Israel-Hamas war live: Gaza counteroffensive ‘just the beginning’ says Netanyahu as Palestinians flee

Rachel Goldberg last saw her son Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, at 11pm the night before the attack, when he left the house with his friend and some camping equipment to go to do “something fun”. Goldberg was at home in Jerusalem when she woke to the sound of rocket-warning sirens. When she turned on her phone, she saw two text messages from him that read “I love you” and “I’m sorry”.

“I immediately know something horrible was happening,” said Goldberg. Her daughter searched online and saw the news that the Supernova music festival had come under attack. “So we knew immediately where he was but we couldn’t reach him,” she said.

In the days since, his mother has tried to piece together some of what happened. Goldberg-Polin, she said, and three friends had got into a car to try to escape the massacre.

Rockets started falling into the street. It was complete chaos. So they stopped and went into a roadside bomb shelter. Hamas terrorists came, threw in hand grenades and spraying it with machine-gun fire. A total horror.

She said her son was trying to throw the grenades out as fast as they came in. After a lull, the terrorists came in and ordered the survivors to stand up. Most people were dead; some were alive but played dead and some were alive but badly wounded. Goldberg-Polin stood up.

“The witness we spoke to said Hersh’s arm below the elbow had been blown off, and he’d taken off his shirt to make a tourniquet. He walked out and they put [him] in a pickup and [he was] taken to the Gaza border,” said Goldberg.

His phone last pinged at 12.45pm on Saturday at the border. “We know nothing about him since, except that he has a critical wound that needs medical assistance immediately, if he is still alive,” said Goldberg. Asked if she was worried that Israel’s bombing of Gaza might diminish her son’s chance of survival, Goldberg said she was not thinking of that.

“Right now, there is such horrible fighting going on down there, so we’re just trying get any help, clarity or answer that we can,” she said. The top floor of her home is filled with families whose children are fighting.

The country is at war. It’s complete chaos and pandemonium, and it’s a terrible situation. I think this country’s life is at stake. My husband and I recognize that Hersh is the most important priority to us – he’s our world – but there’s a larger picture here, and we’re trying to be mindful of that.

Hayim Katsman, a dual US-Israeli citizen, was initially thought to have been taken to Gaza but was later found killed in his home in Kibbutz Holit. It is understood that Katsman, 32, shielded a neighbor from Hamas bullets, and that neighbor later saved two children.

Katsman, whose grandmother fled Nazi Germany and whose grandfather survived the Holocaust, wrote his doctoral thesis at the University of Washington on “Religious nationalism in Israel/Palestine”. Instead of staying in the US, Katsman moved to the kibbutz, where he worked as a landscaper.

His mother, Hanna Katsman, who buried her son on Thursday evening, said:

He was always in a good mood and really enjoyed being with people. It was honorable to me how he did his scholarship but he could also forget about it, hang out and play music.

Katsman was involved in peace initiatives, including Mahsom Watch, which monitors the impact of government activity on Palestinian lives. His sister, Noy, an activist with the Israeli-Palestinian grassroots group Standing Together, told the Jewish Forward that her brother’s death should not be used to justify retribution, a view their mother shared:

She said Hayim wouldn’t have wanted his death to be used against innocent people.

As US officials work to determine the whereabouts of 14 US citizens unaccounted for since last Saturday’s deadly Hamas assault on Israel, US families of the dead or missing are describing their loss.

At least 22 Americans are known to have died in last Saturday’s attacks, and officials have said they are working to determine whether those missing have been killed or taken hostage.

Jonathan Dekel-Chen has not heard from his 35-year-old son since Saturday morning, when Hamas gunmen stormed the Nir Oz kibbutz. There is currently no information on the whereabouts of Sagui, a dual Israeli-US citizen from Connecticut.

He’s a loving guy, funny and charming, a deep thinker, a loving son and a beautiful father, an imaginative and creative doer of the things that get into his head.

Dekel-Chen said he understands that at about 6am the kibbutz was overrun by around 100 Hamas militants. Sagui, he said, hurried to get families into bomb shelters as the men did their best to repel the attack. The Israeli army did not arrive until mid-afternoon. Of 400 people who lived in the village, 240 were dead or missing.

Dekel-Chen said Hamas used stolen vehicles and tractors to transport a dozen people to Gaza. Some could be tracked on their cellphones but several dozen others have simply disappeared. Dekel-Chen said:

Sagui is one of those people – he didn’t simply evaporate. We’ve had no word from the Israeli or US government.

The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, warned that the situation in Gaza has reached a “a dangerous new low”, and called for immediate humanitarian access to allow fuel, food and water to reach those in need.

“Even wars have rules,” Guterres told reporters on Friday.

International humanitarian law and human rights law must be respected and upheld; civilians must be protected and never used as shields.

He said the Israeli military’s evacuation order is “extremely dangerous – and in some cases, simply not possible”.

Guterres appealed to all parties “and those with influence over them” to do their utmost to enable humanitarian access to the besieged Gaza Strip, to release all hostages immediately and to protect civilians.

His comments came as the UN security council met behind closed doors on Friday to discuss the Israel-Hamas war.

At least 1,900 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza following the deadly Hamas attack on Saturday, the Palestinian ministry of health said.

The network said officials reported that the toll included 614 children and 370 women. An additional 7,696 people have been wounded, according to the ministry.

Joe Biden said he had spoken earlier with the families of Americans held by Hamas in Gaza, and that they were “going through agony” not knowing the fate of their loved ones.

The president was speaking just now at an event in Philadelphia, and prefaced comments on the US economy with an update on the escalating conflict in the Middle East, and strong words for Hamas:

The more we learn about the attack, the more horrifying it becomes. With 1,000 innocent lives lost, including at least 27 Americans, these guys … are pure evil. I said from the beginning, the United States, make no mistake about it, stands with Israel.

Biden said visits to the region by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, were “to make sure Israel has everything it needs to defend itself and respond to these attacks”.

He said US teams were working with the governments of Israel, Egypt, Jordan and other Arab nations to address a looming humanitarian crisis. And he said he was on a Zoom call on Friday morning for more than an hour with families of Americans being held by Hamas:

They’re going through agony not knowing what the status of their sons, daughters, husbands, wives, children. You know, it’s gut-wrenching.

I assured them of my personal commitment to do everything possible to return every missing American to their families. We’re working around the clock to secure the release of Americans held by Hamas, in close cooperation with Israel and our partners around the region.

We’re not going to stop until we bring them home.

Reports say air raid sirens are sounding again in Tel Aviv.

A post on X from the Israel Defense Forces said “hundreds of thousands of Israelis are running from their Shabbat dinner tables to bomb shelters”.

Another post from journalist Robert Sherman contains video he says is of missiles being intercepted over the city. It’s just after 10.20pm in Tel Aviv.

Amnesty International said Israel’s order for Palestinian civilians to leave the northern Gaza Strip within 24 hours “cannot be considered an effective warning” and called for it to be rescinded immediately.

The order is an “an impossible demand” that “may amount to forced displacement of the civilian population, a violation of international humanitarian law”, the rights group said in a statement on Friday.

Regardless of timeframe, Israel cannot treat northern Gaza as an open-fire zone based on having issued this order.

Israeli forces must “take all feasible precautions” to minimise harm to civilians wherever they are in Gaza, it said.

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary general, said:

With this order, Israeli forces are setting in motion the mass forced displacement of more than 1.1 million people from Gaza City and the entire northern part of the Gaza Strip. It has sowed panic among the population and left thousands of internally displaced Palestinians now sleeping on the streets, not knowing where to flee to or where they can find safety amid a relentless bombing campaign by Israel and merciless collective punishment measures.

She urged Israel’s allies to call for international humanitarian law to be respected and civilians to be protected.

Civilians in Gaza must not be used as political pawns and their lives cannot be devalued. The international community must also refrain from further legitimizing Israel’s 16-year-long illegal blockade and immediately halt the transfer of arms that could be used to commit unlawful attacks.

Israeli airstrikes on convoys fleeing Gaza City killed 70 people, mostly women and children, the press office of Hamas said.

Hamas said the cars were struck in three places as they headed south from Gaza City.

It was not immediately clear who the target of the airstrikes was, or whether militants were among the passengers.

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza corroborated Hamas’s statement. NBC reported meeting people in hospitals who lost family members from air strikes while fleeing from the north to the south.

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “eradicate” Hamas and said Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza “is just the beginning”.

Netanyahu, in televised remarks on Friday, said Israel was striking at its enemies “with unprecedented might”.

I would like to emphasise: this is just the beginning. Our enemies have only started paying the price I will not detail now what is yet to come, but I would like to tell you this is just the beginning.

He said he had spoken with Joe Biden and other world leaders, and had rallied “tremendous” international support for Israel.

We’re going to eradicate Hamas and we’re going to bring victory. It’s going to take time, but we’re going to come out of this war stronger than ever.