Israel-Hamas war: Israel pounds Gaza neighbourhoods, as people scramble for safety in sealed-off territory
Israeli warplanes hammered the Gaza Strip neighbourhood by neighbourhood on Tuesday, reducing buildings to rubble and sending people scrambling to find safety in the tiny, sealed-off territory as Israel vowed a retaliation for Hamas’ surprise weekend attack that would “reverberate ... for generations”.
Aid organisations pleaded for the creation of humanitarian corridors to get aid into Gaza, warning that hospitals overwhelmed with wounded were running out of supplies. Israel has stopped entry of food, fuel and medicines into Gaza, and the sole remaining access from Egypt shut down on Tuesday after airstrikes hit near the border crossing.
The war began after Hamas militants stormed into Israel on Saturday, bringing gunbattles to its streets for the first time in decades. More than 1800 lives have already been claimed on both sides, and perhaps hundreds more. Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza hold more than 150 soldiers and civilians hostage, according to Israel.
In Kfar Azza, a lush Israeli village just across some fields from the border with Gaza, at least a dozen corpses were strewn along the pathways and on lawns gathering flies. The smell of death was in the air.
“It’s not a war or a battlefield; it’s a massacre,” Maj. Gen. Itai Veruv, an Israeli commander on the scene, told the New York Times.
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Canada planning to airlift Canadians from Israel
Sophie Ryan
Canadian citizens will be flown out of the country from the Tel Aviv, Israel, airport in coming days in the wake of Hamas’ attack on Israel, Canada’s foreign minister said.
The government plans to conduct the evacuation using aircraft from the Canadian Armed Forces, and is working on other options for people who are unable to reach the airport in Tel Aviv, Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Canada is still trying to determine how many of its citizens are among the dead or missing.
Friends and family have confirmed that 22-year-old Ben Mizrachi from Vancouver and former Montreal resident Alexandre Look, who recently celebrated his 33rd birthday, were two of the hundreds killed while attending a music festival in southern Israel.
- AP
The Israel-Palestine conflict: a brief, simple history
Sophie Ryan
Son of missing Italian-Israeli citizens thinks they were kidnapped
Sophie Ryan
A son of two Italian-Israeli citizens unaccounted for after Hamas’ incursion into Israel believes they were kidnapped by Hamas militants.
Eviatar Moshe Kipnis, 65, who has an autoimmune disease and uses a wheelchair, and his wife, Lilach Lea Havron, 60, were holed up in their safe room on Saturday morning at their home in the Kibbutz Be’eri, Nadav Kipnis told The Associated Press on Tuesday. He said that was the last time he and his brother Yotam heard from them.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani briefed parliament about the incursion on Tuesday, identifying the two Italians by name and saying they were “probably taken hostage.”
The family also has lost contact with Havron’s sister and her extended family who lived nearby. All together, 11 people from two family households at the kibbutz are unaccounted for, including children ages 3, 8 and 12, Nadav Kipnis said.
The family has been working ever since to try to draw attention to their plight, hoping in particular that the Kipnises’ Italian citizenship will bring diplomatic pressure to bear.
Tongan Government steps up to help Kiwi church group in Israel
Sophie Ryan
Tongan officials have stepped up to help members of a New Zealand-based church group who found themselves stuck in Israel after the deadly surprise attack that killed hundreds and wounded thousands of people.
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EU calls on Musk to tackle disinformation on X
Sophie Ryan
EU industry chief Thierry Breton has told Elon Musk to tackle the spread of disinformation on his X messaging platform since Palestinian Islamist group Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel.
Breton said on Tuesday he had indications that X, formerly known as Twitter, was being used to disseminate illegal content and disinformation in the European Union.
“I therefore invite you to urgently ensure that your systems are effective and report on the crisis measures taken to my team,” Breton said in a letter to Mr Musk.
Breton did not give details on the disinformation he was referring to.
Responding to Breton’s X posting, Mr Musk said his company’s policy was that everything is open source and transparent.
“Please list the violations you allude to on X, so that the public can see them,” he said.
Drone footage captures extent of destruction caused by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City
Sophie Ryan
US says Israel will not 'pursue siege' of Gaza
Sophie Ryan
The European Union has made clear it opposes a total siege of Gaza, with the bloc’s foreign ministers urging Israel not to cut “water, food, or electricity” to the territory on Tuesday.
Asked what’s the US position was on that, Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said: “My understanding is that the concept of siege is not something that in fact is going to be pursued by the Israeli government”.
Mr Sullivan added: “But we are consulting with the Israeli Government about their actions in this regard.
“President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu had the opportunity to talk through the difference between going full bore against Hamas terrorists, and how we distinguish between terrorists and innocent civilians.”
Portuguese citizen and student in Tel Aviv found dead
Sophie Ryan
Rotem Neumann, who was identified as missing in an Associated Press story yesterday, has been found dead.
Rotem, a 25-year-old Portuguese citizen and a student in Tel Aviv, had been missing for at least three days by the time her body was found.
Neumann was at the Teva festival, one of several music festivals near the Gaza border that was invaded by militants in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Rotem first called her parents from the festival when she heard rocket fire. That was the last time the family heard from her. Rotem then got into a car with friends and drove north, seeking shelter. The car soon encountered trucks filled with militants, shooting at them with machine guns.
Militants soon peppered the shelter with bullets. Bodies have been found in the area around the shelter, Tomer said, though it was not immediately clear if Neumann’s body had been discovered at the site.
- AP
EU will continue to support Palestine
Sophie Ryan
The EU will continue to support the Palestinian Authority, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters on Tuesday, he added that it would be a mistake to stop.
“The overwhelming majority of the member states considered that we have to continue our support to the Palestinian Authority and the payments due should not be delayed”, Borrell said after a meeting of EU Foreign Affairs ministers.
- Daily Telegraph UK
What is the US sending to Israel?
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The White House has already begun delivering critically needed munitions and military equipment to Israel, and the Pentagon is reviewing its inventories to see what else can be sent quickly to boost its ally in the war against Hamas.
The Ford carrier strike group has arrived in the far Eastern Mediterranean, within range to provide a host of air support or long-range strike options for Israel if requested, but also to surge US military presence there to prevent the war from spilling over into a more dangerous regional conflict, officials said.
The Pentagon has said that the US warplanes, destroyers and cruisers that sailed with the Ford will conduct maritime and air operations which could include intelligence collection, interdictions and long-range strikes.
Along with the Ford, the US is sending the cruiser USS Normandy and destroyers USS Thomas Hudner, USS Ramage, USS Carney, and USS Roosevelt, and the US is augmenting Air Force F-35, F-15, F-16, and A-10 fighter aircraft squadrons in the region.
- Daily Telegraph UK
US talking to Israel about safe passage for Gaza civilians, White House says
Sophie Ryan
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday the United States was talking to Israeli officials and others about the idea of a safe passage for Gaza civilians after Israel’s air strikes following a Hamas attack that left hundreds dead.
“We are focused on this question, there are consultations going on,” Mr Sullivan told reporters in a White House press briefing.
- Daily Telegraph
What is Israel's Iron Dome?
Sophie Ryan
Joe Biden has said the US will provide military assistance including helping to restore Israel’s “Iron Dome”.
The air defence system intercepts enemy rocket fire. Hamas has fired thousands of rockets at Israel since Saturday, and Israel has struck more than a thousand targets in Gaza in retaliation, putting a strain on its defences.
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Zelenskyy: Kyiv 'certain' Russia supporting Hamas operations
Sophie Ryan
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has accused Russia of supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas in its conflict against Israel.
“We are certain that Russia is supporting, in one way or another, Hamas operations,” Zelenskyy told the France 2 television channel.
“The current crisis... bears witness to the fact that Russia really is seeking to carry out destabilising actions all over the world,” he added.
The Ukrainian leader also expressed his concern that the international community was turning away from the war in Ukraine in the face of the “tragedy” that has befallen Israel following the Hamas attacks.
“I don’t wish to make any comparisons. There is a terrible war going on in our country. In Israel, many people have lost their loved ones. These tragedies are different, but both are immense,” he said.
He warned, however, that “international attention risks turning away from from Ukraine, and that will have consequences”.
“Ukraine’s destiny depends on the unity of the rest of the world. World unity depends very much on the unity of the United States,” said the Ukrainian leader.
- Daily Telegraph UK
Sophie Ryan
British woman’s son and his fiancée confirmed dead after Hamas attack on music festival
Sophie Ryan
The son of a British woman and his fiancée were killed when Hamas gunmen stormed a music festival.
Dor Shafir, 30, and Savion Kiper, 31, his fiancée, had attended the Supernova festival near Re’im, a kibbutz in the south of Israel close to the Gaza border.
The couple had been planning to get married next year.
Yesterday friends paid tribute to the couple on social media.
“Today, unfortunately, we learned that both of them were murdered by the cursed Hamas terrorists,” she added.
“And they only wanted to dance and rejoice in the festival of peace and love.”
- Daily Telegraph UK
Israeli airstrikes intensify in Gaza as war enters 4th day
Sophie Ryan
The latest Israel-Palestinian war reverberated around the world as foreign governments tried to determine how many of their citizens were dead, missing or in need of medical help or flights home.
Numerous countries also offered to play a role in mediating an end to the fighting, which already has killed at least 1,600 people. The death toll was expected to grow as Israel pummeled the Gaza Strip with airstrikes and sent Palestinians fleeing into UN shelters.
‘We’re in a war zone’, New Zealanders in Israel fear for their lives
Sophie Ryan
A New Zealand man who has been living in central Israel for 30 years is expecting a long and unpleasant war.
“Many people are going to die and be injured, unfortunately, that includes not just Israelis but the people of Gaza who have been living under a repressive regime.”
- RNZ
Sophie Ryan
Israel Hamas war: Kiwi church group, Connection City, stranded in Jerusalem amid conflict
Sophie Ryan
A New Zealand-based Christian church group are desperately attempting to flee Israel as they feel the vibrations of daily rocket attacks from their hotel.
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Israel Hamas war: ‘It’s not a war or a battlefield. It’s a massacre’
Sophie Ryan
“Welcome,” said the sign at the entrance to Kfar Azza, a lush Israeli village just across some fields from the border with Gaza. On the pathway, another sign pointed the way to the gym and the swimming pool.
Then I saw the legs of a bloated corpse dressed in fatigues poking out from under a bush.
- New York Times
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'Get out now': Kiwis in Israel urged to leave immediately
Sophie Ryan
Seasoned tour guide Stephen Greenfield said any New Zealanders in Israel should get out now.
Greenfield, who has escorted 17 tour groups to the country in the past, said the current conflict may get worse.
“The rest of the world is not going to allow Israel to pulverize Gaza altogether, and there are forces behind the scenes.”
My Israeli guide and driver said Hezbollah are amassing near the northern border, and an educated guess says they may get involved.”Greenfield said, if he was there, he would have left by Sunday.“
Currently Israel’s national airline El Al is the only one flying out of Tel Aviv, so I would have had my group up to one of Israel’s border crossings and onto Amman Airport to fly out from there.”
Hamas accused of murdering children and babies in Israeli village
Sophie Ryan
Hamas killed children and babies in a massacre in one of the last Israeli villages to be recaptured from the terrorists.Dozens of dead civilians were found in the Kibbutz of Kfar Azzaz when reporters entered it on Tuesday.
A senior Israeli Defence Force commander told reporters that some of the victims were beheaded.
A child’s bed covered in blood was seen in photographs from a separate kibbutz next to a box of toys.“We can not confirm any numbers.
What happened in Kibbutz “Kfar Azza” is a massacre in which women, children, toddlers and elderly were brutally butchered in an ISIS way of action,” an IDF spokesman said. “It is not a war. It is not a battlefield,”
IDF Major General Itai Veruv told journalists who were let into the kibbutz for the first time.“You see the babies, the mothers, the fathers, in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms and how the terrorist kills them ... It’s a massacre,” he said. “It’s something we used to imagine from our grandfathers, grandmothers in the pogrom in Europe and other places.”
- Daily Telegraph
Key Points
Sophie Ryan
- Unprecedented Israeli bombardment lays waste to upscale suburb Rimal, in Gaza City.
- The mother of the German woman whose unmoving, semi-naked body was seen paraded through the street Hamas has been told her daughter is alive - but is fighting for her life in hospital.
- Fifty-four members of a New Zealand-based Christian church group are among the Kiwis desperately attempting to flee Israel.
- What is Hamas? The group that rules the Gaza Strip has fought several rounds of war with Israel.
Israel shells Syria after rockets hit open land in Golan Heights
Sophie Ryan
The Israeli military said it shelled Syria on Tuesday after rockets hit open land in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
The military did not accuse any group of the rocket attack.
The Syrian government did not comment. However, Britain-based opposition war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says a Palestinian faction conducted the rocket attack from Syrian territory.
- AP
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Israel - Hamas war: Shani Louk claimed to be alive, critically ill in Gaza hospital
Sophie Ryan
The mother of the German woman whose unmoving, semi-naked body was seen paraded through the streets of Gaza by Hamashas been told her daughter is alive - but is fighting for her life in hospital.
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At least 20 US citizens unaccounted for after Hamas attacks, national security adviser says
Sophie Ryan
Twenty or more US citizens are unaccounted for as US President Joe Biden’s administration continues to determine how many were killed in the Hamas attacks or are being held hostage, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday.
Sullivan said the US does not know precisely how many citizens are being held hostage, or their conditions.
Biden confirmed earlier Tuesday that 14 Americans have been killed in the bloody Hamas incursion.
- AP
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Biden condemns Hamas for 'sheer evil' in attack on Israel
Sophie Ryan
President Joe Biden is condemning the militant group Hamas for “sheer evil” for its shocking multipronged attack on Israel launched from the Gaza Strip that has killed hundreds of civilians, including at least 14 American citizens.
Biden spoke out of the actions he and other allies have taken to support Israel in the aftermath of the attack and expressed his horror about “sickening” reports of torture inflicted by militants on innocent civilians. Biden said “Our hearts may be broken but our resolve is clear."
- AP
Israeli airstrikes intensify in Gaza as war enters 4th day
Sophie Ryan
The latest Israel-Palestinian war reverberated around the world as foreign governments tried to determine how many of their citizens were dead, missing or in need of medical help or flights home.
Numerous countries also offered to play a role in mediating an end to the fighting, which already has killed at least 1,600 people. The death toll was expected to grow as Israel pummeled the Gaza Strip with airstrikes and sent Palestinians fleeing into UN shelters.
STORY CONTINUES
The conflict is only expected to escalate. Israel expanded the mobilisation of reservists to 360,000 on Tuesday, according to the country’s media. After days of fighting, Israel’s military said on Tuesday morning that it had regained effective control over areas Hamas attacked in its south, and of the Gaza border.
A looming question is whether Israel will launch a ground offensive into Gaza — a 40km-long strip of land wedged among Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea that is home to 2.3 million people and has been governed by Hamas since 2007.
On Tuesday, a large part of Gaza City’s Rimal neighbourhood was reduced to rubble after warplanes bombarded it for hours the night before. Residents found buildings torn in half or demolished to mounds of concrete and rebar. Cars were flattened and trees burned out on residential streets transformed into moonscapes.
Palestinian Civil Defense forces pulled Abdullah Musleh out of his basement together with 30 others after their apartment building was flattened.
“I sell toys, not missiles,’’ the 46-year-old said, weeping. “I want to leave Gaza. Why do I have to stay here? I lost my home and my job.”
The Israeli military said it struck hundreds of targets in Rimal, an upscale district home to ministries of the Hamas-run government, universities, media organisations and the aid agency offices.
The devastation signalled what appeared to be a new Israeli tactic: warning civilians to leave certain areas and then hitting those areas with unprecedented intensity. On Tuesday afternoon, the military told residents of another nearby neighbourhood to evacuate and move into the centre of Gaza City.
“There is no safe place in Gaza right now, you see decent people being killed every day,” Hasan Jabar, a Gaza journalist, said after three other Palestinian journalists were killed in the Rimal bombardment. “I am genuinely afraid for my life.”
On Tuesday afternoon, Hamas fired barrages of rockets toward the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon and Tel Aviv. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The bombardments and Israel’s threats to topple Hamas sharpened questions about the group’s strategy and objectives. But it is unclear what options it has in the face of the ferocity of Israel’s retaliation and the potential of losing much of its government infrastructure.
Hours after Saturday’s incursion began, a senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri said the group had planned for all possibilities, including “all-out war,” and was ready to suffer “severe blows.”
Desperation has grown among Palestinians, many of whom see nothing to lose under unending Israeli control and increasing settlements in the West Bank, the blockade in Gaza and what they see as the world’s apathy.
Al-Arouri’s comments suggested Hamas expected the fight to spread to the West Bank and possibly for Lebanon’s Hezbollah to open a front in the north. But despite some eruptions of violence, neither has happened on a significant scale, especially amid a heavy Israeli lockdown on West Bank Palestinians.
In hopes of blunting the bombardment, Hamas has threatened to kill one Israeli civilian captive any time Israel targets civilians in their homes in Gaza “without prior warning”. Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, warned in response that “this war crime” would not be forgiven.
Israel, in turn, appears determined to crush Hamas no matter the cost.
The militants’ attack stunned Israel with a death toll unseen since the 1973 war with Egypt and Syria — and those deaths happened over a longer period of time. It brought horrific scenes of Hamas militants gunning down civilians in their cars on the road, in streets of towns, and at a music festival attended by thousands in the desert near Gaza, while dragging men, women and children into captivity.
US President Joe Biden is scheduled to speak on Tuesday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about coordination with allies to “defend Israel and innocent people against terrorism”, the White House said.
The Israeli military said on Tuesday that more than 1000 people have been killed in Israel. In Gaza and the West Bank, 830 people have been killed, according to authorities there; Israel says hundreds of Hamas fighters are among them. Thousands have been wounded on both sides.
The bodies of roughly 1500 Hamas militants were found on Israeli territory, the military said. It wasn’t immediately clear whether those numbers overlapped with deaths previously reported by Palestinian authorities.
In Gaza, more than 187,000 people have fled their homes, the UN said, the most since a 2014 air and ground offensive by Israel uprooted about 400,000. The vast majority are sheltering in schools run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. Damage to three water and sanitation sites have cut off services to 400,000 people, the UN said.
On Monday, Israel announced a “complete siege” on the territory, halting deliveries of food, fuel, water, medicines, electricity and other supplies. That leaves the only access in and out through the Rafah crossing with Egypt.
But that too was shut down Tuesday after Israeli strikes raised palls of smoke nearby and sent families waiting with suitcases for a chance to get out running for cover. A day earlier, the Egyptian Red Crescent managed to get in one shipment of medical supplies.
Egyptian officials were talking with Israel and the US, pushing to set up humanitarian corridors in Gaza to deliver aid, an Egyptian official said. There were negotiations with the Israelis to declare the area around the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza as a “no fire zone”, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the media.
The UN’s World Health Organisation echoed the call for humanitarian corridors. It said that supplies it had pre-positioned for seven hospitals in Gaza have already run out amid the flood of wounded.
“With the number of casualties currently coming in, these hospitals are now running beyond their capacity,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jazarevic told reporters in Geneva. The head of the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders said surgical equipment, antibiotics, fuel and other supplies were running out at two hospitals it runs in Gaza as well.
In a briefing on Tuesday, army spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht suggested Palestinians should try to leave through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
The prospect of an exodus of Gazans into its territory has alarmed Egyptian officials. After Hecht’s comments, the Egyptian state-owned Al-Qahera news channel, which is close to security agencies, quoted an unnamed security official pushing back. “The occupation government is forcing Palestinians to choose between dying under bombardment or leaving their land,” the official was quoted as saying.
Meanwhile in the West Bank, Palestinians entered a fourth day under severe movement restrictions. Israeli authorities have sealed off crossings to the occupied territory and closed checkpoints, blocking movement between cities and towns. Clashes between rock-throwing Palestinians and Israeli forces in the territory since the start of the incursion have left 15 Palestinians dead, according to the UN.
- AP