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

Less than a month before Hamas fighters blew through Israel’s high-tech “Iron Wall” and launched an attack that would leave more than 1,200 Israelis dead, they practised in a very public dress rehearsal.

A slickly produced two-minute propaganda video posted to social media by Hamas on September 12 shows fighters using explosives to blast through a replica of the border gate, sweep in on pickup trucks, and then move building by building through a full-scale reconstruction of an Israeli town, firing automatic weapons at human-silhouetted paper targets.

The Islamic militant group’s live-fire exercise dubbed operation “Strong Pillar” also shows militants wearing body armour and combat fatigues swiftly carrying out operations that included the destruction of mock-ups of the wall's concrete towers and a communications antenna, just as they would do for real in the deadly attack last Saturday.

While Israel’s highly regarded security and intelligence services were clearly caught flatfooted by Hamas’s ability to breach its Gaza defences, the group appears to have hidden its extensive preparations for the deadly assault in plain sight.

“There clearly were warnings and indications that should have been picked up,” said Bradley Bowman, a former US Army officer who is now senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington research institute.

“Or maybe they were picked up, but they didn’t spark necessary preparations to prevent these horrific terrorist acts from happening.” (AP)

The United States will arrange for charter flights to evacuate its citizens from Israel, the White House said Thursday. So far, 27 American citizens have died in the attacks by Palestinian militant group, Hamas and 14 remain unaccounted for.

India became the first country to evacuate its citizens from Israel after Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7.

“We are all acutely aware of limited availability right now on commercial flights out of Israel and the demand signal by US citizens who may want to depart. The president has asked his team to ensure that we are assisting US citizens who do want to leave Israel and providing them with a safe means of doing that,” said John Kirby, Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council at the White House.

“Beginning tomorrow, the United States government will arrange charter flights to provide transportation from Israel to sites in Europe. They’re still working through some of the details of that to assist US citizens and their immediate family members who have, for whatever reason, not been able to provide commercial transit out of the country,” he said.

The US is also exploring other options to expand the capacity of doing this, including exploring whether it's possible to help Americans leave by land and by sea. “We are working hard on this, we know there's a demand signal out there, and we're going to try the best we can to meet it,” he said.

He encouraged American citizens in need of assistance to complete the intake form on Travel.State.gov. (PTI)

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday that “you may be strong enough on your own to defend yourselves, but as long as America exists you will never have to. ... We will always be there by your side.” Britain's government says it is deploying two Royal Navy ships to the eastern Mediterranean within days to show support for Israel, offer “deterrence and assurance” and support humanitarian efforts.

The government said Thursday that UK Royal Air Force surveillance planes will also begin patrols on Friday to help “track threats to regional security, such as the transfer of weapons to terrorist groups.” Malaysian Foreign Minister Zambry Abdul Kadir slammed Israel's “outrageous acts of cruelty” in cutting off food, water and fuel to the Gaza Strip and said Malaysia will provide an emergency fund to help Palestinians.

Egypt has engaged with intensive talks with Israel and the United States to allow the delivery of aid and fuel through its Rafah crossing point. However, it pushed back against proposals to establish escape corridors out of Gaza, saying an an exodus of Palestinians from the enclave would have grave consequences on the Palestinian cause. (AP)

Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Hossein Amirabdollahian said Thursday that if Israel's bombardment of Gaza continues, the war may open on “other fronts,” an apparent reference to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Israel is nervously watching Hezbollah on Israel's northern border and has sent troop reinforcements to the area.

Qassim Qassir, a Lebanese analyst close to Hezbollah, said the group “will not allow Hamas' destruction and won't leave Gaza alone to face a ground incursion.” “When the situation requires further escalation, then Hezbollah will do so,” he told AP.

An official with a Lebanese group familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said Hezbollah fighters have been placed on full alert.

Hezbollah sent a drone over Israel on Thursday, according to an official with a Lebanese group familiar with the situation along the Lebanon-Israel border. The drone was shot down over Israel, the official said, without elaborating further. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to comment to the news media.

An Israeli military spokesman wrote on X (Twitter) Thursday afternoon that an air-defence missile was fired in northern Israel but it turned out there was no target in the air.

With an eye toward Hezbollah, U.S. President Joe Biden has warned other players in the Middle East not to join the conflict.

Israel is anxious that opening a new front could change the tide of the war, with Hezbollah's military calibre far superior to that of Hamas. But the fighting could be equally devastating for Hezbollah and Lebanon.

Hezbollah and Israel were engaged in a vicious monthlong war in 2006 that ended in a stalemate and a tense detente between the two sides. Lebanon is in the fourth year of a crippling economic crisis and is bitterly divided between Hezbollah and its allies and opponents, paralyzing the political system.

Meanwhile, in Syria on Thursday, state media reported that Israeli airstrikes hit the international airports of the capital, Damascus, and the northern city of Aleppo, damaging their runways and putting them out of service. (AP)

The Israeli military says it is preparing for a possible ground operation in Gaza but that political leadership has not yet decided on one. Lt. Col. Richard Hecht told reporters on Thursday that forces “are preparing for a ground manoeuvre if decided.” The military has invested tremendous resources for such a scenario, even building a training base in its southern desert meant to replicate Gaza's urban landscape.

A ground offensive would send a strong message, and forces operating inside Gaza might have a better chance of killing top Hamas leaders and rescuing hostages.

Such an assault all but guarantees far higher casualties on both sides. And it would involve street-by-street battles with Hamas militants who've had years to prepare tunnels and traps.

Israel's government is under intense pressure from the public to topple Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007. Israel has called up 3,60,000 army reservists and has threatened an unprecedented response to Hamas' wide-ranging incursion over the weekend.

The Israeli military said more than 1,300 people, including 222 soldiers, have been killed in Israel — a staggering toll unseen since the 1973 war with Egypt and Syria that lasted weeks. (AP)

The Israeli military is retaliating for the Hamas attack with near-constant airstrikes, forcing 4,23,000 people to flee their homes, according to the UN.

Most have crowded into UN schools. Others have sought the shrinking number of safe neighbourhoods. Gaza is only 40 km (25 miles) long, wedged among Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.

While Israel has insisted that it is giving advance notice of its strikes, it is employing a new tactic of levelling whole swaths of neighbourhoods, rather than just individual buildings.

Palestinians were in near-total darkness overnight after the only power station ran out of fuel and shut down. Hospitals' supplies of medicine and fuel for emergency generators are also expected to run out within days.

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.

With scores of Palestinians killed each day, 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.

Internet connectivity in Gaza City has been below 20 per cent since Tuesday, according to analyst Doug Madory of the network monitoring firm Kentik Inc., whose data shows outages began Saturday morning.

Madory said an internet provider in Gaza told him that Israeli air strikes had cut fibre optic cables. (AP)