LIVE Day 7 | Israel orders evacuation of northern Gaza as it readies for ground invasion

Hamas says Israel’s heavy bombardment of the Gaza Strip has killed 13 hostages, including foreigners, held by the group.

Hamas’s military wing said in a statement Friday that the 13 were killed in various locations over the past 24 hours.

It did not give the nationality of the foreigners. There has been no confirmation from Israel. (AP)

A group of 254 Nepali students rescued from the strife-torn Israel and led by Foreign Minister N P Saud arrived in Kathmandu on Friday.

A Nepal Airlines flight that took off from Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport on Thursday landed at Tribhuvan International Airport here this morning after a stopover in Dubai.

Nepal's Foreign Minister Saud, who flew to Israel a day before to facilitate the rescue mission, told the media the remaining Nepalis who have requested repatriation would be rescued soon.

The minister said 557 Nepalis had provided their details in response to a request from the Embassy of Nepal in Tel Aviv to those wishing to return to Nepal or relocate to safer places.

"Out of the 557 Nepalis, 503 had applied to return to Nepal and among them 254 have returned home today with us," he was quoted as saying by the Himalayan Times newspaper.

Minister Saud also said that 54 Nepalis who had requested to be relocated from risky areas have been shifted to safer zones in Israel.

France’s interior minister has ordered local authorities to ban all pro-Palestinian demonstrations amid a rise in antisemitic acts since Hamas attacked Israel over the weekend. President Emmanuel Macron urged French people not to allow the war in the Middle East erupt into tensions at home.

Soon before Macron spoke in a televised address to the nation about the Mideast conflict, Paris police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse pro-Palestinian protesters who had defied a ban and demonstrated Thursday against the Israeli government.

“Let us not bring ideological adventures here (to France) by imitation or by projection. Let us not add national fractures ... to international fractures,” Macron pleaded. “Let us stay united.”

With several French-Israeli citizens believed to be held hostage by Hamas, Macron pledged that France would protect its Jewish citizens and be “ruthless toward all those who bear hate” and noted concerns about hostility toward France’s Muslims too.

Fighting in the Middle East in the past has led to tensions in France, which is estimated to have the world’s third-largest Jewish population after Israel and the US, and the largest Muslim population in Western Europe. (AP)

Within hours of the attack on Israel by Hamas, the US began moving warships and aircraft to the region to be ready to provide Israel with whatever it needed to respond.

A second US carrier strike group will depart from Norfolk, Virginia, on Friday. Scores of aircraft are heading to US military bases around the Middle East. Special operations forces are now assisting Israel’s military in planning and intelligence. The first shipment of additional munitions has already arrived. More is expected, soon.

For now, the buildup reflects US concern that the deadly fighting between Hamas and Israel could escalate into a more dangerous regional conflict. So, the primary mission for those ships and warplanes is to establish a force presence that deters Hezbollah, Iran or others from taking advantage of the situation. But the forces the US sends are capable of more than that.

Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that a small special operations cell was now assisting Israel with intelligence and planning, and providing advice and consultations to the Israeli Defence Forces on hostage recovery efforts.

“We’re surging additional military assistance, including ammunition and interceptors to replenish Iron Dome,” President Joe Biden said Tuesday. “We’re going to make sure that Israel does not run out of these critical assets to defend its cities and its citizens.”

On Sunday, the Pentagon announced to redirect the Gerald R Ford carrier strike group to sail towards Israel. The carrier provides a host of options. It’s a primary command and control operations centre and can conduct information warfare. It can launch and recover E2-Hawkeye surveillance planes, recognisable by their 24-foot (7-meter) diameter disc-shaped radar.

The Pentagon has also ordered additional warplanes to bolster A-10, F-15 and F-16 squadrons at bases throughout the Middle East. More are to be added if needed. (AP)

The morgue at Gaza’s biggest hospital overflowed Thursday as bodies came in faster than relatives could claim them on the sixth day of Israel’s heavy aerial bombardment on the territory of 2.3 million people.

With scores of Palestinians killed each day in the Israeli onslaught after an unprecedented Hamas attack, medics in the besieged enclave said they have run out of places to put remains pulled from the latest strikes or recovered from the ruins of demolished buildings.

The morgue at Gaza City’s Shifa hospital can only handle some 30 bodies at a time, and workers had to stack corpses three high outside the walk-in cooler and put dozens more, side by side, in the parking lot. Some were placed in a tent, and others were sprawled on the cement, under the sun.

Gaza’s hospitals are poorly supplied in normal times but now Israel has stopped the water flow from its national water company and blocked electricity, food and fuel from entering the coastal enclave.

Israel’s campaign on Gaza has levelled entire neighbourhoods, killing over 1,400 people, more than 60 per cent of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 3,40,000 have been displaced — 15 per cent of Gaza’s population. (AP)