Thousands of tonnes of "life and death" aid for Gaza should be delivered soon, the United Nations said Friday, to relieve a "beyond catastrophic" situation after unrelenting Israeli bombing in response to an unprecedented Hamas attack.
Hundreds of lorries stuffed with vital medicines, food, and water stretched into the distance at the Rafah crossing with Egypt, which has removed concrete roadblocks and is scrambling to repair the route into besieged Gaza -- the only one not controlled by Israel.
Overseeing operations personally, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters: "These trucks are not just trucks, they are a lifeline, they are the difference between life and death for so many people in Gaza."
Meanwhile, Israel bombarded the Gaza Strip early Friday, hitting areas where Palestinians had been told to seek safety, and it began evacuating a sizable Israeli town near the border with Lebanon, the latest sign of a potential ground invasion of Gaza that could trigger regional turmoil.
Palestinians in Gaza reported heavy airstrikes in the southern city of Khan Younis, where civilians had been told to seek safety amid Israel's bombardment of areas closer to the Israeli border. Ambulances streamed into Gaza’s second-largest hospital, already overflowing with patients and people seeking shelter.
Amid the fighting, Israel's defence minister said the country did not have plans to maintain control over civilians in Gaza after its war against the Hamas militant group.
The war, which is in its 14th day on Friday, is the deadliest of five Gaza wars for both sides. The Hamas-run health ministry said 4,137 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have died in the onslaught.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, mostly in the initial attack on Oct 7 when Hamas militants stormed into Israel. In addition, 203 people were believed captured by Hamas during the incursion and taken into Gaza, the Israeli military has said.
More than 1 million Palestinians, roughly half of Gaza’s population, fled homes in the north and Gaza City after Israel told them to evacuate ahead of their expected ground incursion.
The immediate trigger for the latest war was Hamas firing thousands of rockets and sending fighters --- through land, air and sea --- into Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip during a major Jewish holiday (Simchat Torah) on October 7 in a deadly, surprise offensive branded "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood."
Read in detail:
After releasing two American hostages, from around 200 captives abducted in attacks by the militant group in Israel on October 7, Gaza's rulers Hamas said that they are working with the mediators to release the civilian hostages.
US President Joe Biden said Friday he was "overjoyed" after Hamas released two American hostages abducted during the militant group's surprise attack from Gaza on Israel.
"Today, we have secured the release of two Americans taken hostage by Hamas during the horrific terrorist assault against Israel on October 7," Biden said in a statement.
"Our fellow citizens have endured a terrible ordeal these past 14 days, and I am overjoyed that they will soon be reunited with their family, who has been wracked with fear."
Biden thanked Qatar, the Gulf state that hosts a Hamas political office and has previously brokered deals between the group and Israel, and the Israeli government "for their partnership in this work."
The US president vowed that work would continue to win the release of other Americans being held by Hamas since the attack, some of whose families he spoke to last week.
"We will not stop until we get their loved ones home. As president, I have no higher priority than the safety of Americans held hostage around the world," Biden said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Friday that it contributed to the effort to free two United States citizens held hostage by Hamas in Gaza.
Israel warned humanitarian groups in the Gaza Strip on Friday to evacuate a major hospital and five schools ahead of a potential strike, aid agencies said. READ FULL REPORT
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has urged Israel to end its operations in Gaza which he said were “bordering on genocide.”
US President Joe Biden said on Friday that he believed the first trucks carrying aid to Gaza would come through the Rafah crossing from Egypt within the next two days.
Gaza's rulers Hamas said on Friday its armed wing has released two American hostages, from around 200 captives abducted in attacks by the militant group in Israel on October 7. READ FULL STORY HERE
Aid trucks waiting to cross from Egypt into Gaza are "a lifeline" that need to move into the war-torn Palestinian enclave as soon as possible, the UN chief said Friday. READ FULL REPORT
Thousands packed into Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the 2011 uprising that toppled long-time autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Media outlets said rallies also took place in other Egyptian cities on day 14 of Israel's bombardment of the enclave following Hamas's deadly October 7 attacks.
#UPDATE Tens of thousands of protesters rallied across Egypt in support of war-torn Gaza on Friday, with large crowds flooding into Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square, an AFP correspondent and Egyptian media said https://t.co/AGVsRNG3sa pic.twitter.com/ts4nwxQbNi
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) October 20, 2023
US President Joe Biden requested a massive $105 billion security package Friday, including $61 billion in military aid for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel -- but paralysis in Congress means it will hit an immediate wall.
"The world is watching and the American people rightly expect their leaders to come together and deliver on these priorities," White House Office of Management and Budget director Shalanda Young said in a letter to Congress. READ FULL REPORT
Anna Lippman, a sociology instructor at Canada's York University, once resided at Kibbutz Re’im, the Gaza bordering Israeli region targetted by Hamas. She writes in The Conversationrecounting the plight of Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank or in Israel who are denied the fundamentals of living — even as Israelis living right next door enjoy a high quality of life. READ FULL REPORT HERE
Russia is in contact with Hamas to free hostages being held in the Gaza Strip following the Palestinian militant group's attack on Israel, the Russian ambassador to Israel said, according to Jerusalem Post.
Arab Gulf and southeast Asian nations are calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war and the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The final statement of a joint summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Friday also condemned "all attacks against civilians."
The joint summit was hosted by Saudi Arabia on Friday bringing 16 member states together.
Saudi Arabia, which has launched a number of diplomatic initiatives across the Middle East over the past year, has called for a halt to the fighting.
Fadwa al-Najjar said she walked for 10 hours with her family from the north of war-torn Gaza to reach a UN camp for displaced Palestinians, witnessing terrifying scenes along the road.
"We saw bodies and limbs torn off and we just started praying, thinking we were going to die," she said, standing outside one of dozens of tents at the emergency camp.
"The bombings were happening overhead all the way. I would have preferred not to leave, to have stayed at home and died there," said Malak, one of Najjar's daughters.
At least 4,137 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since Israel began bombarding the Palestinian enclave, the Hamas-controlled health ministry said Friday. The ministry said another 13,162 people have been wounded in the Israeli strikes, which have been ongoing since October 7.
Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said at a meeting of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that after Israel eliminates Hamas, it will relinquish responsibility for Gaza and establish a new security regime reports Haaretz.
A spokesperson for the UN human rights office says there are new signs that some Palestinians who initially moved south in response to the Israeli order to evacuate are returning to their homes because Israeli strikes are taking place in the south, too.
Shamdasani said the rights office had heard accounts about people wanting to migrate back north, including from one unidentified Palestinian who said, "I might as well die in my own house."
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres paid a visit to the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing with Gaza on Friday to oversee preparations for the delivery of aid to the war-torn enclave.
Cargo planes and trucks have been bringing aid to the crossing for days, but so far none has been delivered to Gaza, which Israel has besieged and bombed for 13 days in response to a deadly cross-border attack by Hamas militants on October 7.
Any escalation of military activities will be "catastrophic" for people in the Gaza Strip, the UN high commissioner for refugees said Friday. The United Nations says more than one million of Gaza's 2.4 million people have been displaced and that the humanitarian situation is worsening by the day.
"(I) can tell you with certainty that any further escalation or even continuation of military activities will just be catastrophic for the people of Gaza," Filippo Grandi told reporters in Japan on Friday.
Grandi also called the Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7 "appalling" and said that the consequences of the conflict spreading into Lebanon and elsewhere would be "incalculable."
"Lebanon is in a very deep political and economic crisis itself. Lebanon hosts hundreds of thousands of refugees; Syrian refugees and Palestinian refugees...So if God forbid Lebanon were to be engulfed in this war, the humanitarian consequences will be incalculable," Grandi said.
The United Nations believes that the first aid delivery into the besieged Gaza Strip via the Rafah border crossing will take place "in the next day or so."
Egyptian state-linked broadcaster Al Qahera News had said the Rafah crossing -- the only route into Gaza -- would open on Friday, but Cairo later said it needed more time to repair roads.
Desperately needed international aid piled up Friday in Egypt near Gaza, with Palestinians in dire need of food and water after relentless bombing by Israel. READ FULL REPORT HERE
1. Douglas Emhoff, the husband of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, met in Washington with Natalie Sanandaji, a 28-year-old American survivor of Hamas' Oct 7 attacks in Israel.
2. Sanandaji recounted the attack on a music festival, where some 260 people were killed, a White House official said.
3. Emhoff, who is Jewish and has been outspoken about and against antisemitism, spoke to Sanandaji about President Joe Biden and Harris’ support for Israel, providing humanitarian aid to civilians and the administration’s work to combat hate of all kinds, the official said.
We are grateful to have had the opportunity to accompany Natalie Sanandaji who survived Hamas's brutal attack on the Supernova Music Festival in Israel, so she can share her story with our nation’s leaders. pic.twitter.com/AJH2tW5wAQ
— Gabriel Groisman (@GabeGroisman) October 19, 2023
Thankful to Natalie Sanandaji, a U.S. citizen who survived Hamas's brutal terrorist attacks against Israel, and came to our nation's capital to share her testimony with Former Mayor of Bal Harbour @GabeGroisman.
— Senator Marco Rubio (@SenMarcoRubio) October 19, 2023
The U.S. has a moral duty to stand with Israel. pic.twitter.com/XeWFkSC1S7
Egypt has removed concrete blocks near the border with Gaza, an Egyptian security source told AFP on Friday, raising hopes that desperately needed aid could soon begin flowing to Palestinians trapped inside.
Palestinian Ambassador to Denmark and noted Palestinian-American professor Manuel Sarkis Hassassian in conversation with TNIE on the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict.
Haim Abraham, a lecturer in law at University College London, said the evidence of crimes by Hamas is clear. “They massacred civilians at their homes. They kidnaped civilians, taking them hostage. All of these things are clearly war crimes,” he said.
The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross has said that Israel's instruction for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to leave their homes, “coupled with the complete siege explicitly denying them food, water, and electricity, are not compatible with international humanitarian law.” (AP)
A rocket hit a hospital in Gaza late on Tuesday. The strike killed hundreds of Palestinians, according to the Hamas-led Gaza health ministry. While world leaders have condemned the deaths and protests have erupted in Arab countries and the wider Muslim world, Israel and Palestinian militant groups have traded blame for the strike.
(AP)
President Biden declared it is “vital for America’s national security” for Israel and Ukraine to succeed in their wars, making the case for deepening U.S. involvement in these two unpredictable conflicts as he prepared to ask for billions in military aid to both countries. pic.twitter.com/5NRgeStsUO
— The Associated Press (@AP) October 20, 2023