by tyler | Oct 17, 2023 | CNN, middleeast
Gaza is being “strangled” by Israel’s week-long siege and aerial bombardment, UN experts have warned, as concerns grow that further escalation and a lack of safety for fleeing civilians risks drawing regional foes into the long-running conflict.
The Israeli military launched a barrage of airstrikes and a complete blockade on the Palestinian enclave in response to Hamas’ large-scale deadly incursion on October 7, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said left at least 1,400 people killed and scores taken hostage.
In over a week of Israeli bombardment, at least 2,808 people, including hundreds of children, have been killed, and more than 11,000 wounded, the Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said on Monday, according to the official Palestinian press agency, WAFA. In the occupied West Bank, 58 people have been killed and more than 1,250 injured, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said.
Casualties in Gaza over the past eight days have now surpassed the number of those killed during the 51-day Gaza-Israel conflict in 2014.
Human rights groups have said Israel’s complete siege on essential goods entering Gaza is in violation of international law, as Palestinian civilians warn food, water and fuel supplies are running out.
US President Joe Biden called Hamas’ rampage in Israel “the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
Hamas is believed to be holding 199 Israeli and foreign nationals hostage in Gaza, the IDF’s spokesperson Rear Adm. Dan Hagari said on Monday.
That number was revised up from the previous figure of 155, with many believed to be held in the warren of tunnels underneath Gaza.
In a video statement late Monday, a spokesperson for Hamas’ militant wing Al-Qassam Brigades said the number of hostages was between 200 – 250.
Diplomatic efforts to establish a humanitarian corridor to send desperately-needed supplies into Gaza are ramping up, before the Israeli blockade causes the 2.3 million people there to completely run out of clean drinking water, food, fuel and medicine.
Aid agencies have warned the siege will result in an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe inside the Palestinian enclave.
“Gaza is being strangled and it seems that the world right now has lost its humanity,” said United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, in an urgent plea for critical aid to be allowed in. “We all know water is life – Gaza is running out of water, and Gaza is running out of life. ”
Lazzarini said that “not one drop of water, not one grain of wheat, not a liter of fuel” has been allowed into Gaza for the past eight days and people trapped in the densely-populated blockaded strip are desperate.
Limited water supply in Gaza has put the lives of more than 3,500 patients across 35 hospitals at immediate risk, the World Health Organization said on Monday, warning of an “imminent” public health crisis.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s office denied there were any arrangements for the opening of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt – the only entry point into the enclave that Israel does not control.
“At the moment there is neither a ceasefire nor humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip in return for the exit of foreigners,” the Prime Minister’s office told CNN.
The UN would need to coordinate the movement of fuel trucks with Israel.
Hospitals in Gaza under constant barrage from Israeli airstrikes face imminent shutdown due to a lack of fuel to run generators that pump water and keep lifesaving equipment such as ventilators and incubators operating, Palestinian Red Crescent Director General Marwan Jilani told CNN. Fuel, he said, would run out by Monday or Tuesday.
On the brink of collapse, hospitals have run out of painkillers and many Gazans are beginning to suffer from severe dehydration due to lack of drinking water, according to medical NGO Medecins sans Frontieres. Multiple aid agencies have said fuel and other necessities could run out in hours, not days.
The 50,000 pregnant women currently in Gaza – 5,000 of whom are due to give birth in the coming month – face a “double nightmare,” said UN Population Fund (UNFPA) representative Dominic Allen, and face having their babies in unsanitary conditions, risking health complications while under the threat of bombs.
Dozens of unidentified bodies have been buried in mass graves in Gaza City, including children, babies, women, men and elderly people, according to the head of the Hamas-controlled government media office Salama Marouf.
Social media videos verified by CNN show dozens of bodies wrapped in white plastic brought from Gaza’s Shifa hospital to a burial site where they were laid to rest in neat rows.
Compounding the critical situation are the hundreds of thousands of people fleeing their homes in northern Gaza and attempting to head south through the battered streets ahead of an Israeli offensive that the IDF said would include widespread strikes and “significant ground operations.”
UNRWA’s Lazzarini said at least 1 million people were forced to flee their homes in one week alone and at least 400,000 displaced people are taking shelter in UN schools and buildings, but there is little space to cope with the numbers of displaced.
Shtayyeh, the Palestinian prime minister, urged the international community to stop Israel’s shelling and end the blockade. He warned against displacing people in Gaza and creating a new Nakba or “catastrophe,” WAFA reported on Monday.
The Nakba refers to the period after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, when about 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes in what is now Israel.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog on Sunday described the “horrific scenes” he saw from the Hamas assault on Israeli homes and communities, including a booklet he claimed contains tactics used by the militant group to kidnap and torture people.
“My nation is bleeding, my nation is in pain. My nation is in sorrow. And we are faced with an extremely cruel, inhumane enemy which we have to uproot with no mercy,” he told CNN.
The Palestinian Health Ministry accused the Israeli military of “direct targeting of medical staff and their families.”
Frantic calls to open humanitarian corridors into Gaza have grown in urgency and number in recent days, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Pope Francis and several nations and international aid agencies among them.
UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said “mammoth diplomatic efforts” are underway with Guterres and many member states “exercising what leverage they can.”
“We are looking at potentially thousands of deaths if this aid doesn’t get through,” Shamdasani told CNN.
President Herzog said Sunday he was meeting again with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to discuss establishing a humanitarian corridor but further plans to execute such a route would need to include “Israeli cabinet and government under Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu and the new national unity emergency government.”
The top US diplomat has been visiting Israel and neighboring countries in recent days, meeting with various regional leaders.
On Sunday Blinken promised the Rafah border crossing “will be open” and that the United States was working with the UN, Egypt, Israel and others to coordinate aid efforts.
China’s top diplomat Wang Yi accused Israel over the weekend of going “beyond the scope of self-defense.” China’s Middle East envoy Zhai Jun said he would visit the region this week.
Aid has been piling up on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing; Egypt says that airstrikes on the Gaza side have made roads inoperable, and Jordan has said it is seeking assurance that aid convoys will not be targeted by Israeli warplanes.
The UN’s emergency relief chief, Martin Griffiths, reiterated the desperate need for aid to get into Gaza, earlier on Monday. Griffiths will travel to Cairo on Tuesday for a several day long mission that will include a visit to Israel, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
France said it will give 10 million euros ($10.55 million) to UN agencies and NGOs to help humanitarian efforts in Gaza. French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna told reporters on Monday the “aid is ready.”
It is unclear how the aid will cross the border amid airstrikes on Gaza.
Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Herzog told CNN Israel is in the process of creating a humanitarian zone in Gaza while the spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, Stéphane Dujarric, said he could not confirm whether the UN is working with the Israeli government to establish such a zone.
It is also unclear if water is now flowing into southern Gaza.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office told CNN Sunday that Israel has restored water to the south of the strip, but the director of Gaza’s water authority disputed that Monday.
IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus later said Israel has “opened taps” on its side to allow water to enter southern Gaza, but he said he “doesn’t have visibility on exactly how much is actually flowing where it should.”
Hamas released a video on Monday of a French-Israeli woman being held hostage in the Gaza Strip. It is the first hostage video released of any person believed to be held in the territory.
In the video, 21-year-old Mia Schem says she suffered an arm injury and was taken to Gaza. A representative for the family of Schem told CNN they had approved the publication and broadcast of the video.
It is unclear when the video was taken or whether Schem is still alive.
In a statement Monday night, the IDF said it had informed Schem’s family about her kidnapping last week and are keeping in touch with them.
Earlier on Monday, Abu Obaida, a spokesperson for Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades, said there were between 200-250 hostages held in Gaza. Abu Obaida said Al-Qassam Brigades held 200 hostages, while the rest are with other “militant formations” in the territory, adding that they cannot determine the exact number due to constant Israeli bombardment.
Abu Obaida also said 22 of the hostages were killed in Israeli airstrikes, including an Israeli artist whom he said lost his life on Saturday.
CNN cannot independently verify those claims.
Abu Obaida added that the Al-Qassam Brigades will be releasing hostages holding foreign citizenship when “the opportunity arises on the ground,” and said Al-Qassam is “committed” to protecting them. He also warned that any foreign national serving with the Israeli military will be considered a “direct enemy.”
In its statement, the IDF said it is using “all intelligence and operational means to return the abductees,” which it says number 199 Israeli and foreign nationals.
As Israel battles Hamas, it also faces the threat of a wider conflict on new fronts, with hostilities with Lebanon’s powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah in the north, and Syria, being potential flash points.
Early Tuesday morning, the IDF said it was striking Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
A regional conflagration has Western powers concerned: French President Emmanuel Macron “warned” his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi against an escalation of the Gaza crisis on Sunday and the US has been increasing its defense posture in the Middle East to deter any Iranian aggression or an expansion of the fighting beyond Israel’s borders, according to a US official.
Additional US attack aircraft including A-10 Warthogs arrived in the Middle East Sunday joining squadrons of fighter jets already deployed as well as two US carrier strike groups deployed to the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
The White House said on Monday Biden will postpone a trip to Colorado for “national security meetings.”
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told MSNBC the president is “laser-focused on this war against Hamas.”
Pressed on if Biden plans to travel to Israel in the coming days, the NSC spokesman said he didn’t “have any announcements to speak to today, in terms of travel.”
Speaking to CBS Sunday, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that while there is no new intelligence the threat level from Iran has changed, “there is a risk of an escalation of this conflict.”
Iran has warned of the consequences of a possible larger escalation if Israel continues to attack Gaza.
by tyler | Oct 13, 2023 | CNN, middleeast
Egypt is facing mounting pressure to act as neighboring Gaza gets pummeled by Israeli airstrikes after last weekend’s brutal assault on Israel by Hamas.
In the wake of the Hamas attacks, Israel closed its two border crossings with Gaza and imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, blocking supplies of fuel, electricity and water.
That has left the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt as the only viable outlet to get people out of the enclave and supplies into it. But it’s unclear if even that crossing is operational.
The Egyptian side of the crossing is open, but the Palestinian side is “non-functional” following multiple Israeli airstrikes earlier this week, a senior Jordanian official told CNN Thursday, adding that “the Jordanians and Egyptians are waiting for security clearance from the Israelis to allow (aid) trucks to cross without threat of another airstrike.”
Egypt’s foreign ministry on Thursday denied reports of the crossing being closed, saying it has sustained damage due to repeated Israeli airstrikes on the Palestinian side. CNN could not independently verify whether the crossing is open.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that the Biden administration is in talks with Israel and Egypt about creating a humanitarian corridor through which civilians can cross.
But Egypt is uneasy about the prospect of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees crossing into its territory. More than two million Palestinians live in the densely packed coastal enclave that is under intense Israeli bombardment.
Israel’s military overnight Thursday called for residents of northern Gaza to evacuate their homes and move southwards as it amassed 300,000 reservists on the border in apparent preparation for a ground incursion. That would amount to the mass displacement of 1.1 million people, the UN said, adding that it would be “impossible” to do in 24 hours.
Saturday’s attack on Israel killed 1,300 people, prompting retaliation against Hamas that has killed 1,799 in Gaza. As attacks intensify, rights groups have raised concerns about a potential humanitarian catastrophe.
Speaking at a military graduation ceremony Thursday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi compared the situation in his country to a lone house in a neighborhood that’s on fire. He said that rumors about Egypt not seeking to help its Palestinian neighbors are not true.
“We are making sure that aid, whether medical or humanitarian, at this difficult time, makes it to the strip,” Sisi said, adding that “we sympathize.”
But he warned that Egypt’s ability to help has limits.
“Of course we sympathize. But be careful, while we sympathize, we must always be using our minds in order to reach peace and safety in a manner that doesn’t cost us much,” he said, adding that Egypt hosts 9 million migrants already. The largest groups in the country’s migrant population are from Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Libya, according to a 2022 report by the UN’s International Organization for Migration.
Egypt’s foreign ministry warned Friday against Israel’s call for evacuation, calling it “a grave violation of international humanitarian law” that would put the lives of more than 1 million Palestinians in danger.
The Jordanian official told CNN Thursday that Jordanian and Egyptian officials are applying “diplomatic and political pressure on the Israeli government to allow for the safe passage of aid into Gaza through the Rafah crossing.”
A plane carrying medical aid for Gaza from Jordan arrived Thursday in the Egyptian city of Arish, approximately 45 kilometers (23 miles) away from Rafah, and aid was loaded onto Egyptian Red Crescent trucks that have not yet been able to advance towards the border, the official said.
But Egyptian media outlets have sounded alarms about the prospect of allowing Palestinian refugees into the country, warning that it may forcefully displace Gazans into Sinai.
Sisi echoed those sentiments on Thursday. “There is a danger” when it comes to Gaza, he said – “a danger so big because it means an end to this (Palestinian) cause… It is important that (Gaza’s) people remain standing and on their land.”
Jordan’s King Abdullah, who met with Blinken Friday, warned against “any attempt to displace Palestinians from any Palestinian territories or to cause their displacement.”
The vast majority of Gaza’s residents today are Palestinian refugees from areas that fell under Israeli control in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. That war marked Israel’s creation, but it is also lamented by Palestinians as the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” as more than 700,000 Palestinians were either expelled or forced to flee their homes in what is now Israel.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians took refuge in Gaza, which fell under Egyptian control after the war. Israel captured the territory from Egypt in the 1967 war and began settling Jews there, but it withdrew its troops and settlements in 2005.
Additional reporting by CNN’s Celine Alkhaldi and Caroline Faraj
by tyler | Oct 13, 2023 | CNN, middleeast
Israel’s military has told 1.1 million people in northern Gaza to evacuate their homes and said it carried out local raids, amid signs Israel is set to ramp up its retaliatory offensive against Hamas following the group’s October 7 terror attacks.
Gaza is already one of the world’s most densely populated pieces of land, with more than 2 million people crammed into 140 square miles. Now, the entire population is being told to move into the southern part of the strip – an order the UN has described as dangerous and “impossible” to carry out.
“Civilians of Gaza City, evacuate south for your own safety and the safety of your families and distance yourself from Hamas terrorists who are using you as human shields,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said. “In the following days, the IDF will continue to operate significantly in Gaza City and make extensive efforts to avoid harming civilians.”
Images on social media Friday showed that the IDF had dropped leaflets from planes into Gaza calling for the evacuation south. Live footage from news agencies earlier showed leaflets falling from the sky.
CNN footage on Friday showed civilians in Gaza City, Deir el Balah and elsewhere in northern Gaza cramming their possessions into cars, taxis and pickup trucks and driving south on the highway.
Footage showed many families had taken heed of the IDF’s warning. Some had strapped several mattresses to car roofs. Others drove with the trunk and doors open to take as many people and possessions as they could. Some were even seen sitting on the hood as families drove through the city. Others simply walked, carrying as much as they could in bags.
Israel has admitted that the mass migration order will take time, with IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner telling CNN Friday that any deadline “may slip.”
The United Nations on Thursday said it was informed by their liaison officers in the Israeli military that “the entire population of Gaza north of Wadi Gaza should relocate to southern Gaza within the next 24 hours,” and warned that it is impossible for civilians to evacuate “without devastating humanitarian consequences.”
The global organization called for Israel to rescind the order to avoid transforming “what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation.”
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees described Israel’s call to move Gaza civilians as “horrendous” on Friday, adding that the enclave is fast becoming a “hell hole and is on the brink of collapse.”
And the Norwegian Refugee Council has warned that the relocation of Gaza civilians amounts “to the war crime of forcible transfer.”
A senior Hamas official said on Friday the group would “resist Israel’s attempt to ethnically cleanse Gaza” and described the movement order as contravening “all the laws and treaties that the so-called free and democratic countries claim they believe in.”
The IDF has accused Hamas of “hiding behind the people of Gaza” and of instructing civilians to “ignore” Israel’s warnings to evacuate to the south.” IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said during a briefing that it was “just another example” of how Hamas “does not care about the safety of people in Gaza.”
On Friday, the IDF also said it raided parts of the besieged enclave to search for hostages taken by Hamas. The militant group said that 13 Israeli prisoners held in Gaza had been killed by “random” Israeli bombings on parts – a claim the IDF said it could not confirm or deny.
It is unclear if or when Israel plans to launch a potential ground incursion into Gaza but for days Israel has been massing hundreds of thousands of troops, reservists and military equipment at the border while it ramps up its siege and aerial bombardment of the enclave.
Gaza’s borders have been blockaded for years by Israel and Egypt. Calls are now growing for the opening of a humanitarian corridor in Gaza so civilians can access basic supplies such as water, food, fuel and medicine amid warnings from UN experts that residents are at risk of starvation.
The Rafah Crossing connects Gaza to Egypt and is currently the only corridor through which Palestinians or aid can pass in and out of Gaza.
Jordanian and Egyptian officials are applying “diplomatic and political pressure on the Israeli government to allow for the safe passage of aid into Gaza through the Rafah crossing,” a senior Jordanian official told CNN Thursday.
While the Egyptian side of the Rafah border is open, the source told CNN, the Palestinian side of the border is “non-functional” following multiple Israeli airstrikes.
The source said Jordanians and Egyptians are waiting for security clearance from Israel to allow trucks to cross without threat of another airstrike.
And a senior US State Department official said Friday that the US continues to press the Egyptian and Israeli governments on “the importance of the Rafah crossing being open for American citizens and foreign nationals” who want to leave.
The United Arab Emirates have sent a plane carrying urgent medical aid to the Egyptian city of Al-Arish to be brought into Gaza through the Rafah crossing, in order to help the Palestinian people, Emirates state run news agency WAM.
It is unclear how the aid will cross the border amid airstrikes on Gaza.
Atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel last weekend sparked international revulsion and escalated the decades-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
European Union leaders visited Israel to “express solidarity” with the Israeli people in the wake of Hamas’ attack. President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and European Parliament president Roberta Metsola both announced their arrivals on social media Friday.
Hamas militants breached the heavily-fortified border in a coordinated assault, indiscriminately killing men, women and children, and taking as many as 150 hostages back to Gaza. More than 1,300 people were killed in Israel and thousands more injured.
Israel’s response has been swift and relentless.
For six days, Israeli warplanes have pounded Gaza with airstrikes that have reduced streets and homes to rubble and killed more than 1,799 people, including 583 children, and injured 7,388 others, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Israeli forces dropped about 6,000 bombs on Gaza between October 7 and 12, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) said in a statement Thursday.
This is equivalent to the total number of airstrikes on Gaza during the entire 2014 Gaza-Israel conflict which lasted from July 7 to August 26 of that year, according to data from the IDF.
The Vatican’s top diplomat, secretary of state Pietro Parolin, called on Israel to show “proportionality.” Parolin told Vatican News that the Hamas attack on Israel was “inhuman” but the “legitimate defense should not harm civilians,” according to a transcript of the interview provided by the Vatican press office.
Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Church of England, urged “the sins of Hamas are not borne by the citizens of Gaza, who themselves have faced such suffering over many decades.”
The Israeli siege has stopped essential supplies of electricity, food, water and fuel from entering Gaza and medical and relief workers have warned that time is running out to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe for the 2 million trapped civilians.
More than 432,000 Palestinians have been displaced by the conflict and airstrikes have hit at least 88 education facilities, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency.
The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, has warned that “hundreds & hundreds of children have been killed and injured” in Gaza, saying that number rises every hour.
“The killing of children must stop,” UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said in a statement. “The images and stories are clear: children with horrendous burns, mortar wounds, and lost limbs. And hospitals are utterly overwhelmed to treat them.”
Health systems in Gaza are at breaking point, and generators used for critical functions will cease working in a few days when the fuel runs out, with devastating consequences for patients “who need lifesaving surgery, patients in intensive care units, and newborns depending on care in incubators,” the World Health Organization said.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) international president Christos Christou said millions of civilians in Gaza are facing “collective punishment” and that safe spaces must be established.
The UN has warned that targeting innocent civilians and withholding of essential supplies is prohibited under international law.
The Biden administration said Thursday it’s “working very diligently” with Israel and Egypt on safe passage out of Gaza for civilians ahead of a possible ground incursion, according to White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby.
Israel has stood firm in its response.
IDF spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus told CNN: “We are at war with Hamas and we will not allow anything into the Gaza strip that supports the fighting ability of Hamas. If it comes to the price of inconvenience for the population, so be it.”
On Thursday, Israel’s energy minister Israel Katz said supplies to Gaza will remain cut off until all hostages captured by Hamas are freed.
“No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened, and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. Humanitarian for humanitarian. And no one will preach us morals,” Katz said on social media.
Hamas militants are holding as many as 150 people hostage in locations across Gaza and earlier this week warned it would start killing hostages if Israel continued its bombardment of Gaza.
Evidence of that war footing could be seen just outside the blockaded enclave, where a massive mobilization of Israeli troops, armored vehicles, trucks of ammunition, and other military equipment are being prepared for the next phase of Israel’s response to Hamas’s terrorist attacks.
Past Israeli ground offensives in 2008 and 2014 have resulted in high casualties of Israeli soldiers and one major difference this time is that Hamas fighters have captured such a large number of hostages.
Saturday’s bloody attack also displayed a level of military capability and barbarity by Hamas beyond what they have previously displayed.
CNN analysis of videos released by Hamas and its affiliates reveals that militants trained for the onslaught for months and across at least six sites in Gaza.
More evidence has emerged of the attack’s brutality with the release of photos showing murdered babies.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s office released three photos showing two babies whose bodies had been burned beyond recognition and a third bloodstained infant’s body.
Hamas on Thursday “firmly” denied its involvement in killing and beheading babies, saying the allegations were “unethically and unprofessionally” adopted by media outlets.
Testimonies from multiple survivors and eyewitnesses have detailed the scale and nature of atrocities committed by Hamas as well as the staggering number of dead and captured.
by tyler | Oct 12, 2023 | CNN, middleeast
Gaza’s humanitarian crisis deepened Thursday, with warnings people are at risk of starvation and fuel could run out within hours, as Israel continues airstrikes and withholds essential supplies from the enclave in response to Hamas’ brutal terror attacks.
The decades old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians entered uncharted territory this week after Israel suffered its worst attack by Palestinian militants since its founding 75 years ago.
Israel has stepped up its offensive in Gaza following Hamas’ October 7 onslaught, when armed militants poured over the heavily-fortified border into Israel.
The gunmen killed more than 1,200 people, wounding thousands more in a coordinated rampage through farms and communities where they also took as many as 150 hostages.
The atrocities have sparked international revulsion and vows by Israel’s government to destroy Hamas, which has continued to fire rockets at Israeli towns over the last five days.
In a press conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv on Thursday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas should be “crushed” and “spat out from the community of nations.”
Blinken vowed US support for Israel and likened Hamas’ crimes to ISIS. At least 25 Americans have been killed in Israel, he said.
The United Nations “unequivocally condemned” attacks on civilians in Israel and Gaza in a statement on Thursday, which also focused on the worsening plight of people in Gaza.
More than 2 million Palestinians – including over a million children – live in the Gaza Strip, an area that has been under a land, sea and air blockade enforced by Israel since 2007.
At least 1,417 people have been killed in Gaza, including 447 children, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, as Israeli air strikes continue to pummel the densely populated strip, decimating buildings, reducing entire streets to rubble and trapping residents. More than 6,000 have been wounded, the ministry added.
Israel has ordered a “complete siege” on the enclave, including halting supplies of electricity, food, water and fuel.
Israel’s Energy Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday that supplies would remain cut off until hostages being held by Hamas are freed.
“No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened, and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. Humanitarian for humanitarian. And no one will preach us morals,” Katz said on social media.
The UN said withholding essential supplies will “precipitate a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where its population is now at inescapable risk of starvation.”
Food and water are “quickly running out,” the deputy head of emergencies of the UN World Food Programme, Brian Lander, said Thursday.
The European Union has called for the right of Gaza to “access food, water and medicines according to international humanitarian law.”
More than 330,000 people have been displaced in Gaza, according to a statement by the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) early Thursday.
Gaza’s only power station stopped working on Wednesday after running out of fuel, the head of the Gaza power authority Galal Ismail told CNN.
Gaza likely only has enough fuel for a few more hours, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned on Thursday.
If supplies cannot get into the enclave, “the humanitarian situation will become unmanageable,” the ICRC’s regional director for the Middle East told reporters during a briefing in Geneva on Thursday.
Hospitals are expected to run out of fuel on Thursday, leading to “catastrophic” conditions, the Palestinian Health Ministry warned.
A surge in injured people seeking treatment has pushed Gaza’s health infrastructure close to breaking point, according to Ashraf Al-Qudra, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza. “Even after expansion, all beds are occupied, leaving no room for new patients in critical condition,” he said on Thursday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross warned on Thursday that hospitals in the enclave “risk turning into morgues” following Israel’s siege.
Palestinian Minister of Health Mai al-Kaila has called for urgent international assistance to help set up field hospitals in the Gaza Strip and to provide medicines and medical supplies.
Video and photo from the besieged enclave depict scenes of tragedy and heartbreak.
“There are body parts scattered everywhere. There are still people missing,” one man in the northern neighborhood of Al-Karama said. “We’re still looking for our brothers, our children. It’s like we’re stuck living in a nightmare.”
“We are extremely worried that what is happening now is totally unprecedented,” Najla Shawa, an Oxfam worker in Gaza, told CNN. “We are talking about entire areas, not just one area. Entire areas are being wiped and destroyed.”
In response to Hamas’ assault, Israel has massed some 300,000 reservists near the Gaza border, according to the Israel Defence Force (IDF), a huge mobilization given the country’s 9 million population.
On Thursday, the IDF said it was continuing “large scale strikes on terror targets belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza strip,” as speculation of a possible ground incursion into Gaza grows.
“We have sent our infantry, armored soldiers, our artillery corps and many other soldiers from the reserves. 300,000 in numbers in different brigades,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said Wednesday.
“They are now close to the Gaza Strip, getting ready to execute the mission that they have been given,” he added.
Israel’s government also said it was preparing its hospitals and healthcare system for “possible escalations in the security situation,” its health ministry said.
Hamas’ attack has also sparked some political unity in Israel after months of domestic friction with Netanyahu and National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz jointly announcing an emergency government and war management cabinet on Wednesday.
Gantz, a former defense minister, will join Netanyahu and current defense minister Yoav Gallant in a wartime cabinet.
“There is time for war and time for peace. This, now, is the time for war,” Gantz said during a televised address.
A diplomatic push is being made to try and bring about some sort of mediation.
US Secretary of State Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv on Thursday. As well as meeting with Netanyahu, he is scheduled to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and King Abdullah II of Jordan on Friday, according to a US official.
Abbas leads the Palestinian Authority (PA), which was established in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 1993 through the Oslo Accords, a peace pact between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). It stipulated the PLO give up armed resistance against Israel in return for promises of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The PA are rivals to Hamas.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman received a call from Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi on Wednesday in which they discussed the “military escalation in Gaza,” Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.
The scale and nature of Hamas’ attacks have horrified Israelis with each day bringing new testimonies of both atrocities committed as well as astonishing tales of survival and bravery amidst the carnage.
On Thursday, Netanyahu’s office released photos of “babies murdered and burned” by Hamas.
Tom Hand, a resident of the Be’eri, a kibbutz where Hamas gunmen left at least 120 dead, learned his daughter Emily, 8, was among those killed in Saturday’s onslaught.
“I knew she wasn’t alone, she wasn’t in Gaza, she wasn’t in a dark room filled with Christ knows how many people, pushed around… terrified every minute of every day, possibly for years to come. So death was a blessing,” he told CNN, his voice broken, tears streaming down his tired, ashen face.
The fact that Hamas has taken an unprecedented number of hostages now complicates Israel’s response.
On Wednesday, International IDF spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, told CNN that Israeli authorities believe the hostages are being held underground.
“Reason dictates that they are underground,” he said. “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.”
He said even though Israel has had “some experience” with hostage situations they have never dealt with anything like this.
Izzat al-Risheq, a senior Hamas official, told CNN on Wednesday that it’s too early to exchange Israeli hostages.
“There were many calls made by Arab and non-Arab states to Hamas leadership abroad asking about the possibility of exchanging Israeli captives with Hamas prisoners,” al-Risheq said from Doha, Qatar.
“But we told everybody that it’s now too early to discuss it while Israel continues to pound Gaza and kill Palestinian civilians indiscriminately.”
by tyler | Oct 12, 2023 | CNN, middleeast
People from Be’eri sometimes used to say the reason the Israeli kibbutz was so close to the Gaza Strip was because otherwise, it would be too perfect.
“It was a joke, something we used to say because Be’eri is so beautiful. It’s the place where you want your kids to grow up. The sunset is beautiful, the fields are green, it has everything you want from a vacation spot,” Lotan Pinyan told CNN on Wednesday.
Be’eri’s proximity to Gaza, which is only a few kilometers away, means the liberal community has been a frequent target of Hamas rockets fired from the enclave – usually intercepted by Israeli defenses. The rockets were the one downside of the otherwise idyllic spot, Pinyan and his friends would say. “It’s not a joke now,” he said.
Early on Saturday morning, Hamas militants stormed Be’eri and left behind a devastation of unimaginable scale.
They murdered more than 120 of its residents, including children, and kidnapped others. They set people’s homes on fire, then killed them when they tried to escape the heat and smoke. They looted, stole and destroyed what they could.
It all started with the sirens.
The community of about 1,100 people was woken up at 6:30 a.m., when the alarm indicating an imminent rocket attack went off.
“But it was not normal. We are used to the bombing, we know what is sounds like: ‘tat – tat – tat.’ But this was different. It didn’t stop. Tat – tat – tat – tat – tat – tat – tat,” Michal Pinyan, Lotan’s wife, told CNN. “And then some 45 minutes later, we started getting messages that there are terrorists in the kibbutz,” Lotan added.
The family’s WhatsApp group was flooded with anxious messages between Michal’s parents, Amir and Mati Weiss, and her three brothers.
9:25 a.m. Mati: gunshots in the balcony
9:26 a.m. Ran: also here there are gunshots outside the shelter window
9:30 a.m. Mati: I hear voices in Arabic outside the house
9:31 a.m. Dalit: do you also hear the security forces?
9:43 a.m. Amir: dad is injured they are in the house
9:43 a.m. Ran: what do you mean?
9:44 a.m. Dalit: they came inside?
9:44 a.m. Lotan: what? talk to us
9:47 a.m. Ran: limor spoke to racheli, sending you something
9:49 a.m. Michal: mom keep writing all the time
9:52 a.m. Eddie: When????
9:57 a.m. Limor: When, what’s happening with you?
10:01 a.m. Michal: mom
10:01 a.m. Michal: Answer
10:03 a.m. Mati: save us
10:04 a.m. Mati: Save us
10:00 a.m. Michal: are you in the shelter?
10:04 a.m. Mati: dad was shot and they are throwing grenades
10:04 a.m. Mati: They blew up the safe room
10:04 a.m. Michal: inside the house?
10:04 a.m. Mati: yes
That message was the last one that came from Mati, Michal’s mother. After that, silence.
“We knew they were probably dead. But there was still a small hope that maybe they weren’t, that they were kidnapped,” Lotan said.
Across the kibbutz, Tom Hand was getting the same terrifying messages about terrorists breaking into his neighbors’ houses. All he could think about was his eight-year-old daughter Emily – one of the tallest in her class, with honey blond hair and pale skin that tanned in the sun, a talented dancer and singer, a fun, bright girl, he said.
Hand came to Be’eri 30 years ago as a volunteer, planning to stay a few months, and never left. After his wife, Emily’s mother, died of cancer a few years ago, he and Emily have lived here on their own.
The community is close-knit; residents told CNN they eat meals together and share everything, including their salaries, which go into a communal treasury and are redistributed equally among all the families.
Politically, the kibbutz leans left. Many sees Gazans as their neighbors, Michal told CNN.
“There were people from Gaza who worked in the kibbutz and they were a part of the community, they’d bring their children to the kindergarten in the kibbutz. When they couldn’t come to work there anymore, we began collecting money from the community and there is now a fund that keeps them alive,” she said, adding that she is determined to keep sending the money to the family.
On Friday night, Emily went to her friend’s home for a sleepover. “They were having a girly night,” Hand said.
When the sirens went off at 6:30 on Saturday, Hand was not particularly worried; the alarms are not uncommon in the kibbutz. Emily was sleeping over at a friend’s house, and he was sure both children would be safe.
“Until I heard the shots. And it was already too late. If I had known … I could have maybe ran, got her, got her friend, got the mother, brought them back to my place. But by the time I realized what was happening, it was already too late,” he said.
He was not able to get in touch with them, and he was not able to go out because the kibbutz was by then overrun by swarms of heavily armed militants.
“I had to think of Emily. She already lost her mother, I couldn’t risk her losing her father too,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Pinyans, in shock from what they understood to be happening in their parents’ house, were bracing for the possibility that their home could be the terrorists’ next target.
They were inside their safe room, but faced a problem. Its door is not lockable from the inside. While all Israeli homes built after 1993 must have a shelter, these safe rooms are designed to withstand a blast, not an armed incursion.
“We knew we had to keep the door closed, so we took anything we found in the safe room and wrapped it to the handle … we tied it to the window and then put a chair inside it and kept it tight with a baseball bat,” Lotan said.
He spent the next many hours sitting by the door, wrenching the bat against it, waiting for the military to come and rescue them.
The kibbutz has its own volunteer emergency squad, about 15 people who are supposed to protect the community from danger until the army comes. With an army base just a few minutes away, everyone thought that the Israel Defense Forces would come any moment. But that did not happen.
“We were waiting for about 20 hours, with no food, no water, no toilet,” Lotan said. “And the children, they never asked for anything. Not once,” Michal added.
The IDF told CNN that it took them days of intense battle to gain control of the kibbutz. To rescue the Pinyans, 15 soldiers stormed the house, formed a tight circle around the family and walked them to a safe place – while battle still raged in the kibbutz, the family said.
As they left, Lotan said, he covered the kids’ eyes so that they wouldn’t see the dead bodies.
“We saw them, all of them, soldiers, kibbutz members and terrorists. It was like someone sprinkled sesame on a bunny, spread all over the kibbutz, everywhere we went, there were bodies,” Lotan said.
Many of those eventually rescued from Be’eri by the military were evacuated to a hotel on the shores of the Dead Sea. Among them was Tom Hand, who spent the next few days waiting to hear anything about Emily.
Then, the news came.
“Two people from the kibbutz, a team of doctors, psychiatrists, social workers … and they tell you. Softly, but quickly, because they have a lot people to get through,” he said, adding he felt relieved.
Of all the horrible possibilities, death seemed the least painful.
“She was dead. I knew she wasn’t alone, she wasn’t in Gaza, she wasn’t in a dark room filled with Christ knows how many people, pushed around … terrified every minute of every day, possibly for years to come. So death was a blessing,” he told CNN, his voice broken, tears streaming down his tired, ashen face.
“In this crazy world, here is me hoping my daughter is dead,” he said.
Many of the people rescued from Be’eri are staying in the same hotel as Hand, which means he is surrounded by love – but also constant reminders of Emily. Many of her friends who survived the massacre are at the hotel.
“Emily’s friends know that she’s not here with me. So they ask me what happened to her … they look up at me and I say I don’t know yet,” he said. “But then they see their parents hugging me, crying … kids are not stupid, even at that age, so just by seeing that I’m sure they realize.”
The community is holding onto itself, trying to keep going, Michal Pinyan said. Every few minutes, someone comes by to give her a hug, have a chat, share a memory of her parents.
She told CNN that she knows her parents have died, because their bodies were identified by people who knew them personally. However, she has been asked to provide a DNA sample for official identification, which may take some time.
She has no idea what will happen next. “Nobody talks about funerals. We don’t have a place to go to. The kibbutz is a closed army space now,” she said.
Still, she believes Be’eri will be rebuilt in some form. “We will need lots and lots and lots of strength, physical and emotional, to go back. But we will go back it’s not a question,” she said.
When their children question going back to a place where such horrors happened, the Pinyans say they must.
“We explained to them that we don’t leave the ship sinking. We need to go and repair the place, repair the community. And after that, we can decide, as a family, what we will do next,” Lotan said.
by tyler | Oct 12, 2023 | CNN, middleeast
The Israeli government has not confirmed the specific claim that Hamas attackers cut off the heads of babies during their shock attack on Saturday, an Israeli official told CNN, contradicting a previous public statement by the Prime Minister’s office.
“There have been cases of Hamas militants carrying out beheadings and other ISIS-style atrocities. However, we cannot confirm if the victims were men or women, soldiers or civilians, adults or children,” the official said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated that people had been beheaded by Hamas in an appearance beside Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday, but did not specify if they were children.
His office later released what it described as “horrifying photos of babies murdered and burned by the Hamas monsters.”
The three photos showed two babies whose bodies had been burned beyond recognition and a third infant’s bloodstained body.
The post said that Netanyahu showed Blinken the photos, as well as others.
The explosive allegations that children had been decapitated at the kibbutz of Kfar Aza emerged Tuesday in Israeli media. Israel Defense Forces later described the scene as a “massacre” in a statement to CNN. Women, children toddlers and the elderly were “brutally butchered in an ISIS way of action,” the IDF said.
Tal Heinrich, a spokeswoman for Netanyahu, said on Wednesday that babies and toddlers had been found with their “heads decapitated” in Kfar Aza.
US President Joe Biden appeared to confirm that information. In a roundtable with Jewish community leaders on Wednesday, he said: “I have been doing this a long time, I never really thought that I would see… have confirmed pictures of terrorist beheading children.”
A US administration official later clarified Biden’s remarks, telling CNN that neither Biden nor his aides had seen pictures or had received confirmed reports of children or infants having been beheaded by Hamas. The official clarified that Biden was referring to public comments from media outlets and Israeli officials.
An IDF spokesman, Jonathan Conricus, later in the day said terrorists had likely carried out decapitations of babies in the Be’eri kibbutz.
“We got very very disturbing reports that came from the ground that there were babies that had been beheaded… I think we can now say with relative confidence that unfortunately this is what happened in Be’eri,” he said.
Israeli officials initially avoided discussing the specifics of how its citizens were killed. They instead likened Hamas’ brutality to that of ISIS, the Sunni terror group that beheaded captives and burned prisoners alive.
Hamas on Wednesday denied the allegations. Izzat al-Risheq, a senior official and spokesperson for the Islamist militant group, said that the international media had “spread lies about our Palestinian people and the resistance claiming that members of the Palestinian resistance beheaded children and attacked women with no evidence to support such claims and lies.”
Al-Risheq’s claim that Hamas did not attack women is demonstrably false. Women, children and the elderly at kibbutzim like Kfar Aza and Be’eri and were killed during the surprise attack. Videos posted online verified by CNN show women who were attending the music festival targeted by the group’s gunmen being kidnapped.
CNN has pored through hundreds of hours of media posted online attempting to corroborate accounts of atrocities committed by Hamas. In one video, which CNN determined to be authentic but has not been able to geolocate, an assailant attacks an injured man with a garden tool in an attempt to behead him. But CNN has not seen anything that would appear to confirm the claims of decapitated children.
CNN also visited the ransacked ruins of Kfar Aza on Tuesday and saw no evidence of beheaded youths. Israeli officials have not released any photographs of the incident either.
