Israel-Palestine war news LIVE: Hamas official says group ‘willing to release all

The World Health Organization condemned a deadly strike on a hospital in the Gaza Strip and demanded the immediate protection of civilians and health care in the Palestinian enclave.

‘WHO strongly condemns the attack on Al Ahli Arab Hospital’, the UN health agency’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory said Israeli air strikes on the hospital compound sheltering displaced people had killed at least 200 people.

‘Early reports indicate hundreds of deaths and injuries,’ said Tedros.

‘We call for the immediate protection of civilians and health care, and for the evacuation orders to be reversed.’

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has canceled a planned meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, following an Israeli strike on a Gaza hospital on Tuesday that killed hundreds, a senior Palestinian official said.

The meeting was due to take place in Jordan. The senior Palestinian official said Abbas was returning to Ramallah, the seat of his government in the occupied West Bank.

Egypt’s foreign ministry said world leaders must ‘call on Israel to stop targeting the area of the Rafah crossing’ to enable the delivery of aid into the beseiged Gaza Strip.

Convoys of aid have been stuck in Egypt for days, after four strikes over the past week on the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing – the only passage in and out of Gaza not controlled by Israel.

Hundreds of Palestinians have marched through central Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority, protesting President Mahmud Abbas shortly after a strike on a Gaza hospital is claimed to have killed at least 200 people.

‘The people want the fall of the president,’ protesters chanted, referring to Abbas, apparently over his conciliatory tone since war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza began earlier this month.

The Authority has partial administrative control in the Israel-occupied West Bank.

People gather around bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes on the al-Ahli Hospital hospital in central Gaza on Tuesday after they were transported to Al-Shifa hopsital.

The al-Ahli Hospital was housing hundreds of ‘sick’, ‘wounded’ and ‘forcibly displaced’ people when it was attacked, Hamas has claimed.

The terrorist group, in a statement on its Telegram channel, alleged that most of the casualties at al-Ahli Hospital were ‘displaced families, patients, children and women’.

The IDF may have hit the hospital by ‘mistake’, Alistair Bunkall, Sky News Middle East correspondent, reported.

Mr Bunkall told the broadcaster: ‘This is a Christian-run hospital in Gaza. I understand the IDF are looking into it, saying they may have hit a missile depo that caused a far bigger explosion or whether this was a direct hit which might have been a mistake.’

He added that people head to the hospitals for shelter during bombardments because they believe the Israeli forces are ‘very well aware of where schools and hospitals are’ and presumed they ‘will not be hit’.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday said a reported Israeli strike on a hospital in Gaza was ‘horrific and absolutely unacceptable.’

Trudeau made his remarks when asked about the strike, which health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave said had killed hundreds of people.

Canada has stressed that Israel must abide by international law as it strikes back against Hamas over attacks that killed more than 1,300 people.

‘The news coming out of Gaza is horrific and absolutely unacceptable … international law needs to be respected in this and in all cases. There are rules around wars and it’s not acceptable to hit a hospital,’ Trudeau told reporters.

Israel’s military said it did not have any details on the reported bombing.

The UK says it has flown more than 900 people back from Israel amid ongoing uncertainty in the country.

‘All British nationals registered with the Foreign Office and wanting to leave Israel on government organised flights have been allocated seats,’ the department said in a statement.

‘We have successfully brought back more than 900 people,’ it added.

Any other UK citizens wanting to leave have until Wednesday morning to book.

‘We encourage any British nationals who want to leave Israel to register their presence and book a flight before the portal closes,’ added the statement.

Israel is at war with militants Hamas after they crossed from Gaza and attacked border communities on October 7, killing more than 1,400 people.

Egypt denounced ‘in strongest terms’ an Israeli air strike on a Gaza hospital that killed hundreds of Palestinians, after Hamas claimed 500 were killed in the alledged attack.

They say the international community must urgently intervene to stop such violations, according to a foreign ministry statement.

Scores of injured people are being taken to Al-Shifa Hospital following alledged Israeli airstrike

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared three days of mourning following a deadly air strike on a hospital in Gaza, killing at least 500 Palestinians on Tuesday, state media reported.

‘What is taking place is genocide. We call on the international community to intervene immediately to stop this massacre. Silence is no longer acceptable,’ a statement issued by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation said in response to the attack.

Hamas will release all their civilian hostages in the next hour if the Israeli bombardment stops, Sky News have reported.

The United Nations have warned that Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip are being ‘packed into an ever-smaller area’ and life-saving essentials have essentially run out, appealing for a humanitarian truce to allow aid access.

‘It is now estimated that as many as 1 million people have fled their homes to other parts of Gaza,’ senior U.N. aid official Joyce Msuya told a meeting convened by Arab envoys on the enclave, which is controlled by Hamas militants.

Israel last week ordered some 1.1 million people in Gaza – almost half the population – to move to south as it prepares for a ground offensive in retaliation for the worst Hamas attack on civilians in Israel’s 75-year-old history.

‘In reality, civilians have nowhere to go, nowhere to escape the bombs and missiles, and nowhere to find water or food, or to escape the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe,’ Msuya said, urging a ‘humanitarian suspension of hostilities.’

An Israeli air strike has hit a Gaza City hospital packed with wounded and other Palestinians seeking shelter, killing hundreds, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

If confirmed, the attack would be by far the deadliest Israeli air strike in five wars fought since 2008.

Photos from the al-Ahli Hospital showed fire engulfing the hospital halls, shattered glass and bodies scattered across the area.

The ministry said at least 500 people had been killed.

Several hospitals in Gaza City have become refuges for hundreds of people, hoping they would be spared bombardment after Israel ordered all residents of the city and surrounding areas to evacuate to the southern Gaza Strip.

Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said there were still no details on the hospital deaths, adding: ‘We will get the details and update the public. I don’t know to say whether it was an Israeli air strike.’

A man accused of gunning down two Swedish football fans in Brussels had served a prison sentence in Sweden during 2012-2014, the Swedish Migration Agency has revealed.

‘He served a prison sentence in Sweden during 2012-2014,’ agency spokesman Jesper Tengroth said, declining to elaborate on the crime he was convicted of and how long a sentence he served.

Police officers stand guard in front of the house in the Schaerbeek area of Brussels

The Palestinian death toll from Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has climbed to about 3,000, health authorities said, and at least six people were killed in an Israeli air strike that hit a school run by the U.N.’s Palestinian refugee agency.

The violence raged as Washington announced that U.S. President Joe Biden would visit Israel on Wednesday to show support for its war on Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip.

Israel has vowed to annihilate the Islamist group after Hamas gunmen crossed the border and killed 1,300 people, mainly civilians, during a rampage through southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, the deadliest single day in Israel’s 75-year history.

Since then Israel has flattened parts of densely urbanised Gaza with air strikes, driven around half of its 2.3 million population from their homes, and imposed a total blockade on the enclave, halting food, fuel and medical supplies.

Palestinian emergency services and local citizens search for victims in buildings destroyed during Israeli raids in the southern Gaza Strip

At least 500 people have reportedly been killed after an Israeli airstrike hit a hospital in Gaza today, Hamas has claimed.

Unverified photographs circulating on social media showed fire engulfing the al-Ahli Hospital halls, shattered glass and body parts scattered across the area.

Hundreds of people were reportedly seeking shelter at the hospital at the time of the blast. 

Several hospitals in Gaza City have become refuges for hundreds of people, hoping they would be spared bombardment after Israel ordered all residents of the city and surrounding areas to evacuate to the southern Gaza Strip.

Israeli air strikes on a Gaza hospital compound Tuesday killed at least 200 people, the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory has claimed.

‘Two hundred to 300 displaced people killed in occupation (Israeli) strikes on the yard’ of the Ahli Arab hospital in central Gaza, the ministry said.

‘Hundreds of victims are still under the rubble,’ it added.

The media office of Gaza’s Hamas government described the attack as a ‘war crime’.

‘The hospital was housing hundreds of sick and wounded, and people forcibly displaced from their homes’ because of other strikes, a statement said.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the hospital bombing when contacted.

Around 3,000 people have been killed in Israeli air strikes across the Gaza Strip since the war erupted on October 7.

More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, the majority gunned down by Hamas militants who crossed from Gaza and attacked border communities.

Gaza Strip, Palestinian Territories, Oct 17, 2023 (AFP) – Israeli air strikes on a Gaza hospital compound Tuesday killed at least 200 people, the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory said.

‘Two hundred to 300 displaced people killed in occupation (Israeli) strikes on the yard” of the Ahli Arab hospital in central Gaza, the ministry said.

‘Hundreds of victims are still under the rubble,’ it added.

Russia said it need no longer obey U.N. Security Council restrictions on giving missile technology to its ally Iran once they expire, without saying whether it now planned to support Tehran’s missile development.

‘Supplies to and from Iran of products falling under the Missile Technology Control Regime no longer require prior approval by the U.N. Security Council,’ Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

The restrictions were defined in Resolution 2231 of 2015 endorsing a deal by which Britain, China, the European Union, France, Germany, Russia and the U.S. removed sanctions against Iran in return for Tehran curbing its nuclear programme.

Rishi Sunak is to visit Israel, Sky News have reported.

Last week, foreign minister James Cleverly travelled to Israel to show solidarity with the Israeli people following attacks by Palestinian militant group Hamas.

U.S. President Joe Biden will visit Israel on Wednesday.

Israeli military Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi threatened that Israel would retaliate aggressively should Hezbollah escalate.

It comes as Israeli forces and armed groups in Lebanon have engaged in a series of low-level skirmishes since the outbreak of the latest war in Gaza between the Israeli military and the Hamas militant group. Hezbollah has announced the death of 10 militants since skirmishes began.

‘This is a war on the home,’ Halevi said after meeting with Israeli troops near the northern border with Lebanon. ‘If Hezbollah makes a mistake, it will be annihilated.’

An earthquake of magnitude 5.8 struck southern Iran, the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) said on Tuesday.

The quake was at a depth of 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) GFZ said.

An Israeli strike killed at least six people Tuesday who were sheltering in a school in the Gaza Strip, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said.

‘At least six people were killed this afternoon when an UNRWA school was hit in Al-Maghazi refugee camp’, in central Gaza, the agency said.

‘This is outrageous, and it again shows a flagrant disregard for the lives of civilians.’

Clashes along the Lebanon-Israel border have left five Hezbollah fighters dead, marking the largest number of casualties for the militant group in a single day as tensions with Israel escalate.

Israeli forces and armed groups in Lebanon have engaged in a series of low-level skirmishes since the outbreak of the latest war in Gaza between the Israeli military and the Hamas militant group.

Hezbollah has announced the death of 10 militants since skirmishes began.

The escalation comes amid fears that the war could spread into Lebanon, where Hezbollah has expressed strong support to the militant Palestinian group Hamas.

Israel considers the heavily-armed group in Lebanon an even bigger threat than Hamas. So far, artillery exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel have been limited to several towns along the border.

Israel has threatened that if Hezbollah opens a new front, all of Lebanon will suffer the consequences.

Israel and Hezbollah fought a monthlong war in 2006 that ended in a draw. Since then, apart from limited clashes and escalated rhetoric, Hezbollah’s military caliber has significantly increased, and became a key military actor in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere in the region.

An Israeli soldier mans a checkpoint near the northern Kibbutz Sasa close to the border with Lebanon

Israel has attacked around 5,000 Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip since Oct 7 and has cancelled a ‘large number’ of other strikes in an effort to avoid Palestinian civilian casualties, a senior Israeli official said on Tuesday.

Briefing Reuters on condition of anonymity, the official did not elaborate on the number of strikes cancelled during a days-long bombardment of Gaza that has killed around 3,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities.

They said only that every such operation is ‘approved at the highest level’ of the Israeli military.

In the wake of the devastating Oct 7 incursions by Hamas, Israel was determined to eliminate the Palestinian Islamist group in Gaza ‘even if it takes months or years,’ he said.

Palestinian emergency services and local citizens search for victims in buildings destroyed during Israeli raids in the southern Gaza Strip

Israel’s Defence Forces have spent the past week preparing for a massive operation to crush Hamas after some 360,000 reservists were called up to encircle Gaza with tanks, artillery and armoured vehicles.

But now the expected ground assault appears to be on hold, with IDF spokesperson Lt Col Richard Hecht refusing to confirm his troops will deploy into the Palestinian enclave.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Tuesday for broad international support in the country’s war against Gaza rulers Hamas after the militant group’s deadly attack on Israel.

• “The world must stand united behind Israel to defeat Hamas,” Netanyahu said alongside visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
• The German leader is one of a slew of top politicians to have visited Israel since Hamas militants from Gaza attacked the country on October 7.
• “The savagery that we witnessed perpetrated by the Hamas murderers coming out of Gaza were the worst crimes committed against Jews since the Holocaust,” Netanyahu said, referring to the extermination of more than six million Jews by the Nazis.

• An Israeli airstrike killed senior Hamas armed commander Ayman Nofal in Gaza today, the group’s armed wing said, without providing more details

Around 3,000 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip, the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory said on Tuesday.

More than 12,500 others have been wounded since Israel started bombarding Gaza on October 7, in retaliation for Hamas attacks in Israel which killed more than 1,400 people.

Israel has bombed areas of southern Gaza where it told Palestinians to flee ahead of an expected invasion, killing dozens of people.

• Violence along Israel’s border with Lebanon has also led to concerns over a widening regional conflict that diplomats have been working to prevent
• In Gaza, people wounded in the air strikes were rushed to hospital after heavy attacks outside the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis, residents reported
• The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas hideouts, infrastructure and command centres

The US military has put 2,000 troops on deployment alert, the Pentagon has said, in response to the escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin placed the personnel and a range of units ‘on a heightened state of readiness through a prepare to deploy order,’ the Pentagon said in a statement, to be able ‘to respond quickly to the evolving security environment in the Middle East.’

Jordan on Wednesday will host a four-party summit in Amman with U.S. President Joe Biden and Egyptian and Palestinian leaders to discuss the ‘dangerous’ repercussions of the war in Gaza for the region, state media said.

• The discussions would focus on ways to halt ‘the ongoing war in Gaza and ways to find a political horizon that would allow the revival of the peace process’
• Jordan’s King Abdullah will also separately hold a tripartite summit with both Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al Sisi and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
• Jordan which lost territory to Israel during the 1967 Middle East war, is worried widening violence could have repercussions, with a large percentage of Jordan’s population made up of Palestinians

JK Rowling condemned the kidnapping of children by Hamas as she posted a picture of an abducted autistic Harry Potter fan.

• The author shared a picture of Noya, 12, wearing a Harry Potter costume on X
• ‘May Noya and all hostages taken by Hamas be returned soon, safely, to their families,’ the author wrote
• Noya was tragically taken by Hamas alongside her grandmother Carmela, 80

U.S. taxpayer dollars are able to ‘flow freely’ to Iran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah because the United Nations Security Council has failed to label them as ‘terrorists,’ warn top security experts.

• Hamas and Hezbollah are not sanctioned or labeled as terror groups by the UN Security Council
• However, other well-known terrorist organizations Al Qaeda and ISIS have been officially designated, which cuts off their ability to get foreign assistance.
• Richard Goldberg, senior advisor at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, tells DailyMail.com that U.S. taxpayer dollars to the UN are going directly into the hands of terrorists as a result.

Reuters has called on Israel to conduct a quick and comprehensive investigation into cross-border fire that killed one of its journalists and wounded other reporters in Lebanon last week.

Video journalist Issam Abdallah died and six other journalists were injured – including two from AFP – in firing near the village of Alma al-Shaab in southern Lebanon on Friday.

The journalists believe they were hit by fire coming from the Israeli side of the border.

‘I am reiterating my call to the Israeli authorities, who have said they are investigating, to conduct a swift, thorough and transparent probe into what happened,’ Reuters Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni said in a video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Monday.

‘By transparent, I mean an investigation with clear evidence and explanation, and I also reiterate my call to the Israeli Defense Forces for clarity regarding the terms of engagement in this conflict,’ she added.

Prince William has sent a letter to the Chief Rabbi offering support during a ‘traumatic time’ for Jewish people.

The Prince of Wales wrote a letter to the Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis dated on 10 October, expressing his ‘solidarity’ in the wake of Hamas‘ terror attack in Israel three days earlier.

He told Sir Ephraim, 67, who posted the letter to X, formerly Twitter, last night, that it was ‘truly a traumatic time for the Jewish community’ in the UK and condemned that attacks ‘unreservedly’.

The heartbroken mother of abducted Israeli Mia Schem said she is ‘begging the world to bring my baby back home’ after Hamas terrorists paraded her in a disturbing hostage video.

Keren Schem, whose daughter is a French and Israeli citizen, appealed for her child and all the other 199 hostages taken on October 7 to be returned home.

She said the 21-year-old, who was shot at and then abducted while at the Nova Festival near the Israeli border, ‘only went to a party, to a festival party to have some fun… and now she’s in Gaza.’

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Tuesday that “no one can stop resistance forces” if Israel keeps up its bombardment of Gaza in response to the shock October 7 attack by Hamas.

If the crimes of the Zionist (Israeli) regime continue, Muslims and resistance forces will become impatient, and no one can stop them.

Iran has been in close contact with its regional allies, including Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and pro-Tehran Iraqi militias, since Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel, breaking through the heavily fortified border from Gaza and killing more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians.

‘No matter what the Zionist regime does, it cannot make up for the scandalous failure it suffered,’ Khamenei said.

On Monday, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian spoke of possible ‘pre-emptive action’ against Israel by the ‘resistance front’ while President Ebrahim Raisi said time was running out to reach a political solution.

Tehran, which financially and militarily backs Hamas militants, celebrated the Hamas assault but insisted it was not involved.

Clashes erupted again on the border between Lebanon and Israel this morning, where Israeli forces and armed groups in Lebanon have engaged in a series of low-level skirmishes since the outbreak of the latest war in Gaza.

An anti-tank missile fired from Lebanon landed in the town of Metula in northern Israel, injuring three people, according to the Ziv Medical Center in Safed.

No group in Lebanon has immediately claimed responsibility. It was not clear if the injured were civilians or soldiers, but Israel has ordered civilians to evacuate the area near the border with Lebanon.

Israel responded by striking several areas along the border in southern Lebanon with artillery fire and white phosphorus, the state-run National News Agency in Lebanon reported. The Israeli military said its tanks fired back into Lebanon after an anti-tank missile was launched across the border.

Earlier today, the Israeli military said it killed four militants who had attempted to plant explosive devices on a border wall between Israel and Lebanon. A video from an Israeli army reconnaissance drone showed the militants near the separation wall as they were targeted, causing an explosion.

President Joe Biden will visit Israel today in order to ‘reaffirm solidarity’ with its closest ally in the Middle East, as well as to press for humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made the announcement after six hours of talks with Israeli officials. Biden was invited at the weekend by Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Blinken said that Biden’s visit was in ‘solidarity with Israel and our ironclad commitment to its security.’

A 13-year-old British girl who went missing after Hamas terrorists launched their barbaric attack in Israel has been murdered, her heartbroken family have revealed.

Yahel, 13, disappeared after the terrorists attacked Be’eri Kibbutz and killed her British mother Lianne, who was born in Bristol.

Her family have now confirmed that the teenager was also massacred in the attack, reports the BBC. Yahel’s older sister Noiya, 16, and their Israeli father Eli are still missing.