Israeli defence minister promises move into Gaza coming, as airstrikes continue
Some humanitarian aid could enter Gaza on Friday, but hospitals are closing due to lack of fuel
The latest:
- Airstrikes in southern Gaza level buildings in Khan Younis, leaving at least 12 dead, medical staff say.
- At least 30 children among the 200 people abducted by Hamas, says Israeli military.
- Israeli general promises "command will come" for ground offensive into Gaza.
- Trucks carrying food, water could enter Gaza from Egypt as soon as Friday.
Israeli airstrikes pounded locations across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, heightening fears among more than two million Palestinians trapped in the territory that nowhere was safe.
Homes were hit in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Thursday, where hundreds of thousands are seeking shelter. Medical staff at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis said they received at least 12 dead and 80 wounded.
Sirens wailed as emergency crews rushed to rescue survivors from one building, where many were believed trapped. Nearby buildings had balconies and facades blown off.
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In addition to the bombardments, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told ground troops on Thursday to be ready to enter the Gaza Strip, though he didn't say when the invasion will start.
In a meeting with Israeli infantry soldiers on the border, Gallant urged the forces to "get organized, be ready" for an order to move in.
"Whoever sees Gaza from afar now, will see it from the inside," he said. "The command will come."
Gallant said the battle would be long and hard.
Troops were not expected to enter while foreign leaders were visiting. U.S. President Joe Biden returned home from Israel on Wednesday, while British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak visited on Thursday to demonstrate Western support for the war against Hamas militants.
At least 3,785 Palestinians have been killed and about 12,500 wounded in Israeli strikes since Oct. 7, the Health Ministry in Gaza said on Thursday. Ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qudra told a news conference that 44 health workers had been killed in Gaza since then, while four hospitals were out of service and 14 basic health-care services had stopped functioning.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces have killed 10 Palestinians in clashes in the past two days, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, mostly civilians slain during Hamas's deadly incursion on Oct. 7, including several Canadians. Roughly 200 others were abducted.
Nearly 30 of those being held by Hamas are children, the Israeli military said Thursday, and more than 10 are over the age of 60. Authorities have no information about the location of more than 100 missing Israelis, the statement said.
Fate of people who want to leave unclear
The bombardments came after Israel agreed Wednesday to allow Egypt to deliver limited humanitarian aid to Gaza. Many among Gaza's 2.3 million residents have cut down to one meal a day and been left to drink dirty water amid dwindling supplies.
The deal to get aid into Gaza remained fragile, as hospitals in the sealed territory say they are on the verge of collapse. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said the decision was approved after a request from Biden.
Netanyahu's office said Israel "will not thwart" deliveries of food, water or medicine from Egypt, as long as they are limited to civilians in southern Gaza and don't go to Hamas militants.
Egypt and Israel were still negotiating for the entry of fuel for hospitals. An Israeli military spokesperson said Hamas has stolen fuel from United Nations facilities. Israel wanted assurances this won't happen.
Egypt must still repair the road across the border at Rafah, which was cratered by Israeli airstrikes. More than 200 trucks and some 3,000 tonnes of aid are positioned at or near the crossing, said the head of the Red Crescent for North Sinai, Khalid Zayed.
It was not expected that aid would enter before Friday, Egyptian security sources and White House officials said. More aid is being held in the Egyptian city of Al Arish, about 45 kilometres from Rafah.
Supplies will go in under supervision of the UN, Egyptian Foreign Affairs Minister Sameh Shoukry told Al-Arabiya TV.
Under an arrangement reached between the United Nations, Israel and Egypt, UN observers will inspect the trucks before they enter Gaza. A UN flag will be raised on both sides of the crossing as a sign of protection against airstrikes, they said.
Eri Kaneko, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said the UN has "ample experience" ensuring that assistance will go to the people who need it. One example, she said, is the ongoing cross-border operation to monitor the delivery of aid from Turkey to those in need in northwest Syria.
"There is monitoring at the border, in warehouses inside Syria, at distribution points, and post-distribution," she said in an email to CBC News. "The UN delivers aid to people in need in extremely complex contexts around the globe."
Ivan Karakashian, advocacy manager of the Norwegian Relief Council which is helping with aid assistance in Gaza, agreed that agencies like the UN and other NGOs have had years of experience to "avoid and mitigate any aid diversion."
"I think … with our stringent systems in place, that we would be able to get that humanitarian assistance to those in need," he said.
But unless there are a humanitarian pause and safety guarantees, it doesn't matter if aid crosses over from Rafah into Gaza.
"We won't be able to distribute it because we can't guarantee the safety of our personnel, nor the safety of the people in need," he said.
The World Health Organization's emergencies chief, Mike Ryan, said the aid is "a drop in the ocean" of what is needed in Gaza.
"But hopefully this trickle will turn into a river of aid that will flow in the coming days," he said.
Foreign passport holders have headed to the Rafah border hoping to be allowed out under any deal, although Cairo has said aid must be delivered first.
Hospitals under stress
The announcement of a plan to bring water, food and other supplies into Gaza came as fury over a Tuesday explosion at Gaza City's al-Ahli Arab Hospital spread across the Middle East.
There were conflicting claims of who was behind the deadly hospital explosion. Hamas officials in Gaza blamed an Israeli airstrike, saying 471 people were killed.
An unclassified U.S. intelligence assessment delivered to Congress on Thursday estimates the explosion killed on the "low end" of 100 to 300 people. That death toll "still reflects a staggering loss of life," U.S. intelligence officials said in the findings, which were seen by The Associated Press.
Israel denied it was involved and released a flurry of video, audio and other information that it said showed the blast was instead due to a rocket misfire by Islamic Jihad, another militant group operating in Gaza. Islamic Jihad dismissed that claim.
The White House said an analysis of "overhead imagery, intercepts and open-source information" showed Israel was not behind the attack, but the U.S. said it continues to collect evidence.
The Associated Press has not independently verified any of the claims or evidence.
Video from the scene showed the hospital grounds strewn with torn bodies, many of them young children.
Hundreds of wounded were rushed to Gaza City's main hospital, where doctors, already facing critical supply shortages, were sometimes forced to perform surgery on the floors, often without anesthesia.
A spokesperson for Sunak said the U.K. government was still waiting for a report on the hospital explosion from the security services before offering an opinion.
Following his visit to Israel, Sunak flew to Saudi Arabia to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who stressed that the kingdom considered targeting civilians in Gaza "a heinous crime," the Saudi state news agency reported.
Sunak encouraged the crown prince to use Saudi's leadership in the region to support both current and long-term stability, and the pair underscored the need to prevent any escalation in the conflict, the British prime minister's office said.
The Gaza Health Ministry issued an urgent request for diesel on Thursday after a fifth major hospital — Yemen al-Saeed Hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip — closed due to a lack of fuel.
Beit Hanoun Hospital, Dora Children's Hospital, Karama Hospital and the International Eye Hospital in Gaza have already closed due to fuel shortages and airstrike damage, the ministry said. Services have also halted at 14 smaller primary health centres.
Elsewhere on Thursday, the Israeli military said it killed a top Palestinian militant in Rafah and hit hundreds of targets across Gaza, including tunnel shafts, intelligence infrastructure and command centres. It said it struck dozens of mortar launching posts, most of them immediately after they launched shells at Israel.
In northern areas that Israel warned to evacuate, airstrikes also hit three residential towers in al-Zahra, the Hamas-led Interior Ministry in Gaza said, as well as homes along the border with Israel.
Corrections
- An earlier version of this story overstated the number killed over the past two days in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. In fact, the health ministry has said 10 people have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces.Oct 19, 2023 8:27 AM ET
With files from CBC News, the CBC's Mark Gollom and Reuters