October 12, 2023 - Israel-Hamas war news

Our live coverage of the conflict in Israel and Gaza has moved here.

United Nations team leaders in Gaza on Thursday were informed by their liaison officers in the Israeli military that the entire population north of Wadi Gaza should evacuate to southern Gaza within 24 hours, according to Stephane Dujarric the spokesperson for the UN secretary general.

Israel gave the message to the UN team in Gaza at just before midnight local time on Thursday, the UN said.

“This amounts to approximately 1.1 million people. The same order applied to all UN staff and those sheltered in UN facilities — including schools, health centres and clinics,” the UN statement said. “The United Nations considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences.”

The UN’s statement added: “The United Nations strongly appeals for any such order, if confirmed, to be rescinded avoiding what could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation.”

Hamas on Thursday firmly denied its involvement in killing and beheading babies, saying the allegations were “unethically and unprofessionally adopted by western media outlets.” 

The official called Hamas’ large-scale surprise assault on Israel on Saturday a “defensive operation” and an “internally Palestinian” one.

“The operation targeted only the Israeli military bases and compounds,” Naim claimed, despite evidence to the contrary. 

“There were clear instructions from the top commanders of Al Qassam Brigades to avoid targeting civilians or killing them,” the Hamas official said.

CNN previously reported that days after Hamas launched its large-scale surprise assault on Israel, horrifying details were still emerging.

In Kfar Aza, a kibbutz in southern Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told CNN that militants carried out a “massacre” in which women, children, toddlers and elderly were “brutally butchered in an ISIS way of action.”

Tal Heinrich, a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Wednesday that babies and toddlers were found with their “heads decapitated” in Kfar Aza in southern Israel after Hamas’ attacks in the kibbutz over the weekend. Netanyahu’s office on Thursday released “horrifying photos” of two babies whose bodies had been burned beyond recognition and a bloodstained infant’s body.

Hamas militants are holding as many as 150 people hostage in locations across Gaza following their raids on southern Israel Saturday, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations said Monday.

Their presence is complicating Israel’s response to the militant group’s deadly attack. However, Ambassador Gilad Erdan told CNN Monday that the government’s priority is destroying Hamas to restore security for all Israeli citizens. 

The Hamas official said in the statement that hostages whom the militant group is holding will be treated “in accordance with our religious values and the rules of international humanitarian law.”

However, Naim said, “we are really worried that since the Israeli aggression is everywhere in Gaza, they might be the victims of the Israeli army bombardment just like our people.”

The Biden administration is “working very diligently” with Israel and Egypt on safe passage out of Gaza ahead of a possible invasion of the enclave by Israeli forces, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told CNN Thursday.

Israel has amassed more than 300,000 reservists along its southern border with Gaza but has not confirmed whether it is planning for an intensified military operation.

“Whether or not there’s a ground incursion — and I’ll let the Israelis speak to their operations — we want to make sure that there’s a way for people who live in Gaza who want to get out to do it, and to do it safely and quickly, so we’re working on this very, very hard hour by hour,” Kirby told CNN’s Abby Phillip. “We believe that there should be an opportunity for civilians in Gaza to leave now, yesterday, I mean, immediately.”

Gaza’s humanitarian crisis deepened on Thursday with warnings from UN experts that people are at risk of starvation as Israel maintains its siege and bombards targets in response to the Hamas terror attacks that killed more than 1,200 people.

Kirby said the administration believes it’s “important,” for humanitarian aid to reach Gaza.

He also acknowledged that Israeli efforts to target Hamas strongholds in Gaza while hostages are still being held in the area have created “a delicate situation.”

“I can tell you that we are in literally hourly contact with our Israeli counterparts about the hostage situation, we’ve offered expertise and counsel, of course, they know how to do hostage recovery very, very well,” he said. “We’re mindful of the delicate nature of this hostage situation, because they’re most likely being held somewhere in Gaza. It’s a war zone, it’s a combat zone that greatly complicates efforts to find them and to and to work on their release.”

The number of Americans who have died after the Hamas terror attack in Israel stands at 27, according to the White House. Some 14 Americans remain missing, Kirby said earlier Thursday..

When Hamas fires rockets at Israel, advanced warning detectors set off alarms in targeted neighborhoods, civilians flee to an extensive network of bomb shelters, and the vaunted Iron Dome system works to intercept projectiles in the air.  

But in Gaza, none of those high-tech defenses were available to protect Maisara Baroud, 47, when his apartment building was hit by Israeli airstrikes Monday night. The only thing that saved him and his family: A neighbor yelling from the street.  

The neighbor received a call from Israeli military, giving him a heads up that a strike at a nearby residential building was imminent. Still, the neighbor told Baroud and the 15 other family members living in Baroud’s building — including nine children — to get out. 

The first strike wrecked most of the six buildings on the block, including Baroud’s.  

Still, Baroud and others assumed the worst was over and headed back into the building to salvage their belongings. Minutes later, the neighbor received a follow-up call from the Israeli military that a follow-up bombing was coming, and the families fled again. 

A second strike destroyed Baroud’s home, reducing his building and his art studio to rubble. 

This is the reality for Palestinians living in Gaza without the protection of a robust civil defense infrastructure. With no air raid sirens or bomb shelters, the more than 2 million Palestinians living in the besieged territory — half of whom are children — rely on rare phone calls or text messages from the Israeli military to alert them of imminent strikes.    

“In Gaza, we don’t have anything … you have nowhere to go, no bomb shelters, no refuge, you are in the street,” Baroud said. “If you’re lucky enough to even get an alert to tell you to get out of the house, you leave saying, ‘Thank God.’”  

The lack of protection serves as a stark contrast to the civil defense systems of Israel, which has faced intense barrages of rocket fire from Hamas in recent days. Israel boasts elaborate and technologically advanced capabilities — ranging from early radar detection to the Iron Dome — meant to protect its civilians in the event of an attack.  

In Gaza, the call or text alerts are far from guaranteed and — at most — give residents a few minutes to evacuate. Often, it’s just a guessing game.  

Read more about the difficult circumstances for those in Gaza.

Supplies have dwindled so low at hospitals in Gaza that it is feared the hospitals will become morgues.

Avril Benoit, executive director of Doctors Without Borders USA, told CNN on Thursday that one hospital used three weeks of supplies within three days due to the influx of patients.

As a result of the siege, she says there is a looming crisis as hospitals are not able to bring in more supplies, fuel, water and staff. 

“The situation in the hospitals is absolutely overwhelming,” Benoit said. “I do agree with the analysis and the commentary from the International Committee of the Red Cross that the hospitals will become morgues.”

Benoit said that without electricity critical patients — like babies in incubators, people on dialysis and those on respirators — would be without care. 

“What we are hearing from the hospitals that we support is that it is very difficult for patients to even reach the hospitals,” she said. “Everyone is just terrified to move.”

“It’s impossible for staff sometimes, medical staff, to be able to go to work. And if they do go to work they don’t know if they will ever see their families again at night.”

She said hospitals are running short on anesthesia to do surgeries and even four ambulances were destroyed by air strikes as they were transporting patients.

Laor Abramov, a permanent resident of the United States, was killed in the Hamas attack on Israel, his mother, Michal Halev, told CNN via text. 

“This was our worst nightmare,” Halev said after learning about her 20-year-old son’s death.

Abramov was attending a nature party with his friend — he loved being in nature, his mom said.

His loved ones lost contact with him Saturday afternoon and had not heard from him since. On Monday, his parents shared with CNN a photo of him in a shelter, adding they believed he had been hiding in a border city near Gaza.

Abramov’s dream was to be a DJ, like his father, Halev said. 

The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday said it will investigate Hamas’ use of training camps in Gaza after locations were reported by CNN, according to IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus.

 A CNN investigation analyzing two years of Hamas training videos identified six training camps that the militant organization and its affiliates used to train for Saturday’s attacks. Two of the camps were discovered less than 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) from the most fortified and patrolled section of the Gaza-Israel border, the Erez Crossing. 

Another camp was found 720 meters — or less than half a mile — from the border.  

When originally presented with the reporting, Conricus told CNN that identified camps were “nothing new,” that Hamas had many training areas and that they had “struck many training areas over the years in the different rounds of escalation.”

Conricus said the IDF could not answer CNN’s questions “since they relate to the complex analysis of intelligence at the same time that we are fighting a war.”

“This topic, together with numerous other issues, will be investigated by the IDF at the end of the war,” he said.

Family members of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas will speak at the United Nations in a special event Friday afternoon, according to a news release from the Israeli Mission.

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, will also speak at the event, which will conclude with Israel’s national anthem, Hatikvah, performed by Israeli signer Noa Kirel, according to the release.

“The event is intended to convey a clear message to the Security Council: the only humanitarian situation the Council must discuss now is the humanitarian situation of our kidnapped citizens who are being held in horrific violation of international law,” Erdan said in a statement.

The event is scheduled for 1:15 p.m. ET Friday and will be live streamed.

The death toll continues to rise since Israel declared war on the Palestinian militant group Hamas after it carried out unprecedented attacks Saturday that killed more than 1,200 people.

At least 1,537 Palestinians have been killed and an additional 6,612 have been injured since the weekend’s assault, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, at least 36 people have died and more than 650 have been injured, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah said.

According to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, at least 25 Americans have been killed in Israel. And in Canada, the government says another one of its citizens is presumed dead following the Hamas attack on Israel, in addition to two Canadians confirmed dead and four more people from the country who have been reported missing.

Here’s what else you should know:

The footage is from the last two years, but it is chillingly prescient.

In a December 2022 video, Hamas fighters can be seen flooding a training area, shooting rockets and capturing pretend prisoners as they surround mock Israeli buildings. 

The camp, CNN analysis shows, had just been constructed, and was very close to Erez Crossing, the pedestrian passageway between Gaza and Israel that Hamas fighters ultimately breached last weekend in a bloody attack — which killed over 1,200 people in Israel.

Another video taken more than a year ago, shows Hamas fighters practicing take-offs, landings and assaults with paragliders — the same unusual mode that Hamas deployed with lethal effect in the same October 7 attack.

A CNN investigation analyzed almost two years of training and propaganda video released by Hamas and its affiliates to reveal the months of preparations that went into last week’s attack, finding that militants trained for the onslaught in at least six sites across Gaza.

Two of those sites, including the arid training site shown in the December video, were a little more than a mile from the most fortified and patrolled section of the Gaza-Israel border. Of the remaining sites: one is located in central Gaza, and the other three in far south Gaza.

Two years of satellite imagery, also reviewed by CNN, show no indication of an offensive Israeli military action against any of the six identified sites. 

Not only was there activity in the last several months at the camps, but some camps also absorbed surrounding farmland, converting it from agriculture to barren area for training in the last two years, according to satellite imagery.

In the aftermath of Hamas’ ruthless incursion — where militants abducted up to 150 people, overran Israeli military bases, and laid waste to towns and farms — questions are being raised about the intelligence and operational failures of Israel’s security apparatus. 

The fact that Hamas trained for the attack in plain sight for at least two years raises questions as to why Israel, home to the Middle East’s most sophisticated military and spying operation, was unable to pick up on and stop the attack?

When CNN reached out to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment, its international spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said the findings were “nothing new.”

He added that Hamas has “had many training areas” and Israel’s military had “struck many training areas over the years in the different rounds of escalation.”

Conricus noted that Israel has not had a major escalation with Hamas in over two years, in reference to when hostilities between Israel and Hamas erupted in 2021. It followed weeks of tension in Jerusalem, where a group of Palestinian families faced eviction from their homes in East Jerusalem in favor of Jewish nationalists.

Conricus also said that Hamas may have made the facilities “look civilian.” 

However, five of the sites — the sixth is a landing strip — do not have civilian features and are nearly identical in how they are constructed and arranged.

Read more about Hamas’ training that led up to the October 7 attack.

That’s the text Israeli-American Aviv Oz sent his girlfriend as he hid motionless for hours during Hamas’ music festival massacre. 

Oz, 34, was working as a visual artist at the Nova festival Saturday when the music was suddenly replaced by the sound of blaring alarms. 

Like many others, Oz and his friends instinctively ran to their cars to escape, but a traffic jam quickly formed. Moments later, gunshots and shouting erupted from different directions. Then, “complete chaos,” he said.

“It was like a scene from Call of Duty, from a battlefield. A real-life nightmare,” Oz said.

After deciding to abandon his car and run, Oz was separated from his friends and found himself jumping into the bottom of an empty, concrete pool. Before his phone ran out of battery, he was able to send a few messages to his loved ones.

“To my understanding I was going to die, and I needed to say goodbye,” Oz told CNN. 

“When I decided to lay down and wait for my death, I could see the terrorists passing through,” he said. He could hear them laughing and smelled smoke and gunpowder while “I pretended to be dead,” he said, adding that he stayed motionless for five hours.

When he thought it was safe, Oz slowly made his way out of the pool and ventured back out to his car — which he found “shredded by bullets” — to charge his phone and call for help.

“The ground was full of innocent people,” Oz told CNN.

He headed back to his hiding spot while waiting for help to arrive.

“There was another person, an Israeli woman, who was hiding in the bushes all this time,” he said. “She joined me, and we waited in a panicked silence until special forces found us.”

While he is thankful to be alive, Oz said he is deeply mourning friends and coworkers who were killed.

Oz, who has family roots in Queens, New York, is living in Israel and plans to make it his permanent home.

Queen Rania al Abdullah of Jordan posted on social media, in response to the Israeli-Hamas conflict, “It isn’t self-defense if you are an occupying force.”     

Rania, who is of Palestinian descent, posted her message Wednesday as an Instagram story, a format that disappears after 24 hours. Jordanian state-owned media AlMamlaka TV republished the post.

Included in the queen’s Instagram story was a post from Palestinian journalist Motaz Azaiza, which shows aerial footage of destruction in Gaza following Israel’s bombardment.

The queen also shared a video from the news website “Eye on Palestine,” which appears to show Palestinian children injured following Israeli airstrikes.

CNN has reached out to Rania’s office for comment.

More context: Israel withdrew its troops from Gaza in 2005, but its blockade on the enclave effectively allows the country to control access to the land, air, and sea of the strip.

The blockade includes tight restrictions on the movement of residents in and out of Gaza and the movement of goods in and out.    

Current conflict: Israel’s continued airstrikes in Gaza have hit hundreds of targets and neighborhoods, deepening the humanitarian crisis. The Israeli airstrikes are in response to Saturday’s attacks when Hamas members broke through the heavily fortified border fence into Israeli territory. Hamas gunmen killed more than 1,200 people, including civilians and soldiers, and also took hostages.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordanian King Abdullah II met on Wednesday to discuss recent events and how to stop the escalation in Gaza, Jordan’s Royal Hashemite Court posted on social media Wednesday.

“Jordan is making intense efforts to discuss urgent international action to stop the escalation, protect the Palestinians, and prevent their displacement,” King Abdullah II said. “The dangerous escalation and acts of violence and aggression currently taking place in the Palestinian Territories are proof that confirms, once again, that our region will never be secure nor stable without achieving just and comprehensive peace on the basis of the two-state solution.”   

The two-state solution is a decades-old plan to establish a Palestinian state next to Israel.

This week, thousands took to the streets of Amman, Jordan, in a protest supporting the people of Gaza.  

More than 338,000 Palestinians have been displaced by the conflict between Israel and Hamas, said Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN’s secretary-general.

Nearly 218,000 of those are sheltering in 92 schools run by the UN Relief and Works Agency, Dujarric said Thursday.

Airstrikes have hit at least 88 education facilities, including 18 UNRWA schools and 70 Palestinian Authority schools, according to the UN. Two of the UNRWA facilities were being used as emergency shelters for displaced people, the UN added. 

“This means that for the sixth consecutive day, more than 600,000 children have had no access to education in a safe place in Gaza,” Dujarric said.

The UNRWA said 12 of its personnel have been killed since October 7. 

The UN has warned the situation in Gaza is continuing to worsen as humanitarian organizations are unable to bring aid into the sealed-off enclave.

The World Health Organization said the hospitals in Gaza are “at a breaking point.”

Earlier Thursday, the International Committee of the Red Cross warned hospitals in Gaza “risk turning into morgues” as they lose power during Israel’s bombardment of the enclave. And shortages of food, water and electricity have already been putting extra strain on medical facilities.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said it has plans to work with the UNRWA to “reach over 800,000 people across Palestine”. On Wednesday, the WFP said it delivered food to over 175,000 displaced people across 88 shelters.

There is no specific or credible intelligence indicating a threat to the United States as result of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, officials with the US Department of Homeland Security said Thursday.

Still, officials stressed they are keenly aware of how volatile and unpredictable the threat environment might be.

“We are especially vigilant, at this time, against the potential for violence here in the United States from a variety of threat actors,” a Homeland Security official told reporters Thursday, citing the potential for violence driven by anti-Semitic, Islamophobic or anti-Arab sentiments.

In addition to preparing state and local agencies for any potential domestic impacts, the official also alluded to concerns about the situation in Israel developing into a wider conflict on multiple fronts.

“Everybody is pretty well-attuned to the different ways in which the conflict could expand: you know, a northern front involving Lebanese Hezbollah, other actors in the region becoming involved,” the official said. “Each of those, were they to materialize, would have potential implications for our homeland security,” they continued.

On Thursday, US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris discussed homeland security issues with senior law enforcement and national security officials, according to the White House. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was among the attendees. 

In a keynote address at the Foundation to Combat Anti-Semitism’s Inaugural Sports Leaders Convening Thursday, Mayorkas underscored the urgency in confronting anti-Semitism. 

“The events of the last five days have awoken a sometimes deep-seated, sometimes generations-old fear in Jewish people everywhere. The paradigm for anti-Semitism, and anti-Semitic violence, has shifted precipitously over the past five days,” he said, according to a copy of the address provided by DHS. “So must, too, the urgency with which we confront it.”

Russia’s deputy foreign minister and Middle East envoy Mikhail Bogdanov on Thursday called for the “immediate cessation of hostilities” and the resumption of food and medicine deliveries to Gaza, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. 

His remarks were in a phone conversation about the “emerging catastrophic situation in and around the Gaza Strip” with PLO Executive Committee Secretary General Hussein al-Sheikh, the statement said.

Both parties called “indiscriminate bombing” resulting in numerous civilian casualties “unacceptable,” the statement said.

“The emphasis was made on preventing the exodus of the population from the Gaza Strip, which should become part of an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with its capital in East Jerusalem,” it said. 

Gaza’s humanitarian crisis deepened Thursday amid warnings that the population is at risk of starvation as Israel launched airstrikes in retaliation for the attacks by Hamas on Saturday that killed more than 1,200 people.

The Biden administration said it will begin chartering flights on Friday from Israel to destinations in Europe, as officials scramble to get Americans stranded in the war-ravaged country back home to the US.

Once the travelers get from Israel to Europe – on Israeli, Turkish and other regional airlines – they’ll be ferried home by US-based and other carriers.

Worried about safety, United, American and Delta all ceased operations to and from Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel’s lone international airport, earlier this week. The US government charters are expected to open new routes for those fleeing the ongoing violence, however many flights and available seats there may eventually be.

But concerns about the danger, security and insurance coverage are still getting in the way of a more sweeping response to the overwhelming clamor for flights.

“We know there’s a demand signal out there,” Biden administration spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Thursday, “and we’re going to try the best we can to meet it.”

A handful of non-US airlines have continued to operate out of Ben Gurion in the week since Hamas militants attacked Israeli civilians, killing at least 1,200 people and triggering a deadly barrage of Israeli strikes in Gaza. With the hostilities ongoing, the Federal Aviation Administration warned that it’s a “potentially hazardous situation” to fly in the region.

European airlines are heeding the warnings. A British Airways flight aborted its approach into Tel Aviv facing rocket fire this week, and then the airline quickly joined the list of international carriers suspending service into Israel. KLM, Lufthansa and Air France have also done so.

Meanwhile, some travelers have been able to leave the country on one of the regional carriers, including the Israeli airlines El Al and Arkia. Also still operating are the UAE’s Emirates airline, Turkish Airlines and the Russian airline Red Wings, according to data compiled by CNN from the tracking site FlightAware and the flight data provider Cirium.

Read more about the evacuations.

At least 36 people have died, and more than 650 have been injured, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since Saturday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah.

The deaths occurred in clashes from Israeli “aggression,” the ministry said. The Ministry of Health also confirmed that many of those killed sustained injuries from bullets.

CNN previously reported violence has risen in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since Israel declared its war on Hamas and continued to strike Gaza since Saturday.

The United Kingdom will send a “significant support package” to deter attempts to further escalate the conflict between Israel and Hamas, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The two leaders spoke Thursday evening to discuss the UK’s “steadfast support for Israel” in the wake of Hamas’ continued attacks, according to a Downing Street statement released Thursday. 

During this meeting, Sunak also confirmed that the UK had authorized sending a support package, consisting of three Merlin helicopters and a detachment of Royal Marines. 

“The additional military assistance would be deployed in the coming days to bolster security in the wider region and mitigate any attempts to escalate the conflict,” the statement read. 

South First Responders in Israel said on Thursday it obtained footage from cameras found on the bodies of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants that shows the Saturday morning assault on the Israeli kibbutz Kfar Aza.

CNN geolocated the footage to the kibbutz. 

In one of the videos, militants wearing bullet-proof vests and wielding rifles can be seen walking through the community and yelling as gunshots are heard in the background. 

“There are men inside, be careful,” someone is heard yelling in Arabic. “The fighters and the Mujahideen have killed them.”

In another video, several militants are seen positioned next to a tree inside the community with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) that appears to have malfunctioned. 

“What’s wrong with it, what’s the defect?,” a militant says. 

As gunshots are heard, it appears as if militants are entering a home in the background of the video.    

Houses in Kfar Aza were ransacked and set ablaze, CNN has previously reported. At least 1,200 people have died in Israel since the conflict erupted, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, said Wednesday.

CNN’s Celine Alkhaldi contributed to this report.

When he heard that Hamas militants were attacking a music festival his family was attending, Ben Ovadia said Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, for his mother.

“I didn’t know what to do. I said, ‘Please kill her,’ because it would be better than being kidnapped,” Ovadia, 38, told CNN on Wednesday. “It’s a nightmare. I said, ‘Please kill her, don’t take her there.’”

Over WhatsApp, he watched, helpless, as his mother and younger brother sent updates for eight hours, telling him that they were hiding in small bushes, hearing gunfire and people walking past saying “Allahu Akbar.”

Eventually, Ovadia heard of a secure location and sent the map to his brother. The mother and son managed to escape the festival. 

The next morning, Ovadia flew to Israel from London, where he lives with his British wife and 9-year-old twins.

He is one of many Israelis returning home from abroad as their country’s long-running conflict with Hamas escalates into a war not seen on this scale for a generation. To cope with the increasing demand, Israeli airlines El Al, Israir and Arkia added more flights on Tuesday to repatriate military reservists, Reuters reported. 

Cutting short holidays or uprooting their everyday lives overseas, these Israelis are returning for funerals, to help protect their communities, in preparation for call-ups in the military reserves, and to carry supplies home.

Straight after seeing his family when he landed in Israel, Ovadia went to Lod, a city about 9 miles southeast of Tel Aviv, where there had previously been outbursts of violence.

There, he joined friends in forming an impromptu neighborhood watch to ensure the situation remained calm. He has since helped deliver donated food. He is planning to drive to the south of the country, as there aren’t enough drivers to take people to their families.

Read more about Israelis returning home to face the war.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Amman, Jordan, early Friday local time.  

The top US diplomat will meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordanian King Abdullah II later in the day. 

The intensive shuttle diplomacy comes as the US seeks to stop the conflict between Hamas and Israel from expanding, tries to secure the release of the hostages, and works with Egypt and Israel to open a humanitarian corridor from Gaza.

After Jordan, Blinken will travel to Qatar to meet with senior officials on Friday.

As CNN has reported, Qatar has been one of the key actors in talks with Hamas to try to secure the release of hostages from the terrorist group.

A family of six, including at least five US citizens, were among the residents killed by Hamas on Saturday in the attack on the Nir Oz kibbutz, near the Gaza Strip, a close relative told CNN.

Ranae Butler, who lives in Israel, said her mother, Carol Siman Tov, 70, and her brother, Johnny Siman Tov, 36, texted her after they fled to safe rooms at their separate houses on the kibbutz early Saturday during the attack.

Butler said Johnny and his wife, Tamar Kedem-Siman Tov, 35, hid with their three children: Omer, 2, and twins, Arbel and Shachar, aged 5.

Butler’s mother fled to her own home with her dog, Charlie. 

Butler said Johnny texted her saying, “They’re here. They’re burning us. We’re suffocating.’”

“He and his wife were shot through the window … They decided no one is taking them. They’ll suffocate [of] smoke inhalation together, and they held out while wounded,” Butler said.

Butler said her mother was shot to death in her own safe room. 

Carol, Johnny and the three children were US citizens, Butler said. Tamar’s citizenship wasn’t immediately clear.

Several other family members in Nir Oz survived the attack, Butler said, including her two brothers and two sisters, and her father, Larry Butler. They are also US citizens.

Her brother, Shachar Butler, who was head of security for the kibbutz, was shot in the attack but is recuperating. 

“They barely put on their boots and pants and ran and fought in bravery,” she said.  
“We’re crying and hugging,” she added. “They’ve all been through hell.”

Nir Oz is close to the site of the Nova music festival. It was among the worst hit of the kibbutzim near Gaza, with scores of residents killed or taken hostage. 

Russia’s foreign ministry on Thursday called Israel’s missile strikes on Syria “a gross violation” of international law.

“These actions by the Israeli side constitute a gross violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic and the basic norms of international law,” the ministry said in a statement, adding “the lives of innocent people and the safety of international air traffic were exposed to a real threat.” 

The statement said such actions could lead to “extremely dangerous consequences, since they can provoke an armed escalation throughout the region” and shouldn’t be allowed to take place. 

On Thursday, Syrian state news outlet Al-Ikhbaria reported simultaneous Israeli missile strikes on the international airports of Syria’s two largest cities – Aleppo and Damascus.

The strikes resulted in significant damage to the runways “rendering them non-operational,” the outlet reported.

Russia has been known for launching airstrikes in Syria. Russia aids Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose regime faces threats from both ISIS and rebel groups. Russia says its airstrikes target ISIS, but many strikes have hit rebel-controlled areas.

Some context: As Israel battles Hamas, it also faces the threat of a wider conflict on new fronts. Of its immediate neighbors, it is only at peace with Jordan and Egypt, and is officially in a state of war with Lebanon and Syria. Israel has said it is ready in case there are attacks from those two countries.

Hamas on Thursday appealed to world relief organizations to provide essential medical and relief supplies to Gaza as Israel continues airstrikes on the territory.

Gaza’s humanitarian crisis has deepened, with warnings that the population is at risk of starvation and fuel could run out within hours. Israel is withholding essential supplies from the enclave in response to Hamas’ brutal terror attacks, CNN previously reported. 

“We call on all relief, health and charitable institutions in our Arab and Islamic world and in the international community, to intervene urgently and quickly to bring in all necessary medical and relief supplies and fuel, to save more than two million Palestinian citizens,” Hamas said in a statement.

The Palestinian Minister of Health Dr. Mai Alkaila, in a statement on Thursday, “warned of the collapse of healthcare system in the Gaza Strip, as a result of the severe shortage of medical supplies, supplies for operating rooms, medicines, and blood bags.”

The establishment of a full blockade that would include cutting off access to electricity, water, food and other goods “that are indispensable” for the survival of civilian population in Gaza, “is unacceptable,” Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Anniken Huitfeldt said in a Thursday statement. Israel “has an obligation to allow for the entry of humanitarian aid and to ensure access to humanitarian assistance for the civilian population in Gaza,” she said, adding that humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza “should be a key priority.”

At least 1,537 people — including 500 children and 267 women — have been killed since Israel started strikes on Gaza following the deadly Hamas attack last Saturday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. An additional 6,612 people have sustained injuries, the ministry added.

More than 330,000 people have been displaced in Gaza since Israel began its bombardment of the strip, according to a statement by the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs early Thursday local time.

More context: While Hamas — designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union — controls Gaza, Israel has for years tightly restricted the movement of residents and goods in and out of the densely populated territory. Now the country is tightening its grip further in response to Hamas’ unprecedented attack.

The chilling Holocaust stories Eva Chiel heard throughout her childhood have been rushing back to her in the days since her grandchildren vanished during Hamas’ attack.

Her grandchildren, Gidi, 24, and Noa, 27, disappeared from a music festival in Israel where hundreds of attendees were kidnapped or killed Saturday.

As the chaos unfolded, Chiel said the siblings were last seen fleeing from gunfire. 

“That’s the last we know of them. We haven’t heard or seen or had anyone contact us about it,” she said.

She described her grandchildren as very warm and popular young people and said they’ve made her proud. 

Amid the trauma and uncertainty, the family has stayed close together near their northern Israel home as they wait for information.

“I’m not very hopeful,” Chiel said. “The parents, they keep hoping and they keep believing that they will show up. Unfortunately, I’m not that optimistic. But you know, hope is the last thing you give up on. So, I’m glad they are hoping. Unfortunately, I’m not there.”

Chiel’s parents survived the Holocaust and for years, her mother shared harrowing stories of surviving the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, weighing less than 55 pounds when the camp was liberated in 1945. 

Chiel says the painful images from last weekend’s attack brought those memories back.

“It’s made a lot of her stories come back to me about torture and suffering,” Chiel said. 

At least 1,537 Palestinians have been killed since Israel started strikes on Gaza following the deadly Hamas attack last Saturday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.

The death toll includes 500 children and 267 women. An additional 6,612 people have been injured, the ministry added.

Warning: This post contains graphic descriptions of violence.

Israeli jets continued to pound the densely populated Gaza Strip on Thursday in response to Hamas’ brutal terror attacks Saturday that left at least 1,200 people dead and thousands of others injured.

It has implemented a “complete siege,” of the Hamas-run enclave, cutting off food, electricity, fuel and water. Humanitarian groups are warning supplies are running low.

On the sixth day of the conflict, more than 1,500 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Here are the top headlines to know:

Complex hostage situation: Hamas is holding as many as 150 people hostage, according to Israeli authorities. Israel is cutting off any electricity, water or fuel to Gaza until the hostages are returned home, Energy Minister Israel Katz said. Hamas, meanwhile, is warning that it will start executing hostages if Israel targets people in Gaza without warning. Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a spokesperson for the IDF, said “reason dictates” that the hostages are being kept underground.

A humanitarian crisis: Israel is continuing airstrikes and withholding essential supplies from Gaza. Food and water are limited and “quickly running out” on the enclave, the deputy head of emergencies of the UN World Food Programme said. Gaza’s only power station stopped working on Wednesday after running out of fuel, the head of the Gaza power authority said. So far, more than 330,000 people have been displaced there, according to a statement by the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Graphic photos: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office Thursday released “horrifying photos of babies murdered and burned by the Hamas monsters.” The three photos, posted on the social media account for Netanyahu’s office, showed two babies whose bodies had been burned beyond recognition and a third blood-stained infant’s body. The prime minister said he shared the photos, among others, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday.

PM thanks US: Netanyahu thanked the United States for its “incredible support for Israel” during his country’s “war against the barbarians of Hamas.” During his trip, Blinken also said he met with the families of Americans killed or taken hostage by Hamas. At least 27 Americans have been killed and 14 are unaccounted for, the White House said.

Countries arrange to evacuate citizens: Officials around the world are working to evacuate their citizens from Israel following the attacks by Hamas, organizing repatriation flights in an effort to get them home as the crisis unfolds. The United States and Ukraine both scheduled flights to pick up citizens tomorrow and Saturday. Other countries like India, Nepal and Colombia have already evacuated hundreds of people.

Global support: There are no plans to put US troops on the ground in Israel, a top White House official said, pointing instead to a wide array of intelligence sharing, and weapons and munitions contributions to Israel. The United Kingdom has also sent warships and surveillance aircraft to the eastern Mediterranean to support Israel, its defense ministry said.

The Canadian government says another one of its citizens is presumed dead following the Hamas attack on Israel, in addition to two Canadians confirmed dead and four more people from the country who have been reported missing.

Senior officials from Global Affairs Canada also shared details on evacuations from the country, saying two Canadian Armed Forces flights left Tel Aviv on Thursday for Athens, Greece, with a total of just under 300 evacuees.

Senior officials say they are aware of more than 1,600 Canadians that want help getting out of the war-torn region, with about half of them in Israel. Others are in the West Bank and cannot access air options, so the government is trying to arrange them ground transportation to Jordan.

More than 100 Canadians, meanwhile, are located in Gaza, and Global Affairs is currently unable to help them leave, the officials said.

CNN’s Braden Walker contributed to this report.

The family of Jonathan Rom, a dual Israeli-American citizen, said he was killed in Saturday’s Hamas attack on the Nova festival.

His cousin Daniel Zaken said Rom was trying to help a young woman escape the festival when he encountered heavy gunfire.

Rom’s family was informed of his death by the Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday, Zaken said.

Rom was born in South Carolina but had lived in Israel for several years, he said. 

Children make up “between 30 and 40% of the wounded” in Israel’s recent airstrikes on Gaza, British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday.

Speaking from Al Awda Hospital in Gaza, Abu-Sittah said “the overwhelming majority of the wounded are coming from the rubble of their own home.”

Children and other patients come in with wounds from “the blast, shrapnel, masonry that flies in and damages their bodies, or they are crushed under the rubble of their own home,” the surgeon said.

“All of these injuries are extremely contaminated and require surgeries and repeated surgeries,” he said, adding, “the devastating thing is, with children, this is a lifetime worth of reconstructive surgery.”

“As that body — that scarred body — tries to grow in the future, these kids will need surgery after surgery, as we have seen with the kids in Gaza’s previous wars — or in Syria, or in Yemen, or anywhere where children are hurt.”

“This has completely overwhelmed the health system, which was already on its knees at the end of 15 years of siege,” Abu-Sittah said, referring to Israel’s tight control over the occupied territory’s flow of goods, and its strict land, sea and air blockade.

“We are down on consumables, on the very material that you need to be able to treat patients,” he said.

Abu-Sittah traveled from London to Gaza on Sunday, saying that “as a Palestinian, I am driven to continuously come back and help my people here who are under continuous attack.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday his government will “do everything” to release hostages held by Hamas. 

“We will do everything for the release of the hostages no matter their nationality,” he said, addressing the nation in his first televised speech following Hamas’ attacks on Israel. At least 13 French citizens were killed in the attacks, Macron said.

Macron said his country was working with Israeli authorities and other partners to bring home the French hostages “safe and sound.”

“France never abandons its children,” he added. Seventeen French citizens are still missing following the attacks, including children.

He said Israel “has the right to defend itself against terrorist groups like Hamas, through targeted actions but while preserving the safety of civilian populations.”

Macron added “The fight against terrorism cannot replace the search for peace,” and renewed a commitment to ensure Israel’s security and the Palestinians’ aspiration for a state.

The French president also said he was in talks with regional allies to avoid the extension of the conflict, especially with Lebanon.  

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he renounces the “killing of civilians on both sides of the conflict,” in a new statement Thursday.   

“We reject the killing of civilians on both sides, we reject mutilation of bodies,” Abbas said, adding that “such practices violate international law, morals and religion.” 

Abbas also appealed for help in getting aid into Gaza, and for the restoration of water and electricity in the enclave, according to the statement published by the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa.

Abbas “urged the international community to intervene to allow humanitarian aid and medical relief into Gaza through humanitarian corridors. He also called for the immediate resumption of water and electricity.”

Abbas also called the Palestine Liberation Organization the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,” adding that the internationally-recognized umbrella group comprised of several Palestinian parties renounced violence and would continue to pursue national aspirations for Palestinians.  

Abbas’ comments come ahead of a meeting Friday with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Israelis “have every right to be angry” with the government’s initial handling of Hamas’ surprise attack on Saturday, Mark Regev, a senior adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told CNN on Thursday. 

Responding to Israeli concerns about the speed at which the country’s political leadership and the Israel Defense Forces responded to the Hamas assault, Regev told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, “It is clear this time we were surprised. Something went very, very wrong.” 

Remember: Hamas successfully launched its devastating attack despite Israel spending decades preparing for such an assault. It has become a technology powerhouse, with one of the world’s most impressive armed forces and a premier intelligence agency. But when Hamas launched its attack by air, land and sea Saturday, Israel was caught off-guard.

More from Regev: The adviser said that once Israel “wins this war,” inquiries into what happened would take place. 

“We know how to investigate ourselves.” Regev said. “We will look into what went wrong, what was right. Lessons will be learned … and if mistakes were made, they will be exposed.”

CNN’s Joshua Berlinger contributed reporting to this post.

The US government still doesn’t have any details on the condition of American hostages in Hamas custody, White House National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby said Thursday.

But he said that the number of US hostages is still believed to be less than a handful.

Kirby told CNN’s MJ Lee that the limited information the administration has on the hostages has been relayed, at least in part, on accounts from “the families, who, as I mentioned yesterday — some of these families actually saw their loved ones being abducted and taken away — so they have been a significant source of information as well.”

The belief is that hostages in Hamas custody may not necessarily be in one central location, based on previous intelligence on Hamas operations, Kirby said.

“I won’t speak about a specific intelligence matters, but it is a common tactic in the Hamas playbook to break up hostages and move them in rounds in sometimes small groups, so we have nothing that would indicate to us that they would follow a different set of protocols,” he said. “But I can’t stand here before you and prove to you that that is exactly what’s happening – we have to, in order to think about our policy options, you have to make some assumptions and we can’t rule that out as a possibility.”

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced Thursday the arrival of 287 citizens in Mexico after they were evacuated from Israel.

The Mexican president said during his daily news conference there were still 764 Mexicans yet to be evacuated.

López Obrador added that two planes will return to Israel on Friday and will fly the rest of the evacuees to “one or two countries in Europe” that will serve as an air bridge.

“We are going to get them out as quickly as possible,” López Obrador said.

Warning: This post contains graphic descriptions of violence.

US President Joe Biden’s graphic description Wednesday of horrors in Israel was intended to “underscore the utter depravity” of the Hamas attack on civilians, the White House says, even if he hadn’t personally viewed or confirmed the imagery he described. 

Speaking from the Indian Treaty Room, Biden told a gathering of Jewish leaders on Wednesday:

But an administration official told CNN on Wednesday evening that neither Biden nor the administration had seen pictures or confirmed reports of children or infants beheaded by Hamas. The official clarified the president’s remarks were referring to public comments from media outlets and Israeli officials. 

Tal Heinrich, a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said earlier Wednesday that babies and toddlers were found “decapitated” in Kfar Aza in southern Israel. CNN could not independently verify that report and Hamas said media reports about attacking children were false.

Netanyahu’s office on Thursday released “horrifying photos” of two babies whose bodies had been burned beyond recognition and a bloodstained infant’s body. A social media post from Netanyahu’s office said the pictures were shown to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his visit to Israel.

Blinken became emotional later Thursday when he described seeing the images of the victims of the Hamas attack that “almost defies comprehension.”

“A baby, an infant riddled with bullets. Soldiers beheaded. Young people burned alive in their cars, or their hideaway rooms,” Blinken said during press availability.
“It’s beyond what anyone would ever want to imagine, much less actually see and, God forbid, experience.”

Speaking to reporters at the White House later on Thursday, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby cited those photos when explaining Biden’s remarks a day earlier.

“Certainly the president’s comments yesterday … underscore the utter depravity and the barbaric nature with which these terrorists murdered and butchered innocent Israeli civilians,” Kirby said.
 “And that further underscores why — and this is what the president’s specific point was yesterday — that we got to stay with Israel. We got to continue to make sure they have the support that they need,” he said.

Pressed further about the importance of upholding factual accuracy when describing events on the ground, Kirby said the White House takes seriously “the need to be as factual and certainly truthful as we possibly can be.”

 But the reality was that the full extent of Hamas’s depravity was still becoming known, he said.  

“We all need to be prepared for the fact that there’s going to be additional gruesome images coming out, and there’s going to be some pretty tough reports for all of us to swallow,” Kirby said. “This is not over.”

Cindy Flash, 67, a native of St. Paul, Minnesota, and her husband, Igal Flash, 66, a son of Holocaust survivors, are among the dozens killed in one of the grisliest scenes emerging from the Hamas attack on Israel. 

Their daughter, Keren Flash, 34, told CNN she learned Thursday that her parents were killed in the safe room of their home in Kfar Aza, a southern Israel kibbutz close to the Gaza border.

Keren Flash shared the last messages her mom sent in a neighborhood group message, describing the attack as it unfolded. They were sent on Saturday evening, and her mom messaged the group asking for someone to come help, saying “they managed to break into the safe room.”

“That was the last time anyone heard from them,” their daughter said.

“She was she was just all heart and soul,” she said. Her father, Igal, was born in Israel, the son of Holocaust survivors who rarely discussed their experiences. 

“They were just a good balance of each other, and really taught me what a loving and strong relationship should look like and they were just my inspiration for everything,” she said.

After not hearing from them in days and not knowing their whereabouts, Keren Flash said the only small comfort she found after receiving the tragic news is that they “apparently died instantly so at least it was quick and relatively painless.”

“Just the terror before, that’s all they experienced.”

She said her mother had unwavering hope in humanity and had protested Israeli military action in Gaza. 

“Whenever there was a military operation, (she) would always protest,” she said. “She was there protesting all the time so they won’t destroy it – so that people will see what’s happening because you don’t treat human beings like that no matter what their religious belief is and what their ethnicity is.” 
“They were some of the best people that I have ever known,” she added of her parents. “They were good people. They cared about other people. They fought for other people’s rights and other people’s voices.” 

At least 12 people working with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) have been killed in Gaza since Saturday, a spokesperson for the UN’s secretary-general said Thursday, as the humanitarian crisis there deepens.

All 12 of the UN workers killed were Palestinians, the spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, said while speaking to reporters in New York Thursday.

Hundreds of thousands displaced: Dujarric said mass displacement continues to rise across the Gaza Strip as Israel pounds the territory with airstrikes, climbing 30% over the last 24 hours to reach more than 338,000. Of that figure, two-thirds are taking shelter in 92 schools run by the UNRWA.

More than 2,500 housing units in Gaza have been destroyed or severely damaged and rendered uninhabitable, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in an update Thursday. Another 23,000 have sustained moderate to minor damage.

“At least 88 education facilities have been struck, including 18 UNRWA schools, two of which were being used as emergency shelters for displaced people, as well as 70 Palestinian Authority schools. This means that for the sixth consecutive day, more than 600,000 children have had no access to education at a safe place in Gaza,” Dujarric said.

Water, fuel and food: Dujarric also warned of a “looming” water crisis “across the Gaza Strip due to damaged infrastructure, lack of electricity needed to operate pumps and desalination plants, as well as limited supply of water in local markets,” Dujarric said.

“Water supplies cannot be replenished due to the total blockade of the Strip by Israeli authorities, fuel cannot be brought in, and Israeli water suppliers are no longer delivering water to Gaza.”

OCHA said Thursday that “seven significant water and sewage facilities serving more than one million people have been hit by airstrikes and severely damaged” since the conflict erupted. “In some areas, sewage and solid waste are now accumulating in the streets, posing a health hazard.”

Half of the bakeries have less than a week’s supply of wheat flour, OCHA said, while 70 percent of shops report significantly decreased food stocks.

Reading from the OCHA update, Dujarric said:

“Humanitarian agencies continue to face major constraints in providing humanitarian assistance. The insecurity is preventing safe access to impacted areas and warehouses. Despite the challenging conditions, humanitarian workers have provided some assistance, including the distribution of fresh bread to 137,000 displaced people, the delivery of 70,000 liters of fuel to water and sanitation facilities, and the activation of psychosocial support helplines.”

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak “has directed UK military assets to be deployed to the eastern Mediterranean to support Israel, reinforce regional stability and prevent escalation,” the UK’s defense ministry said in a news release Thursday.  

“Our military and diplomatic teams across the region will also support international partners to re-establish security and ensure humanitarian aid reaches the thousands of innocent victims of this barbaric attack from Hamas terrorists,” the prime minister said, according to the release.

The Royal Air Force (RAF) will begin patrols Friday to “help partners track emerging threats to regional security,” such as the transfer of weapons to terrorist groups, the release said. And a Royal Navy task group will be deployed “next week as a contingency measure to support humanitarian efforts.”

“The military package, which includes P8 aircraft, surveillance assets, two Royal Navy ships – RFA Lyme Bay and RFA Argus – three merlin helicopters and a company of Royal Marines, will be on standby to deliver practical support to Israel and partners in the region, and offer deterrence and assurance,” the release continued.  

Sunak also asked for all military teams in Israel, Cyprus and across the region to be bolstered to support contingency planning and the efforts of neighboring countries to deal with any spillover from instability in Israel.  

Jordan will donate $4.3 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees “to fund its response to the unfolding tragedy in the Gaza Strip,” UNRWA said in a statement Thursday.

UNRWA said the fund “will support the teams in Gaza to respond to unprecedented humanitarian needs including to deliver food and other basic supplies to those impacted by the ongoing crisis.”

“More than 222,000 people have sought refuge in over 90 UNRWA schools and other facilities,” the relief agency said.

UNRWA said it has been providing services to 1.4 million people in Gaza, including food aid to nearly 1.2 million.

UNRWA also warned that its stocks of basic supplies “can last for less than 12 days, accommodating 150,000 people only.”

The agency on Wednesday appealed for $104 million “in response to the escalation in the Gaza Strip.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he will meet with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday, following a visit to Israel by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

A senior defense official confirmed to CNN that Austin – who is currently in Brussels for a meeting of NATO defense ministers – would travel to Israel to meet Netanyahu. The official added that Austin is also expected to meet with the minister of defense, and the Israeli War Cabinet.

Austin is looking forward to speaking in depth with Israeli leaders about their operational planning and their objectives for this conflict in response to Hamas’s brutal ISIS-style attack,” said the official in a background call with reporters.

The official added that Israel has requested “precision-guided munitions” from the US in addition to Iron Dome missile interceptors.

 Netanyahu met Blinken in Tel Aviv on Thursday morning. 

There are no plans to put US troops on the ground in Israel, a top White House official said, pointing instead to a wide array of intelligence sharing, and weapons and munitions contributions to Israel.

“There is no intention or plan to put American troops on the ground in Israel — there’s no desire by the Israelis for that outcome,” said John Kirby, the National Security Council coordinator for strategic communication.

“The Israelis have made it very clear that they don’t want foreign troops on their soil, that they want to prosecute these operations on their own, and they have every right to want to do that,” he added.

He reiterated that US President Joe Biden’s first priority is the safety and security of Americans overseas, “as well as our own national security interests, and we have national security interests throughout the region.”

Security will increase at sensitive targets throughout New York after a former Hamas leader made a generic call for protesters to stage demonstrations Friday, the governor said.

Gov. Kathy Hochul said she has asked law enforcement to “ramp up every known area possible targets whether it is a yeshiva, a synagogue,” adding “we have so many museums and gathering places so we have been embedded with NYPD.”

State police are also gathering and sharing intelligence as part of their place on the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the governor said.     

She also called upon “law-abiding” Palestinians to reject Hamas and says ongoing violence falls “squarely at the feet of Hamas.” 

Security efforts across the country: Hochul said she would be participating in a White House briefing in the afternoon and had been in “continuous briefings” this week on security.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with senior law enforcement and national security officials on Thursday, the White House said.

The purpose of the meeting was “to discuss steps we are taking to safeguard the homeland and the people of the United States, including Jewish, Arab, and Muslim communities, following the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel,” the statement said.

Warning: This post contains graphic descriptions of violence.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken became emotional describing his reaction to images of victims of the Hamas assault that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared with him and his team, saying the attack “almost defies comprehension.”

“A baby, an infant riddled with bullets. Soldiers beheaded. Young people burned alive in their cars, or their hideaway rooms,” Blinken said at a news conference in Israel.

Blinken again compared the attack by Hamas to the attacks on civilians by ISIS.

The United States government will arrange charter flights starting Friday for American citizens seeking to leave Israel, according to President Joe Biden’s administration.

Biden previously directed his team “to ensure that we are assisting US citizens who do want to leave Israel and providing them with a safe means of doing that.”

The administration is “still working through some of the details,” but is in the process of organizing charter flights for US citizens and their immediate family members “from Israel to sites in Europe,” said John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council on Thursday. 

“I would add that we’re also exploring other options to expand the capacity of doing this, including exploring whether it’s possible to help Americans leave by land and by sea,” he said. “We know there’s a demand signal out there and we’re going to try the best we can to meet it.” 

Kirby directed American citizens seeking to leave Israel to fill out an intake form at travel.state.gov, which he said will help the State Department process requests and “get a sense of what the scope of the need is.”

He referred questions on the number of Americans seeking to leave Israel — and if passage on the charter flights would be free of cost — to the State Department.

The State Department expects “initial travel options to facilitate the safe departure of thousands of U.S. citizens per week” from Israel, spokesperson Matt Miller said.

In a statement about the start of charter flights on Friday, Miller said that “senior State Department officials are actively working with airline carriers and international partners on how best to provide additional options to U.S. citizens seeking to depart Israel or conduct onward travel to the United States.”

CNN’s Jennifer Hansler contributed reporting to this post.

The number of Americans who have died after the Hamas terror attack in Israel now stands at 27, according to the White House.

Meanwhile, 14 Americans are missing, said National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby.

A 16-year-old Israeli-American whose parents were killed in Hamas’ terror attacks on Israel last weekend says they will live on in his and his family’s memories after helping the teen survive.

Matias was in a safe room with his parents, Deborah and Shlomi Matias, when Hamas militants infiltrated the room, Deborah’s father, Ilan Troen, previously told CNN.

After she was shot, Deborah’s body provided cover to her son, who hid for more than 12 hours despite being wounded himself, said Troen, a professor emeritus from Brandeis University in Massachusetts.

Having survived the attack, Rotem plans to keep a bullet that was removed from his stomach during surgery, he said Thursday.

“I wanted to just keep it as a memory, to never forget them and remember that even though it was the hardest and lowest point in my life, I found … some hope that maybe I could live and share the memories, and how I saw my parents with other people,” he said.  

Read more about Rotem and his family here.

Related article Israeli-American teenager who was shot in a Hamas attack that killed his parents tells CNN he will keep the bullet in memory of their lives | CNN

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with the families of Americans killed or taken hostage by Hamas, he said at a news conference in Tel Aviv Thursday, reaffirming that the US was doing “everything we can to secure the release of the hostages.”

Deputy Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs Steve Gillen joined the meetings with the families, Blinken said, and he “will stay on the ground here to support the efforts to free their loved ones.”

“The enormity of their anguish, their loss, is immeasurable. For the families of the missing, there’s an unrelenting agony of not knowing the fate of their loved ones. Something that I don’t think most of us can truly understand, truly contemplate, if you’re not in their shoes. No one should have to endure what they’re going through,” Blinken said.

At least 25 Americans have been killed following Hamas’ terror attacks in Israel. The White House said Wednesday that 17 Americans were unaccounted for.

Humanitarian crisis in Gaza: Blinken also discussed with Israeli officials “ways to address the humanitarian needs of people living in Gaza to protect them from harm while Israel conducts its legitimate security operations,” the secretary said.

“We also talked about possibilities for safe passage for civilians who want to leave or get out of the way in Gaza and that’s a conversation, a discussion that we will pursue in the coming days including some of the countries that we’ll be visiting,” he said.

The only current route out of Gaza is to Egypt, which Blinken is expected to visit on his trip. One US official said Wednesday that Cairo wants to use a humanitarian corridor to send food and medical supplies into Gaza but doesn’t want to open the border in the other direction to accept civilians who are fleeing.

The official with knowledge of the negotiations said that under the proposal being discussed, all US citizens would be permitted to pass through the Rafah border crossing if they present their US passports, while the movement of other Palestinian civilians would be limited to 2,000 people a day.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday he will travel to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, in addition to Jordan and Qatar, after leaving Israel.

The intensive shuttle diplomacy comes as the US seeks to stop the conflict between Hamas and Israel from expanding, tries to secure the release of the hostages, and works with Egypt and Israel to open a humanitarian corridor from Gaza.

“Across each of these engagements, we’ll continue pressing countries to help prevent the conflict from spreading, and to use their leverage with Hamas to immediately and unconditionally release the hostages,” Blinken said at a news conference in Tel Aviv.

He will also discuss how to establish a more peaceful, prosperous and secure region, he added.

Iran has loomed large as one of Hamas’ most generous financial backers, providing the militant group crucial resources it needs to carry out acts of terrorism. But investigators in the US and across the globe have identified another revenue source being exploited by Hamas: Far-flung online donors offering support in cryptocurrency.

Even before Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel over the weekend, Justice Department officials in Washington, D.C. had been pursuing a criminal investigation into the militant group’s use of cryptocurrency through alleged money launderers, CNN has learned.

Justice Department lawyers have released scant details of its money laundering case — with most of the court filings sealed — but those that are public reveal it stems from Hamas-linked cryptocurrency accounts the US government seized three years ago. A court filing in May said the case was “ongoing” and a judge halted proceedings in a related civil matter until next month to allow the criminal case to continue without interference.

Separately, cryptocurrency addresses that Israel has seized for alleged links to Hamas and another Palestinian militant group have collectively been worth tens of millions of dollars, according to private analysts who spoke to CNN.

Hamas’ use of digital currency represents just one of the many ways the group — designated a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union — has sought to raise funds while evading sanctions.

“There’s not one financing method for Hamas or other terrorist organizations. They’re opportunistic and adaptive,” said former CIA analyst Yaya Fanusie, now an adjunct senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security. “Efforts to stop them are a constant game of cat-and-mouse.”

Read more about Hamas’ use of cryptocurrency here.

Palestinian fighters of the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, take part in a military parade to mark the anniversary of the 2014 war with Israel, near the border in the central Gaza Strip on July 19, 2023.

Related article 'They're opportunistic and adaptive': How Hamas is using cryptocurrency to raise funds | CNN

Israeli settlers fatally shot two Palestinians in the village of Qusra in the West Bank on Thursday, the Palestinian foreign ministry said in a statement. Violence has been rising in the occupied territory following Hamas’ terror attacks on Israel last weekend.

A Palestinian man and his son were shot when the settlers attacked the funeral procession of four Palestinians who were killed in Qusra by armed settlers on Wednesday, the statement said. As an ambulance carried the man and his son away after the initial attack, settlers shot at the emergency vehicle and killed the pair, the statement said.

Armed settlers also shot at vehicles in the streets of the occupied West Bank towns of Sawiya and Turmisiyya on Thursday, the statement said.

The Palestinian Red Crescent aid group said it helped people with severe gunshot wounds in the West Bank town of Qabalan on Thursday. A 63-year-old man shot in the abdomen and a 26-year-old man have been transferred to the hospital, the PRC said.

A total of 610 injuries have been reported in the West Bank since Saturday, the PRC said, 21 of which occurred Thursday. Of those 21 injures, live fire caused 13 of them, the PRC said.

After Hamas attacked Israel on Saturday, Israel responded by ordering a “complete seige,” of Gaza, cutting off food, electricity, fuel and water supplies.

The UN said in a statement released Thursday that residents in Gaza “have lived under unlawful blockade for 16 years,” and condemned this “further tightening” of the blockade. 

Take a look at how Israel is cutting off Gaza:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office Thursday released “horrifying photos of babies murdered and burned by the Hamas monsters.”

“Hamas is inhuman. Hamas is ISIS,” a social media post from Netanyahu’s office said.

The three photos showed two babies whose bodies had been burned beyond recognition and a third blood-stained infant’s body. 

Netanyahu’s post said the pictures were some of the photos that Netanyahu showed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on his visit to Jerusalem on Thursday. 

Gaza likely only has enough fuel for a few more hours and it is needed to power generators for hospitals, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned on Thursday.

“What’s certain, is that if we can’t get supplies in and if we can’t distribute what we have inside Gaza, I wanted to say we are going toward a catastrophe, but we are already in the catastrophe, but here, we are going well beyond that and the humanitarian situation will become unmanageable,” said Fabrizio Carboni, the ICRC regional director for the Middle East.

He told reporters during a briefing in Geneva that the team’s capacity to move safely is greatly challenged in the current conditions.

“When it comes to our supplies, we still have supply in Gaza, the problem is that we can’t move. We have fuel, we have chlorine for essential water infrastructure, we still have medical supplies, the challenge we face is our capacity to move safely in Gaza. You probably follow what happened to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulance who was hit and three of our colleagues, three of the volunteers of the PRCS (Palestine Red Crescent Society) were killed. So, very dire situation within Gaza,” Carboni said.

As the situation unfolds, the ICRC is preparing “for the worst,” he said.

“What we have seen since Saturday is quite awful. You know, even in humanitarian standards, the level of violence, the disrespect for human dignity, basic principle of humanity is quite shocking and it continues,” he added.

Officials around the world are working to evacuate their citizens from Israel following the attacks by Hamas, organizing repatriation flights in an effort to get them home as the crisis unfolds.

India: A charter flight scheduled to land in Tel Aviv on Thursday evening will collect approximately 230 Indian nationals, Arindam Bagchi, a Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson, said in a news conference Thursday. The flight will “likely” return to India Friday morning.

Nepal: Nepal’s foreign ministry has so far evacuated 253 Nepali students who were in Israel, saying on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that a flight carrying the students took off from Tel Aviv on Thursday.

Ten Nepali agriculture students were killed when Hamas attacked a kibbutz in southern Israel, Nepal’s Ambassador to Israel Kanta Rizal has told CNN. Three students were injured in the attack and are recovering in a hospital, while one student remains missing, per the ambassador.

Around 200 of the approximately 4,500 Nepali nationals working as caregivers for the elderly in Israel have so far registered with their government to be evacuated, Rizal told CNN.

Colombia: A plane carrying 110 Colombian nationals has left Tel Aviv, the country’s foreign ministry said Thursday, adding the passengers would change planes in Lisbon before arriving in Colombia. The government will continue to coordinate evacuation efforts, the ministry said in a statement.

The Israeli airline El Al will fly on the Sabbath for the first time since 1982 this Saturday, when it plans to operate two free flights for reservists, medical teams and members of security forces.

El Al said in a statement it had received the necessary religious authorization to operate the flights from New York and Bangkok, saying they are being paid for by El Al and “American financial bodies.”

The humanitarian situation in Gaza is “dire,” with food and water in limited supply and “quickly running out,” the deputy head of emergencies of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) Brian Lander said Thursday.

The UN agency is on the ground and is “responding and we’re providing food to thousands of people that have sought shelter in schools and elsewhere across the territory. But we’re going to run out very soon,” Lander warned.

“We don’t have access to the Gaza Strip that’s been closed down. We’re looking to ensure that we can have means to deliver to these people as the crisis evolves,” Lander said.

Lander said that WFP is “very worried” about how the situation will evolve, particularly if the humanitarian situation is not addressed.

“The people that are seeking shelter and striving to survive in this environment are only going to get worse and worse situations as time goes on. And I think our concern is that unless we’re able to access those communities, the people that are in need, the civilian population, there’s going to be an extreme situation for them, both in terms of having the food to survive, the water to survive and the other services even shelter over their heads,” he added.

Lander said WFP is calling on the parties “to abide by international humanitarian law to allow for those supplies to be brought to the communities that are in need.”

Two London-based Israeli citizens say they have not received any information from British or Israeli governments about the condition or whereabouts of their parents who are being held hostage by Hamas.

The mother of 53-year-old Noam Sagi and the parents of 52-year-old Sharone Lifschitz were kidnapped from the Nir Or kibbutz on Saturday, they said.

“I should have been on my way to Heathrow to pick up my mom who’s going to celebrate the 75th birthday today with her family here in London,” Sagi said.

He said he last communicated with his mother at about 9:20 a.m. UK time on Saturday, when she went into the safe room inside her house where she lived alone after his father died just a year ago.

“Can someone remind me what my mom’s crime was? For being Jewish and living in her own home?” Sagi asked.

Lifschitz said her parents, both peace activists aged 85 and 83, are on vital medication.

Her mother was taken from her bed, disconnected from her oxygen machine and loaded onto a vehicle, she said.

Sagi and Lifschitz grew up together in the Nir Oz kibbutz, one of Israel’s several kibbutzim or small farming enclaves, that bore the brunt of Hamas’ ground assault. About 125,000 people live across approximately 250 kibbutzim in Israel, according to the Jewish Agency for Israel. Sagi’s mother was Lifschitz’s Arabic teacher.

The number of Ukrainian nationals killed in Israel following Hamas’ attacks over the weekend has risen to seven, Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, said in a statement on Facebook Thursday.  

All the victims have been identified and their relatives have been notified, Nikolenko added. Steps are being taken to repatriate the bodies.  

In addition, nine Ukrainian nationals have sustained injuries “of varying severity,” while another nine are still missing, Nikolenko said, adding the Ukrainian embassy is cooperating with the Israeli security services to search for those missing.  

Evacuation efforts: More than 1,000 Ukrainian citizens have requested assistance in leaving Israel due to flight cancellations, Nikolenko said. Officials are preparing for the first evacuation flight on Saturday, with an aim to organizing additional flights.

“Details will be sent to citizens who have provided their details to the Ukrainian Embassy in Tel Aviv,” Nikolenko said.  

About 200 Ukrainians have expressed a desire to be evacuated from Gaza, according to Nikolenko.

“However, due to the lack of security, it is currently impossible to leave. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ukrainian embassies in Israel, Egypt and Jordan, as well as other Ukrainian agencies involved, are making active efforts to get our people out as soon as possible,” he added.  

At least 1,417 Palestinians, including 447 children and 248 women, have been killed since Israel started strikes on Gaza following the deadly Hamas attack last Saturday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

An additional 6,268 people have been injured, the Palestinian Health Ministry added.

Gaza’s humanitarian crisis deepened Thursday as Israeli jets continued to pound the densely populated enclave in response to Hamas’ brutal terror attacks, in the sixth day of the conflict.

At least 1,354 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza since Saturday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Israel has reported at least 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’ attacks over the weekend. Hamas is also holding as many as 150 people hostage in Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel’s energy minister Israel Katz said Gaza will not be provided with any electricity, water or fuel until the hostages are returned home.

“No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened, and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. Humanitarian for humanitarian. And no one will preach us morals,” Katz said Thursday.

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The European Union on Thursday reiterated it stands in solidarity with Israel, while again calling for the right of Gaza to “access food, water and medicines, according to international humanitarian law.”

“It is very important that one cannot forget that Israel has the right to defend itself. But of course, it needs to do it in line with international law, including international humanitarian law,” EU Commission spokesperson Peter Stano said Thursday during a news briefing. “This is very clear position of the European Union that is being repeated, both publicly and in our interactions with partners in the region and on the ground.”

The bloc is working with international partners to make sure that the hostages are released as soon as possible, Stano said, noting that the taking of hostages, “and the way in which Hamas did it, is … not only against international norm, but against any civilized norm.”

The EU also called for an end to the violence. “Unspeakable atrocities” had been committed against Israelis, Stano said, adding, “What we are witnessing in Gaza is a direct consequence of what Hamas started on Saturday.”

Hungary will carry out a further evacuation operation of its citizens from Israel, according to the country’s foreign minister. 

The Hungarian government is in touch with all 220 Hungarians in Israel who have registered for consular assistance, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó said in a post on a government-run website.

“We would like it if they could come home as soon as possible,” Szijjártó said.

“We’re working to ensure a safe return for everyone. Several evacuation operations are being planned along multiple routes,” he added.

Szijjártó urged Hungarians hoping to leave Israel not to delay doing so, also warning them not to share any evacuation details publicly. 

A further eight Hungarians managed to leave Israel this week, he said.

As the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) prepares for a “next stage” of war, the Biden administration remains focused on the status of American hostages, options for humanitarian corridors and safe zones, and the Israeli response, said principal deputy national security adviser Jon Finer.

The Americans held hostage by Hamas remain a key priority, Finer told CNN, though he declined to share any new information about the number or status of hostages. 

The US has sent experts to the region to consult with Israeli counterparts and “advise them on hostage recovery efforts,” Finer said. 

“This is obviously an area of great concern to all of us people who are stuck in this situation. It is about the worst condition that you can imagine being taken from a place where you’re either traveling or live and dragged across the border into a hostile situation like this,” he said, adding that it will also be a focus of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s meetings in Israel today.

The US and Israel are also in “direct conversation” regarding humanitarian corridors, Finer said, 

“We are talking about options, like humanitarian corridors and safe zones, options for people be able to get out of Gaza, if they can. You know, the president has been clear that the democracies like the United States and Israel are strongest when they operate according to the rule of law and the laws of war,” he said.

David Rosenberg, a retired Israeli, told CNN’s Nic Robertson how he survived the surprise assault from Hamas in a rocket shelter last weekend.

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Twelve French citizens were killed in the Hamas attacks on Israel while 17 others are still missing, a French Foreign Ministry spokesperson told journalists Thursday, according to CNN affiliate BFMTV.

There is “no news of 17 citizens whose disappearance is considered extremely worrying,” ministry spokesperson Anne-Claire Legendre said, per BFMTV.

Additionally, France’s foreign minister is set to meet the first evacuation flight from Israel when it arrives in Paris later Thursday.

The foreign ministry previously announced it would evacuate more French nationals on flights planned for Friday and Saturday, with priority given to unaccompanied children, pregnant women, people with disabilities and those with medical emergencies.

The UK is set to fly British nationals out of Israel, with the first flight set to leave Tel Aviv later on Thursday, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said.

The UK government “will facilitate commercial flights to the UK to help British nationals wanting to leave Israel following the Hamas attack, the Foreign Secretary has announced,” the FCDO said in a news release. 

Vulnerable British nationals “will be prioritized for these flights,” the FCDO added, advising that eligible people wait to be contacted and to not make their way to the airport unless they are called.

A Rapid Deployment Team has also been sent to Israel to bolster the efforts of British consular officials, the FCDO said.

At least 100 UK-based reservists and active-duty soldiers have gone to Israel to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said Orly Goldschmidt, spokesperson for the Embassy of Israel in the UK.

Remember: Israel has called up 300,000 reservists to fight for its military, IDF spokesperson, Maj. Doron Spielman, told CNN Wednesday.

The United States will never falter from its support for Israel, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday, adding Hamas’ “litany of brutality and inhumanity” evoked “the worst of ISIS.”

“The message that I bring to Israel is this: you may be strong enough on your own to defend yourself, but as long as America exists, you will never, ever have to,” Blinken said while speaking alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv. “We will always be there by your side.”

Although the top US diplomat did not explicitly speak of restraint, Blinken said he discussed with Netanyahu the importance of taking “every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians.”

“No country can or would tolerate the slaughter of its citizens or simply return to the conditions that allowed it to take place. Israel has the right, indeed the obligation, to defend itself and to ensure that this never happens again,” Blinken said. 

But he also reiterated that respect for civilian life is what distinguishes democracies from the likes of Hamas, saying, “As the Prime Minister and I discussed, how Israel does this matters.”

Blinken also stressed that Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people. 

US assistance: The US is “supplying ammunition, interceptors to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome, alongside other defense material,” Blinken said, noting that the “first shipments of US military support have already arrived in Israel and more is on the way.”

“As Israel’s defense needs evolve, we will work with Congress to make sure that they’re met. And I can tell you, there is overwhelming, overwhelming bipartisan support in our Congress for Israel’s security,” Blinken said.

Blinken echoed “the crystal clear warning” from President Joe Biden “to any adversary — state or non-state — thinking of taking advantage of the current crisis to attack Israel: Don’t.”

“We continue working closely with Israel to secure the release of the men, women, children, elderly people, taken hostage by Hamas. We’re pursuing intensive diplomacy throughout the region to prevent the conflict from spreading, and I’ll be doing that over the course of my trip in the coming days,” said Blinken.

Blinken’s trip is expected to continue beyond its original stops of Israel and Jordan, a State Department official said.

“No justification:” The US has been “adamant” with other nations about the need to unequivocally condemn Hamas’ attacks, the top US diplomat said, cataloging the horrors committed by the terrorist group: “Babies slaughtered, bodies desecrated, young people burned alive, women raped, parents executed in front of their children, children in front of their parents.”

“I understand on a personal level, the harrowing echoes that Hamas’ massacres carry for Israeli Jews, indeed, for Jews everywhere,” Blinken noted, describing his own identity as both a father and Jew.
“There is no excuse. There is no justification for these atrocities,” he said. “This is — this must be — a moment for moral clarity.”

 A CNN team saw several howitzers firing a barrage of artillery into Gaza from outside Sderot on Thursday.

CNN’s Nic Robertson and team reported from gun position of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), roughly two to three miles outside Gaza.

“This is quite a significant barrage of artillery that’s being laid down and going into Gaza right now,” Robertson reported live on air as thundering booms were heard overhead. 

Robertson said he estimated roughly a dozen howitzers were dug recently into the field, observing a “significant number of troops positioned here.”

“We knew to look at this field, because it had been used in previous conflicts here,” he added, noting that this Israeli mobilization is “much more significant” than previous operations.

“More guns are firing more often for a longer period of time,” Robertson stressed.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the United States for its “incredible support for Israel” at a joint news conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv on Thursday, in his country’s “war against the barbarians of Hamas.”

Blinken’s visit, Netanyahu added, was “another tangible example of America’s unequivocal support for Israel.”

 Hamas should be “crushed,” Netanyahu said, just as ISIS had been crushed. 

“Hamas is ISIS, and just as ISIS was crushed, so too will Hamas be crushed and Hamas should be treated exactly the way ISIS was treated,” Netanyahu said.
“They should be spat out from the community of nations. No leader should meet with them, no country should harbor them. And those that do should be sanctioned,” the Israeli leader said.

Spain has flown a total of 400 people out of Tel Aviv, Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares announced on social media.

Spanish citizens as well as European citizens and nationals from other countries arrived at Torrejon de Ardoz air base on Wednesday evening, the minister said.

On Wednesday, Spain’s foreign ministry and acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced that a Spanish-Israeli woman, Maya Villalobo, was killed during the Hamas attacks.

A plane carrying medical aid for Gaza has departed from Jordan, according to a statement from the Jordanian Hashemite Charitable Organization, a state-run relief agency.

The aid includes medicine and medical supplies for hospitals and health agencies operating in the Palestinian territory, said Dr. Hussein Al-Shibli, the secretary-general of the authority.

The aid will first arrive in Egypt and then be delivered to medical authorities in Gaza, through the Rafah border crossing, according to the statement.

Rafah is Gaza’s only border crossing with Egypt. On Tuesday, Palestinian officials in Gaza said it had been closed due to Israeli airstrikes. Whether or not the Rafah crossing is open remains unclear.

The United Nations has “unequivocally condemned” attacks on civilians in Israel and Gaza, and also Israel’s “further tightening of the unlawful blockade,” in a statement released Thursday.

The killings and hostage-taking by Hamas “constitute heinous violations of international law and international crimes, for which there must be urgent accountability,” the statement read.

There is no justification for such violence in Israel or Gaza, the statement said.

The UN also focused on the plight of Palestinians in Gaza.

“We also strongly condemn Israel’s indiscriminate military attacks against the already exhausted Palestinian people of Gaza, comprising over 2.3 million people, nearly half of whom are children. They have lived under unlawful blockade for 16 years, and already gone through five major brutal wars, which remain unaccounted for,” they said. “This amounts to collective punishment.”

The experts also warned the withholding of essential supplies, such as food, water and medicine, will “precipitate a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where its population is now at inescapable risk of starvation.” They called for the establishment of humanitarian corridors to allow people to leave Gaza.

The UN urged the international community to “address the root causes of the current conflict, including the 56-year-old occupation and the annexation pursued by Israel.”

The American death toll in Israel has risen to at least 25 people, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday.

“Tragically, the number of innocent lives claimed by Hamas’ heinous attacks continues to rise. Among those, we now know that at least 25 American citizens were killed,” Blinken said in Tel Aviv.

On Wednesday, the State Department confirmed the deaths of at least 22 Americans.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak acknowledged the “challenging security situation” at the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, during a call with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi Thursday.

Sunak “expressed his condolences for the Egyptians who have lost their lives, along with so many others,” according to a Downing Street spokesperson. 

Sunak called terrorism “an evil which must be confronted, wherever we find it.” The UK leader also said it was important that the conflict did not spread further and noted the importance of Egypt’s historic role in the region, including in seeking de-escalation.

He also offered UK support to try and manage the situation at Rafah border crossing and keep the route open for humanitarian and consular reasons.

Gaza is blockaded both by Israel and by Egypt. There has been speculation as to whether Egypt would open the Rafah crossing – the only border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt – although it has not yet done so.

Eyad al-Bozom, a spokesperson for the Palestinian interior ministry, said Israeli warplanes had targeted the Rafah gateway on Tuesday. Teams working at the crossing were asked to evacuate “immediately due to threats of strikes of the crossing,” al-Bozom said.

The families of 97 hostages taken from Israel by Hamas have been informed that they are being held in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Thursday.

In addition, the families of 222 soldiers killed since Hamas launched its attacks on Saturday have also been notified, according to IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken are addressing reporters in a joint news briefing in Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu thanked Blinken for his visit, both in English and in Hebrew.

“Your visit is another tangible example of America’s unequivocal support for Israel,” he told Blinken.

Netanyahu said, through the attack this weekend, “Hamas has shown itself to be an enemy of civilization.”

Three Chinese citizens are among those killed following attacks by Hamas on Israel, China’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday. Two others are missing.

“It has been confirmed that three Chinese citizens were unfortunately killed in the conflict, two are missing and several others were injured,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, without mentioning Hamas. 

“We urge foreign partners to make every effort to search for and rescue our missing personnel,” Wang added at a regular news briefing. 

China has called for de-escalation of the situation after the Hamas attacks but has yet to condemn the group. 

Israel’s ambassador to China Irit Ben-Abba expressed her frustration with Beijing’s response so far in an interview with Bloomberg TV Thursday.

“We expected China to say much more,” she said. “We expected China to mention Hamas atrocities, we expected China to condemn the terrorist attacks.”

A family in Long Island, New York, is awaiting news on their son, Omer Neutra, who they fear was kidnapped by Hamas this weekend, according to the New York City Mayor’s office.

Neutra, the New York Times reports, grew up on Long Island and, after spending a gap year in Israel in 2020, decided to join the Israeli military.

He last spoke to his parents by phone last Friday, according to the New York Times.

“Then all hell broke loose, and we haven’t spoken to him since,” his mother, Orna Neutra, told the newpaper.

The White House said Wednesday that 17 Americans remain unaccounted for. It’s unclear how many are being held hostage by Hamas.

Neutra was interested in peace-building, and wanted to return home to Long Island and attend college.

“He was planning to come back,” his father, Ronen, told the New York Times. “And we want him back.”

Here’s what New York City Mayor Eric Adams said:

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said “Israel does not stand alone,” as the alliance pledged support to Israel during the second day of the meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels.

Israel defense minister Yoav Gallant briefed his NATO counterparts via a video call “on the atrocities by Hamas perpetrated against Israeli civilians and the nationals of several NATO allies,” NATO said in a press release.

Stoltenberg said the alliance condemned the terrorist attacks in the strongest possible terms.

NATO allies “expressed solidarity with Israel, making clear that it has the right to defend itself with proportionality against these unjustifiable acts of terror” and called for Hamas to “immediately” release all hostages, the statement said.

“No nation or organization should seek to take advantage of the situation or to escalate it,” it warned.

NATO defense ministers are meeting for talks at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, where they have discussed the situation in Israel as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier Thursday, Stoltenberg welcomed US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and thanked him for strong leadership and support for the alliance.

More than 100 antisemitic acts, consisting of “mainly graffiti,” have been recorded by French police since Saturday, interior minister Gérald Darmanin said in an interview with radio station France Inter.

The graffiti includes swastikas and calls to kill Jews, in addition to “some more serious acts,” including people with weapons stopped at the entrance to Jewish sites, he said. 

There is currently no Islamist terrorist threat particularly targeting Jews in France, Darmanin added. But he warned that “hate online has been unleashed,” with an “extremely raised” level of reports of antisemitic abuse online.

“If it’s a protest in support of Hamas or in support of the action by some Palestinians against Israel, it’s ‘No.’ So, since Sunday we’re prohibiting them on a case-by-case basis,” Darmanin said, following the bans of several pro-Palestinian protests in France.

“The Palestinian cause is absolutely respectable,” he added.

Evacuations: Separately, the French foreign ministry announced that the country will evacuate more of its citizens from Israel in further flights planned for the coming days.

The first repatriation flight is scheduled for Thursday afternoon. Priority will be given to unaccompanied children and pregnant women, disabled people or those with medical emergencies. 

The ministry said in a statement Thursday that it is working with Air France to see commercial flights resume “as quickly as possible.” Air France suspended its flights to Israel following the Hamas attacks on Saturday.

X says it has removed “hundreds of Hamas-affiliated accounts” and taken down thousands of posts since the attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group.

The platform, formerly known as Twitter, was given 24 hours by the European Union earlier this week to address illegal content and disinformation regarding the conflict or face penalties under the bloc’s recently enacted Digital Services Act. 

CEO Linda Yaccarino responded to EU official Thierry Breton in a letter dated Wednesday that she posted to X. She said the company had “redistributed resources and refocused internal teams who are working around the clock to address this rapidly evolving situation.”

“There is no place on X for terrorist organizations or violent extremist groups and we continue to remove such accounts in real time,” Yaccarino wrote.

“X is… addressing identified fake and manipulated content during this constantly evolving and shifting crisis,” she added. The platform had “assembled a leadership group to assess the situation” shortly after news broke about the attack, Yaccarino said.

A slew of mischaracterized videos and other posts went viral on X over the weekend, alarming experts who track the spread of misinformation and offering the latest example of social media platforms’ struggle to deal with a flood of falsehoods during a major geopolitical event.

Since the attack on Israel, Yaccarino said X had acted to “remove or label tens of thousands of pieces of content” that break its rules on violent speech, manipulated media and graphic media. It had also responded to more than 80 “take down requests” from EU authorities to remove content.

“Community Notes” — which allow X users to fact check false posts — are visible on “thousands of posts, generating millions of impressions,” she wrote.

According to Yaccarino, notes related to the conflict take about five hours on average to show up after a post is created, a revelation that could fuel concerns that fake or manipulated content is being seen by thousands — or in some cases millions — of people before being moderated.

Acknowledging receipt of Yaccarino’s letter Thursday, Breton said on X that the the Digital Services Act enforcement team “will analyse the reply and decide on next steps.”

The law is one of the most ambitious efforts by policymakers anywhere to regulate tech giants and companies face billions in fines for violating the act.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, according to a statement from Netanyahu’s office.

“We’re here – and we’re not going anywhere,” Blinken told Netanyahu at the start of the meeting, the statement said.

The Israeli foreign minister, the head of Israel’s national security council, and Israel’s ambassador to Washington also participated in the meeting, among others.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said his country is abiding by international law, in response to a question from CNN about whether Israel is upholding the laws of warfare. 

“I’m quite disappointed that that’s what you’re asking instantaneously. Haven’t you seen? You’ve seen, you were all there. So now we’re starting with the rhetoric about war crimes really?” Herzog said, responding to CNN’s Becky Anderson at a news briefing in Jerusalem on Thursday.

“Israel abides by international law, operates by international law. Every operation is secured and covered and reviewed legally with all due respect,” Herzog added. Accusations of war crimes come “totally out of context,” he said.

Israel has been accused of inflicting collective punishment on Palestinians as it has subjected Gaza to intense bombardment since Hamas’ attack on Saturday. Collective punishment is a war crime.

Herzog also got visibly agitated when responding to a similar question at the same briefing. Matt Frei, from UK broadcaster Channel 4, asked the Israeli president whether Israel is holding ordinary Palestinians in Gaza responsible for not removing Hamas.

“That’s the situation. These missiles are there. These missiles are launched, the button is pressed, the missile comes up from a kitchen onto my children,” he continued.

When asked what Israel’s plan is, he responded: “The plan is we have to make sure that Hamas will not be able to repeat this again.”

“We have to defend ourselves. We have the full right to do so. And it’s about time that the world understands it,” he stressed.

The Israeli government has not confirmed the specific claim that Hamas attackers cut off the heads of babies during their shock attack on Saturday, an Israeli official told CNN, contradicting a previous public statement by the Prime Minister’s office.

“There have been cases of Hamas militants carrying out beheadings and other ISIS-style atrocities. However, we cannot confirm if the victims were men or women, soldiers or civilians, adults or children,” the official said. 

The explosive allegations that children had been decapitated at the kibbutz of Kfar Aza emerged Tuesday in Israeli media. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) later described the scene as a “massacre” in a statement to CNN. Women, children toddlers and the elderly were “brutally butchered in an ISIS way of action,” the IDF said.

Tal Heinrich, a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Wednesday that babies and toddlers had been found with their “heads decapitated” in Kfar Aza.

An IDF spokesman later in the day said that terrorists had carried out decapitations.

“We know that there were dead babies. There is evidence that there was decapitation. I don’t know how to verify numbers or how they were killed,” IDF spokesman Maj. Nir Dinar said.

At least 1,354 people have been killed and a further 6,049 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since Saturday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Earlier Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces said it is “conducting a large-scale strike” on Hamas targets in Gaza as the conflict entered a sixth day.

A humanitarian crisis is rapidly spiraling in the coastal enclave. The UN said Thursday more than 330,000 people have been displaced there since Israel began its bombardment.

At least 1,200 people were killed and thousands more injured in Hamas’ surprise attacks on Israel at the weekend, according to Israeli officials.

The health infrastructure in Gaza is close to breaking point, Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, said Thursday.

Al-Qudra raised alarm about the state of intensive care units, saying “even after expansion, all beds are occupied, leaving no room for new patients in critical condition.”

The surge in the number of injured individuals now exceeds the capacity of the operating rooms available, he added.

Earlier Thursday the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said hospitals in Gaza “risk turning into morgues” as they lose power amid escalating violence and following Israel’s siege of the enclave.

A cry for aid: The Palestinian minister of health called for international help to assist in establishing field hospitals in the Gaza Strip as hospitals there are already overcrowded.

In a statement, health minister Dr. Mai Al Kaila “urgently” called on all “international and UN health organizations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and all countries of the world to intervene immediately and urgently to provide medicines and medical supplies, especially for operating rooms, emergency departments, and intensive care units.”

Gaza will not be provided with any electricity, water or fuel until Israeli hostages being held by Hamas are returned home, Israeli energy minister Israel Katz said Thursday.

“No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened, and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. Humanitarian for humanitarian. And no one will preach us morals,” Katz wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

During the onslaught on Saturday, armed Hamas militants poured over the heavily-fortified border into Israel and took as many as 150 hostages, including Israeli army officers, back to Gaza.

Hamas warned that it would start executing hostages if Israel targeted people in Gaza without warning.

Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), told CNN’s Erin Burnett that the situation with the hostages is an “extremely sensitive and complex topic.”

Although Israel has “some experience” with hostage situations, Conricus said they have never dealt with an operation like this: “Not in the scope, not in the magnitude and not in the complexity of where our hostages are.”

Conricus said “reason dictates” that the hostages are being kept underground, to “keep them safe from Israeli intelligence, and efforts to get them out.”

Israel’s Euro 2024 qualifier against Kosovo scheduled for Sunday has been postponed “as the Israeli authorities currently do not allow their national team to travel abroad,” UEFA announced Thursday.

Israel had been due to play their Group I qualifier against Kosovo in Pristina.

UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, has already postponed all soccer matches scheduled in Israel over the next two weeks due to the conflict in the region.

A new date for the October 15 fixture was not given.

Germany will ban Hamas from operating in the country, Chancellor Olaf Scholz told lawmakers Thursday.

The pro-Palestinian association “Samidoun” will also be banned in Germany after its members celebrated “the most brutal acts of terror in the open streets,” Scholz said.

Scholz blamed Iran for backing Hamas, although he had “no solid evidence that Iran has provided concrete and operational support for this cowardly attack by Hamas.”

“Without Iranian support” over the past several years, “Hamas would not have been capable of these unprecedented attacks on Israeli territory,” Scholz said.

“The jubilant statements by the top of the Iranian regime and some other government officials in the region are abhorrent. The leadership in Tehran is unashamedly showing its true colors – and confirming its role in Gaza,” he added.

Scholz warned Hezbollah not to “intervene in the fighting” as “this would not only result in a justified and harsh Israeli reaction,” but also draw Lebanon “to the brink of the abyss.”

Behind the scenes Germany was working “in close coordination with Israel” with all its “might to ensure that all hostages are released again,” Scholz said.

“Our immediate concern today is for the children, women and men who have been trafficked into the Gaza Strip. We are all deeply moved by their fate,” the German Chancellor said.

“We fear that Hamas will continue to use them as human shields in the coming weeks,” he added. “Nothing but nothing justifies the terror of Hamas.”

Scholz said he is counting on the possible mediating role of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Jordanian King Abdullah II bin al-Hussein and the Emir of Qatar, whom he will receive for talks in Berlin on Thursday.

Weapons request: Israel has also asked Germany for ammunition for warships in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks, German defense minister Boris Pistorius said on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in Brussels on Thursday.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Tel Aviv Thursday, where he will meet with Israeli officials.

He is also scheduled to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Before departing for Israel, Blinken told reporters discussions about a humanitarian corridor to allow civilians to leave Gaza via Egypt are “ongoing.” The situation was “understandably complicated,” he said.

An Irish-Israeli woman has been confirmed killed at the music festival attacked by Hamas militants on Saturday, Ireland’s Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said Wednesday.

Kim Damti had been missing for several days after she was last seen at the Nova Festival outside Re’im.

“As a nation we are united in mourning for Kim Damti. This vibrant young Irish-Israeli woman was struck down in her prime with her adult life ahead of her,” Varadkar said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

In a Facebook post, Damti’s sister Laura said the family had lost “our angel, our flower … who was murdered by the cursed terrorists.”

Israeli rescue workers said at least 260 bodies were found at the festival site. Some attendees were taken hostage, seen in social media videos being seized by their armed captors.

Israel’s ongoing aerial bombardment of Gaza “will not lead to peace,” a Palestinian Parliament member said Thursday, as he called for a ceasefire to stem the deepening humanitarian crisis in the densely populated enclave.

Speaking to CNN’s John Vause, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, president of the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI), a political party headquartered in the West Bank, said the “dehumanization of all Palestinians will also not solve the problem.”

Barghouti also called for the “immediate” exchange of Palestinian prisoners in order to free Israelis held hostage by Hamas.

An “immediate two-state solution” is the best hope to achieve lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, he added.

“There is no way that Palestinians will give up their struggle for freedom,” Barghouti said.
“Either we have a two-state solution as soon as possible, or we will have to be together with equality, but Palestinians have to be treated equally. And that means full democratic, civil, and national rights for both people.”

At least 1,203 Palestinians have been killed and 5,763 others injured since Israel’s bombardment of Gaza began on Saturday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said Thursday.

Earlier Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces said it is “conducting a large-scale strike” on Hamas targets in Gaza as the conflict entered a sixth day.

A humanitarian crisis is rapidly spiraling in the coastal enclave. The UN said Thursday more than 330,000 people have been displaced there since Israel began its bombardment.

Hamas’ surprise attacks on Israel at the weekend killed at least 1,200 people and injured thousands more, according to Israeli officials.

As thousands of rockets have rained down on Israel, the country has been relying once again on the Iron Dome system to protect its citizens.

The missile defense system is one of the most important tools in Israel’s arsenal and has saved countless civilian lives over various conflicts in the past decade, analysts say. It is highly effective. The Israel Defense Forces said the system boasted a 95.6% success rate during a rocket salvo fired by Islamic Jihad in May.

The Iron Dome is designed to shoot down incoming projectiles. It is equipped with a radar that detects rockets and then uses a command-and-control system that quickly calculates whether an incoming projectile poses a threat or is likely to hit an unpopulated area. If the rocket does pose a threat, the Iron Dome fires missiles from the ground to destroy in the air.

Saudi Arabia is “exerting maximum effort” to prevent an escalation of the conflict in Israel and Gaza, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Iran’s president in a phone call on Wednesday, the state-run Saudi Press Agency reported.

The prince also expressed concern over the humanitarian situation in Gaza and stressed Saudi’s support to achieve a “comprehensive and fair peace that ensures the Palestinian people’s legitimate rights,” SPA reported.

According to an Iranian official, the call between the Saudi crown prince and Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi Wednesday was their first since the two countries renewed diplomatic ties earlier this year.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to meet with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday, a Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official said Thursday.

Abbas is the president of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which lost control of Gaza to its rival Hamas in 2007.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, PLO Executive Committee Secretary General Hussein al-Sheikh said the meeting would follow talks between Abbas and King Abdullah II of Jordan in Amman.

Al-Sheikh said the meeting with the King of Jordan is “part of the effort exerted around the clock by the Palestinian leadership to stop this devastating war, and within the framework of joint efforts between Jordan and Palestine.”

Before departing for Israel Wednesday, Blinken told reporters he will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while discussions about a humanitarian corridor to allow civilians to leave Gaza via Egypt are “ongoing.” The situation was “understandably complicated,” he added.

As Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes and overwhelm areas, including hospitals, there is little room to go.

Across the Middle East, Gaza is among the smallest and most densely packed cities.

Take a look:

People from Be’eri sometimes used to say the reason the Israeli kibbutz was so close to the Gaza Strip was because otherwise, it would be too perfect.

“It was a joke, something we used to say because Be’eri is so beautiful. It’s the place where you want your kids to grow up. The sunset is beautiful, the fields are green, it has everything you want from a vacation spot,” Lotan Pinyan told CNN on Wednesday.

Be’eri’s proximity to Gaza, which is only a few kilometers away, means the liberal community has been a frequent target of Hamas rockets fired from the enclave — usually intercepted by Israeli defenses. The rockets were the one downside of the otherwise idyllic spot, Pinyan and his friends would say. “It’s not a joke now,” he said.

Early on Saturday morning, Hamas militants stormed Be’eri and left behind a devastation of unimaginable scale.

They murdered more than 120 of its residents, including children, and kidnapped others. They set people’s homes on fire, then killed them when they tried to escape the heat and smoke. They looted, stole and destroyed what they could.

It all started with the sirens.

The community of about 1,100 people was woken up at 6:30 a.m., when the alarm indicating an imminent rocket attack went off.

“But it was not normal. We are used to the bombing, we know what is sounds like: ‘tat - tat - tat.’ But this was different. It didn’t stop. Tat - tat - tat - tat - tat - tat - tat,” Michal Pinyan, Lotan’s wife, told CNN. “And then some 45 minutes later, we started getting messages that there are terrorists in the kibbutz,” Lotan added.

Read how Hamas’s attack on Be’eri unfolded here.

The number of Thai nationals killed in Hamas’ attacks on Israel has risen to 21, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said Thursday, as his government considers alternative routes to evacuate its citizens.

“I would like to convey my condolences to another loss of Thai worker’s life, the death toll is 21 now,” Srettha said on X, formerly Twitter.

About 30,000 Thai workers live in Israel, according to the Thai Foreign Ministry. As of Monday, more than 1,000 Thais had requested help with evacuation.

Thailand is weighing whether to evacuate citizens by boat, or by road to Jordan, but as those options risk crossing through conflict zones, airlifts are the best choice for now, Srettha said.

At least 15 Thai nationals are scheduled to arrive home on Thursday, he added.

On Wednesday, the foreign ministry said at least 14 Thais are believed to have been taken hostage by Hamas militants.

Horrors of Hamas’ attack on border communities are emerging, with children found “butchered” in a kibbutz, the Israeli military said, and at least 1,200 people killed in Israel.

Meanwhile, Israel is hammering Gaza with airstrikes, hitting hundreds of targets, reducing neighborhoods to rubble and killing at least 1,300 people, according to Palestinian officials.

Here are the areas impacted by the fighting:

Hospitals in Gaza “risk turning into morgues” as they lose power during Israel’s bombardment of the enclave, the International Committee of the Red Cross warned on Thursday.

A humanitarian crisis is rapidly spiraling in Gaza, where aid agencies and health officials report hundreds of thousands have been displaced amid shortages of food, water and electricity — putting extra strain on medical facilities.

Gaza’s only power station has stopped working after running out of fuel, the head of the Gaza power authority told CNN on Wednesday. People in the enclave can still use power generators for electricity but with a blockade on all sides of the border, the fuel needed for the generators to work is running out, the official said.

Nearly 1,200 people have been killed in airstrikes in Gaza since Saturday, according to Palestinian health officials.

Hostages: Islamist militants are holding as many as 150 hostages in Gaza and Carboni said the Red Cross is in contact with Hamas and Israeli officials to address their release.

“As a neutral intermediary we stand ready to conduct humanitarian visits; facilitate communication between hostages and family members; and to facilitate any eventual release,” Carboni said. 

Former US President Donald Trump on Wednesday criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and said Israel needed to “straighten it out” following attacks by Hamas militants. 

Speaking at a campaign event in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump expressed sympathy for Israel, calling the country “a blessing to the world” and urging Israeli leaders to organize against Hamas.

“When I see sometimes the intelligence, you talk about the intelligence, or you talk about some of the things that went wrong over the last week, they’ve got to straighten it out because they’re fighting potentially a very big force,” Trump said.

Trump also spoke at length about a 2020 US drone strike he ordered that killed a top Iranian military commander and claimed Netanyahu “let us down” by not assisting the US with that mission. 

Trump, the GOP front-runner for the 2024 US presidential election, also blamed the war in Israel on his political opponent President Joe Biden.

Biden on Saturday said his administration’s support of Israel’s security is “rock solid and unwavering.”

Canada has sent military aircraft to assist in evacuating Canadians from Israel, authorities said Wednesday.

In a media briefing, Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre said two CC-150 Airbus aircraft were heading to Athens and authorities were working to shuttle Canadians from Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport to the Greek capital.  

At the same briefing, Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said the flights are available to Canadian citizens, their spouses, and their children as well as to Canadian permanent residents, their spouses and their children. This includes those with dual citizenship.

At least two Canadian citizens were killed and a third is “presumed” dead in Israel amid the ongoing conflict, authorities said. At least three Canadians are missing.

Joly declined to say whether any of the three missing were considered hostages.  

More than 4,200 Canadians are registered in Israel and an additional 475 Canadians are registered in Gaza and the West Bank, according to CNN Canadian news partner CTV News.

The Hamas-ruled enclave of Gaza is a poor, densely populated area, with few resources.

The coastal enclave has been almost completely cut off from the rest of the world for nearly 17 years, when Hamas seized control, prompting Israel and Egypt to impose a strict siege on the territory, which is ongoing.

Israel also maintains an air and naval blockade on Gaza as well as a vast array of surveillance.

Which begs the question: How did Hamas amass the sheer amount of weaponry that enabled the group to pull off coordinated attacks that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and injured thousands more — while continuing to rain rocket fire down on Israel?

The answer, according to experts, is through a combination of guile, improvisation, tenacity and an important overseas benefactor.

Iran factor: “Hamas acquires its weapons through smuggling or local construction and receives some military support from Iran,” the CIA’s World Factbook says.

While the Israeli and US governments have yet to find any direct role by Iran in last weekend’s raids, experts say the Islamic Republic has long been Hamas’ main military supporter, smuggling weapons into the enclave through clandestine cross-border tunnels or boats that have escaped the Mediterranean blockade.

Recycling munitions: Gaza has none of the heavy industry that would support weapons production in most of the world. But among its main exports are scrap iron, which can provide material to make weapons in the tunnel network below the enclave.

When Gaza infrastructure has been destroyed in Israeli airstrikes, what’s left — sheet metal and metal pipes, rebar, electrical wiring — has found its way into Hamas’ weapon workshops, emerging as rocket tubes or other explosive devices, according to Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib in the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Fikra Forum in 2021.

Recycling unexploded Israel munitions for their explosive material and other parts adds to Hamas’ supply chain, Alkhatib wrote. “The IDF’s operation indirectly provided Hamas with materials that are otherwise strictly monitored or forbidden altogether in Gaza,” he wrote.

Read more on how Hamas managed to stockpile weapons.

Israel is “conducting a large-scale strike” on Hamas targets in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a social media post early Thursday, as the conflict enters a sixth day.

A humanitarian crisis is rapidly unfolding in Gaza as the enclave faces relentless Israeli airstrikes. The UN said Thursday more than 330,000 people have been displaced there since Israel began its bombardment.

Meantime, talks are underway to allow US and Palestinian civilians to leave Gaza through Egypt as a potential land invasion looms, a senior Israeli official said. Several other countries are sending flights to evacuate their citizens.

Nearly 1,200 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel began airstrikes Saturday in response to Hamas’ attacks on Israel, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said. Israel has reported at least 1,200 people have been killed since Saturday.

Here’s what else you should know:

More than 330,000 people have been displaced in Gaza since Israel began its bombardment of the enclave, the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said early Thursday.

In a statement, OCHA further expressed its concerns over the damage of civilian infrastructure in Gaza. Israel began a blockade of the densely populated enclave, cutting electricity, fuel, and water supplies.

“The cumulative number of displaced people increased by 30 percent over the past 24 hours, now totaling 338,934, of whom over two thirds are taking shelter in UNRWA schools,” the statement read.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza earlier on Thursday said 600,000 people have no access to water and that some hospitals are relying on water from wells. The ministry added that the death toll in Gaza is nearing 1,200 since Saturday.

Meanwhile, the World Food Programme (WFP) said it is aiming to provide “a critical food lifeline to over 800,000 people.”

Izzat al-Risheq, a senior Hamas official, told CNN Wednesday that it’s too early to exchange Israeli hostages while Israel continues to strike Gaza.

He also denied Hamas had any help from Iran or Lebanon’s Hezbollah in executing or planning its large-scale surprise assault on Israel.

“I say it very clearly that this operation was a 100% Hamas operation without any help from any regional party,” al-Risheq said.

Some background: Hamas fighters are holding as many as 150 people hostage in locations across Gaza following their raids on southern Israel on Saturday, Israel’s ambassador to the UN said Monday.

Abu Obaida, the spokesperson of Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades, said Monday that Hamas would start executing civilian hostages if Israel targeted people in Gaza without warning.

Israeli authorities think hostages taken by Hamas are being held underground, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Wednesday.  

“Reason dictates that they are underground,” Conricus said. “Reason also dictates that Hamas, since they planned to launch this attack and they planned to take these people hostage, reason dictates that they planned in advance locations to hide these hostages and keep them safe from Israeli intelligence, and efforts to get them out.” 

The situation with the hostages is an “extremely sensitive and complex topic,” Conricus said. Even though Israel has had “some experience” with hostage situations, they have never dealt with anything like this, he added.

“Not in the scope, not in the magnitude and not in the complexity of where our hostages are, Conricus said.

Potential ground invasion: When asked whether an Israeli ground invasion was imminent, Conricus said he would not telegraph Israel’s schedule or intentions in this conflict.

“It is clear and understandable that what needs to be done is that all of Hamas’ military capabilities need to be taken off the map. How that will happen, by what means, and what tactics, that is a few days in the future, maybe more than that.” 

Hamas fighters are holding as many as 150 people hostage in locations across Gaza following their raids on southern Israel on Saturday, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations said Monday.

Abu Obaida, the spokesperson for Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades, on Monday said Hamas would start executing civilian hostages if Israel targeted people in Gaza without warning.

Israeli airstrikes on Gaza killed at least 51 people and injured 281 others early Thursday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The casualties were in the residential areas of Zeitoun, Sabra, Al-Nafaq, and Tel al-Haw, it said.

Some of the victims are still under the rubble, according to Deputy Health Minister Yousef Abu Al-Rish, who accused Israeli forces of intending “to cause as much damage and destruction, hence destroying entire residential areas.” 

The death toll in Gaza since Israeli strikes began on Saturday is nearing 1,200, Abu Al-Rish said.

The minister described the situation as an “imminent humanitarian catastrophe” after Israel began a blockade of the densely populated enclave, cutting electricity, fuel, and water supplies. 

“More than 600,000 of Gaza’s population are deprived from water, and entire hospitals are deprived from water,” he added, urging the world to stop the Israeli aggression. 

The Biden administration is still searching for concrete details about the condition of the handful of Americans believed to have been taken hostage by Hamas, including exactly how many the group may be holding captive in Gaza, or if they are currently being held in one place, a US official told CNN. 

As the Biden administration continues its work to support Israel and move military assets into the region, US officials across the government are furiously working behind the scenes to piece together an accurate picture on the ground.

In remarks to a roundtable with members of the Jewish community at the White House Wednesday, President Joe Biden pledged the full force of his administration’s commitment to rescuing hostages, saying that while “we’re working on every aspect of the hostage crisis in Israel,” if he relayed in detail what steps the administration was taking, “I wouldn’t be able to get them home.”

Further complicating the situation, US officials say, is that Hamas consists of numerous and often competing subgroups and militias that all operate in Gaza. Before the US can put together a plan to recover hostages, officials first have to figure out which of those Hamas sub-groups may be holding them, and for what reason. 

Here’s what is happening: The US is working closely with Israel, with FBI and Pentagon personnel on the ground in Israel providing support to Israeli special operators. 

An interagency team of US officials from the State Department, National Security Council, and FBI is also receiving input about the Americans who are missing or deceased in Israel, a US official said.

FBI hostage negotiators and agents are talking to family members, getting proof of life information that can be used in the investigation and for possible questions to be asked if hostage takers reach out. These include members of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group, which has extensive experience in helping to resolve hostage incidents, including in war zones from Afghanistan to Iraq and across the Middle East. 

Read more about the efforts to bring American hostages home.

Benny Gantz, a former defense minister who joined Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and current defense minister Yoav Gallant in a “war management cabinet,” said Wednesday that the three men standing together is a “clear message to our enemies.”

“The state of Israel is at its most difficult hours. These are faithful days,” Gantz said during a televised address. “At this time, there is only one camp, one group — the camp of the nation of Israel.”

He added that “now is the time for bravery.”

The emergency government and war cabinet were announced earlier Wednesday. The government will not pass any laws or make any decisions that do not concern the conduct of the war, the announcement said.

Hamas has denied that its militants beheaded children and attacked women when it launched a large-scale surprise assault on Israel last Saturday that left at least 1,200 people dead in Israel.

Hamas spokesman and senior official Izzat al-Risheq said in a statement Wednesday that reports “spread lies about our Palestinian people and the resistance claiming that members of the Palestinian resistance beheaded children and attacked women with no evidence to support such claims and lies.”

“We strongly condemn the fabricated and baseless allegations promoted by the occupation in an attempt to cover up for the massacres, crimes and genocide committed in Gaza,” al-Risheq added.

Tal Heinrich, a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said earlier on Wednesday that babies and toddlers were found with their “heads decapitated” in Kfar Aza in southern Israel after Hamas’ attacks in the kibbutz over the weekend.

Some context: In addition, days after the assault, other horrifying details are still emerging.

In Kfar Aza, a kibbutz in southern Israel, the Israel Defense Forces told CNN that militants carried out a “massacre” in which women, children, toddlers and elderly were “brutally butchered in an ISIS way of action.”

Less than 20 kilometers (12 miles) away, the farming community Be’eri was among the worst-hit, with more than 100 bodies recovered and eyewitnesses describing assailants going door to door, breaking into homes and executing civilians.

In addition, at least 260 bodies were recovered at the site of the Nova festival, held on rural farmland in southern Israel.

A survivor of the Nova music festival massacre described what happened as “animal slaughter” in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.  

“It’s like they take all the animals to one place and shoot them all,” Sahar Ben-Sela said from a wheelchair in a Tel Aviv hospital, recounting in great detail how a “big panic” set in as the shooting started amid the attacks by Hamas this weekend.

A police officer pointed Sahar and others to go inside a shelter, he said — a call heeded by dozens of people. But unfortunately, the attackers started dropping grenades into the shelter and shooting people “point blank,” Sahar said. Many of them died.  

“I got hit… but couldn’t really understand what happened,” Sahar said.

The world, he added, should know that “it was a peace festival, and we did nothing to provoke them. We just [were] dancing and having fun.” 

At least 260 bodies were found at the site of the festival, on rural farmland not far from the border between Gaza and Israel, according to Israeli rescue service Zaka. Some attendees were seen in videos posted on social media being taken hostage by armed captors.