and other planning assistance to the Israelis, including advice on the hostage situation.

    A day after visiting Israel to offer the Biden administration’s diplomatic support in person, Blinken was in Jordan on Friday and held talks with Jordanian King Abdullah II. They did not speak to reporters after the meeting. Blinken then went on to a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has a home in Amman, the Jordanian capital.

    In the meeting with the king, Blinken discussed Hamas’ attack last Saturday and efforts to release all hostages the militants seized, as well as efforts to “prevent the conflict from widening,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

    Blinken “underscored that Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination and discussed ways to address the humanitarian needs of civilians in Gaza while Israel conducts legitimate security operations to defend itself from terrorism.”

    The monarch rules over a country with a large Palestinian population and has a vested interest in their status while Abbas runs the Palestinian Authority that controls the West Bank.

    According to a palace statement, Abdullah stressed the need to open humanitarian corridors for medical aid and relief into Gaza while protecting civilians and working to end the escalation of the conflict.

    He appealed against hindering the work of international agencies and warned against any attempts to forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza and elsewhere, or to cause their internal displacement.

    Earlier on Friday, Israel’s military had told some 1 million Palestinians living in Gaza to evacuate the north, according to the United Nations — an unprecedented order for almost half the population of the sealed-off territory ahead an expected ground invasion by Israel against the ruling Hamas.

    The king also urged for the protection of innocent civilians on all sides, in line with shared human values, international law, and international humanitarian law.

    Later Friday, Blinken is to fly to Doha for meetings with Qatari officials who have close contacts with the Hamas leadership and have been exploring an exchange of Palestinian prisoners in Israel for the release of dozens of Israelis and foreigners taken hostage by Hamas during the unprecedented incursion of the militants into southern Israel last weekend.

    Blinken will make a brief stop in Bahrain and end the day in Saudi Arabia, a key player in the Arab world that has been considering normalizing ties with Israel, a U.S.-mediated process that is now on hold.

    He will also travel to the United Arab Emirates and Egypt over the weekend.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Omar Akour in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.

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  • Hamas practiced in plain sight, posting video of mock attack weeks before border breach

    Hamas practiced in plain sight, posting video of mock attack weeks before border breach

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    Less than a month before Hamas fighters blew through Israel’s high-tech “Iron Wall” and launched an attack that would leave more than 1,200 Israelis dead, they practiced in a very public dress rehearsal.

    A slickly produced two-minute propaganda video posted to social media by Hamas on Sept. 12 shows fighters using explosives to blast through a replica of the border gate, sweep in on pickup trucks and then move building by building through a full-scale reconstruction of an Israeli town, firing automatic weapons at human-silhouetted paper targets.

    The Islamic militant group’s live-fire exercise dubbed operation “Strong Pillar” also had militants in body armor and combat fatigues carrying out operations that included the destruction of mock-ups of the wall’s concrete towers and a communications antenna, just as they would do for real in the deadly attack last Saturday.

    While Israel’s highly regarded security and intelligence services were clearly caught flatfooted by Hamas’ ability to breach its Gaza defenses, the group appears to have hidden its extensive preparations for the deadly assault in plain sight.

    “There clearly were warnings and indications that should have been picked up,” said Bradley Bowman, a former U.S. Army officer who is now senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington research institute. “Or maybe they were picked up, but they didn’t spark necessary preparations to prevent these horrific terrorist acts from happening.”

    The Associated Press reviewed and verified key details from dozens of videos Hamas released over the last year, primarily through the social media app Telegram.

    Using satellite imagery, the AP matched the location of the mocked-up town to a patch of desert outside Al-Mawasi, a Palestinian town on the southern coast of the Gaza Strip. A large sign in Hebrew and Arabic at the gate says “Horesh Yaron,” the name of a controversial Israeli settlement in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

    Bowman said there are indications that Hamas intentionally led Israeli officials to believe it was preparing to carry out raids in the West Bank, rather than Gaza. It was also potentially significant that the exercise has been held annually since 2020 in December, but was moved up by nearly four months this year to coincide with the anniversary of Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.

    In a separate video posted to Telegram from last year’s Strong Pillar exercise on Dec. 28, Hamas fighters are shown storming what appears to be a mockup Israeli military base, complete with a full-size model of a tank with an Israeli flag flying from its turret. The gunmen move through the cinderblock buildings, seizing other men playing the roles of Israeli soldiers as hostages.

    Michael Milshtein, a retired Israeli colonel who previously led the military intelligence department overseeing the Palestinian territories, said he was aware of the Hamas videos, but he was still caught off guard by the ambition and scale of Saturday’s attack.

    “We knew about the drones, we knew about booby traps, we knew about cyberattacks and the marine forces … The surprise was the coordination between all those systems,” Milshtein said.

    The seeds of Israel’s failure to anticipate and stop Saturday’s attack go back at least a decade. Faced with recurring attacks from Hamas militants tunneling under Israel’s border fence, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed a very concrete solution — build a bigger wall.

    With financial help from U.S. taxpayers, Israel completed construction of a $1.1 billion project to fortify its existing defenses along its 40-mile land border with Gaza in 2021. The new, upgraded barrier includes a “smart fence” up to 6-meters (19.7 feet) high, festooned with cameras that can see in the dark, razor wire and seismic sensors capable of detecting the digging of tunnels more than 200 feet below. Manned guard posts were replaced with concrete towers topped with remote-controlled machine guns.

    “In our neighborhood, we need to protect ourselves from wild beasts,” Netanyahu said in 2016, referring to Palestinians and neighboring Arab states. “At the end of the day as I see it, there will be a fence like this one surrounding Israel in its entirety.”

    Shortly after dawn on Saturday, Hamas fighters pushed through Netanyahu’s wall in a matter of minutes. And they did it on the relative cheap, using explosive charges to blow holes in the barrier and then sending in bulldozers to widen the breaches as fighters streamed through on motorcycles and in pick-up trucks. Cameras and communications gear were bombarded by off-the-shelf commercial drones adapted to drop hand grenades and mortar shells — a tactic borrowed directly from the battlefields of Ukraine.

    Snipers took out Israel’s sophisticated roboguns by targeting their exposed ammunition boxes, causing them to explode. Militants armed with assault rifles sailed over the Israeli defenses slung under paragliders, providing Hamas airborne troops despite lacking airplanes. Increasingly sophisticated homemade rockets, capable of striking Israel’s capital of Tel Aviv, substituted for a lack of heavy artillery.

    Satellite images analyzed by the AP show the massive extent of the damage done at the heavily fortified Erez border crossing between Gaza and Israel. The images taken Sunday and analyzed Tuesday showed gaping holes in three sections of the border wall, the largest more than 70 meters (230 feet) wide.

    Once the wall was breached, Hamas fighters streamed through by the hundreds. A video showed a lone Israeli battle tank rushing to the sight of the attack, only to be attacked and quickly destroyed in a ball of flame. Hamas then disabled radio towers and radar sites, likely impeding the ability of the Israeli commanders to see and understand the extent of the attack.

    Hamas forces also struck a nearby army base near Zikim, engaging in an intense firefight with Israeli troops before overrunning the post. Videos posted by Hamas show graphic scenes with dozens of dead Israeli soldiers.

    They then fanned out across the countryside of Southern Israel, attacking kibbutzim and a music festival. On the bodies of some of the Hamas militants killed during the invasion were detailed maps showing planned zones and routes of attack, according to images posted by Israeli first responders who recovered some of the the corpses. Israeli authorities announced Wednesday they had recovered the bodies of about 1,500 Islamic fighters, though no details were provided about where they were found or how they died.

    Military experts told the AP the attack showed a level of sophistication not previously exhibited by Hamas, likely suggesting they had external help.

    “I just was impressed with Hamas’s ability to use basics and fundamentals to be able to penetrate the wall,” said retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Stephen Danner, a combat engineer trained to build and breach defenses. “They seemed to be able to find those weak spots and penetrate quickly and then exploit that breach.”

    Ali Barakeh, a Beirut-based senior Hamas official, acknowledged that over the years the group had received supplies, financial support, military expertise and training from its allies abroad, including Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon. But he insisted the recent operation to breach Israel’s border defenses was homegrown, with the exact date and time for the attack known only to a handful of commanders within Hamas.

    Details of the operation were kept so tight that some Hamas fighters who took part in the assault Saturday believed they were heading to just another drill, showing up in street clothes rather than their uniforms, Barakeh said.

    Last weekend’s devastating surprise attack has shaken political support for Netanyahu within Israel, who pushed ahead with spending big to build walls despite some within his own cabinet and military warning that it probably wouldn’t work.

    In the days since Hamas struck, senior Israeli officials have largely deflected questions about the wall and the apparent intelligence failure. Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, acknowledged the military owes the public an explanation, but said now is not the time.

    “First, we fight, then we investigate,” he said.

    In his push to build border walls, Netanyahu found an enthusiastic partner in then-President Donald Trump, who praised Netanyahu’s Iron Wall as a potential model for the expanded barrier he planned for the U.S. Southern border with Mexico.

    Under Trump, the U.S. expanded a joint initiative with Israel started under the Obama Administration to develop technologies for detecting underground tunnels along the Gaza border defenses. Since 2016, Congress has appropriated $320 million toward the project.

    But even with all its high-tech gadgets, the Iron Wall was still largely just a physical barrier that could be breached, said Victor Tricaud, a senior analyst with the London-based consulting firm Control Risks.

    “The fence, no matter how many sensors … no matter how deep the underground obstacles go, at the end of the day, it’s effectively a metal fence,” he said. “Explosives, bulldozers can eventually get through it. What was remarkable was Hamas’s capability to keep all the preparations under wraps.”

    ___

    Biesecker reported from Washington and El Deeb from Beirut. AP reporters Jon Gambrell in Jerusalem, Lori Hinnant in Paris, Beatrice Dupuy in New York, and Aaron Kessler and Fu Ting in Washington contributed.

    ___

    Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org.

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  • Musk’s X has taken down hundreds of Hamas-linked accounts, CEO says

    Musk’s X has taken down hundreds of Hamas-linked accounts, CEO says

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    LONDON — The European Commission on Thursday made a formal, legally binding request for information from Elon Musk’s social media platform X over its handling of hate speech, misinformation and violent terrorist content related to the Israel-Hamas war.

    It is the first step in what could become the EU’s inaugural investigation under the Digital Services Act, in this case to determine if the site formerly known as Twitter is in compliance with the tough new rules meant to keep users safe online and stop the spread of harmful content.

    San Francisco-based X has until Wednesday to respond to questions related to how its crisis response protocol is functioning. Responses to other questions must be received by Oct. 31. The commission said its next steps, which could include the opening of formal proceedings and penalties, would be determined by X’s replies.

    Representatives for X did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. The company’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, said earlier that the site has removed hundreds of Hamas-linked accounts and taken down or labeled tens of thousands of pieces of content since the militant group’s attack on Israel. One social media expert called the actions “a drop in the bucket.”

    Yaccarino on Thursday outlined steps taken by X to combat illegal content flourishing on the platform. She was responding to an earlier letter from a top European Union official for information on how X is complying with the EU’s new digital rules during the Israel-Hamas war. That letter, which essentially served as a warning, was not legally binding — the latest one, however, is.

    “X is proportionately and effectively assessing and addressing identified fake and manipulated content during this constantly evolving and shifting crisis,” Yaccarino said in a letter to European Commissioner Thierry Breton, the 27-nation bloc’s digital enforcer.

    But some say the efforts are not nearly enough to tackle the problem.

    “While these actions are better than nothing, it is not enough to curtail the misinformation problem on X,” said Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the investigative collective Bellingcat who previously worked at Twitter on Community Notes.

    “There is an overwhelming amount of misinformation on the platform,” Koltai said. “From what we have seen, the moderation efforts from X are only addressing a drop in the bucket.”

    Since the war erupted, photos and videos have flooded social media of the carnage, including haunting footage of Hamas fighters taking terrified Israelis hostage, alongside posts from users pushing false claims and misrepresenting videos from other events.

    The conflict is one of the first major tests for the EU’s groundbreaking digital rules, which took effect in August. Breton fired off a similar letter Thursday to TikTok, telling CEO Shou Zi Chew that he has a “particular obligation” to protect child and teen users from “violent content depicting hostage taking and other graphic videos” reportedly making the rounds on the video sharing app.

    For X, changes that Musk has made to the platform since he bought it last year mean accounts that subscribe to X’s blue-check service can get paid if their posts go viral, creating a financial incentive to post whatever gets the most reaction. Plus, X’s workforce — including its content moderation team — has been gutted.

    Those changes are running up against the EU’s Digital Services Act, which forces social media companies to step up policing of their platforms for illegal content, such as terrorist material or illegal hate speech, under threat of hefty fines.

    “There is no place on X for terrorist organizations or violent extremist groups and we continue to remove such accounts in real time, including proactive efforts,” Yaccarino wrote in the letter posted to X.

    X has taken action to “remove or label tens of thousands of pieces of content,” Yaccarino said, pointing out that there are 700 unique Community Notes — a feature that allows users to add their own fact-checks to posts — “related to the attacks and unfolding events.”

    The platform has been “responding promptly” and in a “diligent and objective manner” to takedown requests from law enforcement agencies from around the world, including more than 80 from EU member states, Yaccarino said.

    Koltai, the researcher and former Twitter employee, said Community Notes are not an “end-all solution to curtailing misinfo” and that there are gaps that the feature just can’t fill yet.

    “There are still many videos and photos on X that don’t have notes that are unmoderated, and continue to spread misleading claims,” she said.

    Since Musk acquired Twitter and renamed it, social-media watchers say the platform has become not just unreliable but actively promotes falsehoods, while a study commissioned by the EU found that it’s the worst-performing platform for online disinformation.

    Rivals such as TikTok, YouTube and Facebook also are coping with a flood of unsubstantiated rumors and falsehoods about the Middle Eastern conflict, playing the typical whack-a-mole that erupts each time a news event captures world attention.

    Breton, the EU official, urged TikTok’s leader to step up its efforts at tackling disinformation and illegal content and respond within 24 hours. The company did not reply immediately to an email seeking comment.

    Breton’s warning letters have also gone to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook and Instagram parent Meta.

    —

    AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay in Oakland, California, contributed to this report.

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  • ‘Complete paralysis:’ Palestinian medics say disaster awaits Gaza as Israel pounds enclave with airstrikes | CNN

    ‘Complete paralysis:’ Palestinian medics say disaster awaits Gaza as Israel pounds enclave with airstrikes | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Medical and relief workers are pleading for safe passage for the 2 million civilians in Gaza as Israel pounds the enclave with airstrikes and imposes a complete siege, in response to the brutal attack launched by the militant group Hamas.

    Time is running out for the residents crammed into the increasingly battered 140-square-mile territory under Israeli and Egyptian blockades, as supplies of food and water run low. Families are desperately searching for shelter as missiles flatten buildings and towers. Medical supplies are in dire shortage. And most of the enclave has already lost power, after the fuel that generates electricity ran out on Wednesday.

    At least 1,417 Palestinians, including 447 children and 248 women, have so far been killed in Gaza, and 6,268 others injured, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

    In Israel, at 1,200 people have been killed, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said on Wednesday. Israel also said that up to 150 hostages, including civilians, have been taken to Gaza by Hamas – which controls the strip.

    Relief groups are calling for the protection of the many civilians in Gaza who continue to bear the brunt of the bloody war between Hamas and Israel, urging that an emergency corridor be established for the transfer of humanitarian aid.

    Smoke billows over Rafah, in southern Gaza, on Thursday. Israeli forces hammered the enclave for a sixth consecutive day.

    Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz on Thursday said Israel would deprive the strip of electricity, water and fuel until Hamas returns the hostages.

    “No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened, and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home,” Katz wrote on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter. “And no one will preach us morals,” he added.

    Responding to a question about whether Israel is upholding the laws of warfare with its siege on Gaza, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on Thursday his country “abides by international law, operates by international law.”

    “Every operation is secured and covered and reviewed legally with all due respect,” Herzog told CNN’s Becky Anderson at a press briefing in Jerusalem, adding that talk about war crimes is “totally out of context.”

    Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, the co-founder of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS), warned the complete siege of Gaza will pollute water and reduce oxygen supplies, depleting health indicators, including infant and maternal mortality rates, poverty, starvation and the spread of waterborne diseases and gastrointestinal infections.

    “You will have a very big rise of maternal mortality of women who are going to give birth under terrible conditions. We will see epidemics starting to spread in Gaza,” he said. “That’s also besides the number of people who will be killed by Israeli air strikes.

    “We are heading towards a complete paralysis of the medical system there.”

    Human Rights Watch earlier this week criticized Israel’s call for the complete siege as a form of “collective punishment” and a “war crime.”

    The Israeli blockade on Gaza has crippled the health system inside the Palestinian enclave, medical workers told CNN, as emergency teams struggle to triage patients amid dwindling medical supplies.

    Barghouti, the PMRS co-founder, said patients with pre-existing health conditions, including cancer and chronic kidney failure, are at risk of death because the siege has blocked access to fresh drugs.

    The PMRS has 180 doctors, nurses and psychotherapists stationed inside Gaza, alongside thousands of volunteers, he told CNN on Wednesday.

    “I receive calls around the clock from our people there [in Gaza], patients with kidney problems who need kidney dialysis, telling me that they could die in a few days,” said Barghouti, who is also the leader of the Palestinian National Initiative, a political party headquartered in the occupied West Bank.

    “Our medical teams are finding great difficulty moving from one place to another because, as people will say, there is no safe place at all. So it’s a disaster in front of our eyes.”

    A British-Palestinian surgeon working in Gaza, Ghassan Abu-Sitta, said that unless a humanitarian corridor replenishes the system, hospitals may not make it to the end of the week.

    “Unless there is a cessation of the bombing and the humanitarian corridor (opens), the Palestinian health system will not survive beyond the week,” Abu-Sitta, who was working inside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City but is now operating from a hospital in northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, told CNN.

    The doctor is yet to see any aid come through.

    Palestinian citizens inspect damage to their homes, which were destroyed by Israeli airstrikes in the Karama area, in northern Gaza, on Wednesday.

    Hospitals all over Gaza are overwhelmed with patients, he said, adding that power is limited to generators and already scarce drinking water is being transported in tanks. Concerns of diseases spreading, including cholera, are growing, Abu-Sitta added.

    The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned on Thursday that Gaza likely only has enough fuel for a few more hours.

    “I wanted to say we are going toward a catastrophe, but we are already in the catastrophe,” ICRC’s regional director for the Middle East told reporters during a briefing in Geneva, adding that the humanitarian situation will soon become “unmanageable.”

    Gaza’s health infrastructure is close to a breaking point, Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, said Thursday. All beds are occupied, and there is no room for new patients in critical condition, Al-Qudra said.

    Earlier Thursday the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said hospitals in Gaza “risk turning into morgues” amid power cuts.

    The Palestinian Minister of Health Mai Al Kaila on Thursday called for urgent international help to field hospitals in Gaza. Medical supplies, emergency departments and intensive care units are urgently needed, she said.

    With the current Israeli siege, the only corridor through which Palestinians or aid can pass in and out of Gaza is the Rafah Crossing, which connects Gaza to Egypt.

    Egypt on Thursday denied reports of the crossing being closed, saying it has however sustained damage due to repeated Israeli airstrikes on the Palestinian side of the border.

    Palestinian officials in Gaza had said two days earlier that the crossing had been closed due to Israeli airstrikes. CNN could not independently verify whether the crossing is open or closed.

    In a statement, Egypt called on international partners to send humanitarian and relief aid to Palestinians in Gaza, adding that Egyptian authorities will be receiving aid packages at the Al-Arish International Airport in north Sinai.

    A Jordanian plane carrying medical aid for Gaza left for Egypt on Thursday, according to a statement from the Jordanian Hashemite Charitable Organization, a state-run relief agency, adding that the supplies will be delivered to medical authorities in Gaza through the Rafah border crossing.

    It is unclear how the aid will cross the border amid airstrikes on Gaza.

    CNN has reached out to the Egyptian government about the status of Rafah crossing, whether aid will be able to pass through, and whether Palestinians fleeing the conflict will be able to cross into Egyptian territory.

    The US said it is in talks with Israel and Egypt about creating a humanitarian corridor through which civilians can cross.

    “We’re talking to Israel about that. We’re talking to Egypt about that (getting civilians out of Gaza),” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday prior to departing for Israel.

    A senior Israeli official told CNN on Wednesday talks are “underway” to allow US citizens and Palestinian civilians in Gaza to cross over into Egypt ahead of any possible land invasion of the territory by Israeli forces.

    The official with knowledge of the negotiations told CNN’s Matthew Chance on Wednesday that under the proposal being discussed, all American citizens would be permitted to pass through the Rafah border crossing if they present their US passports, while the movement of other Palestinian civilians would be limited to 2,000 people a day.

    Final approval of the arrangement would need to come from the Egyptians, who control the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, but the Israeli official said it was “in Israel’s interests” for as many Palestinians as possible to leave Gaza.

    The IDF on Wednesday said it has amassed some 300,000 reservists near the Gaza border.

    “They (Hamas) will regret this moment – Gaza will never return to what it was,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said earlier.

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  • Lions linebacker Alex Anzalone’s parents safely arrive home from Israel

    Lions linebacker Alex Anzalone’s parents safely arrive home from Israel

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    Detroit Lions linebacker Alex Anzalone’s parents have safely arrived home from Israel

    ByThe Associated Press

    October 12, 2023, 10:52 AM

    Green Bay Packers running back Aaron Jones (33) is pushed out of bounds by Detroit Lions linebacker Alex Anzalone (34) during the second half of an NFL football game, Thursday, Sept. 28, 2023, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Matt Ludtke)

    The Associated Press

    ALLEN PARK, Mich. — ALLEN PARK, Mich. (AP) — Detroit Lions linebacker Alex Anzalone’s parents have safely arrived home from Israel.

    They were among about 50 people affiliated with a Naples, Florida-based church who were in the country.

    Anzalone posted on social media on Thursday morning that his parents are headed home and his mother later posted that the group arrived safely.

    Sal and Judy Anzalone were in a Jerusalem hotel as Israel vowed an unprecedented offensive against Hamas after the Islamic militant group’s fighters broke through the border fence Saturday and stormed into the country’s south. The war between Israel and Hamas has claimed at least 2,200 lives.

    Anzalone told The Detroit News on Sunday, after Detroit beat the Carolina Panthers, that all he has been thinking about is his parents.

    “It’s hard,” Anzalone told the newspaper.

    Lions coach Dan Campbell said he called Anzalone about his parents when he was informed of their plight Sunday night.

    The NFC North-leading Lions (4-1) play NFC-South leading Tampa Bay (3-1) on the road Sunday.

    ___

    AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL

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  • Live updates | Day 6 of the latest Israel-Palestinian war

    Live updates | Day 6 of the latest Israel-Palestinian war

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    The Israeli government is under intense public pressure to topple Hamas after its militants stormed through a border fence Saturday and killed hundreds of Israelis in their homes, on the streets and at an outdoor music festival.

    In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, residents are facing ever-growing uncertainty after the territory’s only power plant ran out of fuel and shut down Wednesday. Without power, communication is limited and information is scarce.

    Egypt has engaged in intensive talks with Israel and the United States to allow the delivery of aid and fuel through its Rafah crossing point, which remained closed on both sides Thursday. However, Egypt pushed back against proposals to establish corridors out of Gaza, saying an an exodus of Palestinians from the enclave would have grave consequences on the Palestinian cause.

    The war, which has claimed at least 2,600 lives on both sides, is expected to escalate.

    Here’s what’s happening on Day 6 of the latest Israel-Palestinian war:

    UNITED NATIONS — The number of people fleeing attacks on Gaza is continuing “in very, very large numbers,” with a 30% increase in the past 24 hours, the United Nations humanitarian office says.

    Two-thirds of the people displaced by the violence — 218,000 — have taken refuge in 92 schools run by the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Thursday.

    Dujarric said the humanitarian situation, with the Israeli cutoff of fuel, food and electricity, is getting more dire “by the day, if not by the hour.”

    “More than 2,500 units have been destroyed, severely damaged and rendered uninhabitable while nearly 23,000 others have sustained moderate to minor damage,” he said. “At least 88 educational facilities have been struck.”

    Dujarric said discussions about opening a humanitarian corridor from Gaza are ongoing, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and U.N. Mideast envoy Tor Wennesland are engaging “with all relevant actors.”

    TEL AVIV, Israel — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed Thursday that he will visit Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt following planned trips to Jordan and Qatar. Blinken is set to travel on Friday to Doha where he will talks with senior Qatari officials.

    Qatar has ties with Hamas and has in the past served as facilitator in discussions to calm tensions in and around Gaza.

    LONDON — Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced millions of pounds in extra funding to boost security at schools and synagogues and protect them against antisemitic attacks in the wake of Hamas’ attacks in Israel.

    Sunak’s office said Thursday that 3 million pounds ($3.7 million) of additional funding will be provided to the Community Security Trust, an organization established to protect British Jews from antisemitic threats. The funding will enable the group to provide more guards in the schools it supports, as well as outside synagogues during prayer times.

    The Community Security Trust said it recorded 139 antisemitic incidents in the U.K. over the past four days — a fourfold increase compared to the same period last year.

    The funding announcement came after Sunak met with senior officials and police chiefs to discuss security and policing protests and rallies by pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups planned across the U.K. this weekend.

    JERUSALEM — Israel’s military said Thursday that 247 soldiers have been killed since the start of the war last weekend — an increase from 222 earlier in the day.

    The military previously confirmed to The Associated Press that the 222 soldiers had all been identified and their families notified.

    BAGHDAD — Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian expressed his country’s support for the rights of the Palestinian people, saying that the ongoing war in Gaza will affect the whole region.

    Amirabdollahian said there is a need for an end to the “killing of children and civilians in Palestine.”

    The Iranian official made his comments Thursday during a meeting with Iraq’s National Security Adviser Qasim al-Araji in Baghdad.

    Amirabdollahian’s comments were carried in a statement released by al-Araji’s office.

    Al-Araji said demonstrations will be held in different parts of Iraq on Friday in support of the Palestinians.

    Iran is a main supporter of Palestinian factions based in Gaza, including Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group.

    JERUSALEM — A former Israeli defense official told The Associated Press Thursday that Israel should continue bombarding Gaza for as long as militants remain in the territory, even if it incurs massive casualties to Israeli soldiers.

    Yaakov Amidror, a retired General and senior fellow at JINSA, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, said that Israel would “bomb any attempt to build military capability in the in the Gaza Strip for the next hundred years,” raising the specter of an unending military engagement in Gaza.

    “We need to crush Hamas to ashes, no matter how many casualties,” Amidror said. “Of course, we will give all means to our soldiers to defend themselves. but I don’t think casualties are the main element in decision-making.”

    TEL AVIV — Struggling to speak as they sobbed or choked back tears, families of French-Israeli citizens missing since the Hamas attack began last weekend appealed Thursday for information about their whereabouts and for efforts to bring them back.

    “We don’t know if she is dead, if she is in Gaza. We don’t know anything. We haven’t heard anything,’’ Doron Journo, whose 24-year-old daughter Karin Journo disappeared Saturday, said at a news conference in Tel Aviv.

    Karin’s sister appealed to French President Emmanuel Macron, saying, ‘’I want my country back. I want my sister back.’’

    Batsheva Yahalomi described being kidnapped by militants on motorbikes along with her baby and 12-year-old son Eitan. She and the baby escaped, but she hasn’t seen Eitan since.

    Ido Nagar held his 6-month-old child as he pleaded for information about his wife, Celine Ben-David Nagar, 32, who had also been at the music festival. ‘’Bring my wife back to her daughter.’’

    The Israeli military said Thursday it had dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. While Israel says it is striking Hamas targets, many civilians in the pounded strip have been killed. Hospitals and U.N. shelters have also been hit.

    The airstrikes have also killed entire families in their homes. Gaza’s Ministry of Health said Thursday that 22 entire families had been killed. An airstrike in the northern city of Jabalia Thursday killed 44 members of the same family, leaving just six survivors.

    JERUSALEM — A high ranking Hamas official warned Thursday that any Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip will prove catastrophic for the Israeli army.

    “For every action the enemy takes, there is a plan we have,” said Saleh Al-Arouri, the deputy head of the political bureau of Hamas.

    Israeli defense officials have yet to order a ground invasion of the pummeled territory, but have been planning for the possibility of it. The military has called over 300,000 reservists into action in preparation.

    JERUSALEM — In a meeting with the King of Jordan Thursday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas gave tempered remarks calling for the end of aggression toward Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian state media reported, as Israeli airstrikes pummeled the besieged strip.

    “We reject the practices of killing civilians or abusing them on both sides,” said Abbas, who is the head of Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.

    In 2007, Hamas violently seized Gaza from the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority.

    BUCHAREST, Romania — Several hundred people gathered for a rally in Romania’s capital on Thursday to pledge their support for Israel in what its embassy called the country’s “fight against terrorism.”

    Held at a central Bucharest park, many attendees waved Israeli flags and some brandished signs that read: “We stand with Israel.”

    Israel’s ambassador to Romania, Reuven Azar, told reporters there that “we are going to tackle this evil, because without tackling this evil, we are all in danger.”

    “We are now in a very difficult moment in our history. We’ve been attacked by one of the most ferocious, barbaric, savage forces in the world that is killing innocent civilians, families, babies, children, taking hostages, (and) burning people alive,” he said. “It’s a kind of savagery that we haven’t seen before.”

    BRUSSELS — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Thursday that the U.S. is placing no specific conditions on how Israel uses the American-provided munitions. Israel has a professional military and “we would hope and expect that they would do the right things,” he told reporters at the close of the NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels.

    He was asked if the U.S. would put conditions on the weapon, specifically that they would not be used against civilians. Austin said he would leave it to the Israelis to define their operations.

    Austin also said that the U.S. is working to provide Israel whatever it needs, even as America continues to support Ukraine. “The United States can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

    Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council Jan Egeland has called for establishing demilitarized zones in Gaza amid unrelenting bombardment by Israel following last weekend’s unprecedented attack by Hamas.

    Writing Thursday on X, formerly known as Twitter, Egeland said urgent life-saving support is needed for civilians trapped in Gaza.

    “The siege must be lifted,” he wrote. “Defined, safe, and demilitarised zones within Gaza itself must be established & respected by all parties.”

    Egeland also called for the international community to facilitate a deal to release all civilians held by both sides, “with immediate release of children, mothers with infants, the wounded & sick.”

    JERUSALEM — The chief of staff for Israel’s military, Herzi Halevi, admitted Thursday that the military had failed to protect civilians around the Gaza Strip from Hamas’s unprecedented attack on the country.

    “The IDF is responsible for the security of the country and its citizens, and on Saturday morning in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip, we did not,” Halevi said. “We will learn, we will investigate, but now is the time for war.”

    TEL AVIV, Israel — After visiting Israel and Jordan, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel on Friday to Doha where he will have talks with senior Qatari officials.

    Qatar has ties with Hamas and has in the past served as facilitator in discussions to calm tensions in and around Gaza.

    BERLIN – The German government says Chancellor Olaf Scholz has discussed the fate of hostages taken by Hamas with the emir of Qatar.

    The emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, was in Berlin on Thursday for a previously scheduled visit. Qatar has been a mediator in the past.

    Scholz’s office said the German leader underlined Berlin’s condemnation of Hamas’ attack and Israel’s right to defend itself. It said he stressed that “Hamas has full responsibility for the well-being of the hostages” and called for them to be released “as quickly as possible.”

    The statement said Scholz “recognized in this context Qatar’s humanitarian effort” and the two leaders agreed to remain in close contact on the issue.

    The hostages include several German-Israeli dual citizens, but Germany hasn’t given a precise figure.

    JERUSALEM — Fourteen health facilities have been damaged and 10 health care workers killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli airstrikes since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, Palestinian health officials said Thursday.

    JERUSALEM — At least 1,417 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip and over 6,200 have been injured since the Israel-Hamas war began, Palestinian health officials said Thursday.

    Of the dead, nearly 450 are children and 250 are women.

    The war has claimed at least 2,600 lives on both sides since Hamas launched its attack on Israel last Saturday.

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  • Live updates | Day 6 of the latest Israel-Palestinian war

    Live updates | Day 6 of the latest Israel-Palestinian war

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    The Israeli government is under intense public pressure to topple Hamas after its militants stormed through a border fence Saturday and killed hundreds of Israelis in their homes, on the streets and at an outdoor music festival.

    In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, residents are facing ever-growing uncertainty after the territory’s only power plant ran out of fuel and shut down Wednesday. Without power, communication is limited and information is scarce.

    Egypt has engaged in intensive talks with Israel and the United States to allow the delivery of aid and fuel through its Rafah crossing point, which remained closed on both sides Thursday. However, Egypt pushed back against proposals to establish corridors out of Gaza, saying an an exodus of Palestinians from the enclave would have grave consequences on the Palestinian cause.

    The war, which has claimed at least 2,600 lives on both sides, is expected to escalate.

    Here’s what’s happening on Day 6 of the latest Israel-Palestinian war:

    TEL AVIV, Israel — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed Thursday that he will visit Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt following planned trips to Jordan and Qatar. Blinken is set to travel on Friday to Doha where he will talks with senior Qatari officials.

    Qatar has ties with Hamas and has in the past served as facilitator in discussions to calm tensions in and around Gaza.

    LONDON — Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced millions of pounds in extra funding to boost security at schools and synagogues and protect them against antisemitic attacks in the wake of Hamas’ attacks in Israel.

    Sunak’s office said Thursday that 3 million pounds ($3.7 million) of additional funding will be provided to the Community Security Trust, an organization established to protect British Jews from antisemitic threats. The funding will enable the group to provide more guards in the schools it supports, as well as outside synagogues during prayer times.

    The Community Security Trust said it recorded 139 antisemitic incidents in the U.K. over the past four days — a fourfold increase compared to the same period last year.

    The funding announcement came after Sunak met with senior officials and police chiefs to discuss security and policing protests and rallies by pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups planned across the U.K. this weekend.

    JERUSALEM — Israel’s military said Thursday that 247 soldiers have been killed since the start of the war last weekend — an increase from 222 earlier in the day.

    The military previously confirmed to The Associated Press that the 222 soldiers had all been identified and their families notified.

    BAGHDAD — Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian expressed his country’s support for the rights of the Palestinian people, saying that the ongoing war in Gaza will affect the whole region.

    Amirabdollahian said there is a need for an end to the “killing of children and civilians in Palestine.”

    The Iranian official made his comments Thursday during a meeting with Iraq’s National Security Adviser Qasim al-Araji in Baghdad.

    Amirabdollahian’s comments were carried in a statement released by al-Araji’s office.

    Al-Araji said demonstrations will be held in different parts of Iraq on Friday in support of the Palestinians.

    Iran is a main supporter of Palestinian factions based in Gaza, including Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group.

    JERUSALEM — A former Israeli defense official told The Associated Press Thursday that Israel should continue bombarding Gaza for as long as militants remain in the territory, even if it incurs massive casualties to Israeli soldiers.

    Yaakov Amidror, a retired General and senior fellow at JINSA, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, said that Israel would “bomb any attempt to build military capability in the in the Gaza Strip for the next hundred years,” raising the specter of an unending military engagement in Gaza.

    “We need to crush Hamas to ashes, no matter how many casualties,” Amidror said. “Of course, we will give all means to our soldiers to defend themselves. but I don’t think casualties are the main element in decision-making.”

    TEL AVIV — Struggling to speak as they sobbed or choked back tears, families of French-Israeli citizens missing since the Hamas attack began last weekend appealed Thursday for information about their whereabouts and for efforts to bring them back.

    “We don’t know if she is dead, if she is in Gaza. We don’t know anything. We haven’t heard anything,’’ Doron Journo, whose 24-year-old daughter Karin Journo disappeared Saturday, said at a news conference in Tel Aviv.

    Karin’s sister appealed to French President Emmanuel Macron, saying, ‘’I want my country back. I want my sister back.’’

    Batsheva Yahalomi described being kidnapped by militants on motorbikes along with her baby and 12-year-old son Eitan. She and the baby escaped, but she hasn’t seen Eitan since.

    Ido Nagar held his 6-month-old child as he pleaded for information about his wife, Celine Ben-David Nagar, 32, who had also been at the music festival. ‘’Bring my wife back to her daughter.’’

    The Israeli military said Thursday it had dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. While Israel says it is striking Hamas targets, many civilians in the pounded strip have been killed. Hospitals and U.N. shelters have also been hit.

    The airstrikes have also killed entire families in their homes. Gaza’s Ministry of Health said Thursday that 22 entire families had been killed. An airstrike in the northern city of Jabalia Thursday killed 44 members of the same family, leaving just six survivors.

    JERUSALEM — A high ranking Hamas official warned Thursday that any Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip will prove catastrophic for the Israeli army.

    “For every action the enemy takes, there is a plan we have,” said Saleh Al-Arouri, the deputy head of the political bureau of Hamas.

    Israeli defense officials have yet to order a ground invasion of the pummeled territory, but have been planning for the possibility of it. The military has called over 300,000 reservists into action in preparation.

    JERUSALEM — In a meeting with the King of Jordan Thursday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas gave tempered remarks calling for the end of aggression toward Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian state media reported, as Israeli airstrikes pummeled the besieged strip.

    “We reject the practices of killing civilians or abusing them on both sides,” said Abbas, who is the head of Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.

    In 2007, Hamas violently seized Gaza from the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority.

    BUCHAREST, Romania — Several hundred people gathered for a rally in Romania’s capital on Thursday to pledge their support for Israel in what its embassy called the country’s “fight against terrorism.”

    Held at a central Bucharest park, many attendees waved Israeli flags and some brandished signs that read: “We stand with Israel.”

    Israel’s ambassador to Romania, Reuven Azar, told reporters there that “we are going to tackle this evil, because without tackling this evil, we are all in danger.”

    “We are now in a very difficult moment in our history. We’ve been attacked by one of the most ferocious, barbaric, savage forces in the world that is killing innocent civilians, families, babies, children, taking hostages, (and) burning people alive,” he said. “It’s a kind of savagery that we haven’t seen before.”

    BRUSSELS — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Thursday that the U.S. is placing no specific conditions on how Israel uses the American-provided munitions. Israel has a professional military and “we would hope and expect that they would do the right things,” he told reporters at the close of the NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels.

    He was asked if the U.S. would put conditions on the weapon, specifically that they would not be used against civilians. Austin said he would leave it to the Israelis to define their operations.

    Austin also said that the U.S. is working to provide Israel whatever it needs, even as America continues to support Ukraine. “The United States can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

    Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council Jan Egeland has called for establishing demilitarized zones in Gaza amid unrelenting bombardment by Israel following last weekend’s unprecedented attack by Hamas.

    Writing Thursday on X, formerly known as Twitter, Egeland said urgent life-saving support is needed for civilians trapped in Gaza.

    “The siege must be lifted,” he wrote. “Defined, safe, and demilitarised zones within Gaza itself must be established & respected by all parties.”

    Egeland also called for the international community to facilitate a deal to release all civilians held by both sides, “with immediate release of children, mothers with infants, the wounded & sick.”

    JERUSALEM — The chief of staff for Israel’s military, Herzi Halevi, admitted Thursday that the military had failed to protect civilians around the Gaza Strip from Hamas’s unprecedented attack on the country.

    “The IDF is responsible for the security of the country and its citizens, and on Saturday morning in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip, we did not,” Halevi said. “We will learn, we will investigate, but now is the time for war.”

    TEL AVIV, Israel — After visiting Israel and Jordan, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel on Friday to Doha where he will have talks with senior Qatari officials.

    Qatar has ties with Hamas and has in the past served as facilitator in discussions to calm tensions in and around Gaza.

    BERLIN – The German government says Chancellor Olaf Scholz has discussed the fate of hostages taken by Hamas with the emir of Qatar.

    The emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, was in Berlin on Thursday for a previously scheduled visit. Qatar has been a mediator in the past.

    Scholz’s office said the German leader underlined Berlin’s condemnation of Hamas’ attack and Israel’s right to defend itself. It said he stressed that “Hamas has full responsibility for the well-being of the hostages” and called for them to be released “as quickly as possible.”

    The statement said Scholz “recognized in this context Qatar’s humanitarian effort” and the two leaders agreed to remain in close contact on the issue.

    The hostages include several German-Israeli dual citizens, but Germany hasn’t given a precise figure.

    JERUSALEM — Fourteen health facilities have been damaged and 10 health care workers killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli airstrikes since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, Palestinian health officials said Thursday.

    JERUSALEM — At least 1,417 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip and over 6,200 have been injured since the Israel-Hamas war began, Palestinian health officials said Thursday.

    Of the dead, nearly 450 are children and 250 are women.

    The war has claimed at least 2,600 lives on both sides since Hamas launched its attack on Israel last Saturday.

    TEL AVIV, Israel — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

    Blinken offered a statement with Herzog that touched on the same themes as his earlier statement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    “There really are two paths before countries in this region and in many ways, countries in this world. But here in the Middle East, there’s the path of integration, cooperation, normalization and equal measures of justice, opportunity, dignity for all peoples, including the Palestinians,” Blinken said.

    He added: “Or there’s the path that Hamas has shown to the world these last few days — terror, destruction, nihilism, a path that leads to nowhere for anyone except to the darkest places in our souls.”

    JERUSALEM — Every Israeli soldier killed by Hamas militants so far in the latest Israel-Palestinian war has been identified, the Israeli military confirmed Thursday.

    A total of 222 Israeli soldiers have died and their families have all been notified, a spokesperson for the military said.

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  • ‘Hell on Earth:’ Gaza resident describes chaos as Israel’s counteroffensive looms

    ‘Hell on Earth:’ Gaza resident describes chaos as Israel’s counteroffensive looms

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    Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza is triggering a “traumatic” scene of chaos, according to an employee of an international humanitarian organization there.

    “All the people were running in the street, not knowing where to go or what to do,” she said in a voice note recorded Thursday. “I remember my son telling me that he was barely able to take his breath because of how frightened he was.”

    She left her home in Gaza City with her children on Friday after Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told all civilians to evacuate Gaza City and started walking towards the city of Khan Younis, 30 kilometers south. She describes a “hell on earth:” airstrikes pummeling Gaza day and night, no electricity, scarce water supplies, an unreliable telecoms network connection. And most of all, a feeling of hopelessness and helplessness, for being unable to protect her son.

    “[I] don’t know what to say more, but this has to end soon,” she said. “No human can tolerate what we are experiencing for that long.”

    Israel’s order to move Palestinians living in the north of Gaza — the latest in a series of retaliatory measures since Hamas’ attack on Israel last Saturday — has been condemned. International authorities are warning Israel, which has imposed a total siege of the more than 2 million inhabitants of Gaza, to act within international law; and the United Nations and the World Health Organization both called for Israel to reverse course.

    Listen to the full account, from the woman who agreed to publish her story from Gaza on condition of anonymity, here:

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    Claudia Chiappa

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