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  • Anger erupts across Middle East over Gaza hospital blast as Biden travels to Israel | CNN

    Anger erupts across Middle East over Gaza hospital blast as Biden travels to Israel | CNN

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    Gaza and Jerusalem
    CNN
     — 

    Protests erupted across the Middle East following the deadly explosion at a Gaza hospital as Israeli and Palestinian officials traded accusations over who was to blame just hours before US President Joe Biden is set to arrive in Tel Aviv.

    Hundreds of people were likely killed in the blast on Tuesday at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the center of Gaza City, where thousands were sheltering from Israeli strikes, the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement.

    CNN cannot independently confirm what caused the explosion at the Al-Ahli hospital.

    But the blast marks a dangerous new phase in Israel’s war with Hamas, which threatens to spill over regionally. While Israelis grieve those killed in Hamas’ terror attacks on Israeli soil and families plea for the return of loved ones taken as hostages, millions of civilians in Gaza are at risk of injury, death or starvation as vital supplies have been cut to an area that is impossible to leave amid heavy Israeli bombardment.

    Palestinian officials blamed ongoing Israeli airstrikes for the lethal incident. But Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said no Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strikes took place in the area at the time of the blast, claiming to have intelligence pointing to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, a rival Islamist militant group to Hamas in Gaza.

    Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, described “unparalleled and indescribable” scenes after the blast.

    “Ambulance crews are still removing body parts as most of the victims are children and women,” Al-Qudra said. “Doctors were performing surgeries on the ground and in the corridors, some of them without anesthesia.”

    In pictures: The deadly clashes in Israel and Gaza

    Video geolocated by CNN from inside the al-Shifa Hospital, where some victims of the blast were taken, shows chaotic scenes with injured people packed into the crowded facility, doctors treating the wounded on the hospital floor and an emergency worker calling out as he carries an injured child.

    Images show women crying out and terrified children covered in black dust huddled together on the hospital floor.

    Calling the deadly hospital blast “unacceptable,” UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk said hospitals are sacrosanct and the killings and violence must stop.

    “Words fail me. Tonight, hundreds of people were killed – horrifically – in a massive strike… including patients, healthcare workers and families that had been seeking refuge in and around the hospital. Once again the most vulnerable,” Turk said in a statement.

    President Biden, who is en route to Tel Aviv for a high-security wartime visit to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said he was “outraged and deeply saddened by the explosion.”

    But the fallout from the blast threatens to derail US diplomatic efforts to ease the humanitarian suffering in Gaza, where concerns are mounting over Israel’s deprivation of food, fuel and electricity to the enclave’s population.

    Jordan canceled a planned Wednesday summit between Biden and the leaders of Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. Authority President Mahmoud Abbas pulled out of the meeting earlier Tuesday in the immediate aftermath of the explosion.

    Biden was scheduled to visit Amman after his trip to Tel Aviv, though a White House official said the trip was “postponed.”

    “There is no point in doing anything at this time other than stopping this war,” Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told Al Jazeera Arabic early Wednesday. “There is no benefit to anyone in holding a summit at this time.”

    The blast has added fuel to rising anger in the region over Israel’s actions in Gaza.

    Israeli forces have laid siege to the coastal enclave controlled by Hamas following the October 7 attacks on Israel in which the Islamist militant group killed at least 1,400 people and took more than 150 hostages, including children and the elderly.

    Protests condemning the hospital explosion have erupted in multiple cities across the Middle East and North Africa, including in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and Tunisia. Protests also rocked the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah as protesters clashed with Palestinian security forces.

    In the Jordanian capital Amman, angry protesters attempted to gather near the Israeli Embassy in the Rabieh area but security forces pushed them away. Two activists told CNN on Tuesday that Jordanian security forces using tear gas to disperse crowds.

    A Lebanese protestor hurls stones at burning building just outside the US Embassy during a protest in solidarity with the people of Gaza in Beirut, Lebanon on October 18.

    In Lebanon’s Beirut, hundreds of protesters gathered in the square that leads to the US Embassy on Tuesday and tried to break through security barriers, according to a CNN team there.

    Hamas said more than 500 people were killed in the bombing. The Palestinian Health Ministry earlier said preliminary estimates indicate that between 200 to 300 people died in the blast.

    The hospital tragedy comes as health services in Gaza are on the brink, with no fuel to run electricity or pump water for life-saving critical functions. UN agencies have warned that shops are less than a week away from running out of available food stocks and that Gaza’s last seawater desalination plant had shut down, bringing the risk of further deaths, dehydration and waterborne diseases.

    While the IDF has said it does not target hospitals, the UN and Doctors Without Borders say Israeli airstrikes have struck medical facilities, including hospitals and ambulances.

    Israel has insisted it was not responsible for the hospital bombing.

    The IDF presented imagery Wednesday which it said shows the destruction at the hospital could not have been the result of an airstrike.

    In the 30-second montage, the IDF claimed that a fire broke out at the hospital as a result of a failed rocket launch by Islamic Jihad. The imagery included fire damage to several vehicles in the hospital parking lot. The IDF said there were no visible signs of craters or significant damage to buildings that would result from an airstrike.

    IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CNN Wednesday the “first packet of information” was “evidence that clearly supports the fact that it could not have been an Israeli bomb.”

    Islamic Jihad has denied Israel’s assertions that a failed rocket launch was responsible for the hundreds of civilian casualties at the hospital.

    The group described Israeli accusations as “false and baseless” and claimed it does not use public facilities such as hospitals for military purposes, according to a statement Wednesday.

    The US is also analyzing intelligence provided by Israel on the explosion, which includes signals intelligence, intercepted communications and other forms of data, according to an Israeli official and another source familiar with the matter.

    Several nations have condemned Israel following the explosion. Pakistan called it “inhumane and indefensible” and Palestinian observer to the UN Riyad Mansour said Israeli officials were being dishonest in blaming Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

    The UN Security Council will hold an open meeting Wednesday morning on developments in the Middle East, including the hospital bombing and both Israel and Palestinian representatives are expected to speak.

    More than a week of Israeli bombardment has killed at least 3,000 people, including 1,032 girls and 940 boys, and wounded 12,500 in Gaza, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said Tuesday. Casualties in Gaza over the past 10 days have now surpassed the number of those killed during the 51-day Gaza-Israel conflict in 2014.

    Conditions are dire for the 2.2 million people caught in the escalating crisis and now trapped in Gaza and those on the ground warn that nowhere is safe from relentless Israeli airstrikes and the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation.

    Urgent calls for help are mounting and diplomatic efforts to secure a humanitarian corridor out of Gaza have ramped up in recent days.

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has led intense efforts across the Middle East, on Tuesday said the US and Israel “have agreed to develop a plan that will enable humanitarian aid from donor nations and multilateral organizations to reach civilians in Gaza.”

    But officials have said the Rafah border crossing – the only entry point in and out of Gaza that Israel does not control – remains extremely dangerous.

    On the Egyptian side of the crossing, a miles-long convoy of humanitarian assistance is awaiting entry into Gaza, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told CNN.

    “Until now, there is no safe passage that has been granted” as they do not “have any authorization or clear, secure routes for those convoys to be able to enter safely and without any possibility of their being targeted,” he said.

    He added that the crossing was bombed four times in the past few days.

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  • Clashes at Lebanon-Israel border raise fears of wider war | CNN

    Clashes at Lebanon-Israel border raise fears of wider war | CNN

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    Southern Lebanon
    CNN
     — 

    On the face of it, the crossfire on Lebanon’s border with Israel appears marginal, dwarfed by the scale and intensity of the Hamas-Israel war further south.

    The fighting has stayed within a roughly 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) radius of either side of the demarcation line and less than 13 people have died here since last Saturday.

    Yet this barely populated swathe of mountainous terrain could be the launching pad of a regional war, drawing in a myriad of actors, including Iran and the United States.

    Hezbollah – an Iran-backed armed group that is also a regional force in its own right – dominates south Lebanon. It also operates alongside Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria, where the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights separates Israel from Tehran-aligned fighters.

    Israeli soldiers patrol a road near the border with Lebanon, on Monday, amid threat of a regional conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah.

    Iran’s Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian on Monday raised the specter of expanded fighting after talking to counterparts in Tunisia, Malaysia and Pakistan.

    “Underlined the need to immediately stop Zionist crimes & murders in Gaza & to dispatch humanitarian aid,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

    “I stressed that time is running out for political solutions; probable spread of war in other fronts is approaching unavoidable stage,” he added.

    It is a scenario that has gained more currency across a restive Arab and Muslim world as images of dead Palestinian civilians, including more than 500 children, flash on television screens and social media posts, reflecting a civilian death toll rapidly rising at a rate not seen in decades.

    Meanwhile, the US has deployed two of its largest aircraft carriers — including the nuclear-powered USS Gerald Ford — to the eastern Mediterranean. It is an ominous sign of what may come if the situation on the Lebanon-Israel border combusts into a full-scale war.

    For most of last week, the skirmishes were a low-rumbling exchange of fire between Lebanon-based militants and Israeli forces.

    Palestinian militants fired the first shots from Lebanon, hours after Hamas’ surprise attack of October 7, launching rockets that were intercepted over Israel. Israel responded by shooting into Lebanese territory, including at Hezbollah positions. Hezbollah then launched missiles into Israel’s northern-most territory. That cycle repeated for several days.

    By Friday morning, three Israeli soldiers and three Hezbollah fighters had been killed in the exchanges across the border.

    But then the tit-for-tat escalated. At around 5 p.m. on Friday, Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah, who was also a south Lebanon native, was killed in an Israeli strike that wounded at least six other international journalists.

    A CNN video analysis found that the journalists were wearing vest jackets clearly marked as press.

    An Israeli Apache helicopter was flying over their location, according to a Lebanese security source as well as video seen by CNN, when they were fired upon by what Lebanese army and Israeli statements indicate was artillery.

    Israel said it was investigating the incident. In an Israeli military statement that was released around the time of the attack, it said it was shelling Lebanese territory with artillery fire in response to an explosion at a border fence in Israel’s Hanita, near to where Abdallah was killed.

    The situation at the border spiraled further the next day.

    On Saturday, Hezbollah launched a series of strikes at Israeli targets in the disputed Shebaa farms, which was followed by a barrage of artillery fire from Israel. On Sunday, the Lebanese militants fired at several Israeli locations at the border, killing one civilian and one soldier. Earlier that day, Israel turned the 4-kilometer area near its border into a closed military zone.

    In Hezbollah’s statements on Sunday, the group said its cross-border attacks were in response to Abdallah’s killing and the killing of two elderly civilians in Sunday’s Israeli attacks in the border region.

    Unlike low-tech rockets that are fired by Palestinian fighters in Lebanon — and are mostly intercepted by Israel — Hezbollah uses Russian anti-tank guided missiles known as Kornets.

    Every Hezbollah attack over the last week was followed by a video released by the group that demonstrated precision. They were direct hits that seemed to blindside Israeli troops seen in the videos.

    These videos are key to the psychological warfare that underpins this flare-up. It shows clearly how much more sophisticated the group’s arsenal had become since its last conflict with Israel in 2006, when it relied largely on inaccurate Soviet-era Katyusha rockets.

    Back then, the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war ended with no clear victor or vanquished. At the time, many parts of Lebanon were devastated, but Hezbollah foiled Israel’s ultimate plan to dismantle the group, dealing a blow to Israel’s aura of invincibility.

    In the intervening years, Hezbollah has dramatically built up its arsenal, and its fighters are far more experienced in urban warfare. They’re battle-hardened from fighting in Syria against ISIS, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, and armed opposition groups that tried to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

    Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly evoked a hypothetical scenario where his fighters would conduct an incursion into northern Israel in case war erupted between Lebanon and Israel again. Israel and US officials have repeatedly expressed alarm about Hezbollah’s precision-guided missiles, which were used against Israel for the first time this month.

    Nasrallah has also said that his group boasts more than 100,000 fighters and reservists. Historically, Israeli and US officials have been reluctant to dismiss claims by the paramilitary leader, who oversaw a surge in the size and power of the group in the 32 years of his leadership.

    Yet Nasrallah, known for his fiery televised speeches, has been noticeably silent since October 7. Observers don’t know what to make of this. In addresses he delivered in recent months, Nasrallah lauded the growing alliance between his group and Hamas, though they were on opposite sides of Syria’s bloody civil war.

    He has also indicated that the loose rules of engagement between Hezbollah and Israel may soon change, with the Lebanon-based group possibly intervening on behalf of the Palestinians.

    This has led many observers to speculate that Hezbollah may expand its fight against Israel in case of the much-anticipated Israeli ground invasion into Gaza.

    Yet what happens from now is anyone’s guess. World leaders will continue to watch this border with bated breath.

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  • The US is mounting a frantic effort to head off a wider Middle East war | CNN Politics

    The US is mounting a frantic effort to head off a wider Middle East war | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    US leaders are mounting an urgent effort to prevent Israel’s war against Hamas and a resulting civilian catastrophe in Gaza from escalating into a widening regional conflict that could snowball into an even greater geopolitical crisis after this month’s horrific attacks.

    As a second US aircraft carrier strike group steams to the region, President Joe Biden told “60 Minutes” that he has Israel’s back as it avenges its darkest day in 50 years – and as he focuses on the plight of Americans among the more than 150 people taken hostage during the Hamas incursion. But he also said, again, that it would be “a big mistake” for Israel to occupy Gaza and called for a return to a negotiation toward a Palestinian state.

    His comments came after a weekend of frustration for American citizens stuck at the exit between Gaza and Egypt, as the Biden administration also sought to ease the already dire humanitarian conditions for Palestinian civilians without foreign passports who are trapped with no clear relief from relentless Israeli airstrikes.

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s Middle East shuttle mission shows that the United States, despite its efforts to extricate itself from the region, is still uniquely positioned to influence Israel as well as key Arab power brokers at a moment of deep peril – and still willing to take on the task of projecting leadership in the Middle East, in spite of the domestic turmoil in Washington.

    Administration officials speaking Sunday made clear they are also looking ahead, desperately trying to preserve the hope of a reshaped Middle East that would draw Israel and Saudi Arabia toward a diplomatic normalization that the Hamas attacks may now threaten.

    The US task in balancing a quickly widening crisis is hugely complex and some of its aims could be irreconcilable with others: For example, Israel’s desire to stamp out Hamas once and for all could result in such enormous destruction and loss of life that it will alienate America’s Arab allies.

    “We are talking to the Israelis about the full set of questions, looking out into the future to ensure that Israel is safe and secure and also that innocent Palestinians living in Gaza can have a life of dignity, security and peace in the future as well,” Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Sullivan also warned that the war between Israel and Hamas could be just the start. “There is a risk of an escalation of this conflict, the opening of a second front in the north and, of course, Iran’s involvement,” he told CBS.

    The comments came as the full scale of an unfolding human tragedy in impoverished, densely populated Gaza is beginning to emerge, as UN officials warn of hellish conditions after over eight days of Israeli bombardments that have killed more than 2,600 Palestinians in response to Hamas’ brutal hostage-taking and killing of 1,400 in Israel.

    Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, warned of severe shortages of water, electricity, food and medicine as thousands of Gazans flee from northern districts after an Israeli statement to evacuate but as the territory’s southern border with Egypt remains closed. “Gaza is being strangled and it seems that the world right now has lost its humanity. If we look at the issue of water – we all know water is life – Gaza is running out of water, and Gaza is running out of life,” Lazzarini said.

    Israel has said it tries to mitigate civilian suffering, and blames Hamas, an Iran-backed militant group that has embedded its rocket launchers in packed urban areas and refugee camps, for hiding behind civilians. Hamas has urged civilians to ignore Israeli warnings to evacuate the northern part of Gaza.

    Blinken is on a frantic swing that has included stops in Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt and Bahrain. He said in Cairo on Sunday that there was a determination throughout the region to prevent the Hamas attacks from spiraling into a larger regional war. The State Department said he’d return to Israel for further consultations on Monday.

    Israel has also invited Biden to the country for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and both sides were considering the visit, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. The US president unexpectedly scrapped a planned trip to Colorado on Monday where he was to speak about wind energy, though the White House didn’t immediately tie the change in plans to a possible Israel trip.

    But the possibility of the president visiting a war zone and putting his personal prestige on the line at this stage would be fraught with complications.

    Washington is walking a knife-edge as it stresses its unshakable support for Israel’s right to try to eradicate Hamas but also attempts to mitigate the worst civilian blowback of the coming offensive while pursuing its own interests in heading off a situation that could force it to plunge back into the Middle East.

    Blinken spelled out the multipronged US strategy.

    “I don’t think we could be more clear than we’ve been, that when it comes to Israel’s security, we have Israel’s back,” he said in Cairo. But he also warned: “The way that Israel does this matters. It needs to do it in a way that affirms the shared values that we have for human life and human dignity, taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians.”

    The top US diplomat also delivered a wider message of deterrence, adding: “No one should do anything that could add fuel to the fire in any other place. I think that’s very clear.”

    There were signs of modest success for US entreaties on Israel on behalf of Palestinian civilians on Sunday when Blinken promised that the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt would open. The frontier has been closed, with Cairo citing a lack of immigration controls on the Gaza side and fear for the safety of aid convoys entering the bombarded territory.

    Humanitarian supplies have been piling up at checkpoints on the wrong side of the border from where they’re urgently needed. And Sullivan told CNN’s Jake Tapper that while Israeli and Egyptian officials were willing to allow the evacuation of US citizens in Gaza through the Rafah crossing, Hamas was preventing it. Sullivan also told CNN that Israel had agreed to turn water supplies back on for Gaza, a concession confirmed by Israeli officials, but one that Gazan officials said could not be verified because electricity necessary to pump water for use had not been restored.

    Blinken also announced the appointment of David Satterfield, former US ambassador to Turkey, to help coordinate aid efforts. The new US envoy will be in Israel on Monday.

    The fear of escalation is linked to an expected Israeli ground offensive inside Gaza, which could result in heavy fighting with Hamas and appalling civilian casualties. Experts worry that scenes of civilians caught in the crossfire could spark violence among Palestinians on the West Bank. They could also prompt Hezbollah, a Lebanese-based Islamist party and militant group that – like Hamas – is designated as a terrorist organization by the US, to send thousands of missiles into Israeli cities, opening a second front in the war.

    Hezbollah is far more powerful than Hamas, and Israel has warned it would launch a destructive counterattack into Lebanon if the group steps up border skirmishes that have already broken out between the two sides. A double assault on Israel by Iranian proxies Hezbollah and Hamas could also lead to Israeli retaliation against the Islamic Republic, raising the risks of US involvement to protect its ally Israel. Iran’s mission to the United Nations warned on social media Saturday that if Israel’s strikes on Gaza don’t stop, “the situation could spiral out of control & ricochet far-reaching consequences.”

    For the United States, there is the risk that a wider conflict could lead to reprisals by terror groups of Iran-backed militias against its remaining troops in Iraq and Syria, where they are engaged in missions to counter ISIS. A fearsome Israeli ground offensive in Gaza would also narrow the diplomatic room that key Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt have to de-escalate the situation. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for instance called for the “immediate lifting of the siege on Gaza” when he met Blinken on Sunday and rejected the “targeting of civilians, the destruction of critical infrastructure, and the disruption of essential services.”

    With his vehement support for Israel and repeated personal contacts with Netanyahu after the Hamas attacks, Biden laid the ground for Israel to defend itself. But he also created political room for the US to seek to constrain the worst impacts of what is expected to be a ruthless Israeli operation in Gaza and to try to keep longer-term regional peace efforts alive. Given the complexity of the situation and the trauma the Hamas assault created in Israel, it’s not certain that the president’s balancing act is sustainable. But he has to try, since a major war in the Middle East would stretch US resources even further as Washington maintains a multibillion-dollar lifeline for Ukraine, and could foster an impression of global chaos that could harm Biden’s reelection bid next year.

    The president said in his interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” Sunday that the US could support both Israel and Ukraine and that it had no choice but to intervene because “we are the essential nation.”

    “We’re the United States of America for God’s sake, the most powerful nation in the history – not in the world, in the history of the world,” Biden said. “We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense.” He added: “And if we don’t, who does?”

    Biden’s effort to rush more aid to both nations is being complicated by chaos in the House of Representatives, which is paralyzed by the divided Republican Party’s failure to elect a new speaker. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted Sunday that the US had to send Israel the support it needed to defend itself. The New York Democrat said a delegation he was leading to Tel Aviv – which also includes Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah – was rushed to a shelter after an air-raid alert.

    His post underscored the feeling of foreboding in Israel that is unfolding as Palestinians across the border in Gaza brace for even more relentless attacks, with hundreds of thousands of Israeli reservists poised for an order to move into the territory. Back in Washington, the administration is expected to offer a full classified briefing on the situation to senators Wednesday.

    As the week begins, there is a daunting sense that as bad as the situation is, it’s about to get much worse. Veteran US Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller said that the Israeli offensive was coming within days and would be agonizing, but he expressed the hope that diplomatic progress could eventually emerge.

    “Whether it is 24 hours, 48 hours, whether it is by next week, the fact is, it’s coming,” he said. He added he hoped “like many crises in this region involving an extraordinary amount of pain, in large measure to civilians … there will be some prospect for turning that extra amount of pain into gain.”

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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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  • US sending second carrier strike group, fighter jets to region as Israel prepares to expand Gaza operations | CNN

    US sending second carrier strike group, fighter jets to region as Israel prepares to expand Gaza operations | CNN

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    Washington/Seoul
    CNN
     — 

    The Pentagon has ordered a second carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean Sea, according to two US officials, and is sending Air Force fighter jets to the region as Israel prepares to expand its Gaza operations.

    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 vessels is designed to send a message of deterrence to Iran and Iranian proxies in the region, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.

    The first carrier strike group, led by the USS Gerald R. Ford, arrived off the coast of Israel last week.

    Now the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower strike group, which deployed from Norfolk, Virginia, on Friday, is headed to the eastern Mediterranean. The aircraft carrier was initially set to sail for the waters of US European Command, but the officials said it will now head for the waters near Israel.

    It is unclear at this point how long the Ford will stay in the region once the Eisenhower carrier strike group arrives, one official said.

    The Eisenhower is the flagship of the carrier strike group, which will be joined by a guided-missile cruiser and two guided-missile destroyers, according to the Navy.

    The Eisenhower can carry more than 60 aircraft, including F/A-18 fighter jets. The Ford can deploy more than 75 aircraft.

    ABC News first reported the carrier strike group’s orders.

    The Biden administration made clear that the carrier, and its accompanying force, are not there to engage in combat activities on behalf of Israel.

    “There is no intention or plan to put American troops on the ground in Israel,” said John Kirby, strategic communications coordinator for the National Security Council, on Thursday. Kirby underscored that the purpose of the increased military presence in the region is to deter others from entering the conflict if they perceive weakness on the part of Israel.

    “We take our national security interests very seriously in the region,” he said, noting that the purpose of the bolstered force posture was “to act as a deterrent for any other actor, including Hezbollah, that might think that widening this conflict is a good idea.”

    In addition, the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, a rapid reaction force capable of conducting special operations, is making preparations in case it is ordered closer to Israel to bolster the US’ force posture there, multiple US officials tell CNN.

    The unit, which is on board the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan, is comprised of more than 2,000 Marines and sailors and would be capable of supporting a large-scale evacuation. Among the mission essential tasks for a Marine Expeditionary Unit are evacuation operations and humanitarian assistance.

    No such order has been given yet to the unit, the officials said.

    Aircrew aboard a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle assigned to the 494th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron celebrate their arrival in the U.S. Central Command area of operations, Oct. 13, 2023

    Meanwhile, US Air Forces Central on Saturday announced the deployment of F-15E fighter jets and A-10 ground-attack jets to the region.

    The movement of the warplanes from the 494th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron and 354th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, respectively, “bolster the U.S. posture and enhance air operations throughout the Middle East,” an Air Force statement said. It did not give specific numbers of warplanes involved.

    A US Central Command social media post said the A-10s will join another squadron of the aircraft already in the region.

    “By posturing advanced fighters and integrating with joint and coalition forces, we are strengthening our partnerships and reinforcing security in the region,” Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, 9th Air Force commander, said in a statement.

    Defense officials have said repeatedly in recent days that the Pentagon will be able to flow in additional forces and assets to the region quickly as needed, as Israel continues to fight a war against the terrorist group Hamas.

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  • DeSantis says US should not accept refugees from Gaza | CNN Politics

    DeSantis says US should not accept refugees from Gaza | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Saturday that the US should not accept refugees from Gaza, as tens of thousands flee their homes following an evacuation warning from Israel ahead of a possible ground assault.

    “I don’t know what (President Joe) Biden’s gonna do, but we cannot accept people from Gaza into this country as refugees. I am not going to do that,” DeSantis, who is vying for the GOP presidential nomination, said at a campaign stop in Creston, Iowa.

    “If you look at how they behave, not all of them are Hamas, but they are all antisemitic. None of them believe in Israel’s right to exist,” he continued.

    DeSantis argued that Arab states should accept refugees from Gaza, who are attempting to cross south into Egypt, rather than refugees being “import(ed)” to the United States.

    DeSantis’ characterization of Gaza residents is not supported by public polling on the issue. In a July poll by the pro-Israel organization the Washington Institute, 50% of Gazans agreed that “Hamas should stop calling for Israel’s destruction and instead accept a permanent two state solution based on the 1967 borders.”

    One of DeSantis’s 2024 rivals, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, agreed with the Florida governor that the US should not accept refugees from Gaza but warned against making generalizations about them.

    “It’s a danger any time that you categorize a group of people as being simply antisemitic, but I’ve said it also that we should not have refugees in here from Palestine. That’s not our role. It’s the role of those countries surrounding there,” Hutchinson told reporters in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Saturday.

    In the wake of the surprise attack on Israel last weekend by the militant group Hamas, DeSantis and other Republican presidential hopefuls have voiced strong support for Israel. DeSantis and others have used the attack to argue for hardline immigration policies and stronger border security in the US.

    On Thursday, DeSantis pushed back when confronted by a voter at a market in Littleton, New Hampshire, who questioned Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza.

    The voter said that he doesn’t condone what Hamas did or the “killing of any innocent civilians,” but that “Israel is doing the exact same thing with Benjamin Netanyahu, who is a radical, right-wing crazy person,” referring to the country’s prime minister.

    “And I see hundreds of Palestinian families that are dead, and they have nowhere to go because they can’t leave Gaza, because no one’s opening their borders,” the voter said.

    DeSantis said the voter made a “really good point” by bringing up neighboring countries, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

    “Why aren’t these Arab countries willing to absorb some of the Palestinian Arabs? They won’t do it,” DeSantis said.

    The pair continued to have a back-and-forth about the conflict. Before walking out of the market, the voter said: “You had my vote, but you don’t now.”

    DeSantis has also taken steps as governor of Florida to evacuate state residents from Israel. He told reporters in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Friday that he anticipated the first evacuation flight would land in Florida on Sunday. The governor’s press secretary, Jeremy Redfern, confirmed to CNN that the first flight will depart on Saturday and land in Florida on Sunday.

    DeSantis has also seized on former President Donald Trump’s criticism of Netanyahu, slamming the GOP front-runner repeatedly in media appearances and on the campaign trail.

    “He attacked Bibi after the country suffered the worst attack it’s had in its modern history. … And he did that because Bibi did not – Bibi congratulated Biden in November. That’s why he did it. He hates Netanyahu because of that. That’s about him. That’s not about the greater good of what Israel is trying to do or American security,” DeSantis said Friday in New Hampshire.

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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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  • 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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  • Austin and Blinken pledge fulsome support for Israel as concerns about expected ground offensive grow | CNN Politics

    Austin and Blinken pledge fulsome support for Israel as concerns about expected ground offensive grow | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Biden administration underlined its public and fulsome show of support for Israel Friday as two of its most senior national security officials visited the Middle East ahead of an expected Israeli ground incursion into Gaza.

    Behind the scenes, however, the US faces a difficult diplomatic challenge – providing support for Israel’s “legitimate security operations” while trying to mitigate the devastating impact on civilians and prevent the war from expanding out to further fronts.

    Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin arrived in Israel for meetings with senior leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He pledged unwavering US solidarity, echoing a message delivered by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv a day prior.

    Blinken, meanwhile, is engaged in extensive shuttle diplomacy to press “countries to help prevent the conflict from spreading, and to use their leverage with Hamas to immediately and unconditionally release the hostages,” he said Thursday. Following his departure from Israel Thursday, Blinken traveled to Jordan to meet with King Abdullah II and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and then on to Doha for meetings with senior Qatari officials. He also briefly stopped in Bahrain before landing Saudi Arabia on Friday evening. He will also visit the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt before returning to the United States Sunday.

    In public remarks, Blinken and Austin both offered full-throated support for Israel’s actions in the wake of the brutal Hamas attack last weekend, which killed 1,300 people, including 27 Americans. The subsequent Israeli air strikes on Gaza have killed nearly 1,800 people, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

    “No county can tolerate having a terrorist group come in, slaughter its people in the most unconscionable way, and live like that. What Israel’s doing is not retaliation. What Israel is doing is defending the lives of its people and, as I said, trying to make sure that this cannot happen again,” Blinken said at a press conference in Doha Friday.

    “This is no time for neutrality, or for false equivalence or for excuses for the inexcusable,” Austin said at another press conference in Tel Aviv Friday.

    US administration officials have not publicly urged de-escalation or called for a ceasefire.

    They have discussed “with Israel the importance of taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians,” Blinken said Friday – a discussion that comes as Israel’s actions are likely to face immense scrutiny from nations in the region, human rights groups, and progressive lawmakers in Washington. On Friday, the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Blinken urging them to call on the Israel Defense Forces to show restraint in Gaza. to show restraint in Gaza.

    In remarks Friday, Biden said the US was working “urgently to address the humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, noting that “we can’t lose sight of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas.”

    In his meetings in Tel Aviv Thursday, Blinken pressed Israeli officials on the need to establish safe zones for civilians inside Gaza, a senior State Department official said Friday.

    “We do want to find some way to establish some sort of safe area where the people who live in Gaza City can go to be saved from Israel security operations,” the official explained. “It’s work that’s still coming together.”

    “I can tell you from the meetings we had with Prime Minister Netanyahu and the security cabinet yesterday, it is something that they are actively focused on and actively working on,” they added.

    The US is also working with Egypt and Israel to try to establish a humanitarian corridor for supplies to come into Gaza and for American citizens and other civilians to evacuate to Egypt.

    The specter of imminent military action is looming, though, and it is unclear if the mechanisms can be set up in time. The Israeli military warned the 1.1 million people living in northern Gaza to evacuate their homes – an order that the United Nations decried as impossible to undertake “without devastating humanitarian consequences.”

    Some Palestinian-Americans have received their first set of instructions that family members stuck in Gaza may be able to evacuate into Egypt on Saturday afternoon, according to emails shared with CNN. The US State Department’s Consular Affairs Crisis Management System told family members that on Saturday the Rafah Crossing “may be open.”

    “We understand the security situation is difficult, but if you wish to depart Gaza you may want to take advantage of this opportunity,” the CACMS email said.

    A State Department spokesperson told CNN they “are actively discussing this with our Israeli and Egyptian counterparts.”

    “We support safe passage for civilians,” they said. “We are working with our Israeli and Egyptian partners to establish a safe humanitarian corridor both for Gazans trying to flee this war and to ensure humanitarian assistance reaches those in need within the territory.”

    The US is scrambling to try to stop adversaries like Hezbollah and Iran – who have threatened to join the war – from doing so.

    “A big part of my own conversations here throughout this trip, including today, following up the next couple of days, is working with other countries to make sure that they’re using their own contacts, their own influence, their own relationship to make that case – that no one else should be taking this moment to choose to create more trouble in some other place,” Blinken said.

    This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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  • In Gaza, Palestinians have no safe place from Israel’s bombs | CNN

    In Gaza, Palestinians have no safe place from Israel’s bombs | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    When Hamas fires rockets at Israel, advanced warning detectors set off alarms in targeted neighborhoods, civilians flee to an extensive network of bomb shelters, and the vaunted Iron Dome system works to intercept projectiles in the air.

    But in Gaza, none of those high-tech defenses were available to protect Maisara Baroud, 47, when his apartment building was hit by Israeli airstrikes Monday night. The only thing that saved him and his family: A neighbor yelling from the street.

    The neighbor received a call from Israeli military, giving him a heads up that a strike at a nearby residential building was imminent. Still, the neighbor told Baroud and the 15 other family members living in Baroud’s building – including nine children – to get out.

    The first strike wrecked most of the six buildings on the block, including Baroud’s.

    “My building was no longer livable – it was a skeleton of a house left,” he added. “The doors were destroyed, the building’s exterior walls were all gone, the windows shattered.”

    Still, Baroud and others assumed the worst was over and headed back into the building to salvage their belongings. Minutes later, the neighbor received a follow-up call from the Israeli military that a follow-up bombing was coming, and the families fled again.

    A second strike destroyed Baroud’s home, reducing his building and his art studio to rubble.

    This is the reality for Palestinians living in Gaza without the protection of a robust civil defense infrastructure. With no air raid sirens or bomb shelters, the more than 2 million Palestinians living in the besieged territory – half of whom are children – rely on rare phone calls or text messages from the Israeli military to alert them of imminent strikes.

    “In Gaza, we don’t have anything…you have nowhere to go, no bomb shelters, no refuge, you are in the street,” Baroud said. “If you’re lucky enough to even get an alert to tell you to get out of the house, you leave saying, ‘Thank God.’”

    The lack of protection serves as a stark contrast to the civil defense systems of Israel, which has faced intense barrages of rocket fire from Hamas in recent days. Israel boasts elaborate and technologically advanced capabilities – ranging from early radar detection to the Iron Dome – meant to protect its civilians in the event of an attack.

    In Gaza, the call or text alerts are far from guaranteed and – at most – give residents a few minutes to evacuate. Often, it’s just a guessing game.

    The lack of civil defense has also affected international humanitarian and medical workers, who are faced with sporadic, momentary notice of Israel’s counterattacks.

    A post from Doctors Without Borders on Tuesday noted how some of its team members in Gaza receive a text message in the middle of the night telling them to evacuate their homes.

    “You have to wake up your children in the middle of the night and leave your house, without taking any of your belongings,” the post said.

    Dr. Barbara Zind, a US-based pediatrician in Gaza on a medical mission, was speaking to CNN Tuesday about being stranded in the area when her interview was interrupted by loud bombings outside her hotel. Asked if she could seek safe shelter, she responded: “There are no bomb shelters here.”

    Warning phone calls from the Israelis also are more likely to be missed in Gaza because of rolling blackouts. The territory’s only power station ran out of fuel Wednesday and stopped working, this after Israel ordered a “complete siege” and cut off access to food, fuel, water and electricity.

    What remains of Maisara Baroud's building after Israeli airstrikes turned it to rubble.

    Israel, however, has invested heavily over the years in its civil defense systems to protect civilians from rockets and mortars fired by Hamas and other militant groups in the region. Its elaborate and technologically advanced capabilities are meant to protect its people and minimize harm in the event of a rocket attack.

    Azriel Bermant, senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague, says Israel is “very strong and well-organized” on the civil defense front.

    “It’s about saving lives, it’s about strengthening morale, it’s about reducing pressure on the government to send in ground forces,” Bermant said. “If the government knows that the public is protected, especially in a war situation, they feel the public will support the government in what it does.”

    Crucially, the Israeli Defense Forces has developed early warning systems that sound sirens whenever rockets are fired towards Israel. These warning systems are able to calculate the location where a rocket is projected to land and set off a siren in the targeted area, often giving residents advance notice to find shelter.

    Civil defense capabilities are also built into the infrastructure of Israel. Israeli law requires all homes, residential buildings, and industrial building to have bomb shelters. These shelters prove crucial to protect Israelis when warning sirens go off – providing the public with safe and fortified locations to hide from incoming rockets.

    Israel also possesses key active defense measures. The most notable is called the Iron Dome System. Deployed in 2011, the Iron Dome is designed to shoot down incoming projectiles. It is equipped with a radar that detects rockets and then uses a command-and-control system that quickly calculates whether an incoming projectile poses a threat or is likely to hit an unpopulated area. If the rocket does pose a threat, the Iron Dome fires missiles from the ground to destroy it in the air.

    Bermant said when it comes to missile defense, “there’s no question it saves lives,” and that it also can act as a deterrent.

    The system isn’t foolproof, however, and when the volume of rockets fired by Hamas comes in intense barrages, it decides which pose the greatest threat to urban areas and infrastructure and targets those. Some rockets get through.

    Additionally, Israel has several public awareness campaigns that are intended to educate the public on best practices in response to air raid sirens – such as where to go, how much time one has to find cover, and what to do if there is no readily available safe site.

    With far less resources, Gaza hasn’t built anything comparable to the Israeli defense systems. While Hamas has constructed a network of underground tunnels for its fighters, it hasn’t invested in civilian shelters or warning networks.

    Gaza has been cut off from the rest of the world by an Israeli blockade of Gaza’s land, air and sea dating back to 2007, with tight restrictions on the movement of goods. It has been described by Human Rights Watch as the “world’s largest open-air prison.”

    “The disparity is primarily because of the blockade, which has really undermined Gaza’s infrastructure,” said Tareq Baconi, board president of the Palestinian policy network Al-Shabaka. “All entry of goods, all the resources that might be used to build that kind of a system are curtailed.”

    The lack of defenses has left civilians like Baroud living in fear. As he examines the ruins of his building, he said he’s left wondering why his home was hit.

    “I keep asking myself why? … There’s no point in asking why.”

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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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  • How does Hamas get its weapons? A mix of improvisation, resourcefulness and a key overseas benefactor | CNN

    How does Hamas get its weapons? A mix of improvisation, resourcefulness and a key overseas benefactor | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The brutal rampage by Islamist militant group Hamas on Israel last weekend involved thousands of rockets and missiles, drones dropping explosives, and untold numbers of small arms and ammunition.

    But the attack was launched from the Hamas-ruled enclave of Gaza, a 140-square-mile (360-square-kilometer) strip of Mediterranean coastal land bordered on two sides by Israel and one by Egypt.

    It’s a poor, densely populated area, with few resources.

    And it has been almost completely cut off from the rest of the world for nearly 17 years, when Hamas seized control, prompting Israel and Egypt to impose a strict siege on the territory, which is ongoing.

    Israel also maintains an air and naval blockade on Gaza as well as a vast array of surveillance.

    Which begs the question: How did Hamas amass the sheer amount of weaponry that enabled the group to pull off coordinated attacks that have left more than 1,200 people dead in Israel and thousands more injured – while continuing to rain rocket fire down on Israel?

    The answer, according to experts, is through a combination of guile, improvisation, tenacity and an important overseas benefactor.

    “Hamas acquires its weapons through smuggling or local construction and receives some military support from Iran,” the CIA’s World Factbook says.

    While the Israeli and US governments have yet to find any direct role by Iran in last weekend’s raids, experts say the Islamic Republic has long been Hamas’ main military supporter, smuggling weapons into the enclave through clandestine cross-border tunnels or boats that have escaped the Mediterranean blockade.

    “Hamas’ tunnel infrastructure is still massive despite Israel and Egypt regularly degrading it,” said Bilal Saab, senior fellow and director of the Defense and Security Program at the Middle East Institute (MEI) in Washington.

    “Hamas has received arms from Iran smuggled into the (Gaza) Strip via tunnels. This often included longer-range systems,” said Daniel Byman, a senior fellow with the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

    “Iran has also been shipping Hamas its more advanced … ballistic missiles via sea, in components for construction in Gaza,” said Charles Lister, senior fellow at the MEI.

    mark kimmett

    Retired general explains why he thinks Iran helped support Hamas attacks

    But Iran has been a mentor, too, analysts say.

    “Iran also helped Hamas with its indigenous manufacturing, enabling Hamas to create its own arsenals,” said Byman at the CSIS.

    A senior Hamas official based in Lebanon gave details of the Hamas’ weapons manufacturing in an edited interview with Russia Today’s Arabic-news channel RTArabic published on their website on Sunday.

    “We have local factories for everything, for rockets with ranges of 250 km, for 160 km, 80km, and 10 km. We have factories for mortars and their shells. … We have factories for Kalashnikovs (rifles) and their bullets. We’re manufacturing the bullets with permission from the Russians. We’re building it in Gaza,” Ali Baraka, head of Hamas National Relations Abroad, is quoted as saying.

    A Palestinian man is lowered into a smuggling tunnel beneath the Gaza-Egypt border, in the southern Gaza Strip, on September 11, 2013.

    For bigger items, the MEI’s Lister said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the Iranian military that answers directly to the country’s supreme leader, has been giving Hamas engineers weapons training for almost two decades.

    “Years of having access to more advanced systems has given Hamas engineers the knowledge necessary to significantly enhance its domestic production capacity,” Lister said.

    And Tehran keeps the training of Hamas’ weapons makers current, he added.

    “Hamas’ rocket and missile engineers are part of Iran’s regional network, so frequent training and exchange in Iran itself is part and parcel of Iran’s efforts to professionalize its proxy forces across the region,” Lister said.

    But how Hamas sources the raw materials for those indigenous weapons also shows the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the group.

    Gaza has none of the heavy industry that would support weapons production in most of the world. According to the CIA Factbook, its main industries are textiles, food processing and furniture.

    But among its main exports are scrap iron, which can provide material to make weapons in the tunnel network below the enclave.

    And that metal in many instances comes from previous destructive fighting in Gaza, according to Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who wrote about it for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Fikra Forum in 2021.

    When Gaza infrastructure has been destroyed in Israeli airstrikes, what’s left – sheet metal and metal pipes, rebar, electrical wiring – has found its way into Hamas’ weapon workshops, emerging as rocket tubes or other explosive devices, he wrote.

    Recycling unexploded Israel munitions for their explosive material and other parts adds to Hamas’ supply chain, Alkhatib wrote.

    “The IDF’s operation indirectly provided Hamas with materials that are otherwise strictly monitored or forbidden altogether in Gaza,” he wrote.

    Rimal Gaza airstrikes screengrab vpx

    Drone video shows Israel pounding Gaza

    Of course, all of that didn’t happen overnight.

    To fire as many munitions as it did on Saturday in such a short period means Hamas must have been building up its arsenal, both by smuggling and manufacturing, over the long haul, said Aaron Pilkington, a US Air Force analyst on Middle East affairs and PhD candidate at the University of Denver.

    Baraka, the Hamas official in Lebanon, said the militant group had been preparing last weekend’s attack for two years.

    He made no mention of any outside involvement in the planning of the attack, saying in the Russian media report only that the allies of Hamas “support us with weapons and money. First and foremost, it is Iran that gives us money and weapons.”

    The analysts also say the size and scope of Hamas’ raids on Israel caught them – as well as Israeli and other countries intelligence services – off guard.

    “It is important to remember that firing off a bunch of rockets is actually very uncomplicated,” Pilkington said.

    “What is surprising, … is how you could set stockpile, move, set up, and fire thousands of rockets all while eluding Israeli, Egyptian, Saudi intelligence, etc. It is difficult to see how Palestinian militants could have done this without … Iranian guidance.”

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  • Festivalgoers, children, soldiers: What we know about the people captured by Hamas | CNN

    Festivalgoers, children, soldiers: What we know about the people captured by Hamas | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Hamas fighters are holding as many as 150 people hostage in locations across Gaza following their raids on southern Israel Saturday, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations said Monday.

    Their presence is complicating Israel’s response to the militant group’s deadly attack, however Ambassador Gilad Erdan told CNN Monday that the government’s priority is destroying Hamas to restore security for all Israeli citizens.

    “Of course, we want to see all of our boys, girls, grandmothers, everyone who was abducted we want to see them back home, but right now, our focus is looking at our national strategy is to obliterate Hamas terrorist capabilities,” he said.

    In a chilling development earlier Monday, Abu Obaida, the spokesperson of Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades, said Hamas would start executing civilian hostages if Israel targets people in Gaza without warning.

    Little evidence has emerged as to the condition of the hostages, some of whom have been identified by their families as they desperately seek answers.

    Here’s what we know so far about those being held.

    Hundreds of attendees at the Nova music festival ran across the plains of the Negev Desert near Urim, a community close to the Gaza Strip, trying to escape Hamas gunmen pursuing them in vehicles in a terrifying chase. Some were killed and others were seized by armed captors, social media videos showed.

    Details of hostages from the attack are beginning to emerge as family members recognize relatives in the clips circulating online.

    In one video that went viral, an Israeli woman and her boyfriend – identified as Noa Argamani and Avinatan Or – were shown being kidnapped. In it, Argamani was hoisted onto the back of a motorcycle and driven away as Or was apprehended and made to walk with his hands behind his back. CNN could not independently verify the video.

    “It’s very difficult when you see someone that is so close to you and you know so much being treated like this,” Amir Moadi, a roommate of Noa Argamani, told CNN, adding that he knew about five or six people who had been at the festival and have since gone missing.

    Noa Argamani, an Israeli woman, who was kidnapped by Hamas militants with her boyfriend.

    In another video authenticated by CNN, an unconscious woman who was at the festival could be seen being displayed by armed militants in Gaza as onlookers shouted “Allahu Akbar.”

    CNN later confirmed the identity of the woman as German-Israeli national Shani Louk.

    Ricarda Louk, Shani’s mother, told CNN that she last spoke to her daughter after hearing rockets and alarms sounding in southern Israel, calling to see if she’d made it to a secure location. Shani told her mother she was at the festival with few places to hide.

    “She was going to her car and they had military people standing by the cars and were shooting so people couldn’t reach their cars, even to go away. And that’s when they took her,” Ricarda told CNN, adding that she hopes to see her daughter again, but the situation is bleak.

    “It looks very bad, but I still have hope. I hope that they don’t take bodies for negotiations. I hope that she’s still alive somewhere. We don’t have anything else to hope for, so I try to believe,” she said.

    Hamas fighters took hostages in the border community Be’eri, and the town of Ofakim, 20 miles east of Gaza, IDF spokesman Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari said on Saturday, adding that the two locations were the “main focal points” of the unfolding crisis.

    In a televised address, he said that there were special forces with senior commanders in the two communities, and fighting was ongoing in 22 locations.

    One video, geolocated by CNN to Be’eri, appears to show Hamas militants taking multiple Israelis captive.

    Residents in Be’eri and another community on Israel’s border with Gaza, Nir Oz, told the country’s Channel 12 television station that assailants were going door to door, trying to break into their homes.

    Channel 12 also reported that infiltrators had taken hostages in Netiv HaAsara. Israeli authorities did not immediately confirm any details about those reports.

    One Israeli mother told CNN she had been on the phone with her children, ages 16 and 12, who were home alone when they heard gunshots outside and people trying to enter. Then, over the phone, she heard the door break down.

    “I heard terrorists speaking in Arabic to my teenagers. And the youngest saying to them ‘I’m too young to go,’” the mother said. “And the phone went off, the line went off. That was the last time I heard from them.” CNN is not identifying the mother and her children for safety reasons.

    Another Israeli father told CNN he suspects his wife and young daughters may have been abducted while visiting Nir Oz. He said he recognized his wife in a viral video that shows a group of people being loaded on the back of a truck flanked by Hamas militants, while chants of “Allahu Akbar” ring out.

    “I don’t even know what the situation is regarding the hostages, and the situation is not looking good,” Yoni Asher said, adding that he tracked his wife’s phone and learned that it was located in Gaza.

    In another video, geolocated by CNN to Gaza’s Shejaiya neighborhood, a barefoot woman is pulled from the trunk of a Jeep by a gunman and then forced into the backseat of the car. Her face is bleeding, and her wrists appear to be cable-tied behind her back. The Jeep also appears to have an IDF license plate, suggesting it may have been stolen and brought into Gaza.

    Al Qassam Brigades claimed to capture “dozens” of Israeli soldiers on Saturday.

    “We bring good news to our (Palestinian) prisoners and our people that the al Qassam Brigades have dozens of captured (Israeli) officers and soldiers in their hands,” the group’s spokesman Abu Obaida said in a post on Telegram. “They have been secured in safe places and resistance tunnels.”

    Video geolocated and authenticated by CNN shows at least one Israeli soldier being taken prisoner.

    The video, posted to Hamas’ official social media accounts, shows militants yank two clearly terrified and stunned soldiers out of a disabled tank. It’s unclear from the video how the tank was disabled, but Hamas has used drones to drop bombs onto Israeli tanks before.

    One of the soldiers is then seen in a short snippet of video being kicked on the ground by the militants. In the next clip, the soldier is seen lying motionless on the ground.

    The second soldier is seen being led away by Hamas militants. A third soldier – his face very bloody – is seen lying on the ground motionless near the tank track. CNN does not know the current whereabouts or status of the three soldiers.

    A second video, taken afterward, shows a number of different armed men around the tank. The three soldiers are nowhere to be seen.

    The armed men are then seen pulling a fourth Israeli soldier from the tank. The soldier is motionless as he’s dragged down the side of the tank and onto the ground. The armed men are seen stomping on his body.

    On Monday, the sister of an Israeli soldier told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour the soldier called her and their parents to say goodbye before she was kidnapped by militants.

    “The last call my sister made was on the 7th of October, Saturday, 6:30 a.m.,” Alexandra Ariev said about her sister Karina. “She called me, then my parents. She basically called to say goodbye, that she loved us.”

    Karina Ariev is believed to have been captured by Hamas militants.

    Karina Ariev, a 19-year-old corporal, was stationed at the Nahal Oz base at the border with Gaza.

    On Saturday, family members identified the soldier’s bloodied face in a Telegram video, where men can be heard shouting “this is nothing, we are just starting.” After the family reported the video to Israeli authorities, Alexandra Ariev said they eventually confirmed Karina had been abducted.

    Alexandra believes her sister is a hostage in Gaza, because the family “didn’t get any match with the DNA from the corpses found on the base,” she told Amanpour.

    “I’m devastated inside, and my parents are crying all day long,” she said from Jerusalem.

    The attack has impacted families around the world, with a growing list of foreign nationals kidnapped.

    US President Joe Biden said in a statement Monday that it is “likely” that American citizens may be among those being held hostage by Hamas, and that his administration is working with Israeli officials on “every aspect of the hostage crisis.”

    He noted that there are American citizens whose whereabouts remain unaccounted for.

    Two Mexican nationals, three Brazilians, a Nepali student and a British citizen are also among those missing.

    Two Mexican nationals, a woman and a man, have “presumably” been taken hostage by Hamas, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena said on Sunday.

    The Brazilians and 26-year-old British citizen Jake Marlowe were all at the Nova music festival near the Gaza border which was attacked on Saturday.

    Marlowe, who was working there as a security guard, has been missing since Saturday morning, his mother told the Israeli Embassy in the UK.

    A source at the German Foreign Ministry told CNN late Sunday that it “has to assume” there are German citizens amongst those kidnapped by Hamas. “As far as we know, they are all people who have Israeli citizenship in addition to German citizenship,” the source said, but would not comment on individual cases.

    Eleven Thai nationals have been taken hostage, a spokesperson for Thailand’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

    Israel has long been a major destination for Thai migrants, most of whom work agricultural jobs. There are approximately 30,000 Thai workers in Israel, according to the Foreign Ministry, and over a thousand have requested help to be evacuated.

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  • Mother killed while shielding her son from Hamas gunmen among US victims in Israel | CNN

    Mother killed while shielding her son from Hamas gunmen among US victims in Israel | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Ilan Troen said he was on the phone with his daughter in Israel when she was shot and killed by Hamas gunmen while shielding her son from their bullets.

    Troen, a professor emeritus from Brandeis University in Massachusetts, said his daughter and son-in-law, Deborah and Shlomi Matias, were killed by Hamas militants over the weekend. Troen’s grandson, 16-year-old Rotem Matias, was shot but will survive, Troen told CNN’s Poppy Harlow on Monday.

    The killings came after the Gaza-based militant group launched devastating attacks on Israel early Saturday.

    At least 11 US citizens have died in the conflict in Israel, President Joe Biden said in a Monday statement, adding there are also Americans who remain unaccounted for. It is also “likely” that Americans are among those being held hostage Hamas, the statement said.

    As desperate families continue to wait for information about missing loved ones, Troen said he has “too much information” about what happened when the gunmen burst into his daughter’s home.

    “We were on the phone with Deborah as she was killed,” Troen said. “We were on the phone the entire day with our grandson, Rotem, as he lay first under her body, and then found a place to escape under a blanket in a laundry.”

    Rotem was shot in the stomach, Troen said, but will recover.

    “The brunt of the shot was borne by his mother,” he said. “The terrorists who came, they had explosives and blew up the front door to their house and then blew out the front door to their so-called safe room.”

    Rotem hid for more than 12 hours after he was shot, texting on his phone to communicate with people who were coaching him on how to breathe and how to manage “the blood that was coming out of his abdomen,” Troen said, adding Rotem’s phone was down to a 4% charge when he was rescued.

    Deborah Matias attended the Rimon School of Music in the Tel Aviv area, where she met her husband, Troen told CNN.

    “Deborah was a child of light and life,” Troen said. “She, rather than becoming a scientist or a physician, she said to me one day, ‘Dad, I have to do music, because it’s in my soul.’”

    Troen spoke to CNN from Be’er Sheva, Israel, where he said jet planes flew over his house into Gaza. “This is not a normal war,” he said. “It isn’t like there’s a front and rear.”

    Troen said the last he heard, Rotem was with family in the hospital.

    “He’s 16, tough, resilient – he survived this. He’ll survive more, but the trauma of this is going to last his lifetime,” he said.

    Jacob Ben Senior said his daughter Danielle was attending the Nova music festival near the Gaza-Israel border and has not been heard from since Friday. Ben Senior said he has been calling her phone since Saturday morning but has not been able to reach her.

    Danielle Ben Senor was attending the Nova festival and has been reported missing.

    Born in Los Angeles, Danielle Ben Senior is a 34-year Israeli-American citizen who has lived most of her life in Israel, according to her father. Danielle was working at the Nova festival with a group of event organizers, her father said.

    “We are in close contact with the government of Israel as they continue to conduct security operations to locate missing US citizens,” Miller, the State Department spokesperson, said.

    A mother and daughter from the Chicago area who were visiting relatives in Israel are also missing following Hamas’ attacks and it’s feared they are being held hostage, a family member told CNN.

    US citizens Judith Tai Raanan and Natali Raanan were visiting relatives in Nahal Oz, a kibbutz that was attacked by Gazan militants on Saturday. The family said they are in touch with the US Embassy.

    Judith Raanan’s brother Adi Leviatan said he suspected the pair was taken hostage after not hearing from them since the weekend. Natali and Judith arrived in Israel on September 2, he said.

    Nahal Oz is in southern Israel, about one and a half miles from the Gaza border. Dozens of Gaza fighters took control of a military base nearby, and an IDF spokesperson told CNN there was fighting in Nahal Oz on Sunday.

    The Biden administration is “laser-focused” on confirming whether any Americans have been taken hostage by Hamas, deputy national security adviser Jon Finer said during an appearance on CBS News earlier Monday. The US is prepared to offer “expertise on how to address these hostage situations,” he said, with more information expected in the coming days.

    Israel’s Minister of Defense on Monday ordered the “complete siege” of Gaza, cutting off electricity, food, fuel and water to the enclave. This comes as Israel has pounded Gaza with airstrikes and formally declared war on Hamas on Sunday.

    More than 680 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and medical care has been complicated by Israel cutting power to the territory.

    It’s unclear whether any US citizens are among those killed or injured in Gaza.

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  • Elon Musk’s X adds to fog of war at outset of Israel-Hamas conflict | CNN Business

    Elon Musk’s X adds to fog of war at outset of Israel-Hamas conflict | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Misinformation has run rampant on Elon Musk’s social media platform X in the 48 hours since Hamas militants’ surprise attack on Israel, with users sharing false and misleading claims about the conflict and Musk himself pointing users to an account known for spreading misinformation.

    Multiple users over the weekend shared a fake White House news release falsely claiming the US was sending billions of dollars in new aid to Israel in response. Accounts on X with hundreds of thousands of followers in total quickly spread the doctored White House press release after it appeared online on Saturday. Social media influencer Jackson Hinkle, who was among those shared the fake release, claimed it was a slap in the face to Ukraine, which has been pleading with Washington for more money to defend itself from Russia.

    Musk himself added to the information chaos on Sunday by recommending X users follow the Israel-Hamas conflict by following an account known for spreading misinformation, including a fake report earlier this year of an explosion at the Pentagon.

    Musk and Hinkle later deleted their posts. Musk later posted: “As always, please try stay as close to the truth as possible, even for stuff you don’t like.”

    Elsewhere on X (formerly known as Twitter), an account impersonating the Jerusalem Post shared a bogus report that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been hospitalized. (The account was later suspended.)

    CNN has requested comment from Musk and X on the posts related to the Israel-Gaza conflict.

    A slew of mischaracterized videos and other posts went viral on the platform over the weekend.

    One video that is purported to show Israel generals after being captured by Hamas fighter was viewed more than 1.7 million times by Monday. The video however actually shows the detention of separatists in Azerbaijan.

    Another post viewed more than 500,000 times on X purported to show an airplane getting shot down with the hashtag #PalestineUnderAttack. The video is in fact a clip from the video game Arma 3, as was later noted in a “community note” appended to the post.

    Community notes allow users on X to fact-check false posts on the platform. While notes were appended to both of these false posts, they often come after a false post has been viewed thousands – or in some cases millions – of times.

    X has relied more heavily on community notes to moderate content since Musk laid off thousands of the company’s employees, including many responsible for detecting and addressing false claims, following his takeover of the platform last year.

    Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, one of the government’s main cyber defense agencies, on Monday took to X to urge people not to spread unverified information. “[T]he rumor mill is overflowing,” the directorate wrote in Hebrew. The Anti-Defamation League also raised concerns in a statement Saturday about false and antisemitic claims being spread on the platform, including posts by a verified user falsely claiming that Israel helped to facilitate 9-11 on US soil, which have been viewed thousands of times.

    The viral nature of the misinformation has alarmed experts on information operations, offering a fresh example of social platforms’ struggle to deal with a flood of falsehoods during a major geopolitical event.

    “In times of war, social media becomes a propaganda battlefield; there is always an element of disinformation and exaggeration,” said Emerson Brooking, senior resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “Today, X is the main platform where this online battle plays out.”

    Brooking said changes to X policy under Musk’s ownership have incentivized propagandists and scam artists. Any user can now purchase a “verification” checkmark on X by signing up for the platform’s $8 per month subscription program, and their posts are then boosted by the platform’s algorithm and eligible for monetization.

    “Paid verification means that you cannot distinguish between a vetted journalist and a scam artist,” Brooking told CNN. “The for-profit ‘views’ system incentivizes accounts to impersonate news outlets and to post as frequently as possible, drawing from whatever source they can or just making things up.”

    Twitter has long played a pivotal role in information sharing during conflicts, from the Arab Spring to the 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine, and during previous violence in Israel and Gaza.

    Viral misinformation has always existed on the platform, but it has become particularly pronounced under Musk’s stewardship, experts say.

    “In the past decade, every conflict has inevitably bred a digital “fog of war,” where both sides, and their supporters, try to use social platforms to spin the narrative in their favor,” Joe Galvin, a journalist who has specialized in open-source intelligence for more than a decade, told CNN Monday.

    “The volume and reach of misinformation today, though, far exceeds what we saw in the early social media era conflicts, and is exacerbated by platforms like X, which has taken the guardrails off and allows the most egregious types of disinformation to run rampant,” Galvin said.

    He said other platforms that have little or no guardrails including the social media messaging app Telegram are also hotbeds of misinformation, but X is unique given Musk’s behavior.

    “Even the owner of X takes part in the chaos, promoting accounts that are known to spread falsehoods to his 150 million followers. The fact is that malicious users, state-backed and otherwise, have become better at spreading falsehoods, with more sophisticated networks being built and better technology – including AI – being used. The platforms are in a perpetual state of catch-up.”

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  • Civilian hostages in Hamas custody killed in Be’eri near Gaza border, CNN verified videos show | CNN

    Civilian hostages in Hamas custody killed in Be’eri near Gaza border, CNN verified videos show | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    At least four civilians were killed while in the custody of Hamas, just feet from where armed militants had been escorting them near the Gaza border, videos obtained and geolocated by CNN show.

    One video from the kibbutz of Be’eri in southern Israel showed armed fighters with burned cars and a bulldozer in the background. Toward the end of the video, which was released on a Hamas-affiliated Telegram channel, four bodies can be seen on the ground.

    Another video previously geolocated by CNN showed five Israeli civilians taken captive by armed militants in nearly the same spot.

    A CNN analysis of the videos determined that the bodies, and the individuals being escorted by heavily armed militants, had matching clothes and hairstyles.

    It is not clear what happened to the fifth hostage.

    Be’eri lies just three miles from the eastern border of Gaza.

    Alongside other towns and settlements close to Gaza such as Ofakim, Sderot, Yad Mordechai, Kfar Aza, Yated and Kissufim, it was among the first to be targeted by Hamas fighters as they launched Saturday morning’s unprecedented and carefully coordinated killing and hostage-taking spree.

    The community of Be’eri was “very badly hit,” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said Monday during a briefing, more than 48 hours after Hamas launched the surprise attack.

    Hecht said most Hamas militants in Be’eri had been killed, but Israeli troops were still there attempting to clear the area of any remaining fighters.

    “We are still fighting. We thought this morning we would be in a better place,” Hecht said.

    As many as 1,000 Hamas fighters breached the border from Gaza, according to Israeli authorities, in an attack that has killed more than 700 Israelis, prompting retaliatory Israeli airstrikes and a formal declaration of war on Sunday.

    More than 400 Palestinians have been killed, including 78 children, according to the health ministry in Gaza, and medical care has been complicated by Israel cutting power to the territory.

    Hamas militants have taken more than 100 Israelis hostage, including high-ranking army officers, a spokesperson for the group claimed Sunday. It’s believed they are in Gaza but their fate is unknown.

    Another Palestinian armed group, Islamic Jihad, on Sunday said it is holding at least 30 hostages in Gaza. CNN is unable to verify the claims.

    Israel authorities have said that dozens of Israelis are being held hostage in Gaza but have not confirmed exact numbers. In addition to Israeli captives, several other nationalities are believed to have been taken hostage.

    Hecht said it was possible that Hamas fighters were still crossing into Israel from Gaza, adding that four fighting divisions had been deployed in the south.

    He said around 20 breach points had been totally secured but other points were more vulnerable.

    “There are some areas where we are still holding on with tanks and air cover. I can’t deny the fact that there are still people coming in … It’s an ongoing fight,” he said.

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  • Israeli leader warns of ‘long war’ as it faces unprecedented hostage crisis following Hamas attack | CNN

    Israeli leader warns of ‘long war’ as it faces unprecedented hostage crisis following Hamas attack | CNN

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    Jerusalem and Gaza
    CNN
     — 

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country is “embarking on a long and difficult war” as it deals with an unprecedented hostage crisis after Palestinian militants launched a surprise land, sea and air attack from Gaza Saturday, killing hundreds and infiltrating into Israeli territory.

    The shock attacks by Hamas led to the deadliest day in decades for Israel and come after months of surging violence between Palestinians and Israelis with the decades-long conflict now heading into uncharted and dangerous new territory.

    Israel’s political-security cabinet convened late Saturday and made a “series of operational decisions aimed at bringing about the destruction of the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, in a way that would negate their ability and desire to threaten and harm the citizens of Israel for many years to come,” according to a statement from the office of Israel’s Prime Minister.

    Netanyahu vowed “mighty vengeance” on the Palestinian militant group Hamas following its unprecedented assault on Israel that appeared to catch the entire Israeli military and intelligence apparatus off guard in one of the country’s worst security failures.

    Throughout Saturday and into Sunday, Hamas launched thousands of rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel – making direct hits on multiple locations inside the country including Tel Aviv – while armed terror groups entered Israel and infiltrated military bases, towns and farms, shooting at civilians and taking hostages.

    At least 300 Israelis have been killed, an Israeli official told CNN and more than 1,500 have been injured, Israeli media reported.

    Israel responded by launching air strikes on what it said were Hamas targets in Gaza, while its forces clashed on the ground with Hamas fighters in villages, army bases and border crossings.

    Israeli warplanes continued to pound Gaza on Sunday morning with the Israel Defense Forces saying it had struck 426 targets in Gaza, including 10 towers used by Hamas.

    In Gaza, at least 232 Palestinians have died and more than 1,600 are wounded, the Palestinian health ministry said.

    The Israeli leader said the “first phase” of the operation had ended with the “destruction of the majority of the enemy forces that penetrated our territory.”

    Netanyahu announced Israeli forces have started an “offensive formation” which will “continue without reservation and without respite until the objectives are achieved.” Among the decisions made by the cabinet is to stop the supply of electricity, fuel and goods to Gaza.

    In pictures: The deadly clashes in Israel and Gaza

    Complicating Israel’s response is that a “significant number” of Israeli nationals were taken by Hamas as hostages and are being held at locations across Gaza.

    “It is unprecedented in our history that we have so many Israeli nationals in the hands of a terrorist organization,” Israeli Defense Forces spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus (Res) told CNN, without giving an exact number. “I can assure you that the IDF will be focused on getting each and every Israeli back.”

    “These are numbers that we have never, ever seen before,” he added.

    It has been more than 17 years since an Israeli soldier was taken as a prisoner of war in an assault on Israeli territory. And Israel has not seen this kind of infiltration of military bases, towns and kibbutzim since town-by-town fighting in the 1948 war of independence.

    In a statement Saturday, Palestinian militant group Hamas said the captured Israeli hostages are being held across Gaza and warned against attacks in the area.

    “Threatening Gaza and its people is a losing game and a broken record,” said Abu Obaida spokesman for the Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas in a recorded audio message late Saturday. “What happens to the people of the Gaza Strip will happen to them and beware of miscalculation.”

    Earlier the group claimed to have captured “dozens” of Israelis, including soldiers, and were holding them in “safe places and resistance tunnels.”

    The IDF said Sunday that “many hundreds,” possibly as many as 1,000 Hamas fighters were involved in the attack, according to Conricus, who said fighting inside Israel was still ongoing as of 4.15 a.m. local time Sunday morning (9.15pET on Saturday).

    The priority for the Israeli military Sunday was to “make sure that we clear all Israel communities of terrorists that are still inside Israel,” he said, adding that the IDF was still “clearing the last houses and locations and communities and bases.”

    “Hopefully, at the break of dawn we will be able to declare that we have finally restored sovereignty and order in Israel. But that has not yet been achieved. And that will be our number one priority,” he said.

    Saturday’s attack prompted strong reactions from around the world. US President Joe Biden said his administration’s support of Israel’s security is “rock solid and unwavering” and many European leaders denounced the violence, while Brazil said it will call an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.

    Air France said it is suspending its flights to Tel Aviv and US aviation officials issued a special bulletin to pilots and airlines urging “extreme caution.”

    The highly coordinated assault, which began Saturday morning, was unprecedented in its scale and scope and came on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 War in which Arab states blitzed Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.

    “We had no warning of any kind, and it was a total surprise that the war broke out this morning,” Efraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad, Israel’s Intelligence Service, told CNN.

    The number of rockets fired by Palestinian militants was at a scale “never seen before,” Halevy said, and this was “the first time” that Gaza has been able to “penetrate deep into Israel and to take control of villages.”

    “This is beyond imagination from our point of view, and we didn’t know they had this quantity of [rockets], and we certainly didn’t expect that they would be as effective as they were today,” he said.

    Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets launched from the Gaza Strip, as seen from Ashkelon in southern Israel October 7, 2023

    Fighting carried on throughout the day and into the night, and a fresh round of rocket attacks hit Tecl Aviv and other areas on Saturday evening. The IDF urged civilians in Gaza to leave their residential areas as Israeli military operations continued.

    Air raid sirens and rockets could be heard in Israel throughout the night into Sunday.

    “You can hear the intercept missiles banging in the air,” said CNN’s International Diplomatic Editor Nic Robertson as he arrived at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel.

    It is rare for Palestinian militants to be able to make it into Israel from Gaza which is sealed off and heavily watched by Israel’s military. Gaza is one of the most densely packed places in the world, an isolated coastal enclave of almost 2 million people crammed into 140 square miles.

    Governed by Hamas, the territory is largely cut off from the rest of the world by an Israeli blockade of Gaza’s land, air and sea dating back to 2007. Egypt controls Gaza’s southern border crossing, Rafah. Israel has placed heavy restrictions on the freedom of civilian movement and controls the importation of basic goods into the narrow coastal strip.

    Fighting between the two sides has surged in the last two years.

    The violence has been driven by frequent Israeli military raids in Palestinian towns and cities, which Israel has said are a necessary response to a rising number of attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis.

    They also come at a moment of deep division in Israel, months after the country’s right-wing government pushed through a contentious plan to reduce the power of the country’s courts, sparking a social and political crisis.

    Israelis are sharing photos of friends and family who they say have been kidnapped by Hamas militants and are urging the public to help spread the word in hopes of getting them back safely.

    Yoni Asher, a resident of Sharon region, told CNN he recognized his wife from a viral video that shows a group of people loaded into the back of a truck flanked by Hamas militants.

    Asher said his wife and young daughters were visiting his mother-in-law in Nir Oz, a kibbutz near the Gaza border. He said he contacted them on Saturday morning and suspected they may have been abducted. He tracked his wife’s phone and learned that it was located in Gaza, he said.

    Later that day, he saw the viral clip. In the video, a woman is seen in the truck as a militant puts a scarf on her head. Asher told CNN that the woman is his wife though CNN has not been able to independently verify the video.

    “The situation is not looking good,” Asher said, adding that his wife and mother-in-law have German citizenship and pleaded with the German government for help.

    A German foreign ministry source told CNN that, “the Federal Foreign Office and the German embassy in Tel Aviv are in close contact with the Israeli authorities in order to clarify whether and to what extent German citizens are affected.”

    An Israel Police spokesperson has told CNN that family members who wish to report their loved ones as missing to come to the nearest police station when it’s safe to leave their homes. The police suggested relatives bring photos and personal items from which DNA samples can be extracted to help with identification.

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  • Hamas captures hostages and prisoners of war, as Israelis share photos of those missing | CNN

    Hamas captures hostages and prisoners of war, as Israelis share photos of those missing | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Hamas captured a number of Israelis during its deadly attack on Israel on Saturday, the Israeli military said, as videos emerged of Israeli soldiers and civilians being taken away by fighters from the Palestinian militant group.

    Meanwhile Israelis are sharing photos of friends and family who they say have apparently been kidnapped by Hamas fighters and are urging the public to help spread the word in the hope of getting them back safely.

    Hamas fired rockets from Gaza and sent gunmen into Israeli territory, prompting Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare that the country is “at war.” At least 300 people in Israel were killed in the unprecedented attack, an Israeli official told CNN Saturday night, and Israeli media reported that at least 1,500 people have been wounded.

    At least 232 Palestinians were killed in Gaza on Saturday, with 1,697 injured, the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said in a statement.

    At least one Israeli soldier has been taken prisoner, a new video geolocated and authenticated by CNN shows.

    The video, posted to Hamas’ official social media accounts, shows militants yank two clearly terrified and stunned soldiers out of a disabled tank. It’s unclear from the video how the tank was disabled, but Hamas has used drones to drop bombs onto Israeli tanks before.

    One of the soldiers is then seen in a short snippet of video being kicked on the ground by the militants. In another clip, the soldier is seen lying motionless on the ground.

    The second soldier is seen being led away by Hamas militants. A third soldier – his face very bloody – is seen lying on the ground motionless near the tank track. CNN does not know the current whereabouts or status of the three soldiers.

    A second video, taken afterward, shows a number of different armed men around the tank. The three soldiers are nowhere to be seen.

    The armed men are then seen pulling a fourth Israeli soldier from the tank. The soldier is motionless as he’s dragged down the side of the tank and onto the ground. The armed men are seen stomping on his body.

    The Izzedine al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, claimed to capture “dozens” of Israelis on Saturday.

    “We bring good news to our (Palestinian) prisoners and our people that the al Qassam Brigades have dozens of captured (Israeli) officers and soldiers in their hands,” Al Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obaida said in a post on Telegram. “They have been secured in safe places and resistance tunnels.”

    In a recorded audio message released later Saturday, Obaida said that all captured Israelis “are present in all axes in the Gaza Strip.”

    “What happens to the people of the Gaza Strip will happen to them and beware of miscalculation,” he added.

    On Saturday evening, the Israel Defense Forces said the number of civilians captured by Hamas is “unfortunately, a significant number.”

    Spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that “it is unprecedented in our history that we have so many Israeli nationals in the hands of a terrorist organization.”

    “These are numbers that we have never, ever seen before and these are, they’re unprecedented, and they will force an unprecedented response from Israel,” Conricus said.

    Yoni Asher, a resident of Sharon region, told CNN’s Erin Burnett he recognized his wife from a viral video that shows a group of people loaded on the back of a truck flanked by Hamas militants. Chants of “Allahu Akbar,” (God is Great), are heard throughout the video.

    The footage shows a woman in the back of the truck as a militant puts a scarf on her head. Asher told CNN that the woman is his wife and he’s sharing the video to raise awareness of their situation. CNN has not been able to independently verify the video.

    Asher said his wife and young daughters were visiting his mother-in-law in Nir Oz, a kibbutz near the Gaza border. He said he suspected they may have been abducted. He tracked his wife’s phone and learned that it was located in Gaza. Later that day, he saw the viral clip.

    “I don’t even know what the situation is regarding the hostages, and the situation is not looking good,” he said.

    Hamas has not taken hostages in years. Until now, it was known to hold two civilians who crossed the border and were captured, as well as the bodies of two Israeli soldiers.

    Gilad Shalit, a 19-year-old soldier, was captured in 2006 and kept for five years before his release as part of a swap that saw more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners freed.

    Other videos geolocated by CNN appear to show where Hamas appears to have taken other Israelis captive.

    In one of the videos, geolocated by CNN to the neighborhood of Shejaiya in Gaza, a barefoot woman is seen being pulled from the trunk of a Jeep by a gunman and then forced into the back seat of the car. Her face is bleeding, and her wrists appear to be cable-tied behind her back. The Jeep appears to have an IDF license plate, suggesting it may have been stolen and brought into Gaza.

    A second video, which appears to show Hamas militants taking multiple Israelis captive, was geolocated by CNN to Be’eri in southern Israel, a village close to Gaza.

    Gaza Jeep Israel

    Video appears to show Hamas taking woman hostage near Gaza

    IDF spokesman Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari says Ofakim in the Negev and Beeri near the Gaza Strip are the “main focal points” where there are hostage situations.

    “We are fighting in 22 locations,” he said without specifying further.

    Hagari said that the IDF is getting ready for a ground incursion, and “all options are on the table.”

    “Hundreds of thousands” of IDF army personnel would be called up, he said.

    “A wide reserve mobilization has begun,” he said. “There are four divisions that we are immediately bringing down to Gaza; 31 regular battalions are already in Otef and the south. Tanks are also brought down to the Strip.”

    “The main effort is to kill all the terrorists on the fence, all those who try to return to the Strip. First of all, we will deal with fire from the air, and then also with heavy ground tools.”

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  • Militants enter Israel from Gaza after woman killed in rocket barrage | CNN

    Militants enter Israel from Gaza after woman killed in rocket barrage | CNN

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    Gaza
    CNN
     — 

    Multiple militants from Gaza have entered Israeli territory, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Saturday, shortly after a barrage of rockets left one person dead and at least three injured.

    Palestinian militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for the rocket attack.

    Hamas military commander Muhammad Al-Deif released a recorded message, announcing operation “Al-Aqsa Storm” and saying the Palestinian militant group “targeted the enemy positions, airports and military positions with 5,000 rockets.”

    The IDF has warned Israelis who live near Gaza to stay in their homes.

    One person died and at least three were injured when a barrage of rockets was fired from Gaza toward Israel Saturday morning, Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) rescue service said.

    The rockets, which were witnessed by a CNN producer in Gaza, prompted sirens as far north as the Tel Aviv area, east to Beer Sheva, and many other locations in between.

    A woman in her 70s in Kfar Aviv in the Gderot region died following the barrage, the MDA said.

    Two other people in the Ashkelon area were lightly injured, the rescue service said, while a fourth person – a man in his 20s in Yavne – was moderately injured by shrapnel.

    The rockets were fired at about 6:30 a.m. Saturday morning local time (11:30 p.m. ET), when most Israelis are likely to have been asleep.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are conducting security assessments at Israel Defense Forces headquarters in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu’s office said.

    This is a breaking news story. More to come.

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  • Two Israeli civilians killed in flashpoint West Bank town, Israel military says | CNN

    Two Israeli civilians killed in flashpoint West Bank town, Israel military says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Two Israeli civilians were shot and killed on Saturday in the flashpoint West Bank town of Huwara, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

    IDF soldiers have been pursuing the suspects and have set up blockades in the area, the military said in a statement.

    The Magen David Adom (MDA) rescue service said they received a report of a shooting at 3:04 p.m. local time. Medics and paramedics arrived and performed CPR on two men – ages 60 and 29 – alongside IDF medics.

    MDA paramedic Tomer Gusman said the victims were unconscious with gunshot wounds.

    Huwara, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, was the scene of the fatal shooting of two Israeli settler brothers in February, following that night by revenge attacks by settlers on the Palestinian town.

    The IDF has deployed extra troops in the town in the wake of the violence.

    Videos taken in Huwara showed an ambulance and army vehicles at the scene, with a road checkpoint closed off to vehicles and traffic at a standstill.

    Hamas, the Palestinian militant movement that runs Gaza and is increasingly popular in the West Bank, praised the attack without directly claiming responsibility for it.

    Spokesperson Abdel-Latif al-Qanou said the shooting was “the product of the promise to defend our people and respond to the crimes of the occupation,” a reference to Israel.

    In a statement released by his office on Saturday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said security forces were “working diligently to find the murderer.”

    “I send my condolences to the family of the two murdered – a father and son – whose lives were cut short in such a cruel and criminal way during Shabbat,” Netanyahu said.

    “The security forces are working diligently to find the murderer and come to terms with him, just as we have done with all the murderers so far.”

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