LIVE | Day 35: Palestinian death toll crosses 11,000, says Hamas
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out a ceasefire in Gaza, but insisted that Israel does not plan to reoccupy the Palestinian territory.
Israeli strikes hit near several hospitals in Gaza City early Friday as the military pushed deeper into dense urban neighbourhoods in its battle with Hamas militants, prompting increasing numbers of civilians to flee toward the south of the besieged territory.
Israel has accused Hamas fighters of hiding in hospitals and using the Shifa Hospital complex as its main command centre, which the militant group and hospital staff deny, saying Israel is creating a pretext to strike it. Increasing number of people have been living in and around Shifa Hospital, Gaza's largest, hoping it will be safer than their homes or United Nations shelters in the north, several of which have been hit repeatedly. Israeli troops were around 3 km (2 miles) from the hospital, according to its director.
Israel struck the Shifa courtyard and the obstetrics department early on Friday, according to the head of the Hamas-run media office in Gaza, Salama Maarouf. A video at the scene recorded the sound of incoming fire waking people up in their makeshift shelters in the courtyard, followed by screams for an ambulance. The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza later said one person had been killed at Shifa Hospital and several were wounded.
Earlier, crowds of Palestinian families stretching as far as the eye could see were walking south to escape Israeli airstrikes and the ground battle raging between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters. The accelerating exodus to the south came as Israel agreed to start implementing a four-hour humanitarian pause each day and to open a second route for people to flee the north, the White House said. While 1,400 Israelis were killed in the Hamas’ surprise attack on October 7, the death toll on the Palestinian side has exceeded 10,000 with a majority of them being women and children.
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The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says the Palestinian death toll in the war has surpassed 11,000 people.
The ministry said Friday that 11,078 people had been killed since hostilities began on October 7 when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel.
More than 1,400 people have been killed in Israel, primarily in the initial Hamas attack, and 41 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the ground offensive began.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has described the situation in Gaza as “a never-ending humanitarian nightmare for civilians” as he once again reiterated calls for an immediate ceasefire.
"Their neighborhoods wiped out. Their loved ones killed. Bombs raining down, while being denied life’s very basics: food, water, medicine, electricity," Guterres said in a video message that was broadcast to the International Humanitarian Conference for the Civilian Population in Gaza held in Paris on Thursday.
He also said that the amount of aid trickling in was “a drop in the ocean" and said the international community must step up to protect civilians, urging nations to invest in a $1.2 billion UN humanitarian appeal. “We can help civilians in Gaza see at last, and at the very least, a glimmer of hope – a sign of solidarity – and a signal that the world sees their plight and cares enough to act,” he said.
Strikes landed in the vicinity of two separate hospitals in northern Gaza, injuring 10 people and damaging hospital vehicles and infrastructure, according to a statement shared by the Al Awda Hospital on Facebook.
“In targeting the vicinity of Al Awda Hospital – Tal Al Zaatar and the vicinity of the Indonesian Hospital by the Israeli occupation forces, 10 Al Awda Hospital employees were injured and nine vehicles were damaged," the statement read. Two ambulances were among the damaged vehicles, according to the hospital.
The hospital added that staff were continuing to provide medical services despite ongoing bombardment, dwindling medical supplies and a lack of electricity, and called on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and international humanitarian and legal institutions to intervene.
The Israel Defence Force's (IDF) fighter jets struck Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon using artillery and the "Iron Sting" guided mortar munition. However, Israel has agreed to put in place four-hour daily humanitarian pauses in its attacks on Hamas, the White House said after President Joe Biden pressed the war torn nation for a multi-day stoppage in the fighting in a bid to negotiate the release of hostages held by the militant group.
Iran warned the scale of civilian suffering caused by Israel's war on Hamas would inevitably lead to an expansion of the conflict, as officials in Gaza reported Israeli air strikes on or near several hospitals in the Palestinian enclave.
The comments from Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian could ramp up concerns over whether Washington's diplomatic efforts and deployment of U.S. naval forces to the eastern Mediterranean will be able to keep the conflict from further destabilising the Middle East.
"Due to the expansion of the intensity of the war against Gaza's civilian residents, expansion of the scope of the war has become inevitable," Amir-Abdollahian told his Qatari counterpart Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on Thursday night.
Israeli troops have pushed into Gaza City along a key coastal road on the Mediterranean Sea as part of their war on Hamas, according to satellite images from earlier this week analysed on Thursday (November 9) by The Associated Press.
The images show previous positions of Israeli tanks and armoured personnel carriers on one of three axes of attack used to cut the city off from the rest of the Gaza Strip.
Monday's images show Israeli forces just about a kilometer north of the Shati refugee camp, a dense neighbourhood adjacent to Gaza City's centre.
Their position corresponds with what witnesses in Gaza City have told the AP, whose reporters continue to work in the Gaza Strip. On Wednesday, one witness told the AP he saw Israeli soldiers fighting Hamas close to Shifa Hospital, which is some 3 kilometers from the position Israeli forces held on Monday.
After ordering civilians out of Gaza City, Israeli soldiers have moved on Gaza City from three positions.
They cut across the southern edge of the city all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. Meanwhile, two other forces have pushed in from the north, with forces around Beit Hanoun to the east and forces seen in the satellite images along the Mediterranean, to the west, according to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.
With journalists outside the city unable to enter, gathering independent information about what's going on remains difficult. Apart from videos and images on social media, the growing supply of satellite imagery from commercial companies has become increasingly valuable for reporting on closed-off areas and countries.
Western and Arab nations, international agencies and nongovernmental groups stressed the urgent need for aid for Gaza civilians at a Paris conference on Thursday, held as the humanitarian crisis in the besieged territory worsens amid Israel's massive air and ground campaign against Hamas.
The gathering ended a few hours before the White House said Israel has agreed to put in place four-hour daily humanitarian pauses in Gaza, starting on Thursday.
French President Emmanuel Macron opened the conference with an appeal for Israel to protect civilians, saying that “all lives have equal worth” and urging for pauses in the fighting to allow deliveries of desperately needed aid.
“In the immediate term, we need to work on protecting civilians," he said. "To do that, we need a humanitarian pause very quickly and we must work towards a cease-fire.”
The conference brought together officials from over 50 countries, the United Nations and humanitarian organisations as the Gaza Strip is being pounded by Israel in its war against Hamas, sparked by the militants deadly October 7 incursion into southern Israel. Israeli authorities were not invited but have been informed of the talks, Macron's office said. There was no immediate comment from Israel on the conference.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupied the lobby of The New York Times on Thursday, accusing the media of betraying a bias toward Israel in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war and demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the publication's Manhattan headquarters. Many entered the building's atrium for a sit-in and vigil that lasted more than an hour. Led by a group of media workers calling themselves “Writers Bloc,” demonstrators read off the names of thousands of Palestinians killed in Gaza, including at least 36 journalists whose deaths have been confirmed since the war began.
They scattered editions of a mock newspaper — “The New York War Crimes” — that charged the media with “complicity in laundering genocide” and called on the Times' editorial board to publicly back a ceasefire.
The sit-in followed a series of actions at high-profile locations in New York intended to bring attention to the growing death toll in Gaza. On Tuesday, activists with the group Jewish Voice for Peace briefly took over the Statue of Liberty. The week prior, hundreds of people packed into Grand Central Terminal, shutting down the commuting hub during rush hour while hoisting banners that read “Ceasefire Now.”
More than 10,800 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory, since the October 7 massacre by Hamas, which took the lives of at least 1,400 people in Israel.
It wasn't immediately clear if anyone was arrested during the Thursday sit-in. An email sent to New York Times staffers by the publication's head of corporate security described the protest as “peaceful,” noting that “no entrances are blocked".