Israel-Hamas war: Egypt warned Israel three days before weekend attack, described as ‘failure of intelligence’
Egypt warned Israel three days before Hamas massacred hundreds of Israelis that the terrorist organisation was plotting an attack.
Michael McCaul, chairman of the United States’ House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said there had been a “failure of intelligence” ahead of the attack, which he said had been planned for up to a year.
“We’re not quite sure how we missed it, I’m not quite sure how Israel missed it”, he told reporters following a closed-door intelligence briefing.
“We know that Egypt had warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen. We know that this has been planned, perhaps as long as a year ago.”
The exact details disclosed to the Israeli government are not clear, but McCaul said a “warning was given”, the UK’s Daily Telegraph reported.
Meanwhile Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to keep fighting Hamas, saying that every member of the Palestinian militant group is “a dead man”.
STORY CONTINUES AFTER THE LIVE BLOG
Government to assist with departures from Tel Aviv
Royce
The Government is partnering with Etihad Airways to facilitate the departure of New Zealanders and other eligible passengers from Pacific countries out of Tel Aviv, following the outbreak of armed conflict in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has announced.
Details will be provided via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs SafeTravel system regarding how to register.
“The situation in Israel and the OPT remains highly volatile. Therefore any New Zealanders who can depart the region by other commercial airlines should do so now,” Nanaia Mahuta said.
“The Government will assist New Zealanders and Pacific island nationals who are having difficulty securing a commercial seat out of Tel Aviv, due to the high demand of bookings.
“The initial flight will depart Tel Aviv, in coming days, arriving into Abu Dhabi. Passengers will be responsible for onwards travel from Abu Dhabi to New Zealand, including costs incurred for that leg.
“There is only a limited number of seats we can secure at any given time, so it is important that those wishing to leave, who already have commercial bookings, do not forgo those tickets for these flights because there is no guarantee a seat can be assigned.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is in direct contact with those New Zealanders and eligible travellers in the region. Work remains ongoing, alongside partners, on how we can support those New Zealanders having difficulty securing flights out.
“We encourage all New Zealanders in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories to register on Safetravel in order to receive the most upto date government information, and ensure all their details are accurate and up to date,” Nanaia Mahuta said.
IDF looking for underground hostages
Vera Alves
Israeli authorities believe Hamas is holding hostages underground, a spokesman for the country’s military revealed.
It’s believed at least 150 people were kidnapped when the Palestinian terror group infiltrated Israel.
The hostage situation is “extremely sensitive and complex’’, said Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, from the Israel Defence Forces.
He told CNN: Reason dictates that they are underground...reason dictates that they planned in advance locations to hide these hostages and keep them safe from Israeli intelligence, and efforts to get them out.
- Daily Telegraph UK
The alliance to 'crush Hamas'
Vera Alves
Israel’s emergency government establishes a degree of unity after years of bitterly divisive politics.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, will strategise with Benny Gantz, the centrist National Unity Party leader and a retired military general who served as defence minister from 202 to 2022.
The temporary wartime cabinet would also include Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Yair Lapid, the country’s main opposition leader, has been invited to join the alliance but did not immediately commit.
“During the war period, no bills or government decisions will be promoted that do not concern the conduct of the war,” read a statement from the government.
“All senior appointments will be automatically extended during the war period.”
- Daily Telegraph UK
Zelenskyy joins a meeting of global defence leaders to make a direct plea for military aid
Vera Alves
For the first time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joined a meeting of more than 50 defence leaders from around the world, making a personal pitch for military aid in the face of lagging political support in the United States and new pressure on allies to send weapons to bolster Israel’s war with Hamas.
His presence underscored growing concerns about cracks in what has been staunch international backing for Kyiv in its war against Russia’s invasion and worries that Ukrainian forces haven’t made measurable progress in the counteroffensive as winter closes in.
Asked about concerns that Ukraine could get less military support because of the Mideast conflict, Zelenskyy said there is a “very understandable volume” that the US and Europe can provide. Zelenskyy said he has asked that question himself, adding he thinks nobody really knows but he is still assuming US and European support.
- AP
Palestinians say civilians are paying the price in strikes on Gaza
Vera Alves
Hallways filled with screaming voices. A terrible stench in the air. Wounded people streaming through the doors. Lifeless bodies and bags of body parts arrive in bedsheets.
The scene at Shifa Hospital was a grisly reflection of the chaos around it. Even as workers mopped up blood and relatives rushed children with shrapnel wounds into surgery, explosions thundered in central Gaza City.
Over the last five days, Israeli warplanes have pummeled the blockaded strip with an intensity that its war-weary residents had never experienced. The airstrikes have killed over 1,100 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
- AP
Israeli soldiers find a scene of destruction, slain children
Vera Alves
Trudging down a cul-de-sac turned to rubble, an Israeli army commander stopped in front of one scorched home, its front wall blown wide open. Look at what Hamas militants have done, he said, to this close-knit community that only days ago brimmed with life.
“Children in the same room and someone came and killed them all. Fifteen girls and teenagers, they put (them) in the same room, threw in a hand grenade and it’s over,” Major General Itai Veruv said.
"This is a massacre. It’s a pogrom,” he said, recalling the brutal attacks on Jews in Eastern Europe in the 19th and early 20th century.
- AP
US State Department warns citizens to reconsider travel to Israel, West Bank
Vera Alves
The State Department upgraded its travel warning for Israel and the West Bank to Level 3, “reconsider travel.”
It kept its travel advisory for Gaza at the department’s highest warning level, Level 4, meaning “do not travel.”
The State Department cited extremists continuing to plot attacks, the possibility of violence erupting without warning, and increased demonstrations.
- AP
Latest numbers from Mfat of New Zealanders in Israel and Palestine
Vera Alves
There are 245 New Zealanders registered on Safe Travel as being in Israel and 13 New Zealanders registered as being in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Luxon: Evacuation flights for New Zealanders should be considered
Vera Alves
Evacuation flights for New Zealanders in Israel should be considered, said Christopher Luxon while speaking to the media at the BestStart Te Atatu childcare centre on Thursday.
“We stand by Israel and its right to defend itself. Those were attacks which were completely unprovoked and should be condemned," said Luxon.
Families in Israel and abroad wait in agony for word of their loved ones
Vera Alves
One of those taken hostage is a grandmother who learned Arabic in hopes of building bridges with her neighbours. Others include 10 members of an extended family, one an elderly man in a wheelchair who requires hospital care. Another is a nurse who delivered thousands of babies over the years to parents both Israeli and Palestinian.
All are among roughly 150 people abducted by Hamas militants early Saturday during sweeping raids on Israeli towns and villages near the heavily fortified border with the Gaza Strip. They include citizens of Brazil, Britain, Italy, the Philippines and the United States, as well as many Israelis.
- AP
David Seymour addresses Israel Hamas violence
Vera Alves
Act Party leader David Seymour addressed the escalation in the violence in Israel and Palestine.
Seymour had been quick to condemn the horrific acts committed by Hamas slaughtering civilians and called for the organisation to be defined as a terrorist entity by New Zealand (currently only its military wing is).
Asked if he was concerned by Israel’s response, including a full blockade of Gaza stopping food, water and electricity from getting to the general population and bombing civilian areas, Seymour said Hamas had put its citizens in that situation.
Asked if he supported Israel potentially committing war crimes, Seymour said again it was up to Hamas.
“I think [Israel] has been literally backed into a corner here, the result of a terrorist organisation called Hamas, and they are the ones that need to be stopped not just for the Israelis or Jewish victims on one side of the border, but for their own people who are suffering on the Palestinian side of the border.”
Weekend attack marks Hamas' deadliest gambit yet
Vera Alves
In the three and a half decades since it began as an underground militant group, Hamas has pursued a consistently violent strategy aimed at rolling back Israeli rule — and it has made steady progress despite bringing enormous suffering to both sides of the conflict.
Read more here:
Top British lawyers complain to Ofcom over BBC’s Hamas stance
Vera Alves
Four of Britain’s most senior lawyers have accused the BBC of abandoning impartiality by refusing to describe Hamas as “terrorists”.
In a letter to Ofcom, Lord Wolfson KC, Lord Pannick KC, Lord Grabiner KC and Jeremy Brier KC urged the regulator to investigate the corporation.
They said that the BBC had taken sides and described Hamas in “more sympathetic terms”.
The four co-signed the letter alongside Lord Polak, honorary president of the Conservative Friends of Israel.
- Daily Telegraph UK
Olaf Scholz calls on Germans to support Jews
Vera Alves
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called on his compatriots to show solidarity with the country’s Jewish population and guarantee their safety, condemning pro-Palestinian rallies.
“I ask for the support of all citizens so that together we can guarantee the safety of our Jewish fellow citizens, and to do this we must show solidarity with them,” Scholz said on ARD television.
- Daily Telegraph UK
Far-right protesters riot outside hospital in Tel Aviv
Vera Alves
More than a hundred far-right protesters rioted outside one of the main hospitals in Tel Aviv after hearing reports that doctors there were treating a militant from Hamas, according to Hagai Levine, Chairman of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians.
- AP
Palestinians in Gaza discover nowhere is safe
Vera Alves
Over 180,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are packed into UN shelters as Israeli warplanes pound the tiny territory of 2.3 million people after Hamas launched their attack on Israel.
- AP
Biden confirms children beheaded in Hamas attack
Vera Alves
Joe Biden has appeared to confirm reports that Hamas terrorists beheaded children during their attack on Israel on Saturday.
- Daily Telegraph UK
Biden calls Hamas attack deadliest day for Jews since Holocaust
Vera Alves
US President Joe Biden called the Hamas attack on Israel “the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust,” and a campaign of “pure cruelty.”
Biden was addressing a roundtable with Jewish community leaders convened at the White House on Wednesday.
“This attack was a campaign of pure cruelty, not just hate, but pure cruelty, against the Jewish people,” Biden said. He added: “I never really thought that I would see and have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children.”
Biden thanked the leaders for their efforts in combating anti-Semitism in the nation and reiterated continued US support for Israel.
- AP
How Israel’s feared security services failed
Vera Alves
Israel’s military and espionage services are considered among the world’s best, but on Saturday, operational and intelligence failures led to the worst breach of Israeli defences in half a century.
Read more here:
Bernie Sanders on the continuing violence in Israel and Gaza
Vera Alves
Prince William and Princess Kate 'profoundly distressed’ by attacks
Vera Alves
The Prince and Princess of Wales have spoken out against the Hamas terror attack that has claimed the lives of 1200 Israeli civilians so far after militants stormed a music festival and raided border villages.
Read more here:
Hamas terrorists were sent millions in crypto in months before Israel terror attack
Vera Alves
Hamas and its allies were sent hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies in the months before the terrorist group’s attacks on Israel.
More than US$134m ($220m) was transferred to cryptocurrency accounts controlled by Hamas and the allied Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) group during the first half of 2023, according to analysts.
Hamas launched a large-scale terrorist attack on Israel on Saturday, which has left more than a thousand people dead. Questions have been raised about how the group was able to organise and fund the complex attack.
Analysis of blockchain records shows around $93m ($154m) of cryptocurrency was transferred to the PIJ alone between August 2021 and June this year, according to cryptocurrency analysis company Elliptic.
Hamas raised about $41m ($68m) in crypto tokens over the past 18 months, according to figures from Tel Aviv-based crypto tracing company BitOK that were first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Cryptocurrency has been used by Hamas and other terrorist organisations to evade global financial sanctions.
- Daily Telegraph UK
Kiwi expat in Israel tells of terrifying missile attacks across city
Sophie Ryan
An expat Kiwi living in Israel says the Hamas missile attacks over the past four days have left her and her family emotionally distressed from constantly fleeing into bomb shelters.
"A loud siren goes off and you have 90 seconds to make it to a safe place before the missile is expected to land,"
Read more here:
Sophie Ryan
Every member of Hamas is ‘a dead man’ – Netanyahu
Sophie Ryan
Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to keep fighting Hamas, saying that every member of the Palestinian militant group was “a dead man”.
In a televised statement on Wednesday night, Israel’s prime minister appeared alongside his war cabinet and told his nation: “Hamas is Daesh (Islamic State) and we will crush them and destroy them as the world has destroyed Daesh.”
- Daily Telegraph UK
Netanyahu says soldiers beheaded, women raped in Hamas attack
Sophie Ryan
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Hamas militants beheaded soldiers and raped women in their attack on Israel.
Netanyahu, in a late night televised address, detailed some of the atrocities that took place during the attack. He said boys and girls were shot in the head and that people had been burned alive.
At least 1,200 Israelis were killed in the attack, which set off fierce Israeli response in the Gaza Strip.
- AP
Gaza's richest neighbourhood is in ruins
Sophie Ryan
Before the war, it was the most upscale neighbourhood in Gaza City, with vibrant shops, cafés, ice cream parlours and a view on to the Mediterranean.
Today it stands largely in ruins after ferocious Israeli bombardment, in a clear sign that no part of Gaza will be safe in the coming weeks and months of conflict.
Read more here:
Hamas seeds violent videos on sites with little moderation
Sophie Ryan
Since Hamas launched a deadly cross-border attack into Israel over the weekend, violent videos and graphic images have flooded social media
Photographs of dead Israeli civilians, strewn across the side of a road in an Israeli kibbutz near the Gaza Strip, have been shared more than 20,000 times on X.
"Twitter, or X as they are now called, has become a war zone with no ethics."
Read more here:
Eleven UN staff killed in Gaza since Hamas attacks
Sophie Ryan
Eleven UN staff have been killed in the Gaza strip, according to an update.
Jenifer Austin, deputy director of UNRWA affairs in Gaza, said: “I am very saddened to confirm that 11 colleagues have been killed since October 7 in the Gaza Strip.
“They included five teachers at UNRWA schools, one gynecologist, one engineer, one psychological counselor and three support staff.
“Some were killed in their homes with their families.
“UNRWA mourns this loss and is grieving with our colleagues and the families.”
- Daily Telegraph UK
Egypt’s president holds talks with UN chief over conflict
Sophie Ryan
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi held discussions on Wednesday with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres over the conflict, his office said in a statement.
The pair discussed developments in the Gaza Strip and stressed the importance of avoiding expanding the circle of conflict and allowing room for diplomatic efforts, the statement added.
- Daily Telegraph UK
Egypt ‘warned Israel of attack three days before’
Sophie Ryan
Egypt warned Israel three days before Hamas massacred hundreds of Israelis that the terrorist organisation was plotting an attack.
Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said there had been a “failure of intelligence” ahead of the attack, which he said had been planned for up to a year.
“We’re not quite sure how we missed it, I’m not quite sure how Israel missed it”, he told reporters following a closed-door intelligence briefing.
“We know that Egypt had warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen. We know that this has been planned, perhaps as long as a year ago.”
The exact details disclosed to the Israeli government are not clear, but Mr McCaul said a “warning was given”.
- Daily Telegraph UK
Palestinian workers arriving in West Bank from Gaza
Vera Alves
Palestinians who have been expelled from their workplaces in Israel have begun showing up in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where a temporary shelter was set up to house them.
The sudden influx of about 600 workers created an “overwhelming situation” that is bound to get worse as more arrive, Ramallah Governor Laila Ghannam said Wednesday.
At the shelter where men sat on mattresses, some workers said they had been abused by Israeli soldiers.
“We were working and everything was fine, and suddenly they came to us and detained us,” said Raed Al-Moghribi. “When we told them that we are from Gaza, they started beating us.”
The workers began arriving in Ramallah on Wednesday after Israeli security forces brought them to checkpoints in the West Bank.
Khader Achour, another Gaza resident who had worked in Israel, said he wanted to return home but it had been demolished and his nephew, cousin and neighbour had all been killed.
“I wish to return to my family in Gaza to die among them,” Achour said.
White House says the US is working to allow safe passage out of Gaza for civilians
Vera Alves
The US is in active conversations to allow for safe passage out of Gaza for civilians, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday.
Kirby noted that Israel and Egypt are the two most significant players in the efforts.
“We are having active conversations about trying to allow for that safe passage,” Kirby said. “It’s the civilians who did nothing wrong so we want to make sure they have a way out.”
Israel tells residents in north to shelter after “hostile aircraft” enter from Lebanon
Vera Alves
The Israeli military said Wednesday night that hostile aircraft had entered the country from Lebanon, setting sirens blaring across northern Israel as it urged citizens there to shelter.
The military did not specify the kind of aircraft. But Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Palestinian militants are known to have drones and gliders.
Prominent mosque calls for investigation into war crimes by Israel
Vera Alves
Al-Azhar al-Sharif, the Sunni world’s foremost seat of religious learning, on Wednesday called for an international investigation into allegations of war crimes by Israel against civilian Palestinians in Gaza.
In a strong worded statement, the Cairo-based religious institution called for Arab and Islamic countries to take “a serious and unified position against the West’s inhuman rally” behind Israel’s attacks against “innocent Palestinian civilians.”
It said Israel’s “inhuman siege,” which included cutting off electricity and water, and preventing the delivery of food and humanitarian aid to the strip, is a “genocide and war crimes.”
The statement urged Arab and Islamic countries to quickly provide humanitarian aid and “ensure its crossing” to the Palestinians in Gaza.
Sepuloni: NZ is looking to work closely alongside Australia
Ebba Strand
New Zealand is looking to work closely alongside Australia to provide aid to Gaza, said Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni to RNZ this morning.
“We have requested advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and I want to make sure our response is aligned with our mates and is done in a coordinated way,” she said.
Gaza’s sole power plant runs out of fuel
Vera Alves
Gaza’s only power plant ran out of fuel Wednesday afternoon, forcing it to shut down after Israel cut off supplies, the Energy Ministry said. That leaves only generators to power the territory — but they also run on fuel that is in short supply.
STORY CONTINUES
Netanyahu and a leading opposition figure have created a war-time Cabinet overseeing the fight to avenge a stunning weekend attack by Hamas militants. In the sealed-off Gaza Strip ruled by Hamas, Palestinian suffering mounted as Israeli bombardment demolished neighbourhoods and the territory’s only power plant ran out of fuel.
The new war-time Cabinet establishes a degree of unity after years of bitterly divisive politics, and as the Israeli military appears increasingly likely to launch a ground offensive into Gaza.
The Cabinet, which will focus only on issues of war, will consist of Netanyahu, Benny Gantz — a senior opposition figure and former defence minister — and current Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, a statement released by Gantz said.
The government is under intense public pressure to topple Hamas after its militants stormed through a border fence on Saturday and massacred hundreds of Israelis in their homes, on the streets and at an outdoor music festival. Militants in Gaza are holding an estimated 150 people taken hostage from Israel — soldiers, men, women, children and older adults.
Still, Israel’s political divisions remain. The country’s chief opposition leader, Yair Lapid, was invited to join the new Cabinet but did not immediately respond to the offer. It appeared that the rest of Netanyahu’s existing government partners, a collection of far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties, would remain in place to handle non-war issues.
A ground offensive in the tiny, coastal Gaza Strip, densely populated with 2.3 million people, is likely to dramatically hike casualties in a war that has already claimed at least 2200 lives on both sides.
So far, Israel has unleashed an increasingly destructive bombardment in Gaza that has flattened entire city blocks and left unknown numbers of bodies beneath mounds of debris. Militants in Gaza have continued to fire rockets at Israel, including a heavy barrage at the southern town of Ashkelon.
Some 250,000 people have fled their homes in Gaza — more than a tenth of the population — most crowding into UN schools. Others crowded into a shrinking number of safe neighbourhoods in the strip of land only 40 km long, wedged among Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.
After the attack by Hamas, Israel halted the entry of food, water, fuel and medicine into the territory. The sole remaining access from Egypt was shut down earlier this week after airstrikes hit near the border crossing.
Gaza’s only power plant has shut down after running out of fuel, the Energy Ministry said. That leaves only private generators to power homes, hospitals and other facilities. With no fuel able to enter, those were on a ticking clock until individual stocks of diesel run out.
The Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital, Al-Shifa, only has enough fuel to keep power on for three days, said Matthias Kannes, a Gaza-based official for Doctors Without Borders. The group said the two hospitals it runs in Gaza were running out of surgical equipment, antibiotics, fuel and other supplies.
“We consumed three weeks worth of emergency stock in three days,” Kannes said.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said other hospitals’ generators will run out in five days. Residential buildings, unable to store as much diesel, likely will go dark sooner.
Egypt and international groups have been calling for humanitarian corridors to get aid into Gaza. Convoys stood loaded with fuel and food Wednesday on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, but were unable to enter Gaza, an Egyptian security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.
The risk of the war spreading was evident on Wednesday, US time, after the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah fired anti-tank missiles at an Israeli military position and claimed to have killed and wounded troops.
The Israeli military confirmed the attack but did not comment on possible casualties. The Israeli army shelled the area in southern Lebanon where the attack was launched.
After nightfall, Israel urged residents in the north to shelter after “hostile aircraft” entered from Lebanon. It did not specify the kind of aircraft. But Hezbollah and Palestinian militants are known to have drones and gliders.
US President Joe Biden earlier this week warned other countries and armed groups against entering the war. The US is already rushing munitions and military equipment to Israel and has deployed a carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean as deterrence.
In the West Bank, Israeli settlers attacked a village south of Nablus, opening fire on Palestinians and killing three, the West Bank-based Palestinian Health Ministry said.
It has mobilised 360,000 reservists, massed additional forces near the territory and evacuated tens of thousands of Israeli residents from communities nearby.
Toppling Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, would likely require prolonged ground fighting and reoccupying Gaza, at least temporarily. Even then, Hamas has a long history of operating as an underground insurgency in areas controlled by Israel.
Hamas said it launched its attack because Palestinians’ suffering has become intolerable under unending Israeli military occupation and increasing settlements in the West Bank and a 16-year-long blockade in Gaza.
But the shock, grief and demands for vengeance against Hamas among Israelis have brought a new ferocity after past conflicts with Hamas that saw heavy bombardments of Gaza but ended with the group still in power.
In a new tactic, Israel is warning civilians to evacuate whole Gaza neighbourhoods, rather than just individual buildings, then levelling large swaths in waves of airstrikes.
Israel’s tone has changed as well. In past conflicts, military spokesmen repeatedly insisted on the precision of strikes in Gaza, trying to ward off criticism over civilian deaths. This time, military briefings emphasise the destruction being wreaked. They say targeted neighbourhoods broadly are being used by Hamas, but rarely give specifics to justify strikes as they did in earlier wars.
“We will not allow a reality in which Israeli children are murdered,” Defense Minister Gallant said in a meeting with soldiers near the southern border on Tuesday.
“I have removed every restriction — we will eliminate anyone who fights us, and use every measure at our disposal.”
The military tells residents to evacuate neighbourhoods about to be struck, and tens of thousands flee. But Palestinians say some are unable to escape or have nowhere to go, and that entire families have been crushed under rubble.
Other times, strikes come with no warning at all, survivors say.
“They directly targeted our house, and there was no warning or anything,” said Hashem Abu Manea, 58, who lost his 15-year-old daughter, Joanna, when a strike late Tuesday leveled his home in Gaza City.
“We were sitting there as civilians, dressed like anyone else.”
The Hamas-run Interior Ministry said Israeli airstrikes destroyed the entire al-Karama neighbourhood in Gaza City, with a “large number” of people killed or wounded. It said medical teams were unable to reach the area because all roads to it were destroyed.
Rescue officials say they have struggled to enter other areas as well. At least four Red Crescent paramedics have been killed in strikes, the organization said.
Israeli airstrikes earlier this week struck the family house of Mohammed Deif, the shadowy leader of Hamas’ military wing, killing his father, brother and at least two other relatives in the southern town of Khan Younis, senior Hamas official Bassem Naim told the Associated Press. Deif has never been seen in public and his whereabouts are unknown.
On Wednesday, US time, waves of rockets rained down on the Israeli city of Ashkelon, with shrapnel slamming into the street. Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system intercepted at least one overhead. Tuesday night, US time, Israeli troops stopped an incursion by militants into Ashkelon, killing three, the military said.
The Israeli military said more than 1200 people, including 155 soldiers, have been killed in Israel, a staggering toll unseen since the 1973 war with Egypt and Syria that lasted weeks. In Gaza, 1055 people have been killed, according to authorities there. In the West Bank and east Jerusalem, at least 17 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli police during clashes with stonethrowers. Thousands have been wounded on both sides.
Israel says roughly 1500 Hamas militants were killed inside Israeli territory and contends that hundreds of the dead inside Gaza are Hamas members.