Nadav Hanan describes encountering multiple Hamas squads on 7 October when 360 young Israelis were murdered
• Middle East crisis – live updates
Nadav Hanan was at the smaller of the dance stages at the Nova dance festival in southern Israel when Hamas attacked.
It was the beginning of an extended nightmare for the 27-year-old that saw him zigzag more than 25km of rough ground barefoot, surviving seven ambushes by Hamas attackers along the route to safety.
Continue reading...Comments by David Barnea follow assassination of Hamas deputy political chief Saleh al-Arouri in Lebanon
The head of Israel’s foreign intelligence service has vowed to track down and kill all Hamas leaders responsible for attacking Israel, less than a day after a drone strike in Lebanon killed the militant organisation’s second most senior official.
David Barnea said on Wednesday the Mossad was “committed to settling the score with the murderers who descended upon the Gaza envelope” on 7 October and with those who planned the attacks.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed
Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy has said that the death of an IDF soldier overnight has brought the total number of losses for the Israeli army to 509 since 7 October.
At least 174 of those have died inside Gaza during Israel’s ground operation there. The overall casualty figure from 7 October – including civilians – was about 1,200 people killed, revised down from an initial estimate of 1,400.
In Khan Younis, intensive battles against terrorist operatives are continuing. IDF ground troops identified a terrorist that attempted to plant an explosive device on a tank, and directed an IDF aircraft to strike the terrorist and three additional terrorists in the area. Furthermore, in Khan Younis, an IDF fighter jet struck an Islamic Jihad weapons production complex.
Continue reading...Arouri had talked with Hezbollah of ‘real victory’ over Israel after 7 October attacks
The killing of Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut is the first strike in a campaign of assassinations overseas promised by Israeli officials for several months.
The target was carefully chosen – one of the most senior Hamas leaders and the organisation’s main link to Iran and the Lebanon-based militia Hezbollah. Arouri was also influential in the occupied West Bank, where he was born and where violence has soared in recent months.
Continue reading...Israeli defence minister says his country is planning for a long conflict as senior Hamas official is killed in Beirut drone strike
The death toll from Israeli attacks on Gaza has climbed to more than 22,000 after a day of intense fighting across the territory, including in the southern city of Khan Younis, where the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS) said five people had been killed in a second Israeli attack on its compound.
The day after Israel announced the first drawdown of troops from Gaza, there was no sign of relief for its residents, who after three months of heavy bombardment and weeks of ground fighting, are almost all displaced, hungry and stalked by disease.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed
AFP reports that in addition to the four Palestinians the IDF said it killed overnight in the occupied West Bank, Israel says it has arrested seven others.
More than 2,550 people have been arrested in the territory since the Israel-Hamas war began.
Continue reading...Death of Arouri in Israeli drone strike on Beirut suburb threatens significant escalation of war in region
One of Hamas’s most senior officials, Saleh al-Arouri, has been killed in an Israeli drone strike in Beirut that threatens a significant and dangerous escalation of Israel’s war against Hamas and its related conflict with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The Lebanese prime minister, Najib Mikati, echoing fears of further regional violence, described the assassination as a “new Israeli crime intended to spur a new phase of conflict, following daily attacks in the south [of Lebanon]”.
Continue reading...Labour peer and former Middle East minister says Hamas will have to be included in future governance of Gaza
Western policy towards Gaza represents collusion in a terrible failure and will not lead to the permanent elimination of Hamas or security for Israel, the former UK Middle East minister Lord Hain has warned in an Guardian article, demanding a rethink of British approach to the war.
Hain, a cabinet minister in post-1997 Labour governments and a Foreign Office minister from 1999 to 2001, also accuses the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of playing an indirect role in promoting Hamas by refusing to negotiate on a two-state solution and imposing a “near-constant state of siege” on Gaza.
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: After events during the last few days, a nightmare scenario including Iran and the US is becoming ever more likely
• Sign up here for our daily newsletter, First Edition
Good morning. So far, the war in Gaza prompted by Hamas’s 7 October attack has not precipitated the nightmare scenario – a wider Middle East conflict drawing in the US and Iran. But after events of the last few days, that risk appears to be becoming more serious.
The centre of the danger is in the Red Sea, where Houthi forces based in Yemen and backed by Iran have been attacking freighters with real or perceived links to Israel. The US has offered protection to shipping travelling through the region, assembling a multinational naval coalition “to uphold the foundational principle of freedom of navigation”. But President Biden has said he wants to avoid direct military confrontation with the Houthis for fear of triggering an escalation.
Japan | Japan’s prime minister has said the country is facing a “battle against time” to rescue those affected by a series of major earthquakes which reportedly killed at least 30 people. With aftershocks expected over the next few days, residents of coastal areas were being told not to return to their homes.
Ofsted | Ofsted inspections will be halted until assessors have been properly trained in protecting the wellbeing of school staff, the watchdog’s new chief has announced, after the suicide of headteacher Ruth Perry.
Israel | Israel’s supreme court has overturned a law at the heart of Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial judicial overhaul project, potentially plunging the country into political crisis as it fights in Gaza. The judges ruled on Monday by a slim majority of eight to seven to throw out a law that curtailed the court’s own powers, saying it would severely damage Israel’s democracy.
NHS | NHS bosses fear patient safety could be compromised during this week’s junior doctors strikes if medics do not honour an agreement to abandon picket lines if hospitals become overwhelmed during the winter crisis. The NHS Confederation warning comes ahead of a six-day strike due to start on Wednesday.
Hong Kong | The media tycoon and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai has pleaded not guilty to all charges at his national security trial. Lai and his Apple Daily newspaper were key supporters of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, which saw mass protests across the city in 2019. He could face life imprisonment if convicted.
Continue reading...This blog has now closed. You can read our full report on the latest developments here and read all our Israel-Gaza war coverage here
At the Vatican, Pope Francis recalled 2023 as a year marked by wartime suffering.
During his traditional Sunday blessing from a window overlooking St Peter’s Square, he offered prayers for “the tormented Ukrainian people and the Palestinian and Israeli populations, the Sudanese people and many others”.
At the end of the year, we will have the courage to ask ourselves how many human lives have been shattered by armed conflict, how many dead and how much destruction, how much suffering, how much poverty?
Continue reading...Official says intense new phase of war to last at least six more months as country also prepares for Lebanon conflict
Israel is withdrawing some troops from Gaza but preparing for an intense campaign to continue there for “six months at least” as well as expanding preparations for a Lebanon war, a senior official has said.
There is growing international pressure to curb an offensive that has so far killed nearly 22,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children. Even Israel’s staunchest ally, the US, which rejects calls for a ceasefire, has started pushing the government to scale back the ferocity of its attacks.
Continue reading...Heavy bombing continues, while Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel has shown unparalleled ‘morality’ in its conduct in Gaza
At least 100 people have been killed in Gaza in the past 24 hours, as the three-month-old conflict between Israel and Hamas rolls into the new year with no end in sight and only tentative Israeli government plans for discussing the day after the war is over.
The Hamas-run territory’s health authority said about 48 people were killed overnight on Sunday in heavy Israeli bombing of Gaza City, where pockets of fierce fighting are ongoing despite claims by the Israel Defense Forces that the north of the blockaded exclave is largely under Israeli operational control.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed
US Navy helicopters sank three of four small boats used by Iranian-backed Houthi militants to attack a merchant vessel in the southern Red Sea on Sunday, US central command wrote on X.
Responding to distress calls from the Maersk Hangzhou, helicopters from the USS Eisenhower and USS Gravely were said to have returned fire on the Houthi boats in self-defence and sank three of the vessels with no survivors.
Continue reading...IDF bombs urban refugee camps, UN agency warns of famine risk and skirmishes on Lebanon border intensify
Israeli planes bombed refugee camps in Gaza on Saturday as its troops expanded ground operations and tens of thousands of Palestinians fled their homes, setting the stage for a new year as bloody and destructive as the last three months of 2023.
The threat of wider escalation also looms large over the region, as skirmishes on the northern boundary with Lebanon intensify, and Israeli officials have hinted that the “diplomatic hourglass” is running out to reach a negotiated solution.
Continue reading...Russia’s pro-Palestinian stance has inflamed tensions and underscored shift in relations since invasion of Ukraine
When Vladimir Putin spoke by telephone this month to Benjamin Netanyahu, their first conversation in weeks, the two leaders found themselves in an unusual dynamic, engaging not as partners but against the backdrop of historic tensions.
Once touting their friendly relationship – Netanyahu has used billboards showing himself next to Putin during election campaigning in Israel, even last year – the events of 7 October and Russia’s pro-Palestinian stance in the aftermath have brought a decisive schism in their ties.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed
A total of 21,672 Palestinians have been killed and 56,165 have been wounded in Israeli strikes in Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in Gaza said on Saturday.
The figures include 165 Palestinians killed and 250 injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.
We continue to have restrictions to access areas in the Gaza Strip where we should access on a regular basis, like the north of the Gaza Strip.
There’s very, very little commercial supplies coming into Gaza and there’s no market, so more and more people are depending by the day, by the hour, on organisations like UNRWA.
At least 1.4 million people are now living in UNRWA facilities – that is what used to be mainly schools that the agency ran until the war began.
Many are now living anywhere they can find – on the street, with friends crammed in apartments – 70 people in one apartment, and those who can afford it are renting rooms.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed. See all our Israel-Gaza war coverage here
Continue reading...UN says about 100,000 people have arrived in Rafah after intense attacks on Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis
• Israel-Gaza war – live updates
A delegation of high-level Hamas leaders is visiting Egypt for talks aimed at bringing the devastating war in Gaza to an end, even as the Israeli military pushes deeper into the centre and south of the strip, displacing tens of thousands of people.
The UN’s humanitarian office said on Friday that over the past few days an estimated 100,000 people had arrived in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost town on the border with Egypt, after an intense new ground and aerial offensive around the central town of Deir al-Balah and airstrikes on the southern town of Khan Younis.
Continue reading...This blog is now closed.
In a statement, Israel’s military says it has been operating “in the heart of Daraj Tuffah” in Gaza City in the north of the territory.
It claims “after RPG missiles were fired from inside a building toward an IDF vehicle, IDF ground troops destroyed terrorist infrastructure located inside the building. Additionally, an anti-tank missile launch site where terrorist operatives were located was struck by the IAF with the direction of IDF ground forces, Over the last two days, IDF troops conducted operational activity in the Daraj Tuffah area and eliminated terrorists in both ground and aerial strikes.”
Continue reading...Head of psychiatry at Tel Aviv medical centre says hostages have undergone worst abuse she has witnessed
Many of the hostages released from detention in Gaza by Hamas in November still require intensive treatment for the trauma from their weeks in captivity, a leading Israeli psychiatrist has said.
Renana Eitan, the head of psychiatry at the Ichilov Tel Aviv medical centre, said the hostages had undergone the worst abuse and trauma she had witnessed in her career.
Continue reading...