‘Soon many more will die’ from Gaza siege, says UN head
“Many more will die” as a result of Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has said.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) chief, Philippe Lazzarini, warned at a news conference on Friday that basic services in Gaza are “crumbling”, with medicine, food and water running out. He said:
As we speak, people in Gaza are dying. They are dying only from bombs and strikes. Soon, many more will die from the consequences of siege imposed on the Gaza Strip.
Key events
Bethan McKernan
Gaza appears to have been hit by a total Internet and communications black out this evening, amid heavier airstrikes than usual.
It is still unlikely, however, during Shabbat, that this is a prelude to a large ground offensive.
Talks on ceasefire and prisoner exchange ‘quickly progressing’ – reports
Negotiations between Hamas and Israel, mediated by Qatar, are accelerating to agree on a ceasefire and on the return of hostages held in Gaza, the BBC has reported.
Talks are “quickly progressing”, Al Jazeera also reported.
There has been “significant progress” on negotiations to release hostages but issues still remain, diplomatic sources have told CNN. “We remain hopeful,” they said.
Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, has written to UK political leaders urging them to support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza to allow a humanitarian corridor to open.
In the letter, Yousaf, whose in-laws have been trapped in Gaza since the beginning of hostilities, wrote:
The abhorrent terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas on 7 October must be unequivocally condemned, and I will continue to join you in doing so. Hamas must release immediately and unconditionally all hostages and cease its missile attacks on Israel.
The killing of innocent civilians can never be justified, wherever it occurs. Israel, like every other country, has a right to protect itself from attack, but in doing so it must comply with international law.
He urged leaders to help stop “the staggering humanitarian disaster we are witnessing” in Gaza before it becomes “cataclysmic”.
‘Soon many more will die’ from Gaza siege, says UN head
“Many more will die” as a result of Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has said.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) chief, Philippe Lazzarini, warned at a news conference on Friday that basic services in Gaza are “crumbling”, with medicine, food and water running out. He said:
As we speak, people in Gaza are dying. They are dying only from bombs and strikes. Soon, many more will die from the consequences of siege imposed on the Gaza Strip.
Jason Burke
For around 10 days, US military bases in eastern Syria and western Iraq have been hit by rockets and drones. There have been 22 such attacks, although details are sketchy and some may not have been counted. More than 20 US servicemen have been injured, though not seriously, and a civilian contractor died of cardiac arrest.
Earlier this week, Joe Biden promised a reaction if the attacks continued. On Thursday, there were more. This led to the air strikes, carried out by F-16 jets with precision munitions, on a warehouse and a bunker that reportedly contained weapons stored by the groups responsible. No casualties were reported.
Here’s what you should know about why the US launched air strikes on Syria, and what happens next.
Peter Beaumont
Israel has made the claims about Dar al-Shifa hospital – and other hospitals before – not least during the 2014 conflict in Gaza.
While it is not possible to verify the precise details of the claims by the IDF, which included the presence of underground command centres, there is evidence that Hamas has in the past taken advantage of cover provided by civilian objects, including hospitals.
During the 2014 conflict, armed men were visible in some Gaza hospitals, while Hamas officials including leaders and security officers were present in al-Shifa at various times.
However, it is also clear that both during the 2014 conflict and the present war, the main buildings of the al-Shifa hospital complex operated primarily as a civilian healthcare facility making those buildings a protected civilian location.
We reported earlier that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said its medics had entered Gaza for the first time since the outbreak of war.
Six medical staff passed through the Rafah border crossing, alongside four other ICRC specialists and six aid trucks carrying urgently needed medical material and water purification supplies, an ICRC spokesperson said.
The ICRC shared a clip of its trucks entering Gaza on Friday:
Our convoy passed Rafah crossing into #Gaza.
We are bringing in medical staff, including a war surgery team, alongside 6 trucks with urgent humanitarian aid:
📦 Medical materials
🏥 War surgery kits for 1000 to 5000 people
🚰 Water purification for 50,000L of drinking water pic.twitter.com/JvWVhZnPZ0— ICRC (@ICRC) October 27, 2023
Antisemitic and Islamaphobic incidents have almost doubled in just over a week in London, according to police data on Friday.
There have been 408 recorded antisemitic offences in the capital so far this month, compared with 28 in the same period last year, the Metropolitan police said.
There have been 174 Islamophobic offences in that same time period, compared with 65 in the same period last year, it said.
The force has also made 75 arrests linked to the Israel-Hamas conflict, Cmdr Kyle Gordon said. He added:
My colleagues continue to ruthlessly deal with any acts of hate crime that they encounter.
IDF claims Hamas using Gaza’s hospitals to ‘wage war’
The Israeli military has accused Hamas of using hospitals in Gaza for military purposes and of turning them into “hideouts for Hamas terrorists and commanders”.
“Hamas wages war from hospitals” in Gaza, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Rear Adm Daniel Hagari told a news conference on Friday.
Hagari made specific reference to Dar al-Shifa hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip. He said the hospital was being used to hide a variety of command posts and entry points into a sprawling network of tunnels under Gaza. He added:
There is fuel in hospitals and Hamas is using it for its terror infrastructure.
The allegation was swiftly denied by Hamas. A senior member of the Hamas political bureau, Ezzat El-Reshiq, wrote on Telegram:
There’s no basis in truth in what the spokesman of the enemy army stated.
The Guardian has not been able to verify the IDF’s statements. Earlier, the commissioner general for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, denied that any aid was being diverted. He said:
We have solid monitoring mechanisms … UNRWA does not and will not divert any humanitarian aid into the wrong hands.
A rocket hit an apartment in Tel Aviv on Friday afternoon, injuring three people, according to Magen David Adom, Israel’s Red Cross.
Footage reportedly from the scene showed damage to the upper floor of an apartment building, with smoke rising from it, the Jerusalem Post reported.
From Amichai Stein of Kann News:
Emanuel Fabian from the Times of Israel:
And Bild’s Paul Ronzheimer:
A German foreign ministry spokesperson expressed “caution” over death tolls published by Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Christian Wagner was quoted by AFP as saying at a government press conference in Berlin:
We cannot independently verify Hamas information, which is why a certain degree of caution is needed.
On Friday, the health ministry in Gaza said the Israeli bombing of Gaza had killed 7,326 Palestinians, including more 3,000 children, in the nearly three weeks since Hamas killed about 1,400 Israelis and abducted more than 200 others in its cross-border attack.
“Hamas is not a source of information for us,” a spokesperson for Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said at the same press conference, describing Hamas as a “terrorist organisation”.
On Wednesday, Joe Biden questioned the reliability of Gaza’s health ministry, saying that he had “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.””
In response, the Hamas-run ministry issued a 212-page list of the names and identity numbers of every Palestinian it says has been killed in the Israeli bombardment.
On Friday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said that the tolls had proved to be “credible” in previous conflicts.
Hello. It’s Léonie Chao-Fong in Washington taking over the live blog. You can contact me at leonie.chao-fong@theguardian.com.
Richard Luscombe
Ron DeSantis is receiving pushback from Israeli diplomats, Florida Democrats and the White House after he falsely claimed credit for a gun-running operation to assist Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
The Florida governor and 2024 presidential hopeful declared on Thursday that he had worked with Israel’s consul general in Miami to send military equipment, including drones, body armor and helmets.
His office, according to Reuters, said it had worked to “get weapons and ammunition to Israel through private parties” as part of his high-profile “rescue operation”. The operation involved sending humanitarian supplies on chartered planes and returning from Israel hundreds of US citizens who wanted to come home following the Hamas attacks.
His boast, however, started to unravel when Maor Elbaz-Starinsky, Israel’s consul general, told the news agency he had not asked for DeSantis’s help, and that the governor’s involvement was limited to smoothing paperwork requirements for a previously arranged shipment of “rifle parts” ordered by his government.
DeSantis has made hardline support of Israel a prominent part of his flailing campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, pledging to turn away Palestinian refugees if he was in the White House, and expelling pro-Palestinian student groups from Florida’s university campuses.
Unesco has said that more than 200 schools have been damaged in the Gaza Strip — around 40% of all schools there.
“Following the terrorist attacks committed against Israeli civilians by Hamas on 7 October, the operations of the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip have caused a serious humanitarian crisis affecting all aspects of civilian life, including education,” it said in a statement.
“Today, more than 625,000 pupils and more than 22,500 teachers in the area are in an extremely vulnerable situation,” it added.
