Israel-Hamas war, day 8 LIVE updates | More than 1,300 buildings destroyed in Gaza: UN

Saudi Arabia has suspended talks on potentially normalising ties with Israel, a source told AFP on Saturday, amid the war raging between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

“Saudi Arabia has decided to pause discussion on possible normalisation and has informed US officials,” a source familiar with the discussions told AFP.

- AFP

A plane with medical supplies to support urgent health needs in Gaza has landed in Al Arish, Egypt, near the Rafah crossing, the chief of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Saturday in a post on messaging platform X.

“We’re ready to deploy the supplies as soon as humanitarian access through the crossing is established,” he said.

- Reuters

More than 1,300 buildings in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed, the United Nations said Saturday, after nearly a week of fierce bombardment by Israeli forces.

The UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA said “5,540 housing units” in those buildings were destroyed and nearly 3,750 more homes were so badly damaged they were uninhabitable.

- AFP

A Reuters journalist was killed on October 13 and six others from AFP, Reuters and Al Jazeera were wounded while working in southern Lebanon, in cross-border shelling.

The Israel-Lebanon border has seen a series of flare-ups since a bloody attack by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas on Israel on October 7.

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Israeli forces on Saturday killed several “terrorists” trying to cross the border from Lebanon, a military spokesman said.

The military “identified a terrorist cell which attempted to infiltrate from Lebanon into Israeli territory,” the spokesman said, adding that a drone strike “targeted the terrorist cell and killed a number of the terrorists”.

- AFP

The Israel Air Forces has said that it has killed the head of Hamas’s Air Force Murad Abu Murad in the airstrike carried out overnight. The strike targeted a headquarters from which Hamas managed its aerial activity in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli Air Force said that Murad Abu Murad “was largely responsible for directing terrorists during the massacre on Saturday.”

- ANI

As news of Palestinian militant group Hamas launching a deadly attack on Israel and Israel’s threat of retaliation began to filter across news networks and social media platforms, a wave of misinformation and fake videos rose alongside.

In a “tech-first” society, it is increasingly difficult to differentiate between authentic information and false claims or deliberately misleading video content. It is clear that numerous videos, social media posts and images purportedly about the Israel–Hamas conflict are deliberately misleading.

This problem highlights why the verification efforts of journalists reporting on conflicts are vital. And understanding how they work is important for ensuring the public can have confidence in what they read and see from media publishers.

The Digital News Report 2023 from the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute, of which I am acting director, surveyed people from 46 countries about their news consumption habits. It found 56% said they were worried about identifying the difference between what is real and fake on the internet when it comes to news – up from 54% in 2022.

PTI

Israeli Army Arabic lanuage spokesperson on X: IDF will allow safe movement for Gazans on two main roads south in territory between 10 A.M. and 4 P.M.

Reuters

As the Israel-Hamas conflict enters the eighth day, Hamas has released a footage of Israeli children whom they claim they held hostage during the deadly attack on Southern Israel, reported The Jerusalem Post.

The Hamas group shared the video on their Telegram channel, with the caption, “Hamas fighters, showing compassion for children in the midst of the Kibbutz ‘Holit’ battles on day one of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.”

The Kibbutz Holit located in southern Israel, very close to the Gaza border, had witnessed horrific atrocities by the terrorist group Hamas during their October 7 attack on Israel.13 Israelis were killed during the attack on Kibbutz Holit, according to The Jerusalem Post.

According to Israeli media, the children seen in the video have not been identified yet and it is unclear if their parents were killed when the children were taken away.

ANI

In Israel’s call for the evacuation of half of Gaza’s population, many Palestinians fear a repeat of the most traumatic event in their tortured history, their mass exodus from what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation.

Palestinians refer to it as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” An estimated 700,000 Palestinians, a majority of the prewar population, fled or were expelled from what is now Israel in the months before and during the war, in which Jewish fighters fended off an attack by several Arab states.

The Palestinians packed their belongings, piling into cars, trucks and donkey carts. Many locked their doors and took their keys with them, expecting to return when the war ended.

Seventy-five years later, they have not been allowed back. Emptied towns were renamed, villages were demolished, homes reclaimed by forests in Israeli nature reserves.

Israel refused to allow the Palestinians to return, because it would threaten the Jewish majority within the country’s borders. So the refugees and their descendants, who now number nearly 6 million, settled in camps in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Those camps eventually grew into built-up neighborhoods.

AP

Listen in as an IDF Spokesperson provides a situational update as the war against Hamas continues.

A collection of articles from The Hindu explaining the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, and providing context on key players

Israel’s ultimatum that over one million people in northern Gaza should relocate within 24 hours is “extremely dangerous” and “simply not possible”, UN chief Antonio Guterres has said, asserting that “even wars have rules.” UN officials in Gaza on Thursday were informed by their liaison officers in the Israeli military that the entire population of northern Gaza, approximately 1.1 million, should relocate to the southern part within the next 24 hours.

The same order applied to all UN staff and those sheltered in UN facilities – including schools, health centres and clinics.

“Moving more than one million people across a densely populated warzone to a place with no food, water, or accommodation, when the entire territory is under siege, is extremely dangerous – and in some cases, simply not possible,” Guterres told reporters here on Friday.

The UN Secretary-General made those remarks before heading to a Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East.

PTI

An associate professor at the Tamil Nadu Agriculture University (TNAU), here, on a two-month training programme in Israel has been stranded in the conflict zone and she has sought help to return to Tamil Nadu, her husband, who is a HoD at the same varsity has said.

She has been spending sleepless nights at The Negev, a large desert region in southern Israel, as the region is in close proximity to Gaza, T Ramesh, an associate professor and Head of the Department, TNAU, said.

PTI

In Muslim communities across the world, worshippers gathered at mosques for their first Friday prayers since Hamas militants attacked Israel, igniting the latest Israel-Palestinian war. Some imams issued fiery calls of support for the Palestinians. Others bemoaned the loss of civilian lives on both sides and appealed for peace.

Prominent imams in France and Greece, in their Friday sermons, decried the violence that has wracked Israel and the Gaza Strip, and appealed for peace.

AP

Following the Israeli military’s order to evacuate all citizens from Gaza City, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Israel to “reconsider” its warning, calling it “dangerous and deeply troubling,” according to The New York Times.

Guterres in an opinion article in The New York Times emphasized that such demand for a mass evacuation on extremely short notice could have devastating humanitarian consequences.

ANI

As of this time, the IDF has confirmed that over 120 civilians are being held captive in Gaza by the Hamas terrorist organisation.

In an unprecedented order to civilians in northern Gaza and Gaza City, the Israeli military gave Jamal — and 1.1 million other Palestinians — 24 hours to make up their minds. It was the sixth day of Israeli bombing prompted by Hamas’ brutal attack that killed more than 1,300 Israelis and stunned the country.

As the clock ticked on the ultimatum, hundreds of thousands of Israeli army reservists were massing near Gaza’s northern border. Israeli warplanes roared overhead, diving low to hurl bombs at homes and residential high-rises. Aid groups appealed to the international community to stop what they denounced as a possible war crime of forcible population transfer.

In understaffed and poorly supplied hospitals, Palestinian doctors said they felt they had no choice but to stay put. There was no way to evacuate Shifa, Gaza’s biggest hospital, its general director Mohammad Abu Selim said. Even though the hospital was in chaos — its electricity dwindling under an Israeli siege, its beds overwhelmed, its morgue overflowing — Abu Selim said there was simply no other safe place in Gaza to put 600 patients, many of them in serious condition from the attacks.

AP

The special flight bringing back Indians, including those from Tamil Nadu, from Israel reached Delhi today morning. Tamil Nadu Government’s special representative for New Delhi, A.K.S. Vijayan, received them at the airport. The State Government has arranged flight tickets for passengers to Chennai and their hometowns. They will be provided food, and all other arrangements are made to send them on the next available flight, a release said.

Picture credits: TN DIPR

Israeli forces postpone the demand to evacuate Al Awda Hospital in Gaza Strip until 6am Israel time. The evacuation of patients remains complicated.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his country will never forget and forgive the “horrific acts” perpetrated by its enemies. He asserted that Israel is pounding with “unprecedented forces” its enemies who have just begun to pay the price.

In his address after a security assessment at the Kirya in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu on Friday said, “We are all mobilized. We are all united. Stories of the heroic acts of our people in these dark days of pain and grief, of that cursed Saturday, will become an integral part of the history of Israel. We will never forget the horrific acts perpetrated by our enemies, and we will never forgive.”

ANI

The brutal attacks by Hamas last weekend is the most murderous assault on the Jews since the Holocaust in Europe, influential lawmakers told eminent Indian-Americans who have rallied behind Israel since the conflict began.

“The terrorist attacks in Israel committed by Hamas against Israeli civilians over the last week are the most sweeping, murderous assault on Jews that have taken place since the Holocaust in Europe,” Congressman Jamie Raskin told a group of Indian-Americans at an event organized by the Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies (FIIDS).

PTI

Palestinian militant group Hamas, which attacked Israel last week taking more than 1,000 innocent lives, is worse than al-Qaeda, US President Joe Biden said Friday.

“The more we learned about the attack, the more horrifying it becomes. More than 1,000 innocent lives lost, including at least 27 Americans,” Biden said at the top of his remarks on Hydrogen Hubs in Philadelphia.

“These guys make -- they make al-Qaeda look pure. They’re pure evil. Like I said from the beginning, the United States, make no mistake about it, stands with Israel. The United States stands with Israel,” Biden said.

PTI

Russia proposed a draft resolution for the Security Council that calls for a humanitarian ceasefire and condemns violence against civilians and all acts of terrorism, according to a draft text seen by Reuters.

“Russia cannot accept the complete inaction and lack of any reaction on the part of the UNSC,” Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said after the meeting, adding that Russia was also ready to mediate between Israel and the Palestinians.

It was not immediately clear when or if Russia would put the draft resolution to a vote. The United States has traditionally shielded its ally Israel from any Security Council action. It holds a veto along with Britain, France, China or Russia.

Reuters

Israeli troops make foray into Gaza. Israel urgers mass evacuation of Gaza civilians. Palestinians in Gaza grapple with where to go, while hospitals struggle with patients.

AP

On the side of the United Nations Headquarters are the faces of those abducted at the hands of Hamas—making it known to the world the tragedy that Israelis and foreign nationals alike are grappling with.

More than 1 million Palestinians in northern Gaza faced an Israeli deadline on Saturday to flee south, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had only just begun to retaliate for last week’s Hamas rampage across southern Israel.

U.S. President Joe Biden said consultations were under way with regional governments on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as trapped Palestinians endured a power blackout and shortages of food and water amid fierce Israeli bombing.

Reuters

The Palestinian United Nations envoy appealed to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday to do more to stop a “crime against humanity” by Israel, which has warned nearly half of the population of the Gaza Strip to relocate as it plans an assault.

“He has to do more. Whatever was done is not sufficient. We need all of us to do more to stop this crime against humanity,” Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour told reporters before a meeting of Arab Group ambassadors at the United Nations.

Countries urged Israel on Friday to hold off attacking northern Gaza, where more than a million civilians largely defied Israel’s order to evacuate before it goes after Hamas militants who slaughtered Israeli civilians last weekend.

Over 1,350 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s bombing of Gaza in six days that followed a surprise attack by Hamas that left at least 1,200 Israelis dead on October 7. Israel has also mobilised some 300,000 military reservists and is moving troops and weaponry towards the Gaza border, preparing for an invasion. U.S. President Joe Biden has said responding to Hamas’s attack is Israel’s “duty”, throwing America’s full support behind Israel’s actions.

Israel’s military said early on Saturday it had struck a Hezbollah target in southern Lebanon in response to the “infiltration of unidentified aerial objects into Israel” and fire on an Israeli drone.

The military intercepted the objects and the fire on its drone, it said.

Reuters