Israel-Hamas war: Israel suffers deadliest day of war; hostage families storm parliament
The Israeli army suffered its biggest single-day losses when 24 soldiers were killed as angry scenes unfolded in Israel’s parliament. Follow latest updates. Warning: Graphic
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The US and UK have carried out strikes on the Yemeni capital Sanaa and other areas of the country, the official news agency of the Houthi rebels said.
“American-British forces are launching raids on the capital of Sanaa” and several other parts of Yemen, the Saba news agency said in an alert.
US-led air attacks have targeted the Houthis in response to the Iranian-allied group’s targeting of shipping in the Red Sea.
The Houthis say their attacks are focused on Israeli-linked ships and are in support of Gaza.
The joint statement from the US-led coalition: said: “Today, the militaries of the United States and United Kingdom, at the direction of their respective governments with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands, conducted an additional round of proportionate and necessary strikes against 8 Houthi targets in Yemen in response to the Houthis’ continued attacks against international and commercial shipping as well as naval vessels transiting the Red Sea.
“These precision strikes are intended to disrupt and degrade the capabilities that the Houthis use to threaten global trade
Meanwhile, the relatives of Israelis being held hostage in Gaza have stormed a parliamentary committee meeting in Jerusalem, demanding politicians do more to free their loved ones.
The action by a group of around 20 relatives demonstrated the growing anger over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to agree to a deal as the war enters its fourth month.
An admission from the Israel Defence Forces last week that three hostages, whose bodies were recovered in the Jabaliya area in December, may have been killed by an air strike on a Hamas tunnel, has also stoked relatives’ fears.
At least 27 hostages are believed to have died in Gaza, including three men who were shot and killed by Israeli soldiers after escaping captivity and approaching the troops for help.
And as the fate of those left in Gaza remains uncertain, the families of the hostages have taken aim at Mr Netanyahu and his far-right government, calling for a new election.
“Just one I’d like to get back alive, one out of three!” the woman protester cried after pushing into the Knesset Finance Committee discussion.
Other protesters, clad in black T-shirts, held up signs reading: “You will not sit here while they die there.”
“Release them now, now, now!” they chanted.
On Saturday, relatives camped overnight outside Mr Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea north of Tel Aviv to demand the government take bolder steps to secure their loved ones’ release.
“We will not leave him until the hostages are back,” said Eli Stivi, whose son Idan is being held in Gaza.
The dad is embarking on a hunger strike until Mr Netanyahu agrees to meet with him.
Others were seen blocking traffic in Tel Aviv as they demanded a new agreement with the terrorist group to secure the hostages’ release.
Mr Netanyahu on Sunday rejected new Hamas conditions for ending the war and releasing the hostages.
On Monday, the prime minister doubled down on his refusal to accept the agreement, saying, “There is no real proposal by Hamas.
“I am saying this as clearly as I can because there are so many incorrect statements which are certainly agonising you,” he told the hostages’ families.
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ISRAEL LAUNCHES INVESTIGATION INTO DEATHS OF 21 SOLDIERS
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that the army had launched an investigation into the “disaster” that led to the deaths of 21 soldiers in Gaza a day before.
“The IDF (Israeli army) has launched an investigation of the disaster. We must learn the necessary lessons and do everything to preserve the lives of our warriors,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
The 21 reservists were among a total of 24 soldiers killed in Gaza on Monday, the army’s biggest single-day losses since the start of its ground operation on October 27, military spokesman Daniel Hagari said.
The Israeli army said it had suffered its biggest single-day losses since the start of its ground war in Gaza amid growing pressure on the government to find a way to end the conflict.
HOUTHI SAY AIRSTRIKES ‘WILL ONLY INCREASE THE YEMENI PEOPLE’S DETERMINATION’
Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti, a senior political official and spokesperson for Yemen’s Houthi rebels, has posted on X in response to Monday’s US and UK airstrikes.
“The American-British aggression will only increase the Yemeni people’s determination to carry out their moral and humanitarian responsibilities towards the oppressed in Gaza,” he said. “The war today is between Yemen, which is struggling to stop the crimes of genocide, and the American-British coalition to support and protect its perpetrators.”
Posting an undated video that appeared to show children dying, he added: “Thus, every party or individual in this world is faced with two choices that have no thirds: either to preserve its humanity and stand with Yemen, or to lose it and stand with the American-British alliance. Who do you stand with as you watch these crimes?”
PRO-ISRAEL US LOBBY CALLS FOR ‘NEGOTIATED STOP TO THE FIGHTING’
J Street says that the “time has come for diplomacy” to free captives and provide “relief to the people of Gaza”.
The organisation, which frames itself as an alternative to the more hawkish AIPAC lobbying group in the US, added that the “toll inflicted upon civilians in Gaza has been unbearably high, the suffering must stop now”.
The statement said that Israel had the right to respond militarily to Hamas’s October 7 attack but that the “time for war has come to a close”.
Israeli war cabinet member and chief of staff of the IDF General Gadi Eisenkot, who lost his son in Battle, spoke out last week in favour of stopping the fighting to pursue diplomacy that could lead to the release of hostages.
General Eisenkot acknowledged that the fighting to date has not achieved the goals of the war and it is time for a different position.
🧵 It is time for a negotiated stop to the fighting to bring freedom to the hostages and relief to the people of Gaza.https://t.co/p0960YHcLipic.twitter.com/s3kwHrJA2P
— J Street (@jstreetdotorg) January 22, 2024
More than 25,000 people reportedly killed - including 2 mothers every hour.
— Martin Griffiths (@UNReliefChief) January 22, 2024
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Hospitals overcrowded, besieged and under fire.
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Homes reduced to rubble.
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Places of safety turned into places of danger.
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There is no let-up in the atrocities inflicted on Gaza since 7 October.
ISRAEL POUNDS KHAN YUNIS
Israeli tanks reached the gates of two Khan Yunis hospitals on Monday local time, in the bloodiest fighting to date and the worst violence in the south of Gaza since October 7.
More than 25,200 people in Gaza have now been killed in the fighting, the majority women and children, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said on Monday it had lost all contact with its staff at Khan Yunis’s al-Amal hospital, adding that tanks had surrounded both al-Khair hospital and the nearby al-Aqsa University, where thousands of displaced people were sheltering.
“It’s very difficult to leave the [hospital] complex and go to any cemetery and bury bodies because we’re under siege and anyone who leaves the complex is targeted,” Abdelkarim Ahmad, who was helping burying the dead, told Reuters.
At Nasser hospital, the only big hospital still accessible in Khan Yunis and the largest still functioning in Gaza, witnesses said the trauma ward was overwhelmed with wounded being treated on the floor and in hallways.
ISRAEL HAMMERS GAZA AS PRESSURE MOUNTS
The Israeli army bombarded Khan Yunis, the latest epicentre of the war in Gaza, on Monday local time after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected what he said were Hamas conditions for the release of hostages, even amid mounting pressure from their families.
Witnesses reported deadly strikes overnight in Khan Yunis, the largest city in southern Gaza, and fierce fighting between Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza reported that more than 120 people had been killed in the previous 24 hours.
“Artillery shelling has not stopped since 5:00am,” said Yunis Abdel Razek, 52, who was sheltering with his family at the city’s al-Aqsa University.
“We can’t leave the university … it’s dangerous and I fear for the little ones,” he said. “They said the Al-Mawasi area was safe but they lied,” he added, referring to a coastal strip west of Khan Yunis.
Mahdi Antar, 21, meanwhile said he feared forces would “storm” Al-Nasr Hospital where he was sheltering with his family.
While fighting is concentrated in the south it has not ended in the north, where Hamas authorities reported shelling in the Gaza City area and witnesses heard explosions.
Late on Monday the IDF launched a major new push in Western Khan Yunis, ushering in the most intense combat since December when Israel’s military entered Gaza’s southern capital.
HAMAS ISSUES 16-PAGE REPORT
The strikes came after Hamas on Sunday issued a 16-page report in which they admitted to “some faults” but defended the October 7 attacks that sparked the war.
The attacks resulted in the deaths of about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
In response, Israel vowed to destroy Hamas, launching a relentless offensive that has killed at least 25,295 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the latest toll issued Monday by Gaza’s health ministry.
Hamas said in its first public report on the events that triggered the war that if civilians were targeted “it happened accidentally,” and called for an end to “Israeli aggression” in Gaza.
The October 7 attacks were a “necessary step” against Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and a way to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners, said the report issued in English and Arabic.
US intelligence agencies have estimated that the Israeli campaign has killed “around 20 per cent to 30 per cent” of Hamas fighters and is still far from its goal of destroying the Islamist movement, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
In a video statement issued after the Hamas report, Netanyahu said that “in exchange for the release of our hostages, Hamas demands an end to the war, the withdrawal of our forces from Gaza”, the release of Palestinian prisoners and guarantees that Hamas would stay in power.
“If we accept this, our soldiers have fallen in vain,” and security would not be guaranteed, Netanyahu said.
The US co-ordinator for the Middle East, Brett McGurk, was due to meet top officials in Cairo on Monday, followed by a trip to Qatar, in a bid to secure a new hostage exchange deal, US media said.
WHITE HOUSE ADVISER HEADING TO MIDDLE EAST
Senior White House adviser will travel to the Middle East this week for talks on a hostage deal as families set up a protest camp outside the Israeli Prime Minister’s house.
Brett McGurk, US National Security Council co-ordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, will visit both Egypt and Qatar to discuss the release of the remaining 136 Hamas hostages being held in Gaza.
Mr McGurk is also set to discuss the war in Gaza with his counterparts, a US official told The Times of Israel.
Hamas said its October 7 attacks in southern Israel were a “necessary step” against Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.
But the Islamist group admitted in a 16-page report justifying the attack that “some faults happened … due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the border areas with Gaza”.
The document was the group’s first public report released in English and Arabic explaining the background to the attack, when the militants broke through Gaza’s militarised border.
It comes as Gaza’s death toll surpassed 25,000, as Israel pushed its southward offensive and renewed bombardment in the north.
EU CALLS FOR TWO-STATE SOLUTION
The EU’s foreign policy chief on Monday insisted on an eventual two-state solution as he told Israel it couldn’t build peace “only by military means” ahead of talks with Israeli and Palestinian top diplomats.
Josep Borrell repeated the condemnation from the United Nations of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “unacceptable” rejection of calls for a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza.
“What we want to do is to build a two-state solution. So let’s talk about it,” Borrell said.
He told Israel that “peace and stability cannot be built only by military means”.
“Which are the other solutions they have in mind? To make all the Palestinians leave? To kill them off?” Borrell said.
The 27 EU ministers will first meet with Israel’s foreign minister Israel Katz, before sitting down separately with the Palestinian Authority’s top diplomat Riyad al-Maliki.
Katz and Maliki are not expected to meet each other.
GAZA CEMETERIES DESECRATED BY ISRAEL MILITARY
A CNN investigation has revealed the desecration of at least 16 cemeteries in Gaza by Israeli military.
Gravestones have reportedly been “ruined, soil upturned and, in some cases, bodies unearthed.”
The IDF told CNN that the removal of bodies from a cemetery in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, was part of a search for the remains of hostages held by Hamas since the October 7 deadly attacks.
Satellite images and social media posts show the desecration of the cemeteries. CNN reporters also witnessed the destruction first-hand “while travelling with the IDF in a convoy.”
Legal experts told CNN that the desecration could amount to war crimes. The intentional destruction of religious sites like cemeteries violates international law, except under narrow circumstances relating to that site becoming a military objective.
An IDF spokesperson could not account for the destruction of the cemeteries but said the military sometimes had “no other choice” but to target cemeteries if it believes Hamas are using it for their purposes.
US NAVY SEALS MISSING FROM GULF OF ADEN DECLARED DEAD
Two US Navy SEALs who were reported missing in The Gulf of Aden earlier this month have had their status changed to deceased.
The two SEALs had boarded an Iranian vessel on January 11 as part of an operation near the coast of Somali, and were reported missing soon after, the US Central Command said on X.
“We mourn the loss of our two Naval Special Warfare warriors, and we will forever honour their sacrifice and example. Our prayers are with the SEALs’ families, friends, the US Navy, and the entire Special Operations community during this time,” CENTCOM Commander General Michael Erik Kurilla said in a statement.
The new status comes as tensions in the Red Sea continue, with the US having carried out several strikes against Houthi targets after disruptions to global trade brought on by Houthi attacks on merchant ships.
US Central Command forces struck a Houthi anti-ship missile that was prepared to launch into The Gulf of Aden on Saturday, according to the US military.
EU PEACE PLAN INCLUDES PALESTINIAN STATE
The European Union has suggested that peace can only be achieved by the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
The suggestion has been brought forth in a discussion paper sent out to the EU’s 27 member countries in the lead up to an EU foreign ministers meeting on Monday, which Israeli and Palestinian foreign ministers are set to attend, according to Reuters.
The document’s key goal is to establish an independent Palestinian state “living side-by-side with Israel in peace and security”, despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that “Israel must retain security control over Gaza to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel”.
EU officials have acknowledged Israeli officials’ stance, but maintain that it’s the only option.
The plan has also outlined a “preparatory peace conference”, which would go ahead even if Israel or Palestine declined to take part (though they would still be consulted).
Monday’s meeting is set to focus on the October 7 attack by Hamas, as well as Israel’s military response.
HOSTAGES’ FAMILIES GATHER NEAR PM’S HOME
Family members of Hamas hostages have set up tents near Mr Netanyahu’s private home on Azza Street in Jerusalem carrying placards.
Accompanied by protesters, relatives are calling for the release of hostages following an earlier rally.
One placard read: “We love our children more than we hate Hamas”.
The group will reportedly remain camped outside the Israeli Prime Minister’s home until he “agrees to a deal to return the hostages.”
ISRAELI STRIKE KILLS HEZBOLLAH FIGHTER
An Israeli strike on south Lebanon killed a Hezbollah fighter, a source close to the group told AFP, with a security official saying the target was a high-level commander who survived.
The strike on a car in south Lebanon “killed a member of Hezbollah’s protection team”, a Lebanese security official told AFP, adding that the senior commander he was protecting “escaped death”.
A source close to Hezbollah confirmed a Hezbollah fighter had been killed, but denied that a high-level official had been the target of the strike.
BODY OF ISRAELI SOLDIER REMAINS IN GAZA
The Israeli army announced the death of another soldier in the October 7 Hamas attacks and said his body was being held in the Gaza Strip.
“Sergeant Shay Levinson, 19, died on October 7 … his body is in the hands of Hamas,” the Israeli army said in a statement.
His death brings to 28 the number of dead hostages whose bodies remain in the Palestinian territory, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli data.
Israel’s army said Levinson was living in the northern village of Givat Avni and served in a combat unit.
BOMBARDMENT CONTINUES
Witnesses told AFP Israeli boats were bombarding Gaza City and other areas in the north early Sunday local time. Hamas also reported heavy combat in the north.
“Dozens are still under the rubble,” the Hamas government’s media office said, adding that the dead and injured “could not be transferred to hospitals due to the continued artillery shelling on … Khan Yunis and the Tal al-Hawa area in Gaza City and the north”.
The Israeli army said it had “eliminated a number of terrorists” in the main southern city of Khan Yunis and killed 15 militants in northern Gaza over the past day.
Thick plumes of smoke billowed above Khan Yunis on Sunday morning.
1.7M PEOPLE DISPLACED
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees says about 1.7 million people have been displaced in Gaza, with about one million crowded into the Rafah area.
UN agencies have warned better aid access is needed urgently as famine and disease loom.
Diplomatic efforts have sought to secure scaled-up aid deliveries for Gaza and a truce, after a week-long cessation of hostilities in November saw Hamas release dozens of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Hamas’s Qatar-based chief Ismail Haniyeh was in Turkey Saturday for talks with the foreign minister, diplomatic sources said.
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