LIVE | Israel-Hamas War Day 27: Israeli troops advance as diplomatic efforts aim to pause Gaza fighting
Israeli airstrikes destroy apartments in Jabaliya refugee camp for second straight day as dual passport holders and seriously injured Palestinians leave Gaza
Israel’s ground troops were advancing toward Gaza City as diplomatic efforts intensified for at least a brief pause in the fighting in Gaza's deadliest war.
US President Joe Biden suggested a humanitarian “pause” and Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected back in the region on Friday. Arab countries, including those allied with the US and at peace with Israel, have expressed mounting unease with the war.
The opening of the Rafah border crossing, allowing hundreds of foreign passport holders and wounded Palestinians to leave Gaza, followed weeks of talks among Egypt, Israel, the US and Qatar, which mediates with Hamas.
The Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war has reached 9,061, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. In the occupied West Bank, more than 130 Palestinians have been killed in violence and Israeli raids.
Meanwhile, UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said it is proving very difficult to bring about a pause in the Israel-Hamas war to allow humanitarian aid to reach people in Gaza.
Cleverly said that “pretty much the whole world has been agreed that we need to get increased volumes of humanitarian aid into Gaza.”
“We, the US, voices all over the world have been pushing for, you know, these humanitarian pauses -- temporary, localized, specifically for humanitarian purposes. They've proven to be very, very difficult to achieve,” he told reporters at an AI Safety Summit in England.
Cleverly, who has made several trips to the Middle East since the war began, said “we will keep pushing to get those humanitarian pauses … for as long as it takes.” He said the UK position remains that “calls for a broad ceasefire are premature.”
Injured allowed to leave
Hundreds of dual passport holders and dozens of seriously injured Palestinians were allowed to leave Gaza on Wednesday (November 1) after more than three weeks under siege, while Israeli airstrikes destroyed apartments in a densely populated area for the second straight day.
The group were the first people to leave Gaza — other than four hostages released by Hamas and another rescued by Israeli forces — even as bombings have driven hundreds of thousands from their homes, and food, water and fuel run low.
It remained unclear whether more people would be allowed to leave Gaza in the coming days.
The latest strikes in the densely populated Jabaliya refugee camp near Gaza City demolished multi-story apartment buildings, and dozens of men later dug through the rubble, searching for survivors, according to footage from Al-Jazeera television, one of the few media outlets still reporting from northern Gaza. It showed several wounded people, including children, being brought to a nearby hospital.
The Hamas-run government said the strikes killed and wounded many people, but the exact toll was not yet known.
The toll was also unknown from Tuesday’s strikes on buildings in the same camp, though the director of a nearby hospital said hundreds were killed or wounded. Israel said those strikes destroyed military tunnels beneath the buildings and killed dozens of Hamas fighters, including a senior commander involved in the militants’ bloody October 7 rampage that ignited the war.
In a sign of increasing alarm over the war among Arab countries, Jordan on Wednesday recalled its ambassador from Israel and told Israel’s ambassador to remain out of the country. Jordan, a key US ally, signed a peace deal with Israel in 1994.
Jordan’s deputy prime minister, Ayman al-Safadi, said the return of the ambassadors is linked to Israel “stopping its war on Gaza … and the humanitarian catastrophe it is causing”. He warned that the conflict could spread and threaten “the security of the entire region”.Live Updates
- 2 Nov 2023 2:11 AM GMT
Pause needed to get prisoners out: Biden
US President Joe Biden has said he thinks there should be a humanitarian “pause” in the Israel-Hamas war in order to get “prisoners” out.
Biden was speaking at a fundraiser for his 2024 re-election campaign when a protester interrupted him, calling for a ceasefire.
“I think we need a pause,” Biden said in response. “A pause means give time to get the prisoners out.” Israeli ground troops have advanced to Gaza City in heavy fighting with militants following Hamas' killing of roughly 1,400 Israelis on October 7. (AP) - 2 Nov 2023 2:11 AM GMT
“Gaza a graveyard for children”
More than 3,600 Palestinian children were killed in the first 25 days of the war between Israel and Hamas, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry. They were hit by airstrikes, smashed by misfired rockets, burned by blasts and crushed by buildings, and among them were newborns and toddlers, avid readers, aspiring journalists and boys who thought they’d be safe in a church.
Nearly half of the crowded strip’s 2.3 million inhabitants are under 18, and children account for 40 per cent of those killed so far in the war. An AP analysis of Gaza Health Ministry data released last week showed that as of October 26, 2,001 children ages 12 and under had been killed, including 615 who were 3 or younger.
“When houses are destroyed, they collapse on the heads of children,” writer Adam al-Madhoun said Wednesday as he comforted his 4-year-old daughter Kenzi at the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah. She survived an airstrike that ripped off her right arm, crushed her left leg and fractured her skull.
Israel says its airstrikes target Hamas militant sites and infrastructure, and it accuses the group of using civilians as human shields. It also says more than 500 militant rockets have misfired and landed in Gaza, killing an unknown number of Palestinians.
More children have been killed in just over three weeks in Gaza than in all of the world’s conflicts combined in each of the past three years, according to the global charity Save the Children. For example, it said, 2,985 children were killed across two dozen war zones throughout all of last year.
“Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children,” said James Elder, a spokesperson for UNICEF, the UN children's agency.
Images and footage of shell-shocked children being pulled from rubble in Gaza or writhing on dirty hospital gurneys have become commonplace and have fuelled protests around the world. Scenes from recent airstrikes included a rescuer cradling a limp toddler in a bloodied white tutu, a bespectacled father shrieking as he clutched his dead child tight to his chest, and a dazed young boy covered in blood and dust staggering alone through the ruins.
“It’s a curse to be a parent in Gaza,” said Ahmed Modawikh, a 40-year-old carpenter from Gaza City whose life was shattered by the death of his 8-year-old daughter during five days of fighting in May.
Israeli children have also been killed. During Hamas’s brutal October 7 rampage across southern Israel that sparked the war, its gunmen killed more than 1,400 people. Among them were babies and other small children, Israeli officials have said, though they haven't provided exact figures. About 30 children were also among the roughly 240 hostages Hamas took. (AP)
