Hamas reports clashes with IDF – as it happened | Israel-Hamas war

Reuters: Hamas said its militants fired machine guns and anti-tank missiles toward Israeli forces in north and south Gaza early on Tuesday as Israel’s tanks and infantry attacked the enclave’s main city, raising concerns about the plight of Palestinian civilians.

Israel has expanded ground operations in Gaza as it seeks to punish Hamas for a deadly gun rampage three weeks ago that Israeli authorities say killed over 1,400 people.

Witnesses said Israeli forces targeted Gaza’s main north-south road on Monday and attacked Gaza City from two directions.

The al-Qassam brigades, the armed wing of Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement, said militants clashed early on Tuesday with Israeli forces “invading the southern Gaza axis, (including) with machine guns, and targeted four vehicles with al-Yassin 105 missiles,” referring to locally produced anti-tank missiles.

The militants also targeted two Israeli tanks and bulldozers in northwest Gaza with the missiles, al-Qassam said.

Neither Reuters nor the Guardian were able to confirm the reports of fighting. Israel’s military had no immediate comment.

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield has urged the divided UN Security Council to come together, saying “the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is growing more dire by the day.”

Stressing that all innocent civilians must be protected, she said the council must call “for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, address the immense humanitarian needs of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, affirm Israel’s right to defend itself from terrorism, and remind all actors that international humanitarian law must be respected.”

She reiterated President Joe Biden’s call for humanitarian pauses to get hostages out, allow aid in, and safe passage for civilians.

In a sign of increasing US concern at the escalating Palestinian death toll, Thomas-Greenfield told the council Biden reiterated to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday “that while Israel has the right and responsibility to defend its citizens from terrorism, it must do so in a manner consistent with international humanitarian law.”

“The fact that Hamas operates within and under the cover of civilians areas creates an added burden for Israel, but it does not lessen its responsibility to distinguish between terrorists and innocent civilians,” she stressed.

Republicans in the US House of Representatives on Monday introduced a plan to provide $14.3bn in aid to Israel by cutting funding for the Internal Revenue Service, setting up a showdown with Democrats who control the Senate.

In one of the first major policy actions under new House speaker Mike Johnson, House Republicans unveiled a standalone supplemental spending bill only for Israel, despite Joe Biden’s request for a $106bn package that would include aid for Israel, Ukraine and border security.

Johnson, who voted against aid for Ukraine before he was elected House speaker last week, had said he wanted aid to Israel and Ukraine to be handled separately. He has said he wants more accountability for money that has been sent to the Kyiv government as it fights Russian invaders.

“Israel is a separate matter,” Johnson said in an interview on Fox News last week, describing his desire to “bifurcate” the Ukraine and Israel funding issues.

Johnson has said bolstering support for Israel should top the US national security agenda in the aftermath of the 7 October attack by Hamas that killed more than 1,400 people and saw more than 200 others taken hostage.

Democrats accused Republicans of stalling Congress’ ability to help Israel by introducing a partisan bill.

It is almost 2.30am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Here is where things stand:

• Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out a ceasefire in Gaza, declaring “this is a time for war”. In a press conference conducted in English on Monday, the Israeli prime minister said the army’s advance through Gaza opened opportunities to free hostages, which he said Hamas would do only under pressure.

• Nearly 70% of those reported killed in Gaza are children and women, said the UNRWA chief. The head of the UN relief agency for Palestine refugees has warned that the level of destruction across Gaza “is unprecedented, the human tragedy unfolding under our watch is unbearable”. Philippe Lazzarini, addressing the UN security council on Monday, said nearly 3,200 children have been killed in Gaza in three weeks, citing figures by the territory’s health ministry.

• The US does not believe a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is “the right answer” right now, the White House’s national security council spokesperson said. “We believe that a ceasefire right now benefits Hamas, and Hamas is the only one that would gain from that right now,” John Kirby said on Monday.

• Hamas has released a video of three Israeli hostages in Gaza in an apparent effort to increase the pressure on Netanyahu’s government. Netanyahu’s office named the hostages as Daniel Aloni, Rimon Kirsht and Elena Trupanov. Their families held a press conference in Tel Aviv urging the Red Cross to demand to see all of the hostages held in Gaza, and for the US president, Joe Biden, to “do any and everything in your power to bring everyone home”.

• An Israeli soldier captured by Hamas has been rescued from Gaza in an overnight operation, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said. Ori Megidish, an army private, was freed on Sunday night, three weeks after she was abducted with more than 220 other hostages. After a medical check declared her healthy she was reunited with her family.

• Israeli forces appear to be advancing on Gaza City in two directions. In the north of the Gaza Strip, Israeli armour was operating close to the Mediterranean coast. Witness reports described Israeli tanks cutting the main north-south Salah al-Din road south of Gaza City and operating on the outskirts of the Zaytun district and Shejaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City. The cutting of the key road, if confirmed, would suggest that Israeli forces are attempting to cut off Gaza City from the south, effectively isolating and laying siege to the urban sprawl that extends north all the way to Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia.

• A total of 26 trucks containing food supplies and medical equipment have passed through the Rafah border crossing into the Gaza Strip, the Palestine Red Crescent said on Monday. Just 144 trucks have delivered supplies to the Palestinian humanitarian organisation since 7 October, it said.

• Hundreds of patients are trapped inside al-Quds hospital in northern Gaza amid intense constant bombardment around the hospital, ActionAid warned. More than 12,000 displaced people are taking shelter in the hospital’s corridors and courtyards in addition to hundreds of patients who would not survive the journey south, it said.

• The humanitarian crisis in Gaza continued to worsen, with insufficient water, food, medicine and fuel, aid agencies said. The international criminal court’s top prosecutor, Karim Khan, said impeding aid could constitute a war crime and urged Israel to allow more trucks to enter.

• The deepening IDF incursion into Gaza came amid dwindling Israeli public enthusiasm for a prolonged occupation. Support has fallen from 65% on 10 October to 46% now, according to a study by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which has monitored the same sample of 1,774 people, with a 4.2% margin of error.

• Israeli forces struck targets in Syria and Lebanon, in response to launches from those areas into Israel, the military said. In separate tweets, the IDF said an aircraft had attacked Hezbollah targets in Lebanese territory, including “infrastructures for directing terrorism and military infrastructures of the organisation”, and that a fighter jet had attacked launchers in Syrian territory.

• Israel said it carried out an operation to “thwart terrorist infrastructure in the Jenin refugee camp” in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which it claimed led to 51 people being arrested, of which it claimed 38 were operatives of Hamas.

• The family of Shani Louk, a 22-year-old German-Israeli woman initially believed to have been kidnapped alive during Hamas’s assault on a music festival in Re’im, have said she died.

• A Palestinian stabbed and seriously wounded an Israeli police officer before being shot dead in annexed East Jerusalem, close to the green line. Guardian correspondents about 200 metres from where the shooting took place heard two bursts of gunfire in quick succession and saw armed police, horses and sharp shooters on motorbikes converging on a nearby petrol station.

• The Kremlin has said a mob that stormed a Dagestan airport in search of Jewish passengers from Israel on Sunday did so due to “outside influence”. The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said “ill-wishers” had used widely seen images of suffering in Gaza to stir up feeling in the predominantly Muslim region in the north Caucasus. Local health authorities said 20 people were injured in the incident in Makhachkala.

• A British Conservative MP, Paul Bristow, has been sacked from his government job after breaking ranks to publicly urge Rishi Sunak to back a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

• A man accused of murder, attempted murder and a hate crime in an attack on a Palestinian American boy and his mother pleaded not guilty on Monday after his indictment by an Illinois grand jury. Joseph Czuba, 71, is charged in the fatal stabbing of six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume and the wounding of his mother, Hanaan Shahin, on 14 October. Authorities said the victims were targeted because of their Muslim faith.

• Civil rights groups in the US have warned of a “wave of McCarthyite backlash” against criticism of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza after Americans expressing support for the Palestinians have been sacked, faced threats of violence and hounded by pro-Israel groups.

More now from Philippe Lazzarini.

“The system in place to allow aid into Gaza is geared to fail unless there is political will to make the flow of supplies meaningful, matching the unprecedented humanitarian needs,” Lazzarini said, calling for the Security Council to demand an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

According to UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, 33 trucks carrying water, food and medical supplies entered Gaza through Rafah on Sunday.

Prior to the war, some 500 trucks carrying aid and other goods entered Gaza every day.

Patrick Wintour

Lazzarini added that there is no place is safe in Gaza, and warned that a further breakdown of civil order in the territory would make it “extremely difficult if not impossible” to deliver more aid.

“Most of the people of Gaza felt abandoned. They feel the world is equating all of them to Hamas. This is dangerous – an entire population is being dehumanised. The atrocities of Hamas do not absolve the state of Israel from its obligations under international humanitarian law. Every war has rules and this one is no exception,” he said.

64 UNRWA staff among the thousands of people killed in Gaza

Patrick Wintour

Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general for the UN relief and works agency (UNRWA), has accused Israel of “collective punishment” of the people of Gaza, and of forcing their displacement from the north of the territory to the south – where they are still not safe.

More than 8,000 Palestinians have now been killed in Israel’s attack, who Lazzarini said included 64 UNRWA staff.

He said that a UN worker named Samir, as well Samir’s wife and eight children, were killed just hours before the meeting.

The Swiss-Italian official said:

My UNRWA colleagues are the only glimmer of hope for the entire Gaza Strip … but they are running out of fuel, water, food and medicine and will soon be unable to operate

Entire population of Gaza becoming ‘dehumanised’ says UN commissioner

Patrick Wintour

The entire population of Gaza is becoming “dehumanised” the commissioner general for the main UN agency in Palestine has told the UN security council, adding that a ceasefire has become a matter of life and death for millions.

Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general for the UN relief and works agency (UNRWA) was one of three speakers to starkly describe the scale of the damage being inflicted on Gaza, as UN agencies piled pressure on the security council to set aside its divisions and back some form of immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

The speakers detailed a breakdown in civil order, the loss of clean water and a death rate of children that matches the total number of children killed in conflict in the last four years.

The debate called by the United Arab Emirates was intended to build on the momentum created by Friday’s vote by the UN general assembly calling for a humanitarian truce, a vote seen as a way of shaming the superpowers to abandon their arguments for not backing a form of ceasefire.

Four previous draft UN security council resolutions on the crisis have been vetoed either by Russia or the US. Efforts are now being made by the 10 elected members of the security council – including Brazil, the current security council president – to frame a resolution that the five permanent members would feel forced to adopt.