May 12, 2024 - Israel-Gaza updates

Our live coverage of the Israel-Hamas war has moved here.

Smoke rises following Israeli bombardment in Jabalia in northern Gaza on Sunday, May 12.

The Israeli military has said that it began operating in northern Gaza overnight, and “precise operations” are continuing in eastern Rafah and near the Rafah crossing, as well as in the area of Zeitoun in central Gaza. The military action in Rafah comes ahead of a planned full-scale invasion.

The death toll in the Strip since October 7 has surpassed 35,000, the Ministry of Health said.

In northern Gaza, following calls Saturday to evacuate several areas, including Jabalya, the Israel Defense Forces said its troops began an operation “based on intelligence information regarding attempts by Hamas to reassemble its terrorist infrastructure and operatives in the area.”

Video captured heavy gunfire, Israeli tanks and the sound of drones in the area of Jabalya early Sunday.

Here are the latest headlines:

Israeli Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi attends a wreath-laying ceremony marking Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem on May 6.

Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said he bears “the responsibility for the failure of the IDF to defend our civilians on October 7.”

Halevi’s remarks came during a speech he delivered at Israel’s Memorial Day ceremony held at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Sunday evening.

Hamas’ surprise attack on October 7 left Israel flat-footed, sparking a backlash that is still rippling through the country. The operation saw at least 1,500 Hamas fighters pour across the border into Israel in an assault that killed at least 1,200 Israelis, while others are still held hostage by the militant group.

US President Joe Biden’s top national security aide spoke Sunday with his Israeli counterpart about the concerns about a potential offensive in Rafah.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan “reiterated President Biden’s longstanding concerns over the potential for a major military ground operation into Rafah,” the White House said.

Sullivan discussed alternatives to an invasion of the city “to ensure the defeat of Hamas everywhere in Gaza” with Tzachi Hanegbi.

“Mr. Hanegbi confirmed that Israel is taking U.S. concerns into account,” a White House readout of the phone call said. The men agreed to arrange an in-person meeting of US and Israeli officials soon to discuss Rafah and other issues.

The call came on Israel’s Memorial Day. Sullivan emphasized that it’s the first Memorial Day since the October 7 terror attacks and discussed efforts to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas.

A frame taken from a video released by the IDF shows the opening of the 'Western Erez' crossing.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has announced the opening of a new humanitarian aid crossing into Gaza Strip in coordination with the United States.

“In accordance with the directive of the government of Israel and in coordination with the U.S. government, the ‘Western Erez’ Crossing was opened in the area of the northern Gaza Strip for the transfer of humanitarian aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip,” the IDF said in the statement on Sunday.

The IDF said it’s part of the effort “to increase aid routes to the Gaza Strip, and to the northern Gaza Strip in particular.”

This came as Israel’s military on Saturday ordered the immediate evacuation of several more neighborhoods in Rafah, where it has been stepping up operations ahead of an anticipated ground offensive. About 300,000 people have already fled the southern Gazan city.

The southern crossings to the Gaza Strip have not seen aid in three days, according to the UN’s World Food Programme on Friday. Egypt said Saturday it will not coordinate on the entry of aid from the Rafah crossing, citing security concerns.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a press conference in Washington, DC, on May 10.

Top American officials offered stark warnings Sunday against an Israeli invasion of Rafah, predicting that a major ground offensive in the southern Gaza city would lead to widespread civilian casualties.

The alarm bells from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan came after President Joe Biden delivered an ultimatum last week on CNN that an Israeli invasion of Rafah would cause him to pause certain weapons transfers.

Blinken and Sullivan both said Biden made the determination because he didn’t want American weapons used in what he estimates would be a bloody, ill-advised operation. At the same time, they sought to rebut claims from Republicans and pro-Israel Democrats that Biden was leaving Israel to fend for itself.

Speaking on CBS, Blinken said the US believes Israel has killed more civilians than Hamas terrorists as part of its war in Gaza. And he said the country needed to do more to mitigate civilian deaths.

“While Israel has processes, procedures, rules, regulations to try to minimize civilian harm, given the impact that this operation, this war in Gaza has had on the civilian population, those have not been applied consistently and effectively,” he said.

Despite American warnings dating back months about the wisdom of a ground invasion into Rafah, Israel appears poised to continue advancing on the city and has issued evacuation orders for some of the 1.4 million civilians estimated to be sheltering there.

Going “headlong into Rafah” could have dire consequences, Blinken warned Sunday. “Israel’s on the trajectory, potentially, to inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas left, or, if it leaves, a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy and probably refilled by Hamas,” Blinken said on NBC.

Sullivan warned an Israel operation would cause “really significant civilian casualties” while still being unlikely to eliminate Hamas. “While Israel would also be able to kill some Hamas folks, many Hamas folks would melt away because they’re terrorists,” he said on ABC.

Last week, the State Department released a report finding it is “reasonable to assess” that US weapons have been used by Israeli forces in Gaza in ways that are “inconsistent” with international humanitarian law. But the report stopped short of officially saying Israel violated the law.

Palestinians leave Rafah, Gaza with their belongings on May 11.

More people are streaming out of Rafah for other parts of Gaza following Israeli orders to civilians to leave much of eastern and central Rafah — but some are staying, too exhausted or sick to move on yet again.

An elderly man, Hassan Aboul Einien, told CNN he had not wanted to leave his home in the Shaboura refugee camp. “But now I want to because there is no one left in the camp. I want to see my wife and daughter,” he said. “I’m going on foot. I don’t have money for a car. I sent my wife and daughter on foot as well.”

Maher Soliman, also living at the Shaboura refugee camp, said he didn’t know where to go: “No-one is supporting us. It’s just destruction. I left home with a T-shirt.” Soliman said there was no safe zone. “My 15-year-old daughter had burns over her body. There was a strike on the building next door while she was making food.”

Ayman Abu Negira, who was driving a car with a broken windshield, said he was heading for Al Mawasi, an area to the north-west of Rafah to which the Israelis have instructed people to go. He said he hopes it is a safe zone, but has his doubts. “They will probably strike around it,” Negira told CNN.

Some, however, were planning to stay. An unidentified woman said: “We are not afraid. We are exhausted but we are steadfast.” Her tent stands alone in an area she says was filled with tents just few days ago.

She said she was from Khan Younis. “I wish I could go home and I hope it is still standing. I’m crying because I want to go home.”

The woman said it was tense last night. “Even the water distribution guy is afraid to come by. People are afraid to leave the tents at night to relieve themselves because they are afraid of the quadcaptors (armed Israeli drones) … All of us have hepatitis. There are lot of infections among people.”

The woman pointed to a scar under her ear and said it had been causes by a sniper’s bullet which had broken her jaw when she was trying to retrieve belongings from near Nasser hospital. “There was a window covered by a blanket and the sniper got me here.” 

“Why would they target me? I was at a school. It was empty.”

Her son, 18-year old Raed Abu Salem, has a face injury which he said was caused by shrapnel from a drone attack in Khan Younis when he was trying to get water. He also lost several teeth.

“I would say how good-looking I was,” he said, when asked what he feels when he looks at his photos before the war. Now his injuries are painful and he has to eat through a syringe.

His mother said she was struggling to feed the children. “These kids haven’t eaten. We don’t have fresh water.”

The Israeli military has said that it began operating in northern Gaza overnight, and “precise operations” are continuing in eastern Rafah and near the Rafah crossing, as well as in the area of Zeitoun in central Gaza.

The death toll in the Strip since October 7 surpassed 35,000 Sunday, with 63 people being killed in the past 24 hours, the Ministry of Health said. The figure is somewhat higher than the recent average due to the expanding military operations.

The IDF said that in Rafah, troops had “located and dismantled a number of tunnel shafts and rocket launchers ready to fire toward Israeli territory.”

It added that they also identified and eliminated ten armed Hamas terrorists.

The military action in Rafah comes ahead of a planned full-scale invasion.

The IDF also said its troops “eliminated a number of terrorists in close-quarters combat,” and an Israeli aircraft had also carried out strikes, in the Zeitoun area. It reported earlier that five Israeli soldiers had been killed in the area on Friday.

In northern Gaza, following calls Saturday to evacuate several areas, including Jabalya, the IDF said its troops began an operation “based on intelligence information regarding attempts by Hamas to reassemble its terrorist infrastructure and operatives in the area.”

Video captured heavy gunfire, Israeli tanks and the sound of drones in the area of Jabalya early Sunday.

The Israel Defense Forces says that a senior officer was injured in Gaza Friday.

It named the officer as Rear Admiral Yogev Bar-Sheshet, the Deputy Head of the Defense Establishment Comptroller Unit, and said he was “moderately injured on Friday in the Gaza Strip. He was evacuated to the hospital to receive medical treatment.” 

Bar-Sheshet was injured on the same day that five Israeli soldiers were killed in the Zeitoun area of Gaza. Four of the five were 19-year old sergeants who were killed by an explosive device.

272 Israeli soldiers have been killed inside Gaza since ground operations began there.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza has reported that the number of people killed in the Strip as a result of Israeli military operations has risen above 35,000.

The Ministry said 63 people have been killed in the past 24 hours – bringing the total to 35,034.

A further 114 people were injured, bringing the total of injured since October 7 to 78,755 people, according to the Ministry.

The figures are somewhat higher than the recent average as Israeli military operations expand in Rafah as well as intensify in parts of northern and central Gaza.

CNN cannot confirm the numbers of the health ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians in its data.

UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron arrives at the BBC offices in London, on May 12.

UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron has said he does not support Israel’s plan for a full-scale offensive in the southern Gazan city of Rafah, but also opposes the idea of ending arms sales to Israel.

Cameron told the BBC Sunday that ending arms sales to Israel would “make Hamas stronger and it would make a hostage deal less likely.”

The UK last came under pressure to end arm sales to Israel when three British citizens were killed during an attack on an aid convoy in Gaza in April. Cameron said, “a few days later there was a brutal attack by Iran on Israel.”

He said he is instead focused on “hammering away every day” on getting humanitarian aid into Gaza, as well as “what can we do to maximise the British pressure and the outcome that will help people in their lives - including getting the hostages, including British nationals, released.”

Cameron’s position differs to that of US President Joe Biden, who threatened to halt weapon deliveries to Israel if there is a full-scale Rafah invasion.

Earlier this week, the United States paused a shipment of bombs to Israel amid concerns over their potential use in a Rafah incursion.

Cameron argued that the US “is in a totally different position” to the UK since the US is “a massive state supplier of weaponry,” while the UK supplies only 1% of Israel’s weapons.

Smoke rises after Israeli attacks on Jabalya, Gaza, on May 11.

Israeli ground forces are continuing an operation in Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, according to witnesses and social media video.

Video filmed for CNN showed families trying to leave the area amid the sound of drones overhead.

Social media video also showed Israeli tanks close to the market in Jabalya refugee camp, as well as heavy gunfire early Sunday.

The Israel Defense Forces ordered an evacuation of parts of Jabalya on Saturday, ahead of an operation which it said was aimed at preventing Hamas from re-establishing itself in the area. Months ago, the IDF said it had dismantled Hamas’s command structure in northern Gaza.

One man in Jabalya, Abu Muhammed Odeh, told CNN: “I don’t know where people should go, they tell people to go western Gaza which is Al Shifa hospital and Al Sinaa area, and those areas were all destroyed by the Israelis before.”

IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari also said Saturday that in the central Gaza Strip, troops from the 99th Division “are in the midst of a wide-scale operation in the Zeitoun area.”

In this video still, a man drives with his children and their belongings on May 11.

While much of the focus has been on the southern Gazan city of Rafah, there is ongoing military action in the north too.

A video obtained by CNN shows some families evacuating northern Gaza, following orders by the Israel Defense Forces Saturday to immediately leave several neighborhoods there due to a “dangerous combat zone.”

“I don’t know where we are going. We’ve been displaced 7 or 8 times. We and the children are suffering,” a father of three, who did not give his name, told a CNN stringer. 

The father, who was driving a motorcycle with his young children and belongings, said Israeli forces “dropped leaflets saying they will invade the north.”

“We are only moving because of the little ones. I don’t care if I would die, but I worry about them,” he said.

He described the dangerous situation in the area, saying, “there is no safe place,” adding: “Whenever we go, there is bombardment.”

Another man described Friday night as “horrible” and “intense” due to ongoing strikes.

He said it was the “tenth time” they were being displaced, adding: “We are scared for our lives. I’ll go look for a place, pitch a tent. Anything to escape death.”

Demonstrators gather during a rally calling for the hostages' release May 11 in Tel Aviv, Israel. 

Families of hostages took part in fresh anti-government protests in several cities across Israel Saturday, demanding the release of all hostages held in Gaza.

Yael Adar, mother of Tamir Adar, who was abducted on October 7 and his death was announced in January, said during the rally that “all we ask is to bring Tamir and all the murdered hostages back for burial, here in the land they loved. To grant Tamir the burial he deserves. To grant us closure, to have a grave where we can be with his memory.”

Hagit Chen, mother of Itay Chen, who was killed October 7 during the Hamas attacks on Israel, and Chen’s remains were taken into Gaza, said she wanted to bury her son in peace. 

“I have been invited to take part in many ceremonies for Israel’s Remembrance Day, but the only ceremony that I ought to be in, with my family and with the memory of my own son, is a ceremony that the country has not enabled me to have,” Chen said.

“How much more suffering can one take? I turn to the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu: It is time that you bring them all back! The living for rehabilitation and the fallen for a respectful, appropriate Jewish burial,” she added.

The number of hostages taken on October 7 believed to be left in Gaza is 128, with 36 of them thought to have died.

The UN agency responsible for providing humanitarian aid and support in Gaza – UNRWA – says that over the past week it estimates that around 300,000 people have fled Rafah in Gaza.

The estimate matches the one given by the Israel Defense Forces Saturday.

Earlier Sunday, the commissioner general of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, posted: “Again and again. The exodus continues. The Israeli authorities continue to issue forced displacement orders also known as ‘evacuation orders.’ This is forcing people in Rafah to flee anywhere and everywhere.”

Lazzarini added: “Since the war began, most people in Gaza have moved multiple times: on average once a month. They desperately sought safety that they never found. Some have no choice but to stay in bombed out @UNRWA shelters. The claim of ‘safe zones’ is false and misleading. No place is safe in #Gaza. Period.”

Limited amounts of aid are entering the Strip, with the closure of the Rafah crossing and disruption at the Kerem Shalom crossing. There are also problems with aid distribution within Gaza.

Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s global director of Communications, told CNN Sunday that 157,000 liters of fuel and six trucks of flour have entered Gaza through Kerem Shalom over the past two days – a very small fraction of what’s required.

The Civil Defense in Gaza estimates about 10,000 bodies are trapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings in Gaza. 

“For months, we’ve been working with simple equipment, which drains us (of) our time and effort,” spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal said on Saturday. The group says Israel has destroyed 70 to 80% of Civil Defense’s capabilities. 

What the group does: Civil Defense and medics are the first responders in the aftermath of Israeli airstrikes and work on rescuing survivors and retrieving bodies when they are able to reach the sites of the attacks. 

“We demand that the United Nations and humanitarian groups immediately intervene to allow the entry of necessary rescue equipment so we can continue our work, retrieve the missing from under the rubble and provide the required fuel to operate the civil defense vehicles,” Bassal said. 

Forty days after the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the vicinity of the Al-Shifa medical complex, “Civil Defense and medical staff are still retrieving bodies buried by the Israeli occupation forces in mass graves,” Bassal added. 

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said Wednesday that medical teams discovered a third mass grave in the Al-Shifa complex. The Israeli military has denied any involvement in the burials.

US President Joe Biden listens to a question from reporters before getting into a car upon arrival at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, in SeaTac, Washington, on May 10.

US President Joe Biden said there would be a “ceasefire tomorrow” if Hamas would release the hostages held in Gaza.  

“As I’ve said, it’s up to Hamas — if they wanted to do it, we could end it tomorrow. And the ceasefire would begin tomorrow,” Biden said at a fundraiser in Seattle on Saturday, according to reporters in the room. 

Families of the five Americans believed to be held hostage in Gaza met with national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk on Friday. 

According to a readout of the meeting from representatives for the families, they “expressed their immense frustration with yet another pause, especially after recent hostage videos showed their loved ones disabled, thin, pale, and under apparent duress” to the Biden administration officials. 

Where talks stand: Israeli and Hamas negotiating teams left Cairo without a deal earlier this week.

Hamas militants said Israel’s rejection of a ceasefire plan submitted by mediators at negotiations in Cairo sent hostage release talks back to “square one.” Hamas accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of hindering the ceasefire talks to use negotiations as a cover to attack the southern Gazan city of Rafah.

Israel has repeatedly refused to agree to a permanent ceasefire in Gaza until Hamas has been defeated, even if all hostages are released. On Tuesday, Netanyahu said that “the Hamas proposal was very far from Israel’s core demands.”

CNN’s Betsy Klein contributed reporting to this post.

Georgios Petropoulos, the head of the UN Humanitarian Agency (OCHA) in Gaza, warned that the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) are likely to have run out of food aid in southern Gaza. 

“The World Food Programme and UNRWA will run out of food for distribution in the south by tomorrow,” Petropoulos said in a video filmed Friday and posted on OCHA’s X account Saturday. “That means that people will be left only with the aid that has already been distributed in their shelters, in their homes, and on-site. As of today (May 10) we have 12 bakeries supported by humanitarian partners here in South Gaza.”

Eight of the bakeries had ceased operations due to lack of staff, and four of them are operating at reduced capacity and will be out of stock by Monday, Petropoulos added. 

He said that the closure of the Rafah Crossing and Kerem Shalom, the border crossing between southern Gaza and Israel, had “severed our access to fuel, supplies, and the movement of humanitarian staff.”

On Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces released a statement stating that “over the last few days, we facilitated the entry of 200,000 litres of fuel through the Kerem Shalom crossing.”

The IDF also said “over the last few days” Hamas had fired rockets from Rafah towards the aid crossing, but without specifying exactly when the attacks happened.

“We are operating to enable the flow of humanitarian aid to Rafah through the Salah Al-Din Road,” it said.

Displaced Palestinians travel in a vehicle as they flee Rafah, Gaza, May 12.

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled Rafah after the Israel Defense Forces ordered evacuations earlier in the week. Many of those leaving Rafah are being told to move to places that are already crowded with displaced people and facing an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis. Israel has been stepping up operations in the southern Gazan city ahead of a ground offensive.

Here’s what to know to get up to speed: