October 29, 2023 Israel-Hamas war news

The Israel Defense Forces have told civilians in Gaza to leave the northern part of the enclave, as it continues to strike what it says are Hamas targets in the north. But many of the people who followed that evacuation order are finding it impossible to find a safe place to stay.

Hala Bin Naeem is from Beit Hanoun, a city in the northeastern corner of the Gaza Strip. She and her family fled their home when Hamas launched its attacks on Israel on October 7, and have been sheltering in the Deir al-Balah refugee camp.

The camp lies south of Wadi Gaza, within the area that the IDF instructed people to evacuate to. But they couldn’t escape the danger. Bin Naeem said two of her sisters-in-law were killed in a strike on October 11. Her niece and sister were wounded.

Eyewitnesses have told CNN that the area of Deir al-Balah was bombed Friday night, alongside other locations in central Gaza.

“We also went to the schools, and the situation has become dangerous, and it becomes more dangerous day in, day out. We are really very frightened and are subjected to a lot of danger. So I hope the war ends and we live normal life and we win victory. That’s it,” Bin Naeem said.

The situation at the camp is dire, the 13-year-old said.

On the ground: Fighting continues during Israel's expanded ground operations in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli soldiers killed and wounded several “terrorists” Sunday who emerged from a tunnel near the Erez crossing in northern Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces said Sunday.

Meanwhile Israeli aircraft, with support from ground troops, struck what the IDF described as “two staging grounds” and killed several “terrorists.”

CNN's Ivana Kottasová and Pierre Meilhan contributed reporting to this post.

Israel has "crossed the red lines" in Gaza, which "may force everyone to take action," Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi said Sunday, while US national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned of an "elevated risk" of a spillover conflict in the Middle East.

Experts say that while Iran is wary of being dragged into the Israel-Hamas war, it may not be in full control if the militias it backs in the region — like the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah — independently intervene as Hamas suffers heavy blows and the death toll in Gaza continues to mount.

“What connects all these groups to Iran is their anti-Israel policies,” said Sima Shine, head of the Iran program at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, noting that while Iran has varying levels of influence over the groups, it doesn’t dictate all their actions.

Raisi's comments were not the first warning from an Iranian official of the potential for a broader conflict.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has also warned that Israel’s bombardment of Gaza could have far-reaching consequences, saying that if Israel does not halt its airstrikes, “it is highly probable that many other fronts will be opened.”

“This option is not ruled out and this is becoming increasingly more probable,” he told Al Jazeera in a recent interview.

Last Monday, Abdollahian said the US has sent Iran two messages regarding escalation in the region.

“The first message said that the United States is not interested in expanding the war, and the second message asked Iran to have self-restraint and insisted that Iran should also ask other countries and other sides to have self-restraint,” Abdollahian said during a news conference in Tehran, without saying how and when the messages were delivered.

He added that while the US says it wants to de-escalate, it has contradicted itself by continuing to support Israel.

Trita Parsi, vice president of the Quincy Institute in Washington, DC, said there is no appetite or desire from either Iran, the US or Israel for a wider war, but that Washington’s failure to restrain Israel may inadvertently drive the region toward escalation.

US President Joe Biden has pledged continued support for Israel, which has hardened Arab sentiment across the region and translated to mass protests against Israeli and American policies.

“The only actor that has a clear interest in (a wider conflict) is Hamas, given that an enlargement of the war could change the dynamics in a favorable way for them,” Parsi said. In the absence of US efforts to rein in Israel, “many (regional) actors are going to feel compelled to step in… because of their own strategic calculations.”

“When Israel is mobilizing 300,000 (troops), it is not likely that Hezbollah is going to sit there and assume that this is done only to go after Hamas,” he said, adding that it will factor in the risk of Israel going after the Lebanese group as well.

Read more on Iran's role in the region.

Médecins Sans Frontières — also known as Doctors Without Borders — has sent 26 tons of medical supplies on a World Health Organization plane to Egypt to support the emergency medical response in Gaza, it said in a statement on Sunday. 

The supply transfer will be coordinated with the Egyptian Red Crescent. Doctors Without Borders said the medical supplies can cover the needs for 800 surgical interventions and are destined for healthcare facilities in Gaza in collaboration with local health authorities.

Israeli airstrikes have “caused extensive damage to hospital departments and exposed residents and patients to suffocation” at the Al-Quds Hospital, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Sunday.

The aid organization accused Israel of “deliberately” launching the airstrikes “directly next to Al-Quds Hospital, with the aim of forcing the medical staff, displaced people, and patients to evacuate the hospital.”

Videos from the Palestinian Red Crescent show dust clouding up hallways in the hospital, with some people trying to put on face masks. Other video obtained by CNN appears to show the aftermath of a strike, with a cloud of dust rising next to the hospital.

The director of Al-Quds Hospital, Dr. Bashar Mourad, told CNN the vicinity of the hospital had been targeted three times by Israeli airstrikes Sunday as of 4:45 p.m. local time (10:45 a.m. ET).

CNN has asked the Israel Defense Forces about the aid organization's reports that the Al-Quds Hospital was specifically targeted by airstrikes.

Some background: Al-Quds Hospital is treating hundreds of patients, including wounded people, patients in intensive care and children in incubators, the Palestinian Red Crescent said. In addition, approximately 12,000 internally displaced civilians are currently sheltering at the hospital.

The hospital is located in the Tal Al Hawa neighborhood in Gaza City, north of Wadi Gaza — the line south of which Israel has urged people in Gaza to flee. 

Earlier Sunday, the Palestinian Red Crescent had said it received a warning to immediately evacuate the hospital. The World Health Organization has said the order is impossible without endangering the lives of patients.

In response to questions about the evacuation warning and medical workers' response, Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Maj. Nir Dinar told CNN, "They received much more than two (warnings) for the last three weeks." 

The United Nations World Food Programme said some of its aid supplies were looted in Gaza and warned of "growing hunger and desperation" in a news release Sunday.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East said earlier Sunday that "thousands" of people had broken into some of its warehouses and distribution centers in the central and southern areas of the strip, "taking wheat flour and other basic survival items like hygiene supplies."   

The food program said one of the warehouses was storing some of its food commodities, and supplies from humanitarian deliveries through Egypt.

The food program pointed to the "harrowing 24-hour communication blackout" and "persistent access challenges" that brought all of its operations to a halt as a result of Israel's extensive airstrikes Saturday.

"WFP plans to provide food lifeline to over one million people who are going hungry now and needs a steady supply of food with at least 40 WFP trucks to cross daily into Gaza to be able to meet the escalating needs," the statement said. "So far emergency food and cash assistance has reached over 635,200 people in both Gaza and the West Bank."

The Israeli military said its fighter jets struck Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon Sunday in response to shelling toward northern Israel from a “terrorist cell.”

The strike took place in the Har Dov area, and Israeli aircraft destroyed weapons that could have been used for further shelling, the Israel Defense Forces said via Telegram. 

Of the three launches from that area in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military said it intercepted two, and the third landed in an open area. 

In addition, several launches were fired toward the Malkia area in northern Israel, but two of them were intercepted and there were no injuries, according to the IDF. 

Remember: This fighting is centered on northern Israel and southern Lebanon — separate from Israel's fighting with Hamas farther south, which is centered around Gaza. But an uptick in clashes with Hezbollah has raised fears that the powerful Lebanese paramilitary group could actively participate in the conflict.

Hezbollah has unambiguously supported the Palestinian militants and roundly condemned Israel’s offensive in Gaza, but it has not intervened on behalf of Hamas so far.

The group has explicitly linked its attacks on Israel to the IDF's strikes in Lebanese territory, and the fighting remains limited to this border region for now.

The United States is emphasizing the importance of protecting civilian lives in Gaza in conversations “at the highest levels” of the Israeli government, the top US national security adviser said Sunday, even as he repeatedly declined to say whether Israel was going about its war the right way.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said US President Joe Biden would speak later Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — their first known conversation since Israel expanded its ground operations in Gaza — and would reiterate the importance of distinguishing "between terrorists and civilians" as Israel conducts its operation.

The assault on Gaza has left thousands of Palestinian civilians dead and worsened the humanitarian crisis in the enclave. Aid has been slow to enter and civilians, including hundreds of Americans, have been unable to leave. While some aid has made its way to Gaza, humanitarian workers say it is a fraction of what’s required for the 2.2 million people crammed into Gaza under a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt.

More than 200 hundred hostages also remain held by Hamas on the strip, according to officials, and securing their release could be complicated by the expanded operation.

Sullivan said Israel was solely responsible for its military operations. “They’re the ones making decisions, they’re the ones conducting the operations,” he said, declining to openly criticize any aspect of the new military effort.

“I’m not going to react to every strike, every move that they make,” he said.

Israel's intentions in Gaza: Sullivan did indicate that tougher conversations were being held behind the scenes between senior US and Israeli officials — including Biden and Netanyahu — about the scope and intent of Israel’s going into Gaza.

“We’ve asked them hard questions, the same hard questions that we would ask ourselves if we were seeking to conduct an operation to take out a terrorist threat,” Sullivan said. “We’ve pressed them on questions like objectives and matching means to objectives, about both tactical and strategic issues associated with this operation.”

Sullivan said Hamas was “making life extremely difficult for Israel” by using civilians as human shields and placing its rocket infrastructure among civilian populations.

Read more on CNN about US communications with Israel about Gaza.

The US sees an "elevated risk" of a spillover conflict in the Middle East as Iranian proxies continue targeting American troops stationed in the region.

"We are vigilant, because we are seeing elevated threats against our forces throughout the region and an elevated risk of this conflict spreading to other parts of the region. We are doing everything in our power to deter and prevent that," US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday.

Last week, the US carried out airstrikes targeting two facilities linked to Iranian-backed militias in eastern Syria following a series of drone and rocket attacks against US forces in the region.

The airstrikes against the facilities linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and affiliated groups did not result in any casualties, the US assessed.

Asked about US strikes on Iranian proxies in the region, Sullivan said on ABC, “If attacks continue, we will respond, and I think the Iranians understand our message.”

The Israeli military is continuing ground operations in the northern Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement Sunday. 

Israeli "aircraft, guided by IDF troops, struck Hamas military structures, some of which contained Hamas terrorists," the military said. "In addition, anti-tank missile launching posts, observation posts and military infrastructure were struck."

"Terrorists who shot at the soldiers were killed, as well as terrorists who were identified on the coastline in the Gaza Strip near the area of Zikim," the IDF said. 

Remember: Israel says the next stage of its war with Hamas has begun after expanding its ground operations in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that the second stage of the war against Hamas has begun, with the goal of destroying the group's armed wing and government, and returning hostages held in Gaza home.

The IDF launched its offensive after the devastating October 7 attacks by Hamas in Israel.