November 2, 2023 Israel-Hamas war news

Doctors are struggling to treat patients with severe injuries under dire conditions in Gaza as Israel maintains its bombardment of the enclave, a medic with aid group Doctors Without Borders said.

Speaking from Amman, Jordan, Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan said the lack of medical supplies in Gaza meant doctors have been "completely stripped of all the tools of modern medicine" to treat patients — mostly women and children — with severe injuries and burns.

Doctors at the strip's largest Al Shifa Hospital are seeing children with the majority of their body and faces burned, missing limbs and other "catastrophic injuries," said Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care and humanitarian doctor with the aid group, which is also known as Médecins Sans Frontières.

"And the doctors are left to treat them with limited pain control, running out of anesthetic drugs." she said. "We do not have enough antibiotics to treat wound infections, we don't have enough dressings."

Ceasefire call: Haj-Hassan called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, saying "a stop rather than a pause" is needed in what she described as the "indiscriminate bombardment and massacre."

Medical workers in Gaza are working around the clock while they and their families also fear being bombarded, she said. But "they have refused to leave, because they have decided to stay with their patients," she said.

Israeli airstrikes struck near the Al Quds hospital in Gaza City, where doctors say thousands of displaced people are sheltering, the key medical facility's director told CNN Thursday.

The strikes that began Wednesday evening continued into Thursday morning and were “getting closer to the hospital,” Dr. Bashar Mourad said in a phone call.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said in a statement around 10 p.m. local time Wednesday that heavy airstrikes were targeting near the hospital “for two hours”.

The hospital, the second-largest in the main urban center of Gaza City in the northern part of the enclave, has previously been targeted in Israeli airstrikes.

In a statement to CNN, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said due to “intensifying hostilities” against Hamas in Gaza City and northern Gaza, the IDF continues to urge civilians to evacuate south.

Evacuation zones and warning alerts from the Israeli military have not guaranteed safety for civilians in densely populated Gaza, where Palestinians have no safe place to escape Israeli bombs.

Iran-backed Islamist militant group Hezbollah on Thursday claimed it shot down an Israeli drone over southern Lebanon amid nearly daily cross-border exchanges of fire that have spurred fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East.

Hezbollah claimed it hit the drone "directly" with a surface-to-air missile as it flew between the border villages of Al-Malikiyah and Hunin.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) acknowledged the Hezbollah missile launch but denied any damage was inflicted on its unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). In a statement, the IDF said it “struck the terrorist cell that fired the missile and the launch site” in response.

A “number of launches” from Lebanon toward northern Israel also fell in open areas, the IDF added. IDF artillery “struck the source of the launches in response,” the statement said.

CNN has not been able to verify the claims by either side. 

Here's what to know about Hezbollah.

A Palestinian-American man stuck inside Gaza has urged the United States to intervene in the Israel-Hamas conflict, according to a social media post by a US congresswoman.

Zakaria Alarayshi sent a voice memo and text message from the besieged enclave to Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, describing his condition as dire and saying there is no medicine, food or water, according to an Instagram post by the congresswoman.

Alarayshi, who lives in Dearborn, Michigan, was visiting family in Gaza with his wife, Laila Alarayshi, when hostilities broke out, CNN previously reported.

The couple remains stuck and “terrified” in Gaza despite being instructed to go to the Rafah border for evacuation six times only to be denied, according to an attorney for the family. 

Attorneys for the family filed a lawsuit on October 13 against the US Department of State and the US Department of Defense for allegedly failing to "safely evacuate US citizens that are currently in the besieged Gaza Strip,” CNN previously reported.

First evacuees: On Wednesday, injured Palestinians and hundreds of foreign nationals started crossing from Gaza into Egypt through the Rafah crossing. They included more than 360 foreign passport holders, many of them Palestinian dual nationals, an Egyptian government official told CNN. US citizens are were among the initial group of foreign nationals to leave, the US State Department said, without giving details on the numbers.

A 25-year-old Israeli soldier was killed Wednesday during the Israel Defense Forces' ongoing ground operation in northern Gaza, the IDF said Thursday.

The soldier was named as Capt. Yuval Zilber.

It brings the number of Israeli soldiers killed since the start of the ground incursion to 17 — 16 of whom were killed inside Gaza.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post misidentified the Israeli soldier killed Wednesday. This has been amended.

The House’s struggle to send $14 billion in emergency aid to Israel is exposing political rifts that leave America looking like a divided super power unable even to rush help to a friend that believes it’s fighting an existential war.

A vote on the package had been expected on Thursday, though that timeline now appears at risk of slipping, as the country’s political schisms and a fractured foreign policy consensus once again threaten to paralyze governing.

It shouldn’t be this hard.

For years, a vote on aid to Israel might have been one of the least controversial measures to come up in the House all year. But delays in moving the measure, the fragile balance of power in Washington and feuds between and inside both parties over the new Middle East war show that there’s no longer any easy vote.

The commotion around the issue largely centers on newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to pay for the $14.3 billion in aid to Israel with an equal amount of cuts from the budget of the Internal Revenue Service. This is popular with conservatives but means that many Democrats will vote against what they see as a political stunt.

The Israel package is also being dragged deeper into the political mire because President Joe Biden chose to include it in a much broader request that includes the next tranche of arms and ammunition for Ukraine. Johnson’s conference opposes some aspects of the ask for funding north of $100 billion. And while the speaker is moving an Israel bill on its own, the Senate may insert Ukraine aid and send it back to the House, further delaying the dispatch of US assistance to Israel amid its war with Hamas.

Read Collinson's full analysis.

Beijing has clarified that Israel remains marked on official maps issued by Chinese authorities after questions emerged over why the country’s name was not visible on online maps provided by two major Chinese companies.

The country name “Israel” does not currently appear on maps on popular mobile applications from leading search platform Baidu or the Alibaba-backed Amap, even though its territory and the names of neighboring countries are clearly shown in a view of the region.

Countries of similar or smaller size to Israel such as Cyprus, Lebanon and Kuwait are visible in the same view, for example.

The maps also don’t include a country name marker for “Palestine,” which China recognized as a state in 1988 and is listed on its official maps alongside Israel.

Both names come up in word searches on the mobile versions of the platforms, which are not-state owned but operate in China’s heavily moderated online environment and are as ubiquitous as Google or Apple maps are outside the country.

Editor’s Note: A version of this post originally appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, which explores what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Read more about the Chinese maps.

Ten Japanese citizens and eight of their Palestinian family members were evacuated from Gaza to Egypt on Wednesday, according to Japanese authorities.

Speaking at a regular news conference Thursday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said one Japanese national who remained in Gaza has family in the enclave and had not requested evacuation.

In the first sanctioned exodus from Gaza in weeks, injured Palestinians and hundreds of foreign nationals started crossing into Egypt through the Rafah border crossing Wednesday. They include more than 360 foreign passport holders, many of them Palestinian dual nationals, an Egyptian official told CNN.

Children are being killed or injured at a rate of more than 400 a day in Israel's ongoing siege of Gaza, the United Nations children's agency said Wednesday, as it reiterated calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

Some 3,500 children have reportedly been killed and more than 6,800 children reportedly injured during 25 days of “ongoing bombardment” since October 7, UNICEF said in a statement that added: “This cannot become the new normal.”

The UN agency said it does not yet have estimates of the death toll of children from the camp. Medical officials on the ground told CNN hundreds were injured and killed, including many children, following the airstrikes.  

The Israeli military said it targeted and killed several Hamas militants in the camp and maintains it does everything it can to minimize civilian casualties.

Hamas on Tuesday strongly denied the presence of one of its commanders at the camp. 

Calls for ceasefire: UNICEF said refugee camps are protected under international law and “parties to conflict” have obligations to respect and protect civilians from attack.