Palestinian group, Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, has announced the start of military the operation Al-Aqsa Flood against Israel. Thousands of rockets have been fired from the blockaded enclave towards the occupied territories as far away as Tel Aviv, killing over 1,400 Israelis, including both military and settlers. More than 10,000 Palestinians have been so far killed in an exchange of fire between the two sides.
Israeli air strikes killed 548 Palestinians in the past 24 hours, the Palestinian health ministry said on Tuesday afternoon.
This takes the death toll to 10,328 people killed since 7 October, including 4,237 children, 2,719 women and 631 elderly people. At least 25,956 people have been wounded.
Around 2,450 people are still missing in Gaza, including 1,350 children. The vast majority of these people are believed to be dead and buried under rubble.
Additionally, Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 161 Palestinians in the West Bank in the same period – a sharp rise from the monthly death toll in the occupied territory.
According to the health ministry, the October deaths take the total number of Palestinians killed this year in the West Bank to over 371.
Some doctors in Gaza have been performing operations, including amputations, without anesthesia, a World Health Organization spokesperson announced Tuesday.
“Nothing justifies the horror being endured by civilians in Gaza,” WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier said Tuesday during a press briefing in Geneva, Switzerland, stressing their “desperate need for water, fuel, food and safe access to health care to survive”.
Lindmeier reiterated the United Nation’s calls for “unhindered, safe and secure access” for some 500 trucks of aid a day — not only across the border but also “all the way through to the patients in the hospitals,” where surgeries including amputations were being performed without anesthesia.
The level of death and suffering is “hard to fathom”, he added.
Lindmeier also stated that 16 health care workers have been killed while on duty, stressing that any attacks on health care are forbidden by international humanitarian law.
The number of journalists killed in Gaza by Israel has surpassed 48, Palestinian officials in Gaza said on Tuesday.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) previously announced the violence since 7 October has been the deadliest for journalists covering conflict since they began documenting journalist fatalities in 1992.
At least 569 aid trucks have entered Gaza since October 21, the United Nations humanitarian office (OCHA) said in its regular update Tuesday.
Some 93 trucks primarily carrying food items, medicines, health supplies, bottled water and hygiene products crossed from Egypt into Gaza on Monday, OCHA announced.
Prior to the start of the hostilities an average of 500 truckloads entered Gaza every working day, it noted.
OCHA stressed that the entry of fuel is “desperately needed” to operate electricity generators to run life-saving equipment, but remains banned by the Israeli authorities.
“Gaza remains under a full electricity blackout since 11 October, following Israel’s halt of its power and fuel supply, which triggered the shutdown of Gaza’s sole power plant,” OCHA added.
A spokeswoman for the International Red Cross has said aid that entered Gaza over the last month is equivalent to what used to enter the besieged trip in a single day before the war,
Speaking to Al Jazeera on Tuesday, Suhair Zakkout urged an immediate ceasefire and said there was “no justification for bombing hospitals”.
A total of 114 foreign nationals have been evacuated from Gaza to Egypt through the Rafah border crossing so far on Tuesday, an Egyptian border official told CNN.
In addition, four wounded Palestinians arrived in Egypt for treatment through the crossing, the official added.
According to a CNN tally, this brings the total number of wounded Palestinians with severe injuries sustained from Israeli airstrikes in Gaza who have been transferred to Egypt to 105.
At least 30 more wounded patients are expected to arrive in the country today, the official stated.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, began a five-day visit to the Middle East on Tuesday “amid Israel’s escalation in Gaza”, his office said in a statement.
“It has been one full month of carnage, of incessant suffering, bloodshed, destruction, outrage and despair,” Türk stated.
“Human rights violations are at the root of this escalation and human rights play a central role in finding a way out of this vortex of pain,” he added.
Türk is in Cairo, Egypt, on Tuesday and will visit Rafah on the border with Gaza Wednesday, before travelling to Amman in Jordan on Thursday.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that at least two people have been killed and 12 wounded in the overnight raids in the West Bank.
Dozens of Palestinians were also detained during the raids which have increased in frequency since October 7.
At least 164 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank since October 7, including four prisoners who died in Israeli custody. More than 2,200 have been detained.
Explosions were reported in Tulkarm refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, as videos on social media showed a large column of Israeli armoured vehicles moving through the camp.
Israel deployed a drone to strike targets in the camp. Two young men were injured by fragments of a missile fired by the drone, according to Wafa news agency.
Violent confrontations took place between young men and Israeli soldiers, Wafa added.
An Israeli bulldozer has also destroyed parts of the main streets in the camp.
Israel will have the “overall security responsibility” in Gaza for an “indefinite period” after the war ends, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed in an interview that aired on ABC News on Monday.
Gaza should be governed by “those who don’t want to continue the way of Hamas”, Netanyahu said, before adding, “I think Israel will, for an indefinite period, will have the overall security responsibility because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it.”
The prime minister also repeated that Israel will not allow a general ceasefire until all hostages are released by Hamas.
However, Netanyahu stated he was open to short pauses to take place.
“As far as tactical little pauses, an hour here, an hour there. We’ve had them before, I suppose, we’ll check the circumstances in order to enable goods, humanitarian goods to come in, or our hostages, individual hostages to leave. But I don’t think there’s going to be a general ceasefire,” he continued.
Netanyahu also addressed the role of Iran and Hezbollah in the conflict, cautioning them from getting more involved.
“I think they’ve understood that if they enter the war in a significant way, the response will be very, very powerful and I hope they don’t make that mistake,” Netanyahu told ABC.
At least 70% of Gaza Strip’s 2 million people are now displaced with most living in appalling conditions at United Nations shelters, a spokesperson for a UN relief agency stated.
“1.5 million people who moved there were forcibly displaced,” said Tamara Alrifa, the director of external relations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
“So, we’re talking about 70% of people who are displaced away from their homes.”
In a statement Monday, the agency described the conditions in the overcrowded UNRWA installations which are currently sheltering 717,000 internally displaced Gazans. It announced the situation at the shelters is “inhumane” and deteriorating and warned of a risk of a public health crisis due to the damage to the water and sanitation infrastructure.
“UNRWA shelters have reported thousands of cases of acute respiratory, skin infections, diarrhea, and chicken pox,” the statement added.
The UN agency noted the decomposition of bodies under collapsed buildings amid limited rescue efforts also continues to raise humanitarian and environmental concerns.
One UNRWA facility, the Khan Younis Training Centre (KYTC), is hosting more than 22,000 internally displaced people – and the space per person is less than 2 square meters (about 21 square feet), the organization said.
The United States is planning to transfer $320 million worth of precision-guided bomb equipment to Israel, according to three people familiar with the matter, amid Israel’s ongoing aerial bombardment of Gaza as part of its war on Hamas.
The sale of the Spice Family Gliding Bomb Assemblies — a type of precision bomb kit that can turn unguided bombs into GPS-guided munitions — to Israel was approved by the relevant US congressional committees several months ago, before Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 and sparked a war, one of the sources said.
But the State Department did not formally notify congressional leaders that the transfer was moving forward until October 31, according to the sources and a formal notification reviewed by CNN.
The notification, addressed to the Speaker of the House, House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee, says that defense contractor Rafael USA would transfer “defense articles, technical data, and defense services to support procurement, inspection, assembly, testing, and shipment of Spice Family Gliding Bomb Assemblies for end-use by the Ministry of Defense for Israel”.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that the US plans to transfer the kits.
SPICE stands for Smart, Precise Impact, and Cost Effective. The weapons are produced by Rafael USA, the American branch of one of Israel’s most prominent arms manufacturers.
The guidance kits are similar to JDAMs — or joint direct attack munitions — produced by the US in that they are also fin and steering kits that turn unguided “dumb” bombs into guided “smart” bombs. The US began expediting the delivery of JDAMs to Israel shortly after the start of the war, a senior defense official said in late October, which was one of Israel’s top needs, along with interceptor missiles for its aerial defense systems.
A State Department official told CNN that “as a matter of policy, we are unable to comment on or confirm specific defense trade licensing or compliance activity”.
The transfer comes as several countries have called for a ceasefire in Gaza, as the civilian death toll from Israeli air strikes continues to rise. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on Monday that “many, many thousands of innocent people” have been killed in Gaza, and that the US has only seen “some indications” in “certain scenarios” that Israel is making an effort to minimize the civilian death toll there.
Gaza has lost at least 61 percent of its jobs since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, the United Nations labour agency has announced, warning that the economic fallout will reverberate for “many years to come”.
The Palestinian territory’s estimated employment losses are equivalent to 182,000 jobs, the International Labour Organization said on Monday in an assessment of the economic impact of the conflict.
“Our initial assessment of the repercussions of the tragic current crisis on the Palestinian labour market have yielded extremely worrying results, which will only worsen if the conflict continues,” stated Ruba Jaradat, the ILO’s Regional Director for Arab States.
“The ongoing hostilities not only represent an enormous humanitarian crisis in terms of loss of lives and basic human needs, they also represent a social and economic crisis which has caused vast damage to jobs and businesses, with reverberations that will be felt for many years to come.”
The occupied West Bank has also lost an estimated 24 percent of its employment, the equivalent of 208,000 jobs, due to spillover effects of the war, the ILO said.
When combined, job losses in the two Palestinian territories translate into estimated daily income losses of $16m, according to the UN agency.
Jaradat added residents in Gaza must be allowed “full, rapid, safe, and unhindered” access to humanitarian aid.
“We are working tirelessly with government, worker and employer partners, other UN agencies and humanitarian actors to provide immediate assistance to impacted workers and businesses,” she continued.
“We will also support them in the longer term towards collecting vital labour market information and recovering jobs and enterprises, combined with social protection initiatives, to the utmost extent of our mandate.”
US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed hostages, humanitarian aid and “the possibility of tactical pauses” in their call Monday, the White House announced.
Biden “reiterated his steadfast support for Israel and the protection of Israeli citizens from Hamas and all other threats while also emphasizing the imperative to protect Palestinian civilians and reduce civilian harm in the course of military operations”, according to the White House readout.
The president “also discussed the situation in the West Bank and the need to hold extremist settlers accountable for violent acts”.
The two leaders agreed to speak again in the coming days.
The rising death toll as Israel’s bombardment campaign on the densely populated strip has drawn international condemnation. On Monday, the health ministry in the Palestinian enclave confirmed more than 10,000 people have died since Israel launched its war on Hamas.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres told reporters on Monday that Gaza is “becoming a graveyard for children” and the deteriorating conditions in the enclave make the need for a humanitarian ceasefire more urgent.
“The nightmare in Gaza is more than a humanitarian crisis. It is a crisis of humanity,” the secretary-general told reporters at the UN in New York.
Following those comments, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan called for Guterres to resign and accused him of remaining silent regarding the Israeli casualties in the October 7 Hamas attack.
“It has been over 30 days since the children of southern Israel were intentionally slaughtered by Hamas terrorists, but you have said NOTHING about the ‘graveyard of children’ the south of Israel has become,” Erdan said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, on Monday.
Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Eli Cohen echoed Erdan, saying, “Hamas is the problem in Gaza, not Israel’s actions to eliminate this terrorist organization.”
The remarks from both sides come as the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 surpassed 10,000, the Ministry of Health in Gaza announced Monday.
Guterres went on to announce that the UN and its partners are launching a $1.2 billion humanitarian appeal to help the entire population of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
“The unfolding catastrophe makes the need for a humanitarian ceasefire more urgent with every passing hour. The parties to the conflict — and, indeed, the international community — face an immediate and fundamental responsibility: to stop this inhuman collective suffering and dramatically expand humanitarian aid to Gaza,” Guterres said.
The secretary-general also stressed the importance of protecting civilians, called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and that “no party to an armed conflict is above international humanitarian law”.
More than 400 trucks have crossed into Gaza from the Rafah crossing in the last two weeks, coming short of the roughly 500 a day that crossed before the conflict, Guterres continued.
The Rafah crossing “alone does not have the capacity to process aid trucks at the scale required,” and the aid that has come through so far represents a “trickle of assistance does not meet the ocean of need”, Guterres added.
Guterres reiterated his condemnation of the Hamas October 7 attacks and called for the release of the hostages held captive by the militant group.
Palestinian workers who were expelled back to Gaza from Israel last week have accused Israeli authorities of “torture”, alleging they were stripped naked, held in cages, viciously beaten and, according to one worker’s account, subjected to electric shocks.
“They broke us and beat us with batons and metal sticks… they humiliated us… they have made us starve without food or water,” Muqbel Abdullah Al Radia, another of the workers, told CNN.
CNN spoke to Abdullah Al Radia and eight other men who returned to Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Israel on Friday. Al Radia, who is from Beit Lahiya, a village in northern Gaza, told CNN he was working in Israel — one of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza with permits to do so — when the war started.
Most workers from Gaza work in construction or agriculture. They tend to spend weeks away from home, rather than commuting, which is why so many were in Israel when Hamas launched its terror attack on Saturday, October 7.
Al Radia said that right after the war started, he and some of the other Gazan workers fled to Rahat, a predominantly Arab Bedouin city in southern Israel, where he says they were turned over to the Israeli army by local residents.
“(The military) took our phones and money, we couldn’t communicate with our families, we were given food on the floor in plastic bags,” he added.
When the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel was first launched, Israeli media reported initial fears that Hamas fighters were among the workers with permits, although an Israeli security official later told CNN the men were detained for being in Israel illegally after their work permits were revoked, not for suspected terror activity.
The security official said that in some cases, their detention was also for their own protection, as they were at risk of violence from Israeli communities.
Six human rights organizations in Israel have filed a petition to Israel’s High Court arguing these detentions were “without legal authority and without legal grounds”.
CNN has reviewed some of the videos showing the alleged abuses. They show people being detained, with their hands and feet tied, sitting in the sun, and being kicked and dragged around. One video shows a bus full of people who have been blindfolded, their hands tied.
The security official who spoke to CNN about these allegations stated the IDF was investigating these videos and confirmed two — one showing IDF soldiers kicking a detained person and one showing a large group of detainees tied, blindfolded and humiliated — were genuine. The official said soldiers who took part in these videos were punished by the IDF.
Yemeni Armed Forces announced they have launched a large-scale drone strike against “sensitive” targets in the occupied territories in a show of support for Palestinian people in the besieged Gaza Strip.
“A barrage of drones was launched during the past hours at various sensitive targets of the Israeli enemy in the occupied territories,” Yemen’s official al-Masirah television network quoted the country’s Armed Forces as saying in a Monday statement.
The Yemeni forces added that the drone attack led to the cessation of operations at the targeted Israeli bases and airports for several hours.
“The Yemeni Armed Forces … will continue to carry out more military operations in support of … the oppressed Palestinian people, and in response to the calls of our great Yemeni people … until the brutal Israeli aggression against our brothers in Gaza stops.”
The armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas has announced that it fired a barrage of rockets at Israel from southern Lebanon in response to Israeli strikes on Gaza.
In a statement on Telegram on Monday, the Lebanon branch of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades said that it had launched 16 rockets targeting the northern Israeli city of Nahariya and the southern outskirts of the city of Haifa.
Israel claimed that it had identified about 30 launches from Lebanon over an hour.
“The IDF is responding with artillery fire toward the origin of the launches,” the Israeli Defense Forces posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Qassam Brigades added that the rockets were in retaliation for “massacres and its aggression against our people in Gaza”, where Palestinian authorities say that relentless Israeli air strikes have killed more than 10,000 people since fighting began on October 7.
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