October 30, 2023 - Israel-Hamas war news

Israel sent more ground forces into Gaza overnight, according to Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.

“Additional forces have entered the strip. Our activity there is only set to intensify,” he said during a daily morning briefing. 

Dozens of Hamas gunmen had been killed in recent fighting as Israeli ground forces advanced towards Hamas positions, he added.

He explained one type of tactical maneuver. 

"We are carrying out an extended ground operation. Ground forces, tanks, infantry, armored forces move towards the terrorists, [who take positions] in a compound in an attempt to attack us. Then we target them from the air,” Hagari said.

Some context: Israeli troops have advanced more than 2 miles [about 3 kilometers] into Gaza in their expanding ground operation, a CNN analysis has found.

Israel over the weekend announced it had entered a “second stage” of its war against Hamas and on Sunday said its ground operation in Gaza would intensify, following weeks of aerial strikes on the Hamas-controlled territory.

CNN's Hadas Gold contributed to the reporting in this post.

The World Bank warns that an escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hamas could cause oil prices to sharply increase. In a new report, it says the impact of the conflict has been limited so far, with oil prices rising about 6% and prices of other commodities – such as food and metals – barely moving. The Bank says the global economy is much better-placed to cope with a major oil price move than in the 1970s, but cautions that an escalation of the conflict – combined with the disruptions from the Russian invasion of Ukraine – could lead to a dual shock. 

If the conflict escalates, the Bank has laid out three possible scenarios for oil prices, depending on the degree of disruption to oil supplies. In a "small disruption scenario,” similar to that resulting from the Libyan civil war in 2011, it says oil prices could jump to as much as $103 a barrel.

In a "medium disruption scenario", which the World Bank says would be equivalent to the Iraq war in 2003, oil prices could jump as much as 35% to $121 a barrel.

A "large disruption scenario" – which the Bank says would be comparable to the Arab oil embargo in 1973 – would see oil prices climb up to 75% higher, at $157 a barrel. 

The World Bank also warned higher oil prices would lead to higher food prices, increasing food insecurity across the world. 

The Biden administration is announcing new actions Monday aimed at combating a series of antisemitic incidents on college campuses across the United States in the wake of the Hamas terror attacks on Israel.

The White House highlighted a series of steps taken by the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Education, including engagement with campus law enforcement officials, which comes amid rising tension on campuses.

CNN has reported that at many universities, students are engaging in fervent protests as some administrators grapple with how to acknowledge students’ wide-ranging concerns while also fielding backlash from influential donors demanding the colleges take a clearer stance on the conflict. Over the weekend, a series of antisemitic threats were made against Cornell University’s Jewish community in online posts.  

The Justice Department’s Community Relations Service is providing support to Jewish, Muslim, Arab, and other impacted communities, the official added.

And the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of DHS, is working to “proactively engage with schools to assess and address need,” the official said. 

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is also “(expediting) its update of the intake process for discrimination complaints under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to specifically state that certain forms of Antisemitism and Islamophobia are prohibited by this law.”

That means that, for the first time, the complaint form will make clear that “discrimination on the basis of national origin in federally funded programs or activities -- including ethnic or ancestral slurs or stereotypes against students who are for example Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, or Hindu — are forms of prohibited discrimination under this law,” the White House official said. That is expected to formally be updated later this week.

The Russian government has blamed "external interference" for the antisemitic riots that broke out at the Makhachkala airport in Russia's southern region of Dagestan on Sunday.

An angry mob in the Muslim-majority region of Dagestan stormed the airport where a flight arrived from Israel on Sunday, forcing authorities to close the facility and divert flights.

At least 20 people were injured in the incident, including both law enforcement and civilians, according to a statement from Dagestan's health ministry on Telegram.

Multiple videos posted on social media showed a crowd of people inside the airport and on the runway, some waving the Palestinian flag, others forcing their way through closed doors in the international terminal.

According to Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been receiving extensive updates on the situation in Dagestan from various security agencies and local authorities, and has scheduled a meeting for Monday evening to address the riots.

The United Kingdom is “working extensively with the Egyptians, with the Israelis, and others to try and have a humanitarian pause” in Gaza, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said Monday.

Cleverly said this would be a “temporary pause, so that we can get that humanitarian aid to the people that need it.”

Speaking in an interview with Reuters during a visit to Abu Dhabi on Monday, Cleverly said that aid to Gaza was “trickling through, but we need a significant increase in the volume.”

Cleverly said that UK aid to Palestinian people in Gaza “is predominantly stuck in Egypt” at the moment.

Some background: Many of Israel’s allies have stopped short of calling for a “ceasefire,” stressing that Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas after its brutal October 7 terror attack – but have begun to call for a “humanitarian pause” to the fighting to allow aid to reach the 2 million civilians living in Gaza.

A resolution calling for a halt to the fighting passed by an overwhelming majority of 120 nations at a meeting of the United Nations on Friday. The resolution called for an immediate cessation of hostilities in the war between Israel and Hamas and for aid to be allowed to flow unrestricted into Gaza.

The United States and Israel sharply criticized the resolution text, however, for not explicitly criticizing Hamas.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan asked the assembly, “Why are you defending murderers?”

Shani Louk, a German-Israeli woman kidnapped by Hamas gunmen during the October 7 attack and taken to Gaza, has been found dead, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said.

Louk was at the Nova music festival in southern Israel on October 7 when Hamas breached the border between Gaza and Israel. They blocked off the road to the festival from the north and the south, before swarming the sprawling site on foot, videos showed. The militants then encircled the crowds on three sides, gunning them down and forcing them to flee over fields to the east.

More than 260 bodies were found at the Nova festival site itself, according to Israeli rescue service Zaka but, based on CNN's analysis, the total death toll could be even higher.

Louk was kidnapped at the festival and “tortured and paraded around Gaza by Hamas terrorists,” the foreign ministry statement said, adding that she “experienced unfathomable horrors.”

“May her memory be a blessing,” the statement said.

Note: Israeli authorities previously announced that Louk had been "found and identified" but did not specify that a bone fragment was found.

A total of 59 aid trucks arrived on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing with Gaza and were waiting to undergo security checks Monday morning, according to a CNN stringer in Rafah.

If the vehicles cross into the strip, it will mark a significant increase in the number of daily aid trucks arriving in Gaza. But it will still be far short of the roughly 455 trucks that used to enter daily, according to the United Nations.

Monday’s arrivals at the crossing follow a statement from the Israeli military on Sunday that it had worked out an inspection mechanism with Egypt and the United States that would allow more aid to enter. 

On Sunday evening, 24 aid trucks were received by the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza, according to a statement from the aid group, adding to 10 that arrived earlier in the day.

The vehicles were allowed to enter Gaza after passing through inspection procedures on the Egyptian side, according to a CNN stringer on the ground, who spoke to an Egyptian border official at the crossing.

Some context: Israel imposed a complete closure on Gaza from the two crossings it controls, in response to the October 7 Hamas attack, leaving the Rafah crossing from Egypt as the only entry to the strip.

Aid has been able to trickle into Gaza for more than a week, after the first convoy of trucks entered through the Rafah crossing on October 21. But UN officials have warned that the current levels of aid are a "drop in the ocean" of the needs of some 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza, and the initial deliveries did not include vital fuel supplies.

Several rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel Monday morning, a sign that Hamas is still capable of firing back despite enduring more than three weeks of intense bombardment by the Israeli military.

A CNN team on the ground in Askhelon, southern Israel, heard two successive barrages of rockets — at least six in total — just before midday local time on Monday. According to local media, one of the rockets fell onto an industrial complex in Ashkelon. The rest appeared to have been intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system.

Israel’s Home Front Command has issued thousands of warnings of incoming fire from the Gaza Strip since Hamas launched its terror attack on October 7. The vast majority have been intercepted by the Iron Dome, but a handful have caused damage in cities across Israel.

The Israeli military said that destroying the infrastructure that allows Hamas to fire rockets towards Israel was one of the priorities of its operation in Gaza. It said on Thursday that its intelligence reports suggested air strikes have killed a Hamas rocket commander, Hassan Al-Abdullah, who the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said commanded rocket units in the Khan Younis area of Gaza.

Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, told CNN it believes it has killed “scores” of senior figures in Hamas’s military structure since it began air strikes on Gaza more than three weeks ago — despite that, Hamas continues to fire rockets towards Israel on daily basis.

Dozens of Hamas operatives who had barricaded themselves in buildings and tunnels were killed overnight as Israel continued its ground operations in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Monday.

In one incident, an Israeli aircraft guided by IDF ground troops struck a staging post inside a building belonging to Hamas with over 20 militants inside, the IDF said in a statement.

Overnight, a guided fighter jet also struck the area of Al-Azhar University, where IDF troops had identified what they said were armed terrorists and an anti-tank missile launching post.

Over the past few days, the IDF says it has struck more than 600 "terror targets," including weapons depots, dozens of anti-tank missile launching positions, and hideouts and staging grounds used by Hamas.

Some context: Israeli troops have advanced more than 2 miles [about 3 kilometers] into Gaza in their expanding ground operation, a CNN analysis has found.

Israel over the weekend announced it had entered a “second stage” of its war against Hamas and on Sunday said its ground operation in Gaza would intensify, following weeks of aerial strikes on the Hamas-controlled territory.

The country was prepared for a “long and difficult” war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday, as it seeks to root out and “destroy” Hamas after its October 7 attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians.