Health ministry: Gaza death toll rises to 4,651 Palestinians killed by Israeli strikes, 40% are children
Gaza’s health ministry spokesperson claimed on Sunday that since 7 October, Israeli strikes on Gaza had resulted in the death of 4,651 Palestinians, of which 40% were children.
More than 14,245 others have been wounded, 70% of them children and women, the ministry claimed.
The spokesperson, Ashraf Al-Qudra, claimed that Israel strikes had killed 266 Palestinians over the past 24 hours, including 117 children, Reuters reports.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Key events
The Israeli military reports that one of its tanks accidentally hit an Egyptian post near the Gaza border and expresses sorrow over the incident, Reuters reports.
According to an Israel Defence Forces spokesperson, the tank accidentally fired and hit an Egyptian position near the border in the Kerm Shalom area.
An Egyptian army spokesperson said that border watchmen sustained minor injuries after being accidentally hit by fragments of a shell from the tank, Reuters reports.
Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh has called on the international community to create a ‘united front’ to stop Israel’s attacks across Gaza.
“We place at the top of our priorities stopping the Israeli aggression … and bringing in medical and relief aid to prevent a major humanitarian catastrophe,” he said during a meeting with 25 ambassadors, representatives and consuls, Reuters reports.
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
Eleven Hezbollah fighters have been killed in the past 24 hours, at least four of them in two separate drone attacks.
Israel is deploying armed drones to target Hizbollah operatives in a new escalation. In the same period, Hezbollah conducted more than a dozen attacks on Israeli targets, ranging from communication towers, monitoring cameras, military positions and at least one armoured vehicle, as well as on targets in the contested Shab’a farms.
After one Hizbollah attack early this morning, smoke could be seen rising from Israeli positions opposite to the Lebanese town of Nakoura.
Eyewitnesses also reported the sounds of a dozen or so rockets fired from the Lebanese side around noon today.
Al Qaida and IS have called on their followers to strike Israeli, US and Jewish targets, raising security concerns across the world.
The Guardian’s Jason Burke reports:
In a series of statements over the past two weeks, affiliates of al-Qaida congratulated Hamas on its “invasion of Israel”, a reference to the terrorist attacks that killed 1,400 people, mainly civilians, on 7 October.
The Israeli military offensive in Gaza, which has caused a humanitarian crisis and so far killed more than 4,500 people, according to medical authorities in the Hamas-controlled territory, has provoked outrage across the Islamic world.
This offers an opportunity to extremist groups, experts say.A recent statement from al-Shabaab, al-Qaida’s powerful affiliate in Somalia, said the conflict in the Middle East was not just “the battle of the Islamic factions in the land of Palestine in particular, but rather the battle of the entire Muslim Ummah.”
It added: “Muslims must gather and offer everything they can to support the mujahideen against the Jews and their hypocritical infidel allies. The strength of this nation lies in the strength of its jihadist fronts.”
Other al-Qaida affiliates in the Indian subcontinent, Yemen and Syria issued similar statements.
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Summary of the day so far …
It has just gone 6pm in Gaza City and in Tel Aviv. Here is a summary of the latest headlines.
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Israel has said it is intensifying attacks on north Gaza, and warned that anyone who stays risks being considered a terrorist sympathiser, as airstrikes continued on Sunday in the south, where civilians had fled hoping to survive the war.
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Israel’s military said the number of people held captive had risen to 212. The release of two Americans on Friday raised hopes that others might be able to return home.
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The Palestinian health ministry said Israeli strikes have killed 4,741 Palestinians, with 15,898 hurt. Authorities in Gaza said 40% of those killed in the Gaza Strip were children. Israel has been launching the attacks since 7 October, when a Hamas attack inside Israel killed more than 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians.
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Palestinian media reported that Israel was bombing the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis. The attacks came hours after the Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari called on Gaza’s residents to move south “for your own safety”.
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The UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) has said 29 of its workers have been killed in Gaza since 7 October.
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Israel said it had returned fire into Lebanon after a drone and anti-aircraft missiles were fired into northern Israel. The country has said it plans to evacuate 14 additional communities in the area.
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Israel also struck the West Bank, hitting a compound beneath a mosque early on Sunday that the Israeli military claimed was being used by Hamas.
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Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hezbollah on Sunday against opening a second war front with Israel. He said: “If Hezbollah decides to enter the war, it will long for the second Lebanon war. It will be making the mistake of its life. We will strike it with strength that it cannot even imagine and the significance to it and to the country of Lebanon will be devastating.”
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Speaking to soldiers near the blue line UN-drawn boundary that separates Israel and Lebanon, Netanyahu said: “I know that you lost friends, and it’s a very difficult thing, but we are in the fight of our life, a fight for our home. That’s not an exaggeration, it’s not an overstatement, that’s this war. It is kill or be killed, and they need to be killed.”
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The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Sunday that Washington saw potential for escalation in the ongoing war in the Middle East due to the actions of Iran and its proxies in the region.
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Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, will visit Tehran on Monday.
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Turkey sent its presidential plane with a medical team and supplies to Egypt on Sunday, carrying humanitarian aid for Gaza.
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Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, said on Sunday he had “no idea” how many people died in a blast at an Anglican hospital in the Gaza Strip, and that assuming Israeli culpability could be tantamount to antisemitic libel.
That is it from me, Martin Belam, for today. I will be back with you tomorrow. Maya Yang will be here shortly to continue our live coverage.
The Times of Israel is reporting that the Israeli government press service has released figures of the number of rockets it claims have been fired into Israel since Hamas began its 7 October attack.
It reports that more than 7,400 rockets have been fired, and that the government claims that “the Iron Dome intercepted over 1,100 of these rockets, 550 misfired and fell inside Gaza, and more than 400 directly hit Israel.”
The Times of Israel notes that “the figures did not account for several thousand rockets, many of which may have fallen in open areas, although the government did not immediately qualify the discrepancy”.
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the news wires from Gaza and Israel.
Reuters has a quick snap that a blast and ambulances have been heard near the Rafah crossing. A small number of aid trucks were attempting to enter Gaza earlier today.
More details soon …
Palestinian health ministry: 4,741 killed, 15,898 wounded by Israeli attacks
The Palestinian health ministry has given updated casualty figures for Palestinians since the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel which killed over 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians.
The ministry states that since 7 October Israeli reprisals have killed 4,741 Palestinians, with 15,898 hurt. Earlier, authorities in Gaza said 40% of those killed in the Gaza Strip were children.
Israeli forces killed six Palestinians in the West Bank on Sunday, bringing the number of deaths to 91 since 7 October, the Palestinian health ministry said on Sunday, Reuters reports.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Sunday that Washington saw potential for escalation in the ongoing war in the Middle East due to the actions of Iran and its proxies in the region.
Reuters reports that Blinken told NBC News the US was not looking for escalation, and hoped more hostages would be released by Hamas.
Earlier today, Israel said it had exchanged fire over the blue line boundary with Lebanon, and said it planned to evacuate 14 additional communities in northern Israel.
The Times of Israel is carrying some fuller quotes from Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to soldiers in the north of Israel today. It quotes the Israeli prime minister saying:
If Hezbollah decides to enter the war, it will long for the second Lebanon war. It will be making the mistake of its life. We will strike it with strength that it cannot even imagine and the significance to it and to the country of Lebanon will be devastating.
I know that you lost friends, and it’s a very difficult thing, but we are in the fight of our life, a fight for our home. That’s not an exaggeration, it’s not an overstatement, that’s this war. It is kill or be killed, and they need to be killed.
In a message on social media, the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) has confirmed that 29 of its workers have been killed in Gaza since Israel commenced its retaliatory airstrikes for the Hamas attack on southern Israel on 7 October.
We are in shock and mourning.
It is now confirmed that 29 of our colleagues in📍#Gaza have been killed since October 7.
Half of these colleagues were @unrwa teachers.
As an Agency, we are devastated. We are grieving with each other and with the families. pic.twitter.com/TPTdUAAjg3
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) October 22, 2023
Netanyahu warns of ‘devastation’ for Lebanon if Hezbollah enters war
Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hezbollah on Sunday against opening a second war front with Israel, saying that doing so would bring Israeli counterstrikes of “unimaginable” magnitude that would wreak “devastation” upon Lebanon.
In an official transcript of a briefing Israel’s prime minister gave commandos near the Lebanese border, Reuters reports he also said: “I cannot tell you right now if Hezbollah will decide to enter the war fully.”
He said the conflict was “do or die” for Israel.
