Israel launches 250 airstrikes in just one hour into ‘Nest of Terror’

Missiles have been from Lebanon into Israel, and mortars launched from Syria, sparking a response from Israel’s military.

Israel’s military is massing near the border and is pounding the Palestinian militant group Hamas which rules the narrow strip.

It comes after Hamas launched an extensive multi-pronged attack against Israel on Saturday, catching the country’s intelligence agencies completely off guard.

Thousands of rockets were fired from Gaza while militants infiltrated Israeli communities, massacring hundreds and abducting some 150 hostages.

Israel has retaliated by launching a wave of air strikes for the bloody incursion and yesterday imposed a “complete siege” on the Gaza Strip, cutting off electricity, food, water and gas to its 2.3 million residents.

Israel is now threatening a ground invasion as more than 300,000 reservists are called up.

Hamas has warned it will begin broadcasting the execution of hostages if Israel targets “innocent civilians”, with 200 targets in Gaza hit in one night alone.

Follow our live coverage of the conflict below.

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Gaza’s only power station goes dark

The only power plant in the Gaza Strip, which is under Israeli bombardment and siege, shut down on Wednesday after it ran out of fuel, the Palestinian enclave’s electricity authority said.

“The only power plant in the Gaza Strip stopped functioning at 2pm (local time),” the authority’s head, Jalal Ismail, said in a statement, having earlier warned that it was running short of fuel.

It means Gaza’s population of roughly two million people is now without power, with the exception of what can be provided by private generators.

‘Worse than ISIS’: Israeli PM shares horrific image

The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has shared a photograph of what appears to be a child’s bed covered in blood, citing it as proof that Hamas is “worse than ISIS”.

Hamas is worse than ISIS. pic.twitter.com/mK76MJWGsw

— Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) October 11, 2023

Gaza man loses eight family members

A Gaza resident has lost eight members of his family, including his pregnant wife, as a result of Israel’s attacks on the region.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Ala al-Kafarneh is the only survivor of an Israeli air raid that killed his family, who are some of the 1050 now confirmed dead after the retaliatory attacks.

“We received a message to leave Beit Hanoon town, so we went to the beach refugee camp. They threatened the building we were in, so we went to find safety,” he said.

“But the building we were in was also threatened so we had to move to Sheikh Radwan town where we stayed in an apartment. Around 4am, a strike hit us. We don’t know why. We have done nothing.”

Gaza hospitals on the brink

Hospitals in Gaza are becoming increasingly overwhelmed and face shortages in crucial medical supplies.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned that without power, the situation will deteriorate rapidly for healthcare workers and patients, as Israel’s retaliation continues through Wednesday.

Executive director of MSF-USA Avril Benoît said the aid agency was “seeing shortages of water, electricity, and fuel, which hospitals rely on for their generators”.

“Some hospitals only have enough fuel for four days,” she said.

Israel launches 250 airstrikes in just one hour into “Nest of Terror”.

Forces unleashed 250 airstrikes in just one hour early on Wednesday, Fox News’ Trey Yingst reported.

The IDF said the area hit is a “Nest of Terror” used by Hamas miltants to launch attacks against Israel.

Dozens of buildings were reduced to rubble - leaving unknown numbers of bodies beneath mounds of debris as residents scrambled to find safety.

Albanese announces repatriation flights

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has told Australians in Israel they will have the option to fly home on Friday.

The Federal Government is reportedly in talks with Qantas and Virgin to offer repatriation flights to Israel to help those who wish to flee the region.

“Australians who want to leave Israel on our assisted departure flights must register with the Australian government’s 24-hour consular emergency centre,” he said.

“We are assessing all options to get Australians home as soon as possible who wish to travel back here.

“We have been working on these contingencies over recent times and will continue to do so across the range of issues as a result of the appalling and abhorrent attacks by Hamas that we saw on the weekend.”

Graphic images as Israel continues extraction

Israeli workers are still removing dead bodies from the city of Sderot, four days after the city was attacked by Hamas.

The Israeli death toll has risen past 1,200 on Wednesday, while the Palestinian health ministry says 1,055 people have been killed over 5,100 others injured since Israel‘s retaliation.

Volunteers of the Zaka Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jewish emergency response team remove the bodies of killed Palestinian Hamas militants from outside the police station in Sderot on October 11.

The Israeli death toll has risen past 1,200 on Wednesday.

Thousands attend Sydney vigil for Israel attacks

Thousands are attending a vigil organised by Sydney’s Jewish community to commemorate the deaths of more than a thousand Israeli civilians after the weekend’s shock attack from Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Organisers said by 6pm, close to 5000 attendees had flooded Rodney Reserve in Dover Heights in Sydney’s east.

Couple Danielle Chaanger and Gioel Gottlieb, both of whom are Jewish, said they had been “devastate and crushed” at the Hamas attack.

Thousands flocked to Dover Heights to show their support. (Photo by DAVID GRAY / AFP)

“This morning I went to my doctor and my doctor’s wife sister had been shot. She barricaded herself in the house, but they kidnapped her neighbours and killed her baby,” he said.

He said he was at the vigil in a show of support for Israel.

“We are not here to protest. We’re here to show that we are very different. We’re here to unite ourselves because we love each other,” he said.

Gaza power plant on brink of shutdown

Gaza’s power plant, the only source of electricity in the embattled region, will run out of fuel within hours as Israel continues its total siege.

Head of the Palestinian Energy Authority Thafer Melhem told Voice of Palestine radio that Gaza could be completely without power in just three hours.

Israel has also also vowed to cut off the region from food, fuel and water supplies in an effort to choke Hamas.

Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN secretary-general, said over a dozen healthcare workers had been killed or injured over the past two days of retaliation.

“Damage to water, sanitation and hygiene facilities has undermined services to more than 400,000 people,” Mr Dujarric said via the BBC.

“The Gaza Power Plant is now the only source of electricity and could run out of fuel within days.”

Israel retaliates after Hezbollah attack

The IDF conducted retaliatory strikes on Lebanon on Wednesday in response to missile attacks originating from Lebanese territory aimed at an Israeli military position at the border.

Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the missile launches, claiming they had caused “a large number of confirmed casualties”.

The attack occurred near the Israeli town of Arab al-Aramshe, across from the Lebanese village of Dhayra on Wednesday.

Residents of the southern Lebanese town of Rmeish reported Israeli shelling in their vicinity as Israeli artillery shells targeted the rocket launch point near Dhayra.

The IDF confirmed it is carrying out the strikes and and has not yet provided information on casualties.

Waleed Aly emotional over Palestine crisis

Waleed Aly was on the verge of tears on The Project on Wednesday night, while reporting on the massacre in Israel.

The Project host was presenting a piece on an Australian-born woman, Galit Carbone, who was found dead outside her home in a kibbutz 5km from the Gaza Strip where more than 100 people, including babies, were killed.

“They’re just kids. It is a lot isn’t it,” an emotional Aly said.

“This as been hard to cope with. We understand we need to cover it. We are glad to say there has been some good news, not on this story, but on other stories that we can bring.”

Grandmother Galit Carbone is the first Australian confirmed dead after Hamas attacked Israel, prompting Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to send repatriation flights to Israel to bring back any Aussies who want to come home. pic.twitter.com/WUh3R0ML9Z

— The Project (@theprojecttv) October 11, 2023

Man distraught as partner still missing from festival

The boyfriend of an Israeli woman still missing after attending the music festival stormed by bloodthirsty Hamas terrorists said he is living in agony after deciding to skip the rave at the last minute.

“I feel like I needed to go and be there with her. Maybe I could have done something different,” Ohad Malul said in an interview with the New York Post.

“It’s killing me inside that I am not with her.”

His girlfriend of two years, Shani Kupervaser, has not been seen or heard from since she fled the Tribe of Nova event in the Negev Desert with friends and was attacked by Hamas fighters with grenades and gunfire.

“We don’t know if she is alive, dead or if she is missing. We don’t know if she is kidnapped because nobody told us,” Malul said.

Shani Kupervaser, 27, has not been seen or heard from since she fled the Tribe of Nova event in the Negev Desert

Kupervaser — a 27-year-old economics student who had a job lined up for after graduation — went to the Nova festival with six friends, but Malul said he decided not to go since he was tired after just getting back from a trip to Paris.

“She said ‘I will come back, I won’t go for long … Everything is going to be OK’,” he said.

Kupervaser became separated from her friends once Hamas fighters turned the festival ground into a battlefield, according to her friends’ accounts.

“It is something that you can’t imagine, them throwing grenades in a small room just to kill everyone,” Malul said, adding that another one of her friends who she fled with is missing.

“The other people who survived can almost not talk. They are devastated.”

Israel death toll rises to 1,200, Gaza 950

More than 1,200 Israelis have been killed in the Israel-Hamas conflict, an Israeli Defence Forces spokesperson said Wednesday, up from 1,000 previously reported.

“The death toll is a staggering 1,200 dead Israelis,” IDF spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus said in a video message, adding that “the overwhelming majority of them” were civilians.

It comes as electricity service to Gaza “will completely stop within hours” as Israeli forces continue to rain down airstrikes.

On Wednesday, the Gaza Ministry of Health said 950 people have been killed and 5,000 others have been wounded in the strikes.

“All basic services in Gaza depend on electricity, and it will not be possible to partially operate them with generators due to the prevention of fuel supplies through the Rafah gate,” the Gaza government media office said in a statement.

Over 263,000 people have been displaced in the region following the Israeli airstrikes, with that number “expected to rise further,” the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Wednesday.

“This is increasing the caseload for humanitarian organisations to meet displaced people’s basic needs of shelter, bedding, food, water and sanitation facilities,” the UN agency said.

Palestine responds as civilians injured in strikes

The Palestinian Ministry of Interior Affairs reported airstrikes have pounded residential neighbourhoods situated in the eastern part of Jabalia and the Qizan al-Najjar region on the Gaza Strip.

The strikes were aimed at civilian residences and infrastructure caused “direct injuries among citizens”, according to a statement from the ministry early on Wednesday.

The Israel Defense Forces have not yet issued statements regarding the airstrikes.

Tens of thousands of Israeli troops have now mobilised as the nation prepares for a possible ground operation.

Defence minister Yoav Gallant said he has “released all restraints” on the IDF as the region prepares for another bloody escalation.

“Whoever comes to decapitate, murder women, Holocaust survivors — we will eliminate him at the height of our power and without compromise,” he said.

Israeli mother lashed out on TV

An Israeli mother whose children were abducted by Hamas lashed out after being asked about the fate of Gazans being pounded by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Speaking on MSNBC with host Andrea Mitchell, the Israeli woman was visibly irritated when asked about Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip, the New York Post reports.

“I can’t be sympathetic to animal human beings — well, they’re not really human beings — who came into my house, broke everything, stole everything, took my children from their bedrooms and took them to the Gaza Strip,” she responded.

“Israel never done that, and it will never do. So there is no symmetry! I’m sorry.”

The mother lashed out after the question on left-leaning US news network MSNBC. Picture: Supplied

Incredibly, Andrea Mitchell asks Israeli mother, whose two children were abducted by Hamas Terrorists, how she feels about Israel retaliation in Gaza.

Part I pic.twitter.com/pU8xq38z3m

— Stop Uyghur Genocide (@FJnyc) October 9, 2023

She added: “If you were dealing with a war who is between two countries, countries don’t take children hostages. I’m sorry. It’s against the laws of war. It’s against humanity. It’s against anything that we all believe in.”

Over 260,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip, as heavy Israeli bombardments from the air, land and sea continue to hit the Palestinian enclave, the United Nations said.

Israel has imposed what it called a “complete siege” on the already blockaded Gaza Strip, cutting off food, water, fuel and electricity.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the move would worsen an already dire humanitarian situation.

Hamas took control of Gaza after the 2006 Palestinian legislative election — the last time elections were held.

Israel strikes Gaza’s Rafah border

Explosions rocked Gaza City on Tuesday night (local time).

For the third time in 24 hours, an Israeli air strike hit Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt, an AFP photographer and an NGO said.

White smoke billowed from among fishing boats after an air strike on Gaza’s port, and in Jerusalem the deserted streets were targeted by Hamas rocket fire.

“Israeli people they are scared of the Arabs and the Arabs are scared of the Jews... everybody is scared of each other,” said Ahmed Karkash, a shop owner in the Old City.

In Gaza City, streets are clogged with rubble and littered with shards of glass. Mazen Mohammad and his family slept on the ground floor of their apartment block, huddling together as explosions rang out around them.

What they woke up to the next day was unrecognisable.

“We felt like we were in a ghost town, as if we were the only survivors,” Mohammad, 38, told AFP.

Missiles launched from Lebanon and Syria

There are growing fears the clash between Israel and Gaza could escalate into a wider conflict, with munitions fired from both Lebanon and Syria into northern Israel, sparking a response from the IDF.

Fifteen rockets were fired from Lebanon at Western Galilee on Tuesday (local time), the Times of Israel reports.

Four of those were intercepted by Israel’s “Iron Dome” defence system, while the rest landed without damaging buildings or causing injuries.

Mortars were also fired from Syria at the Golan Heights, an area seized by Israel from Syria during the Six-Day War of 1967.

The IDF reportedly retaliated by launching shells at posts in both Lebanon and Syria.

A map showing Gaza (bottom), Lebanon (top) and Syria (right). Picture: Supplied

The “war” between Israel and Gaza is taking place in the south of Israel, with thousands of troops massing near Gaza. The IDF is poised to mount a ground invasion.

But the IDF has also been bolstered in the north to deter hostile nations and proxy forces from joining the conflict.

The United States is also taking actions to prevent other actors from getting involved.

The US moved the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the Eastern Mediterranean specifically as a “deterrent signal to Iran, Lebanese Hezbollah, and any other proxy across the region who might be considering exploiting the current situation to escalate the conflict,” a senior official told reporters.

Israel is surrounded by nations that have never officially recognised Israel, including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Oman.

Neighbouring Egypt and Jordan have given Israel diplomatic recognition.

IDF soldiers are responding with artillery and mortar shells toward the origin of the launching in Syria. pic.twitter.com/4XgKFYsp8T

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 10, 2023

‘Sheer horror’: Babies, children murdered

Hamas militants allegedly murdered at least 40 babies and children in a single town, with some of them found beheaded.

Israeli soldiers said they discovered the horrifying aftermath in the town of Kfar Aza, near the border with Gaza.

“I’ve been talking to some of the soldiers, and they say what they’ve witnessed as they’ve been walking through these houses, these communities – babies, their heads cut off. That is what they said,” i24 News journalist Nicole Zedek reported, her voice shaking.

“Families gunned down in their beds. You can see some of these soldiers now, comforting each other, many of them reserves, many of whom left their own families behind, not knowing the sheer horror they were going to come to.

“They say they’ve never experienced anything like this, this is not something anyone ever could have imagined.

“About 40 babies at least were taken out on gurneys. They are going house to house still taking out dead bodies.”

Fox News reporter Trey Yingst wrote: “Imagine the worst things possible that can be done to humans. Hamas did all of that and more to Israeli civilians. Babies beheaded. People burned alive in their homes. Women raped and dragged through the streets. Don’t look away.”

i24NEWS reporter Nicole Zedeck talks about the massacre in Kibbutz Kfar Aza.

Israeli soldiers prepare to remove bodies in Kfar Aza. Picture: Jack Guez/AFP

IDF ‘unable to confirm reports’

Israeli Defense Force spokesman LTC (Res) Jonathan Conricus said that he was unable to confirm the “sickening” reports of beheadings.

“I have heard the reports. I have been chilled by the reports,’’ he told Sky News Australia.

“At this age. I cannot confirm it. Sadly, I don’t think it would be beneath them to do even such monstrosity, but at this stage I cannot confirm it.

“The pictures are sickening. I mean I’ve been around military business for many years and I’ve seen my share of things that I would rather not have seen. It’s became like something from an beyond our ability to comprehend.”

His comments follow reports that Israeli soldiers found the decapitated corpses of babies at Kfar Aza, a kibbutz near Gaza.

A spokesman, Major Nir Dinar, did not say how many babies’ bodies had been found, nor how many had been beheaded.

“These people [Hamas] are animals,” Dinar said. “They have butchered women and children in worse ways than ISIS.”

i24NEWS Correspondent @Nicole_Zedek reports from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, a quarter-mile from the Gaza border, and recounts the atrocities that were committed in the small community which remains an active scene as soldiers clear booby traps and recover the bodies of dozens of victims pic.twitter.com/J4ZfWZQYHp

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) October 10, 2023

Family of woman paraded by Hamas say she’s ‘alive’

A young German-Israeli tattoo artist thought to have been murdered by Hamas militants is still alive, according to her mother.

Shani Louk, 22, was presumed dead after disturbing footage of her naked and limp body being driven by militants into Palestinian territory went viral.

She was abducted from the Supernova festival on Saturday, which was brutally attacked by Hamas militants, leaving at least 260 people dead.

The attackers paraded her body through the streets on a flatbed truck, screaming, “Allahu Akbar (God is great)”.

Her mother, Ricarda, claimed to have been tipped off by an unidentified Palestinian source that her daughter was actually in a hospital.

Read more here.

The mother of Shani Louk says her daughter is alive but in a critical condition.

Australian woman first confirmed casualty

Sydney-born woman Galit Carbone is believed to be the first Australian killed in the bloodshed in Israel.

The 66-year-old grandmother was killed in her home in the Be’eri kibbutz in southern Israel, about 5km from the Gaza Strip border.

Ms Carbone was killed when Hamas militants targeted homes, setting them on fire to smoke out inhabitants.

Julian Cappe, a cousin of Ms Carbone, said her family was “numb” after learning her body had been found outside her home, the Australian reports. About 100 people are believed to have been killed in the raid on the kibbutz.

A number of Australians are still missing in Israel since the conflict broke out on Saturday, with fears they may be among the dead.

Defence Minister Richard Marles said there was about 10,000 Australians in Israel but the Department of Foreign Affairs has not confirmed any deaths.

US President Joe Biden condemned Hamas’ attacks on Israel in an emotional speech in the White House. Picture: Brendan Smialowski/AFP

‘Sheer evil’: Biden’s emotional speech

US President Joe Biden said Washington stood by its ally Israel and was ready to deploy more military assets to the region as he condemned the attacks by Hamas in a speech on Wednesday morning.

Mr Biden said Hamas had carried out atrocities including murders of entire families and rapes of women, along with “stomach-turning reports of babies being killed”.

“There are moments in this life — I mean this literally — when a pure unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world,” he said.

“This is an act of sheer evil.”

Mr Biden confirmed at least 14 Americans were dead and a number had been taken hostage by Hamas, which has threatened to kill hostages if Israel did not warn civilians of upcoming attacks on Gaza.

Mr Biden said the US would support Israel “today, tomorrow, as we always have” and issued one word to any adversaries of Israel who might get involved: “Don’t”.

Rocket fire rains down after deadline passes

Earlier, Hamas gave the Israeli city Ashkelon a deadline of 5pm, local time, for residents to evacuate. That deadline has now passed, and the city is being showered with rockets.

NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel reports from Ashkelon, Israel where Hamas just fired “an intense barrage” of “dozens” of rockets. “The Iron Dome” — the Israeli missile defense system intercepts them in real time. pic.twitter.com/QmLUcLkMUI

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) October 10, 2023

Hamas gives city two hours to evacuate

“In response to the enemy’s crime of displacing our people and forcing them to flee their homes in several areas of the Gaza Strip, we give the residents of the occupied city of Ashkelon a deadline to leave it before 5pm this evening,” a spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, Al Qassam Brigades, said in a statement.

Massive push to arm Israeli civilians

Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has announced a push to buy 10,000 rifles to arm “civilian security teams” across the country.

“We will turn the world upside down so that towns are protected,” he said, according to The Times of Israel.

“I have given instructions for massively arming the civilian security team.”

The policy is focused on towns that have “civilian security teams linked to Israel’s border police force”.

Israel recaptures border towns

Israel said it had recaptured border areas from Hamas militants on Tuesday, as the death toll from the conflict passed 3000, including more than a thousand Israelis.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Israel’s military campaign is only the start of a sustained war to destroy Hamas and “change the Middle East”.

Hamas gunmen killed more than 100 people in the kibbutz of Beeri alone, said Moti Bukjin, a volunteer with the charity Zaka, which recovers bodies in accordance with Jewish law.

“They shot everyone,” he told AFP.

“They murdered in cold blood children, babies, old people. Everyone.”

The Israeli army has called up 300,000 reservists for its “Swords of Iron” campaign and massed tanks and other heavy armour, both near Gaza and on the northern border with Lebanon, where the militant group Hezbollah wields immense influence.

Israeli soldiers patrol a road near the border fence with Gaza. Picture: Jack Guez/AFP

Threat to kill hostages

The United States, a key ally of Israel, which has reported 11 of its own citizens killed in the spiralling conflict, stressed its full support for Israel, as did Britain, France, Germany and Italy.

Their leaders said they recognised the “legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people” but said Hamas “offers nothing for the Palestinian people other than more terror and bloodshed”, in a joint statement.

The five Western powers and many other nations have reported citizens killed, abducted or missing, also including Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, Ireland, Mexico, Nepal, Panama, Paraguay, Russia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Ukraine.

Hamas has held around 150 hostages since its ground incursion, among them children, elderly and young people who were captured at a music festival where some 270 died.

On Monday, Hamas warned it would start killing hostages every time Israel launches a strike on a civilian target in Gaza without warning.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply distressed” by the siege announcement and warned Gaza’s already dire humanitarian situation will now “only deteriorate exponentially”.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk said Tuesday that imposing “sieges that endanger the lives of civilians by depriving them of goods essential for their survival is prohibited under international humanitarian law”.

– with AFP