October 10, 2023 - Israel-Hamas war news

The parents of 23-year-old American Hersh Goldberg-Polin are holding on to hope for their wounded son who was at the Nova music festival in Israel Saturday when Hamas attacked and began taking hostages.

Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin told CNN that they last heard from their son Saturday morning, receiving two WhatsApp messages in the same minute, “I love you." and "I’m sorry.”

Goldberg immediately tried to call him, and said, “it just rang and rang.” 

She sent follow-up messages.

They say the police told them around 12:45 p.m. local time Saturday afternoon that their son's phone signal was on the Gaza border.

Since then, they said they are learning more about their son’s heroism. A firsthand account from a young woman who was in the bunker with Goldberg-Polin when Hamas attacked said he helped to throw grenades out of a bunker before getting his arm blown off from the elbow down.

He was physically wounded with a severe injury and shell-shocked, not really understanding what was happening, the parents added.

The young woman told the parents that Goldberg-Polin "stood up, didn’t lose consciousness — he was very calm, he was not screaming and he walked out with his tourniquet-ed arm,” the Goldberg explained.

The parents urged the US government and other leaders to rescue and treat their son and other hostages. The family was born in the US but made Aliyah and moved to Israel in 2008. One of Israel’s foundational laws is the right of any Jew in the world to make “aliyah” and immigrate to Israel. The family still has American citizenship. 

The imposition of sieges that endanger civilians by depriving them of essential goods “is prohibited under international humanitarian law,” Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR), said Tuesday.  

Shamdasani's comments come a day after Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant ordered a "complete siege" of Gaza, saying he would halt the supply of electricity, food, water and fuel to the Palestinian enclave following Hamas' devastating surprise attack over the weekend.

Laerke said Tuesday the decision to cut off the water supply to Gaza affects more than 610,000 people and "will result in severe shortage of drinking water."

“We remain extremely alarmed by these rapidly escalating events,” said Laerke, adding that displacement across the Gaza Strip has reached more than 187,500 people since Saturday.  

More than 1,000 people were killed in an attack by Hamas on Israel over the weekend, according to the Israeli Embassy in the US.

The death toll now stands at 1,008, with at least 3,418 injured, the embassy said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

The Israel Defense Forces has said it "cannot confirm or deny" these reports from the embassy. An IDF spokesperson told CNN that it is aware of over 900 deaths.

Israeli jets have struck more than 100 “targets” in the Al-Furqan area in Gaza on Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement. 

Over the past day, the IDF has struck over 250 targets in the area, it added. 

The defense forces said it also struck in the Rafah area, including an underground tunnel used for "smuggling weapons and equipment."

The only border crossing between the Gaza strip and Egypt was struck on Tuesday, the spokesperson for the Palestinian Interior Ministry Eyad al-Bozom said Tuesday. 

Israeli warplanes struck the gateway and teams working at the crossing were asked to evacuate “immediately due to threats of strikes of the crossing,” al-Bozom said Tuesday. 

The order came from the management of the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian side, Bozom said.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) did not say that the border crossing was struck but said that an underground tunnel for smuggling weapons and equipment was struck in the Rafah area. It’s unclear where exactly the strike occurred.

The Rafah crossing was working normally on Tuesday, according to the Palestinian Border Crossing General Authority, adding that 75 names had been cleared for passage on Wednesday.

About the Gaza border crossings: The tightly controlled Rafah crossing with Egypt is the only crossing available to Gazans looking to flee following Hamas' attack on Israel. All crossings out of the territory are shut.

The IDF has urged civilians in Gaza to leave their residential areas immediately for their safety as Israeli military operations continue to target Hamas, and shut all crossings between Israel and Gaza, potentially setting the stage for a ground incursion into the enclave.

US President Joe Biden is expected to speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, an administration official says.

The anticipated call would mark the third call between the two leaders since Hamas launched its attacks on Israel on Saturday and would come as the president is set to speak about the “terrorist attacks” Tuesday afternoon.

Netanyahu has been in “continuous contact with President Biden” as the crisis has unfolded, the Israeli prime minister said Monday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made his first comments on the conflict in Israeli, framing it as a “clear example” of the failure of the US policy.

"We see a sharp escalation of the situation in the Middle East. I think that many will agree with me that this is a clear example of the failure of the United States policy in the Middle East, which tried to monopolize any settlement (between the Israelis and the Palestinians)," Putin said at the Kremlin on Tuesday.

Putin went on to criticize the US approach for not prioritizing compromises acceptable to both sides, emphasizing that it often involved imposing ideas and pressure without considering the fundamental interests of the Palestinian people. 

“Unfortunately, they (the US administration) were not concerned with finding compromises acceptable to both sides, but on the contrary, (they were) putting forward their own ideas about how this should be done, putting pressure on both sides,” Putin said.

“Without taking into account the fundamental interests of the Palestinian people. I mean, first of all, the need to implement the decision of the UN Security Council on the creation of an independent sovereign Palestinian state,” he added.

Putin also emphasized the need to minimize damage to the civilian population and called on all conflicting parties to prioritize this goal.

Two foreign workers were killed and another seriously injured in a rocket attack Tuesday in the Eshkol region in southern Israel, according to United Hatzalah, a volunteer Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) group. 

The nationalities of the foreign workers are not immediately clear.

A Hamas spokesperson on Tuesday issued a warning to the residents of the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon to leave the city before 5 p.m. local time.

The warning is in response to the “crime of displacing our people and forcing them to flee their homes” in the Gaza strip, the spokesperson said.

No further details were provided in the statement, which was shared by Hamas on Telegram.