April 9, 2024 - Israel-Hamas war

The families of American-Israeli hostages in Gaza met with US National Security adviser Jake Sullivan on Monday in Washington to press for their immediate release, according to the Hostages Families Forum Headquarters.

The forum says at least eight American-Israelis were taken hostage by Hamas. Five of them are still thought to be held alive in Gaza. Another, 19-year-old Itay Chen, was confirmed dead by the Israel Defense Forces last month. 

The families shared their concerns with Sullivan that their loved ones will be next if negotiations continue to drag out, according to the forum, and told Sullivan that all hostages, “both the living and the murdered,” must be brought home immediately.

The National Security Council has not commented on the meeting, but according to the forum, Sullivan told attendees that the Biden administration is doing all it can to advance a deal that the US, Israel, Qatar, and Egypt have agreed to. CIA Director Bill Burns traveled to Cairo over the weekend where he presented a new proposal to try and help broker a deal between Israel and Hamas and bridge the gap between the two sides.

Vice President Kamala Harris is planning to meet with the families this afternoon, the second such meeting since Hamas' deadly attack on Israel on October 7 last year, according to an advisory from her office. The meeting is closed to the press.

Jihad Abu Watfa was standing in the rubble along a dark stretch of coastal road southwest of Gaza City when he saw Israeli military tanks approaching. He began recording on his phone just as a heavy barrage of gunfire flashed before his eyes.

“We are now under siege, a tank is beside us and it’s shelling,” Abu Watfa could be heard saying in the video, which he shared with CNN.

The 27-year-old was surrounded by hundreds of other Palestinians who had gathered for an aid delivery on February 29 when Israeli soldiers accompanying the humanitarian convoy opened fire. More than 100 people were killed and 700 injured, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The tragedy, which has become known among Palestinians as the “Flour Massacre,” is one of the single deadliest mass casualty events to take place in Gaza since Israel launched its assault on the strip following Hamas’ October 7 terror attack. It came after more than a month of Israel denying aid into Gaza City and northern Gaza and followed what the United Nations has called “a pattern of Israeli attacks” on civilians desperately seeking food, amid unprecedented levels of starvation.

CNN collected testimonies and videos from 22 eyewitnesses, many of whom had traveled from other cities across Gaza in the hopes of finding something for their families to eat.

Read more of CNN's analysis of what happened the night a Gaza aid delivery in February turned deadly.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that “no force in the world” will stop Israeli troops from entering Rafah in southern Gaza to eliminate Hamas units said to be there.

Speaking at a recruitment event at a military base, Netanyahu said: "We will complete the elimination of the Hamas battalions, including in Rafah. There is no force in the world that will stop us."

“Many forces are trying to do this, but it will not help, because this enemy, after what it has done, will not do it again, it will cease to exist,” Netanyahu added.

Earlier this week, Netanyahu said that a date had been set for the Rafah operation, but did not specify when it would begin. 

Netanyahu also told the event: “We have three goals: one, to return the abductees. All the observers, and not only them, all together. We'll get them all back. The second goal —eliminate Hamas. The third goal — to ensure that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.”

Netanyahu went on: “There is a fourth goal — Hamas is part of Iran's evil axis that aims to destroy us. When we defeat Hamas, it's not just defeating Hamas — it's defeating the Axis.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) killed the mayor of the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in a strike in central Gaza on Monday, the IDF and Hamas both said.

Hamas called it “a cowardly assassination of the mayor of Al-Maghazi, Mr. Hatem Saleh Al-Ghamri,” saying Israeli “warplanes directly and without warning bombed the building of the Joint Services Council of the central governorate’s municipalities.” 

Hamas said the strike was “a war crime contrary to international laws that grant immunity and protection to civilian figures.” 

The IDF said its fighter jet struck and “eliminated the terrorist,” characterizing Al-Ghamri as a “Hamas military wing operative in the field of projectile launches within the Maghazi Battalion of the Central Camps.”

Some background: The Al-Maghazi refugee camp is located in the central part of the coastal enclave south of Wadi Gaza, the waterway that divides north from south Gaza.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the camp is filled with narrow alleys, where 33,000 people lived before the conflict, in a relatively densely packed area no more than 0.6 square kilometers (about 0.2 square miles).

CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq and Kathleen Magramo contributed reporting to this post.

Vice President Kamala Harris will meet Tuesday with US families whose loved ones were taken hostage by Hamas amid ongoing negotiations for the release of remaining hostages and a ceasefire in Israel's war in Gaza.

Harris will meet with them in the afternoon, the second such meeting since Hamas' deadly attack on Israel on October 7 last year, according to an advisory from her office. The meeting is closed to the press. 

Her meeting comes after US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with the families on Monday evening.  

CIA Director Bill Burns traveled to Cairo over the weekend where he presented a new proposal to try and help broker a deal between Israel and Hamas and bridge the gap between the two sides.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, said that several UN agencies are assisting in the efforts to retrieve bodies in and around Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza.

Tedros said in a post on X Tuesday, that WHO, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and others were supporting Gaza’s Health Ministry “in organising dignified burials for the unidentified bodies on Al-Shifa Hospital premises.”

“This war is a moral failure of humanity,” Tedros added.

A video accompanying his post showed UN and Palestinian workers retrieving bodies from mounds of sand in the area of Al-Shifa.

CNN reported earlier today that the Gaza Civil Defense organization said that nearly 400 bodies have been recovered from around Al-Shifa hospital, following the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the area last week.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that for the first time, the maritime air defense system known as "C-Dome" has intercepted a drone.

The IDF said Tuesday that overnight, a Sa'ar 6-class corvette missile ship “successfully intercepted a UAV that had approached from the east and had crossed into the area of the Gulf of Eilat” in the northern Red Sea.

Houthi rebels in Yemen said last month that they had fired 32 drones towards Israel in support of Hamas. 

French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne has suggested that imposing EU sanctions could be a way to pressure Israel into opening Gaza border crossings for humanitarian aid. 

“France was the first country to propose European Union sanctions on violent [Israeli] settlers in the West Bank. We will continue if needed to obtain the opening up of humanitarian aid,” Sejourne added.

The minister said that 300 trucks of aid, at a minimum, need to enter Gaza daily.

Israel has responded to Turkey's decision to ban exports of military-related products, accusing Ankara of breaching a trade agreement.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is "once again sacrificing the economic interests of the people of Turkey for his support of Hamas," adding that Israel will "respond accordingly." 

In response, Katz said he:

Some context: Turkey announced new restrictions on exports to Israel on Tuesday after Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan accused Israel of denying a request to airdrop aid to Gaza.