December 5, 2023 Israel-Hamas war

Video and witness accounts indicate there have been multiple strikes in the area of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza on Tuesday, with many casualties being taken to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

Dozens of videos CNN commissioned from a freelance journalist on the ground in Deir al-Balah show men digging through rubble in the aftermath of a strike, which destroyed a large, multi-story building. 

In one video, a blanket appears to be covering a dead body as people at the scene prepare to move the body. In another video, men are seen searching for someone trapped under the concrete, and one man says he can hear a voice inside the rubble.

The spokesperson of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, Dr. Khalil Al Daqran, told CNN that more than 90 bodies arrived at the medical facility on Tuesday, in addition to 130 people who were injured. He said more casualties are arriving.

"Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital is the only hospital in the central area and cannot accommodate such a large number of people, especially considering that massacres against our people are still ongoing," he said.

One video received by CNN from a freelance journalist showed a stream of ambulances and private cars arriving at the medical facility, and several injured children being carried in. One dazed woman covered in dust is also helped into the hospital.

Many of those carried into the hospital appeared to have severe injuries, with some lying on the hospital floor as medics treated them.

Another video filmed in Deir al-Balah shows a Palestine Red Crescent Society ambulance fleeing the scene of nearby artillery fire, according to the aid agency.   

The PRCS shared the video, which was filmed by a local journalist in Gaza, alongside the caption: "Horrific scenes for Israeli tank artillery targets the vicinity of two PRCS ambulances today while attending to casualties in Deir Al-Balah, South of #Gaza."

CNN geolocated the video to the southern part of the city. 

The video shows people running into the ambulance as blasts are heard nearby, as one person says, "The bombing is directly on us." Through the window of the ambulance, a large plume of smoke can be seen rising in the distance. 

CNN has reached out to the IDF for comment. 

Al Daqran also called for more medical supplies to enter the enclave and for "Egypt to open Rafah (border crossing) to transfer the critically ill cases in Gaza and save their lives, especially due to the lack of medical aid in Gaza."

On Tuesday, seven injured Palestinians, along with seven accompanying individuals, crossed into Egypt to receive medical treatment, as observed by a journalist working with CNN at the Rafah crossing.

Lebanon's caretaker prime minister wants to spare his country "from any major war that might occur" as the conflict between Israel and Hamas is leading to the fear of rising regional tensions.

Prime Minister Najib Mikati said he is working with international partners, including the United States and the United Nations, to ensure Lebanon doesn't get wrapped up in "any war that we do not know where it will lead."

Mikati said that Lebanon continues to support the Palestinian cause and he stressed that any guarantees to avoid a wider war fall on Israel.

The Lebanese official also said negotiations will take place "in the coming months" to solve the ongoing border disputes with Israel with the support of the US, Europe and the UN.

"This issue takes a fundamental role with the aim of sparing Lebanon from any war that we do not know where it will lead. We hope that in the next three months we will reach a stage of complete stability on our borders," Mikati said.

Some background: Israel and Hezbollah, Lebanon’s powerful militant group, have been exchanging frequent fire across the border for two months, using rockets, artillery, drones and airstrikes. 

A Lebanese soldier was killed and three others were wounded in an Israeli attack on Tuesday, the Lebanese army said on social media. It appears to be the first death of a Lebanese soldier since the two groups have been exchanging fire.

The Israeli Defense Forces said fighter jets struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, including infrastructure and weapons storage military posts on Tuesday morning, adding it identified several launches from Lebanon into Israel that fell into open areas. 

The Israel Defense Forces spokesperson who on Monday told CNN that killing two Palestinian civilians for every Hamas militant in Gaza would be a “tremendously positive ratio” on Tuesday said that the IDF had not confirmed that those numbers were accurate. 

Jonathan Conricus, the spokesperson, said that he had only meant to say that he had seen a news report attributing those numbers to an unnamed Israeli official. “I confirmed that I saw the report. I didn’t confirm the numbers yet,” he told CNN on Tuesday.

AFP, citing a briefing for foreign media by senior Israeli military officials, reported on Monday that the Israeli military believes that about two civilians have been killed in Gaza for each Hamas militant.

AFP reported that the Israeli military official, when asked to confirm reports that around 5,000 Hamas militants had been killed, replied: “The numbers are more or less right.”

Conricus said that the IDF wants to get accurate numbers of civilians and combatants killed, adding that he thought the number would be known before the end of the war.

And he said the Israeli military was talking about active combatants when it counted how many Hamas fighters it killed: “Our definition is combatants, people who are fighting.” 

He repeated Israel’s regular assertion that the IDF was aiming to kill “as low as possible a number of civilians” and blamed Hamas for using people as human shields. 

He insisted again that a ratio of two civilians killed per combatant was better than seen in urban combat in places like Raqqa and Deir Ezzor in Syria, but added, “Every loss of life is sad, I should have chosen my words more carefully.”

The United States will provide an additional $21 million in aid to Gaza, US Aid Administrator Samantha Power announced during a trip to Egypt Tuesday.

According to US Aid, this aid will provide:

Her announcement for additional aid follows US President Joe Biden's announcement of $100 million in humanitarian aid to Gaza on October 18.

Power visited El-Arish, Egypt, to meet with local officials and Egyptian and international humanitarian organizations, according to a US Aid press release.

At the time of her visit, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) airlifted 36,000 pounds of food assistance and medical supplies from Amman, Jordan, to El-Arish, at USAID’s request, the press release said.

The city of El-Arish lies roughly 28 miles from the Rafah crossing which links Egypt to Gaza.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a new policy on Tuesday to prevent extremist Israeli settlers responsible for violence in the West Bank from coming to the United States.

The State Department will be able to apply the policy to both Israelis and Palestinians who are responsible for attacks in the West Bank, Blinken said.

Blinken did not name any individuals who would be subject to the visa restrictions, nor did he say how many would be included in the initial tranche of restrictions.

The new policy is expected "to impact dozens of individuals and potentially their family members," State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Tuesday.

"Any other Israeli citizen who is designated as a result of this program, but does not currently have a visa, will not be notified. If they want to travel to the United States and they apply through ESTA, which is the way that it works if you're currently a Visa Waiver Program Country, that application will be rejected," he said.

The background: Administration officials have signaled for weeks that they would take such action as violence in the West Bank has intensified in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack. 

In his engagements with Israeli officials since that attack, Blinken has called on the Netanyahu government to do more to hold the settlers responsible for the violence accountable.

Blinken said that the US will continue to engage with Israeli leadership to "make clear that Israel must take additional measures to protect Palestinian civilians from extremist attacks."

The secretary of state also said the US will continue to "engage the Palestinian Authority to make clear it must do more to curb Palestinian attacks against Israelis," he said, noting that leaders in Israel and those with the Palestinian Authority "have the responsibility to uphold stability in the West Bank. Instability in the West Bank both harms the Israeli and Palestinian people and threatens Israel’s national security interests. Those responsible for it must be held accountable."

Benny Gantz, Israel war cabinet member and former defense minister, on Tuesday cautioned the US against its rhetoric referring to extremist Israeli settlers responsible for violence in the West Bank, and urged the international community not to use the term "settler violence." 

During a news conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, Gantz responded to a question about the US policy, saying: "Concerning the US sanctions, I repeatedly ask everyone, also from my American counterparts, not to use the term ‘settler violence,’ because it does not represent the citizens of Israel. It does not represent the residents of the communities in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], 99% of them are normative and abide the law."

This post has been updated with comments from Benny Gantz.

Tamar Michaelis contributed to this report.

US President Joe Biden's administration has begun to stress publicly that the United States' efforts to shape Israel’s military operations to be more surgical and deliberate to limit civilian casualties in Gaza have been fruitful. 

“I do believe that they have listened,” Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters on Sunday when asked about Israel’s receptiveness to US urgings to do more to protect civilian lives.

Two days earlier, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters, “We believe that the approach that we’re taking thus far has produced effective results.”

In particular, US officials are arguing that Israel has heeded lessons that the administration has shared from its past experience with urban warfare. They are also insisting that the Israel Defense Forces’ initial incursion into northern Gaza would have been far wider in scope had it not been for warnings from the US. 

But privately, that is not a view shared by everyone inside the White House. 

One senior administration official told CNN that they did not feel comfortable using the word “receptive” to capture Israel’s response so far to the administration’s advice on its military operations. 

The White House is deeply concerned, this official said, about how Israel’s operations targeting southern Gaza will unfold. US officials’ recent conversations with their Israeli counterparts about not replicating in the southern part of the strip what it did in the north have been “hard,” “firm” and “direct,” they said. 

But administration officials are careful to avoid directly admonishing any of Israel’s tactics in public. Since the start of the war, this official said, the White House’s approach has largely been to quietly counsel Israel behind the scenes, rather than publicly shaming them.

The Israeli military is encircling the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces’ chief of the general staff said on Tuesday. 

“Sixty days after the war began, our forces are now encircling the Khan Yunis area in the southern Gaza Strip,” Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said on Tuesday. “Simultaneously, we continue to secure our accomplishments in the northern Gaza Strip.”

Earlier Tuesday, the IDF said that its forces were operating “in the heart” of Khan Younis, the territory’s second-largest city.

In the north: Israeli troops have also "completed the encirclement" of the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza, Israel's military said Tuesday, as it seeks to complete its offensive operations against Hamas militants in the north of the enclave.

Halevi said that the IDF was now entering the “third phase of the ground operations,” though he did not specify what that meant. “We have secured many Hamas strongholds in the northern Gaza Strip, and now we are operating against its strongholds in the south,” he said.

In response to a journalist’s question about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, Halevi pointed to the aid trickling into Gaza, saying, “We’re making great efforts, in accordance to the government’s decision and the international law.”

Fifty trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered Gaza through the Rafah crossing Tuesday, including two trucks specifically carrying fuel, according to an Egyptian official.

Before the October 7 attack, about 455 aid trucks were crossing into the area each day, according to the UN. 

Meanwhile, seven injured Palestinians, along with seven accompanying individuals, have crossed into Egypt to receive medical treatment, as observed by a journalist working with CNN at the Rafah crossing.

Furthermore, seven buses transporting foreign nationals have been seen arriving in Egypt from Gaza. The exact number of foreign nationals on these buses is currently unclear.  

This post has been updated with the number of aid trucks to cross into Gaza.

As Israel expands its ground offensive into the south of Gaza, a woman who is living with dozens of her family members in the center of the territory says she feels like they are living through a “famine.”

Hammad’s testimony was shared with CNN by MAP. 

She has stayed in her home, where 45 of her family members are also sheltering, including 15 children.

“We’re a couple of miles away from Israeli tanks separating us from the south. We hear bombs and tank shelling from both Salah Eddin Street (Gaza’s main north-south route) and the seaside,” Hammad added. 

Israel blocked access to water, food and electricity in the strip on October 9, though resumed the delivery of some water at the end of October.

Earlier on Tuesday, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland, said the organization had been forced to halt nearly all aid operations in Gaza “due to the bombardment, the chaos, and the panic.”

The “pulverizing of Gaza now ranks amongst the worst assaults on any civilian population in our time and age,” Egeland said in a Tuesday statement.

Almost 16,000 people have been killed in Gaza during the war, according to the enclave's Hamas-run Ministry of Health. 

Hammad anticipates this may soon become the reality for her and her family.