The Gaza health ministry has issued a 212-page document with lists of names and identification numbers for 7,028 Palestinians that the Hamas authorities, which control Gaza, state have been killed by Israel’s bombardments there since 7 October.
This news has come in a swift snap report from the Reuters agency and we’ll bring you more detail as soon as it emerges.
Joe Biden triggered a row yesterday when, during an unrelated press conference at the White House, he called into question the Palestinian civilian death toll in Gaza being reported by the authorities there. The US president said he had “no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed”.
That sparked fierce debate but, as the Guardian’s Chris McGreal writes in a piece today, some important bodies say that the Gaza ministry has a track record of reliable casualty figures, which have been indirectly drawn on in the past by the US state department.
And Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said he saw no evidence that the current numbers were being manipulated.
You can read McGreal’s article here.
A senior Hamas delegation has travelled to Moscow to meet Russian foreign ministry officials in the organisation’s first high-profile international visit since it launched a raid in southern Israel on 7 October, killing an estimated 1,400 people and taking another 220 hostage.
The delegation was led by Mousa Abu Marzook, a founder and political leader of Hamas, who met the Russian deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Bogdanov. Marzook, who lives in exile in Qatar, travelled to Moscow after an earlier meeting in Doha with Bogdanov and the Iranian deputy foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani.
The delegation was confirmed by representatives of Hamas and by Russia, and a photo showed the three men meeting at the Russian foreign ministry in Moscow.
“Abu Marzook, a member of the political bureau of the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, is in Moscow,” said the Russian foreign ministry in a statement.
Contact with him took place in pursuit for the immediate release of foreign hostages held in the Gaza Strip, and issues related to ensuring the evacuation of Russian and other foreign citizens from the territory of the Palestinian enclave were discussed.
Earlier this month, Bogdanov had said he wanted to meet Hamas representatives in Qatar in order to discuss the release of Israeli hostages. At least six of the 220 hostages held by Hamas have Russian citizenship, according to the Israeli government.
The Palestinian representative to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, addressed an emergency special session at the UN’s general assembly on the Israel-Palestine crisis.
“We are meeting here while Palestinians in Gaza are under the bombs,” he said. He told of families being killed, hospitals coming to a halt, neighbourhoods being destroyed, and civilians “fleeing from one place to another with no safe place to go.”
“There is no time to mourn,” he told the assembly, pointing to the rising death toll in Gaza.
If you do not stop it for all those who have been killed, stop it for all those who can be saved.
Mansour, recalling Israel’s recent comments in the UN’s security council about how its people are suffering, said Palestinians are suffering too.
How can representatives of states explain how horrible it is that 1,000 Israelis were killed, and not feel the same outrage when 1,000 Palestinians are now killed every single day? Why not feel a sense of urgency to end their killing?
The UN’s humanitarian chief said aid is “barely trickling” into Gaza despite the agency’s “best efforts”.
In a statement posted to social media, Martin Griffiths said bombardments on Gaza “are getting worse, even in areas supposed to be safer”.
The world itself is failing to meet the bare entitlements of a part of humanity.
The rules of war are clear: Civilians must be protected and have the essentials to survive, wherever they are and whether they choose to move or stay.
Palestinian families in Gaza are running out of food as bakeries run out of fuel amid Israel’s blockade of the territory, ActionAid has warned.
The international charity accused Israel of using starvation as “a weapon of war” with bakeries “a target of indiscriminate bombing”. It said it was particularly concerned about the impact of food and water shortages on women and newborns.
ActionAid quoted a Gaza resident currently at a UN shelter saying:
The situation in the Gaza Strip is very, very bad. People have been killed, may God have mercy on them, but the rest will die because of hunger. There is no food in the supermarket, no tinned food, no food. Regarding bread, we have to wait in line. We go at six in the morning and wait until the afternoon to get it. This is if you even manage to get some bread, of course.
The situation in Gaza “is nothing short of a complete catastrophe,” ActionAid Palestine’s coordinator of advocay and communication, Riham Jafari, said.
With over 2 million people in urgent need of food, it is completely barbaric to see bakeries under bombardment as civilians line up every day to get food for their families. Those who survive the bombings may die from starvation instead.
She added:
Food is a basic human right, not a weapon of war. We should be clear: indiscriminate attacks on bakeries, hospitals, and schools’ amount to a gross violation of International Humanitarian Law.
An Al Jazeera correspondent has held a funeral for his wife, son, daughter and grandson who the Qatar-based network said were killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Wael al-Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza, had fled with his family to the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza after Israel warned those in the northern half of the territory to leave immediately.
Twenty-one other people were killed in the same airstrike, according to Palestinian health officials. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strike, according to Reuters.
It was an extraordinary moment when an 85-year-old hostage shook the hand of her Hamas captor and said one word: “Shalom”.
Yocheved Lifshitz, who was released by Hamas after 16 days in captivity, is now focused on trying to secure the release of other hostages. And her daughter, Sharone Lifschitz, has revealed that the captor was reportedly a paramedic with whom her mother had discussed peace.
Sharone said her mother had been comforting the relatives of other captives while she received medical treatment in Tel Aviv.
She said she was “immensely proud” of Yocheved, a retired teacher who has emerged from her ordeal several kilos lighter but with a determination to bring some hope to the families of the remaining hostages.
Sharone, a London-based artist and academic, said:
It’s really hard to explain that we are still in this. As my mum says, her body is here but her heart is back there with the rest of the hostages.
Yocheved and her husband, Oded, 83, who have been married for 63 years and are peace and human rights activists, were kidnapped by Hamas gunmen from the Nir Oz kibbutz in southern Israel on 7 October.
Yocheved had told her daughter that she became separated from Oded after witnessing him being shot in the hand. Yocheved was tied to a motorcycle and driven to Gaza, while Oded, a veteran journalist, remains missing.
The US government has reiterated its lack of trust in figures released by Hamas of the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza by Israeli bombardment.
This follows Joe Biden voicing skepticism in death toll figures issued by the ministry of health in Gaza, the blockaded Palestinian territory that is controlled by Hamas.
The US president’s assertion at the White House yesterday prompted a row.
Now the US State Department has said Washington knows a significant number of people have died in Gaza but does not have independent confirmation of numbers, adding that it does not trust the figures released from Hamas, Reuters reports.
The State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller added that the US had seen Russia play no productive role at all in the Middle East crisis.
A delegation from Hamas visited Moscow on Thursday for talks on the release of foreign hostages including Russian citizens that the militant group is currently holding in Gaza.
Here’s one US journalist’s take on that last point:
It’s around 9pm in Tel Aviv and Gaza City. We’ll continue to bring you the news from the Israel-Hamas war as it develops.
Here’s where the day stands:
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The Gaza health ministry has issued a 212-page document with lists of names and identification numbers for 7,028 Palestinians that the Hamas authorities, which control Gaza, state have been killed by Israel’s bombardments there since 7 October.
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The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it has killed the deputy head of Hamas’s intelligence directorate, Shadi Barud, in a strike in the Gaza Strip.
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Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, has said “almost 50” hostages held in the Gaza Strip have been killed due to Israeli strikes.
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Fifty-four Thai nationals are among the more than 200 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, according to new figures released by the Israeli government.
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A joint statement signed by the foreign ministers of nine Arab countries has condemned what it described as the targeting of civilians and violations of international law in Gaza.
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Israeli infantry backed by tanks and armoured bulldozers have attacked Hamas targets in an hours-long overnight ground raid into the northern Gaza Strip. The military said the operation was “preparation for the next stages of combat” and that “the soldiers have since exited the area and returned to Israeli territory”.
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A report by local radio described the raid as a “relatively large” ground incursion, suggesting it was the biggest foray since Israel started massing forces outside the territory in advance of a planned full-scale invasion.
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The confirmed number of people held hostage in the Gaza Strip since the 7 October cross-border raids by Hamas has risen by two to 224, according to the Israeli military. So far, four hostages have been released.
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At least 7,028 Palestinians have been killed, including 2,913 children, in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza said on Thursday.
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Rishi Sunak has said that UK border force teams are “pre-positioned” in Egypt to assist British citizens trying to leave Gaza.
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The EU is set to call for “humanitarian corridors and pauses” of the shelling in Gaza to allow food, water and medical supplies to reach Palestinians, according to its latest draft text.
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The UN relief and works agency for Palestinian people has said that it expects its fuel supply to run out today. The agency has been sharing its supplies in order to allow trucks to distribute aid, bakeries to feed people in shelters, water to be desalinated, and so that hospitals can keep incubators, life support machines and other vital equipment running.
Stay tuned for further updates.
The US and Qatar have agreed to revisit the Gulf country’s ties to Hamas – after the hostage crisis in Gaza is resolved, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing four diplomats familiar with the discussions, Reuters writes.
The Post reports:
The agreement, which has not been reported previously, was forged during a recent meeting in Doha between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. Still undecided is whether the reevaluation will entail an exodus of Hamas leaders from Qatar, where they have long maintained a political office in the capital, or steps that come short of that, these officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
The agreement is an attempt to balance the Biden administration’s short-term goal of rescuing as many hostages as possible with its long-term objective of trying to isolate Hamas following its Oct. 7 rampage in Israel.
Qatar, a tiny gas-rich peninsula in the Persian Gulf, has been instrumental in helping the United States and Israel secure the release of hostages and communicating with Hamas on other pressing issues, including the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza and the safe passage of Palestinian-Americans out of the besieged enclave.
But its decision to provide harbor to Hamas’s political leaders and host an office for their operations, dating back more than a decade, has come under scrutiny by Republicans in Congress and other pro-Israel hard-liners.
The whole Post report is here.
In this time of war, the health ministry in Gaza has been given its own health warning.
Joe Biden has questioned the reliability of its reporting of the number of people killed and wounded during the Israeli assault on Gaza – because the health ministry is run by Hamas.
“I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war.” the US president said. “But I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”
On Thursday, the ministry said the Israeli bombing of Gaza had killed 7,028 Palestinians, including 2,913 children, in the nearly three weeks since Hamas killed about 1,400 Israelis and abducted more than 200 others in its cross-border attack.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations called on Biden to apologise for his “shocking and dehumanising” remarks.
[But] Luke Baker, a former Reuters bureau chief in Jerusalem, is among those calling on news organisations to show scepticism….
…Others say the ministry has a track record of reliable casualty figures and that it has fallen victim to the propaganda war as Israel seeks to minimise the consequences of its hundreds of bombing raids on Gaza.
In the past, the US state department’s annual human rights report indirectly relied on the same ministry’s casualty figures in quoting UN statistics drawn from Palestinian data.
Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said he saw no evidence that the numbers were being manipulated.
Full report here.
The Gaza health ministry has issued a 212-page document with lists of names and identification numbers for 7,028 Palestinians that the Hamas authorities, which control Gaza, state have been killed by Israel’s bombardments there since 7 October.
This news has come in a swift snap report from the Reuters agency and we’ll bring you more detail as soon as it emerges.
Joe Biden triggered a row yesterday when, during an unrelated press conference at the White House, he called into question the Palestinian civilian death toll in Gaza being reported by the authorities there. The US president said he had “no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed”.
That sparked fierce debate but, as the Guardian’s Chris McGreal writes in a piece today, some important bodies say that the Gaza ministry has a track record of reliable casualty figures, which have been indirectly drawn on in the past by the US state department.
And Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said he saw no evidence that the current numbers were being manipulated.
You can read McGreal’s article here.
Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, warned at the United Nations this morning that if Israel’s retaliation against Hamas militants in Gaza did not end then the US would “not be spared from this fire”, Reuters reports from New York.
The minister also indicated that Iran was prepared to become involved in any negotiations over hostages held by Hamas since militants attacked southern Israel on 7 October and demands from Hamas for the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
While seeking to destroy Hamas, Israeli airstrikes are killing many thousands of Palestinian civilians and the blockade of Gaza by Israel has led to an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis inside the besieged territory with shortages of water, food, medical supplies and fuel at dire levels.
Reuters writes from the UN HQ in Manhattan about Iran’s words to Israel’s close ally, the US:
I say frankly to the American statesmen, who are now managing the genocide in Palestine, that we do not welcome [an] expansion of the war in the region. But if the genocide in Gaza continues, they will not be spared from this fire,” Amirabdollahian told an emergency meeting of the 193-member General Assembly on the Middle East.
Israel is preparing a ground invasion and Palestinian authorities say more than 7,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas has told Iran [one of its international backers] that it was ready to release civilian hostages, adding that the world should push for the release of 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, Amirabdollahian said.
The Islamic Republic of Iran stands ready to play its part in this very important humanitarian endeavor, along with Qatar and Turkey. Naturally, the release of the 6,000 Palestinian prisoners is another necessity and responsibility of the global community,” he said.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said three of its schools had sustained “collateral damage” due to nearby strikes in Gaza in the past 24 hours.
One person was killed in one of the schools, and a further 15 suffered minor injuries in another, the agency said in its latest update.
Fuel continues to be “urgently needed” in order to maintain the agency’s key humanitarian operations, it said.
Current stocks are almost completely exhausted, forcing life-saving services to come to a halt.
Another UNRWA staff member has been killed, bringing the total to 39 staff killed since 7 October, it said.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it has killed the deputy head of Hamas’s intelligence directorate, Shadi Barud, in a strike in the Gaza Strip on Thursday.
The IDF accused Barud of planning the 7 October Hamas attacks in southern Israel with its current leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar.
Relatives of British or dual nationals trapped in Gaza have expressed their outrage at the government for the delays in getting help to their family members, as No 10 said about 200 had registered with UK authorities to say they were in the Palestinian territory.
A team of Border Force officials has been sent to Egypt to try to help them leave Gaza while their families in the UK have called for faster action from the prime minister.
The 200 figure was only those who had made their presence known, Rishi Sunak’s official spokesperson said, adding that the government did not have an estimate for the total number of UK nationals who may be in Gaza. The spokesperson said:
We obviously want to ensure that those British nationals that do want to leave can get out of Gaza. That’s something that we’ve been working on intensely over the past few days.
In terms of whether all of the numbers that are registered want to leave, I can’t be definitive. But clearly, we are working to enable crossings to be able to open so that people can leave should they wish.
That assistance involved speaking to the Israeli and Egyptian governments, as well as “to regional leaders who have influence in Gaza”, they added.
Answering media questions after a speech in London, Sunak said the Border Force officials had been sent to Egypt in the hope that a pause in fighting would allow the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza to be opened, enabling people to leave.
Israel has allowed a small amount of aid to get through the crossing in recent days, but has not opened it to people leaving Gaza into north-east Egypt.
Abu Obeida, a spokesperson for Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, has said “almost 50” hostages held in the Gaza Strip have been killed due to Israeli strikes.
The Guardian was not able to independently verify this figure.
Maxar Technologies has released some satellite imagery which shows the scale of the damage done to infrastructure across the Gaza Strip by Israel’s aerial bombardment of the territory.
These before an after images show the al-Karama district in Gaza City:
These before and after images show Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza, which is one of the worst impacted areas by Israel’s airstrikes.
This is another part of Beit Hanoun:
In al-Zahra, which is slightly south of Gaza City, buildings and other structures can be see flattened, with piles of debris remaining:
Israel-Hamas war: more than 7,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli bombardments, Gaza authorities say - The Guardian
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