Israel Hamas war live updates: Israel agrees to ‘continuous flow’ of aid as Gaza death toll rises
Joe Biden has revealed that a deal had been brokered to allow more aid into the Gaza Strip as Israel continues to bomb Hamas targets. See latest. Warning: Graphic
Israel has agreed to a “continuous flow” of aid into Gaza as it proceeds to rain down bombs on Hamas targets in the besieged territory.
Videos released by the Israeli Defence Forces show explosions in Gaza, where more than two million people have been cut off from water and electricity for two weeks.
United States president Joe Biden has revealed that a deal had been brokered to allow more aid into the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing on its border with Egypt.
The agreement comes despite more than 200 hostages, including at least 10 Americans, remaining in the hands of Hamas following the October 7 terror attack in Israel that killed at least 1400 people.
Meanwhile, more than 4300 Palestinians have been killed by Israel, with nearly half of the death toll children.
Hardline Israeli politicians have criticised the deal to allow aid into Gaza while Hamas still has hostages.
Mr Biden spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the phone on Sunday to discuss Gaza and the region.
“The President welcomed the first two convoys of humanitarian assistance since Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack, which crossed the border into Gaza and is being distributed to Palestinians in need,” a White House statement said.
“The leaders affirmed that there will now be continued flow of this critical assistance into Gaza.”
So far less than 40 trucks have been allowed into Gaza, only about 8 per cent of what it usually imports each day.
Thousands of trucks would be needed to supply food, medicine into Gaza to make up the shortfall from the two week blockade.
Fuel was also needed to help run its desalination plant, which the arid Gaza Strip relies on for its water supplies.
No-one has been allowed out of Gaza since the terror attack, including 77 Australian passholders who were there when the borders were shut.
FOLLOW UPDATES BELOW:
GAZA TO RUN OUT OF FUEL IN THREE DAYS
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has said that Gaza is set to run out of fuel in three days.
Israel cut off all fuel, aid, water and electricity supplies to the Gaza strip on October 9.
UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini said the lack of fuel will add to the struggle of children, women and people of Gaza.
“Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and bakeries. Without fuel, aid will not reach many civilians in desperate need. Without fuel, there will be no humanitarian assistance,” Mr Lazzarini said.
“Without fuel, we will fail the people of Gaza, whose needs are growing by the hour, under our watch.”
And while the second aid convoy since the start of the war entered Gaza on Sunday, aid organisations warn that it is a miniscule amount considering the significant needs on the ground.
‘HAMAS PLANNED TO USE CHEMICAL WEAPONS’
Hamas planned to use cyanide agents against Israeli civilians, according to Israel’s President Isaac Herzog.
Mr Herzog produced material he says was recovered from a USB drive on the body of a Hamas terrorist who entered the country on October 7.
“This is material which was found on the body of one of those sadistic villains. It’s al-Qaeda material, official al-Qaeda material,” he told Sky News.
“When dealing with ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Hamas, this is what we’re dealing with. And in this material, there were instructions, how to produce chemical weapons.”
AREAS NEAR GAZA HOSPITALS HIT
Israel fighter planes aimed in areas near hospital in the Gaza Strip early on Monday, Palestinian media reported according to Reuters.
It is not clear whether there were injuries or damage to the hospitals.
“There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the reports, which said Israel had struck near Gaza City’s Shifa and Al-Quds hospitals and near the Indonesian Hospital, in the enclave’s north,” Reuters reported.
The Indonesian Hospital’s director told Al Jazeera the Israeli bombardment caused “serious damage and injuries” but provided no further detail.
WORLD LEADERS RELEASE JOINT STATEMENT
Joe Biden also began talks with Benjamin Netanyahu about allowing US citizens to cross the border at the Rafah crossing into Egypt.
It comes as a meeting was held between Mr Biden, United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
The leaders released a joint statement backing Israel’s right to defend itself but said they would work towards getting “safe access to food, water, medical care, and other assistance required to meet humanitarian needs” inside the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian has been in talks with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who is based in Qatar.
Iran has been blamed for backing the terror attack that sparked the war.
RISK LEBANON, IRAN WILL ENTER WAR
Fears are growing that Hezbollah, a close ally of Hamas and Iran, could enter the conflict, prompting Israel’s Netanyahu to warn it would be “the mistake of its life”.
“We will strike it with a force it cannot even imagine, and the significance for it and the state of Lebanon will be devastating,” he said.
Iran also warned about the conflict spreading, with top diplomat Hossein Amir-Abdollahian cautioning that if Washington and Israel did not “immediately stop the crime against humanity and genocide in Gaza the region will go out of control”.
Australia‘s ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd appeared on Sunrise and was asked whether Australia will be asked to play a role in the Middle East if the conflict develops.
“We have no such advice or indication from the United States at all,” Mr Rudd said.
“The bottom line is it is time for cool heads to prevail. What we do have concerns about is the possibility of escalation in the region, particularly when I look at early reports this morning of what is happening in northern Israel on the border of Levitt, and reports of rocket attacks by Hezbollah.
“Nobodies interests are served by the further escalation of this conflict. But to go to the core nature of the point you just asked me, we have received no such request.”
‘BROTHERS, STOP’: POPE’S PLEA
Pope Francis used his weekly Angelus prayer in Rome to plead for an end to the bloodshed.
“War is always a defeat, it is a destruction of human fraternity. Brothers, stop!” he said on Sunday.
He later held a 20-minute conversation with US President Joe Biden about “conflict situations in the world and the need to identify paths to peace”, the Vatican said.
GLOBAL PROTESTS CONTINUE
Protesters hit the streets of several European capitals on Sunday with at least 10,000 people rallying in support of Israel in Berlin as Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed to stamp out a resurgence of anti-Semitic incidents linked to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
And thousands rallied in Paris to demand an end to Israel’s operation in Gaza in the first pro-Palestinian rally in the French capital that wasn’t banned on security grounds.
NEW ELITE ISRAELI UNIT TO HUNT HAMAS
Israel has formed an elite unit of Israeli agents to hunt down every Hamas terrorist involved in the October 7 attack, according to reports.
The specially selected members of Shin Bet, Israel’s version of the FBI, will function independently from other units targeting high-ranking terrorists, The Jerusalem Post said.
The new unit will specifically target members of the special Hamas commando group called Nukhba, which is believed to have pulled off the attack that slaughtered hundreds of innocent Israelis along the country’s border with the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, Israel has claimed that Hamas used bombs disguised in a child’s pink backpack in the hopes it would kill an innocent victim.
“Hamas purposefully chose to booby-trap a child’s backpack with the hope a well-intentioned civilian would pick it up,” the Israel Defense Forces said.
NUMBER OF UN WORKERS KILLED RISES
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said that 29 of its staff had been killed since the start of the war in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, saying half of them were teachers. On Saturday it had given a toll of 17.
The scale of the bombing has left basic systems unable to function, with the UN saying dozens of unidentified bodies had been buried in a mass grave in Gaza City because cold storage had run out.
MACRON TO VISIT ISRAEL
French President Emmanuel Macron will visit Tel Aviv on Tuesday for talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his office announced.
Seven French citizens are still missing: one of them, a French woman, has been confirmed as among the hostages taken by Hamas.
Mr Macron has said the others are also thought to be hostages, but there has not yet been confirmation.
US President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have already visited Israel.
Mr Biden discussed the war over the phone on Sunday with these leaders, alongside Macron and Canada’s Justin Trudeau.
IDF HITS SYRIA, WEST BANK
Israeli war planes struck Gaza on Saturday night, with additional attacks on Sunday hitting two airports in Syria and a mosque in occupied West Bank frequented by militants.
The IDF bombed Syria’s Damascus and Aleppo airports in a bid to stop them being used to supply Hezbollah with advanced weapons from Iran.
Overnight air strikes in the Gaza city of Deir Al Balah killed at least 143 people, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital told CNN.
A total of 262 people were wounded according to the hospital, which received the bodies and the wounded.
The hospital has been overwhelmed with bodies and some parents in Gaza have resorted to writing their children's’ names on their legs to help identify them in case they are killed.
CNN reported it had viewed video from the hospital which shows a toddler and three children who have been killed, bearing their names written in Arabic on their calves, their bodies lying on stretchers on the floor of what appears to be a morgue.
EGYPTIAN BORDER GUARDS INJURED BY ISRAELI FIRE
The Israeli military said it “accidentally fired and hit an Egyptian post” with a tank on Sunday, near the border with Gaza.
“The IDF (Israeli military) expresses sorrow regarding the incident” near the Kerem Shalom area, an army statement said.
Some Egyptian border guards suffered minor injuries, Egypt’s military said.
“During the ongoing clashes in the Gaza Strip Sunday, one of the Egyptian border watchtowers was accidentally hit by fragments of a shell from an Israeli tank, resulting in minor injuries to some border guards,” an Egyptian military spokesperson said on Facebook.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that if the United States and Israel “do not immediately stop the crime against humanity and genocide in Gaza, anything is possible at any moment and the region will go out of control”.
‘WE MAINTAIN RIGHT TO DEFEND OURSELVES’: US
The United States warned against any “escalation” in the Middle East in the wake of Israel’s war with Hamas, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said, hours after the Pentagon moved to step up military readiness in the region.
The United States has seen a “prospect of significant escalation of attacks on our troops” in the region, Austin said on Sunday, adding that the US military was preparing for “the ability to respond.”
“If any group or any country is looking to widen this conflict and take advantage of this very unfortunate situation that we see, our advice is: don’t,” he told ABC News.
“We maintain the right to defend ourselves and we won’t hesitate to take the appropriate action,” he added.
US ACTIVATES AIR DEFENCE SYSTEMS IN MIDDLE EAST
The Pentagon said it was upping readiness in the region in response to “recent escalations by Iran and its proxy forces.”
US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin ordered the activation of air defence systems and notified additional forces that they may be deployed soon. He did not say how many US troops would be added to those already in the region.
The Pentagon’s moves came after what Mr Austin had earlier described in a statement as “detailed discussions” with US President Joe Biden.
“These steps will bolster regional deterrence efforts, increase force protection for US forces in the region, and assist in the defence of Israel,” Mr Austin said.
Mr Austin said he had activated deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery and additional Patriot battalions “throughout the region.”
“Finally, I have placed an additional number of forces on prepare-to-deploy orders as part of prudent contingency planning, to increase their readiness and ability to quickly respond as required,” he said.
Armed factions close to Iran have threatened to attack US interests in Iraq over Washington’s support for Israel.
Multiple Iraqi bases used by US-led coalition troops have been targeted in several attacks in recent days.
HAMAS-ISRAELI TROOPS CLASH ON THE GROUND
An Israel Defense Forces soldier died and three others were wounded during a raid as part of preparations for a Gaza ground operation, an IDF spokesperson said on Sunday.
The raid occurred in the area of Kibbutz Kissufim near the Gaza Strip, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said during a video briefing.
Israel increased its attacks and killed “dozens of terrorists” in and around Gaza City, including the deputy commander of the Hamas rocket network, military spokesman Daniel Hagari said.
Hamas fighters clashed with Israeli troops inside Gaza on Sunday in what appears to be one of the first skirmishes between the two sides on the ground inside the strip since war broke out.
Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades said its fighters destroyed two Israeli military bulldozers and a tank in an ambush, forcing Israeli troops to retreat into Israel without their vehicles.
AUSSIE BOY TRAPPED IN GAZA PLEADS TO COME HOME
Australia boy Yazan Ellis, 12, his seven-year-old sister and mother revealed they were trapped in the Gaza Strip.
“It’s really stressful … like you’ve never been in a war before, so I’m really scared,” he told 7 News.
“I saw people dead on the ground, legs everywhere, arms everywhere … I want to go home back to Australia but the borders are closed and there’s bombing everywhere.”
Yazan, who is from Melbourne, said his mother was “really, really stressed and scared”, pleading with the Australian Government to get them home.
They are among 51 Australians stuck in Gaza, whose borders have been closed since Hamas’ terror attack on Israel.
Israel has warned more than one million residents of northern Gaza to move south for their safety, and the UN says more than half of the territory’s population is now internally displaced.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians are believed to remain in and around Gaza City in the north, unwilling or unable to leave.
HEZBOLLAH THREAT PROMPTS MASS EVACUATIONS IN ISRAEL
The Israeli Defence Force announced that it had “evacuated many of the communities along the northern border” amid the Hezbollah threat from Lebanon.
“We maintain our focus on the south, but it’s extremely important for everybody in Lebanon to ask themselves the question of the price,” IDF spokesman Jonathan Conricus said.
“Is the Lebanese state really willing to jeopardise what is left of Lebanese prosperity and Lebanese sovereignty for the sake of terrorists in Gaza?
“Hezbollah is aggressing and it is dragging Lebanon into a war that it will gain nothing from, but stands to lose a lot.”
As the gunfights and rocket attacks continued in Gaza and on the Lebanese border, Israel also opened up a new battleground in the Palestinian West Bank.
Israeli forces bombed a mosque being used as a base for “terror attacks” near a refugee camp in Jenin, 160km north of Jerusalem.
– with AFP
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