LIVE | Israel-Hamas War Day 26: Rafah border opens; Gaza links cut off again

Human rights group Amnesty International has said civilians in southern Lebanon were injured this month when Israeli forces hit a border village with shells containing white phosphorus, a controversial incendiary munition.

The organisation said it verified three other instances of Israel’s military dropping white phosphorus on Lebanese border areas in the past month, but Amnesty said it did not document any harm to civilians in those cases.

Human rights advocates say the use of white phosphorus is illegal under international law when the white-hot chemical substance is fired into populated areas. It can set buildings on fire and burn human flesh down to the bone. Survivors are at risk of infections and organ or respiratory failure, even if their burns are small.

After an October 16 Israeli strike in the town of Duhaira, houses and cars caught fire and nine civilians were rushed to the hospital with breathing problems from the fumes, Amnesty said. The group said it had verified photos that showed white phosphorus shells lined up next to Israeli artillery near the tense Lebanon-Israel border.

The organisation described the incident as an “indiscriminate attack” that harmed civilians and should be “investigated as a war crime”. A paramedic shared photos with The Associated Press of first responders in oxygen masks and helping an elderly man, his face covered with a shirt, out of a burning house and into an ambulance.

“This is the first time we’ve seen white phosphorus used on areas with civilians in such large amounts,” Ali Noureddine, a paramedic who was among the responding emergency workers, said. “Even our guys needed oxygen masks after saving them.”

The Amnesty report is the latest in a series of allegations by human rights groups that Israeli forces have dropped shells containing white phosphorus on densely populated residential areas in Gaza and Lebanon during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Israel maintains it uses the incendiaries only as a smokescreen and not to target civilians.

Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have also reported an alleged case of white phosphorus shelling in a populated area of the Gaza Strip during the current Israel-Hamas war but have not verified civilian injuries from it.

Doctors working in hospitals in the besieged Palestinian territory told the AP they saw patients with burn wounds they thought were caused by white phosphorus but they did not have the capacity to test for it.

In 2013, the Israeli military said it would stop using white phosphorus in populated areas in Gaza, except in narrow circumstances that it did not reveal publicly. The decision came in response to an Israeli High Court of Justice petition about use of the munitions. (AP)

In the Jabaliya refugee camp — a densely built-up area of small streets on Gaza City’s outskirts — footage of the scene from Al-Jazeera TV showed at least four large craters where buildings once stood amid rubble surrounded by partially collapsed structures in Israeli airstrikes.

Dozens of rescue workers and bystanders dug through the wreckage, searching for survivors beneath the pancaked buildings. Young men carried the limp forms of two children from the upper floors of a damaged apartment block’s crumbling frame while helping down another child and woman. It was unclear whether the children were alive or dead.

The Israeli military also said on Tuesday, ground troops took control of a Hamas military stronghold in west Jabaliya, killing 50 militants. Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem denied the military’s claim, saying it was trying to justify “its heinous crime” against civilians.

Hagari repeated calls for civilians to evacuate northern Gaza to the south. The military says it targets Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that the militants endanger civilians by operating among them. The military has also repeatedly emphasized it will strike Hamas wherever it finds it. (AP)

A day after Israel’s first successful rescue of a captive held by Hamas, the spokesman of the militant group’s armed wing said they plan to release some non-Israeli hostages in the coming days. Hamas has previously released four hostages, and has said it would let the others go in return for thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, which has dismissed the offer. (AP)

The war has also threatened to ignite fighting on other fronts. Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group have traded fire daily along the border, and Israel and the US have struck targets in Syria linked to Iran, which supports Hamas, Hezbollah and other armed groups in the region.

The military said it shot down what appeared to be a drone near the southernmost city of Eilat and intercepted a missile over the Red Sea on Tuesday, neither of which entered Israeli airspace.

Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen later claimed they fired ballistic missiles and drones at Israel, saying it was their third such operation and threatening more. Earlier this month, a US Navy destroyer in the Red Sea intercepted missiles and drones launched toward Israel by the Houthis, who control much of northern Yemen.

In the occupied West Bank, where Israeli-Palestinian violence has also surged, the army demolished the family home of Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas official exiled over a decade ago. An official in the village of Aroura said the home had been vacant for 15 years.

Israeli forces reportedly have advanced north and east of Gaza City. South of the city, Israeli troops were also trying to cut off the territory's main highway and the parallel road along the Mediterranean coast, according to Dawood Shehab, a spokesperson for Islamic Jihad, a smaller militant group allied with Hamas. (AP)

The World Health Organization has said two hospitals were damaged and an ambulance destroyed in Gaza over the last two days. It said all 13 hospitals operating in the north have received Israeli evacuation orders in recent days. Medics have refused such orders, saying it would be a death sentence for patients on life support.

Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, the largest in the territory, is on the verge of running out fuel, the Health Ministry said.

It has allowed a limited amount of food, water, medicine and other supplies to enter from Egypt, though far less than what is needed, relief groups say. A convoy of 59 aid trucks entered through the Rafah Crossing with Egypt on Tuesday — the largest yet — bringing the total that have entered since October 22 to 216, according to Wael Abu Omar, Hamas' spokesperson for the crossing.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, says 64 of its staff have been killed since the start of the war, including a man killed alongside his wife and eight children in a strike late Monday. (AP)