IDF carries out ‘targeted raid’ in Gaza as US strikes Syria – live

Hostages seized by the Hamas terror group during its cross-border raid which killed up to 1,400 Israelis cannot be released until there is a ceasefire, the group has claimed.

“They seized dozens of people, most of them civilians, and we need time to find them in the Gaza Strip and then release them,” Hamas official Abu Hamid told Russian newspaper Kommersant.

A calm environment was needed to complete this task, the newspaper quoted him as saying. On Thursday, Hamas said around 50 of the hostages had been killed in Israeli air strikes.

But Israel has urged Russia to expel the visiting Hamas delegation, calling their invitation to Moscow “deplorable”.

Nearly half of Israelis want to hold off on any invasion of the Gaza strip, a new poll has found.

Twenty-nine per cent of Israelis agreed while 49 per cent said “it would be better to wait” when asked if the IDF should immediately escalate to a large-scale ground offensive. Meanwhile, 22 per were still undecided, the poll published in the Maariv newspaper said.

The paper said the results contrasted with its poll last week which found 65 per cent of Israelis supported a major ground offensive.

The Israel Defence Forces said it had conducted more air strikes on Hamas terrorist targets over the last 24 hours.

“IDF ground troops, fighter jets and UAVs struck anti-tank missile launch sites, command & control centers and Hamas terrorist operatives. The troops exited the area and no injuries were reported,” the Israeli military said.

The rising death tolls in Gaza are unprecedented in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even greater loss of life could come if Israel launches an expected ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007 and survived four previous wars with Israel.

The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said on Wednesday that more than 750 people were killed over the past 24 hours, higher than the 704 killed the previous day.

The figures could not be independently verified and the ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

By comparison, 2,251 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed in the entire six-week-long war in 2014, according to UN figures.

Iran’s foreign minister said Hamas is ready to release civilian prisoners abducted from Israel but that the international community must take responsibility for releasing 6,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

Hossein Amirabdollahian told an emergency meeting of the UN General Assembly on Thursday that Iran “stands ready to play its part in this very important humanitarian endeavour, along with Qatar and Turkey”.

Overly stringent checks on lorries at the Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza were slowing the flow of humanitarian aid to a “dribble” as hunger grows among Palestinians there, UN World Food Programme executive director has said.

The Rafah crossing, which is controlled by Egypt and does not border Israel, has become the main point of aid delivery since Israel imposed a “total siege” of Gaza in retaliation for an attack by Hamas militants on 7 October.

The United States is leading negotiations with Israel, Egypt and the UN to try to create a sustained delivery mechanism for aid to Gaza.

“We’ve gotten a few – a dribble, just a dribble – of trucks in,” Cindy McCain told Reuters. “We need to get a large amount in. We need safe, unfettered access into Gaza so that we can feed and make sure that people don’t starve to death, because that’s what’s happening.”

On Thursday, Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said at the United Nations that if Israel’s retaliation against Palestinian militants Hamas in the Gaza Strip doesn’t end, then the United States will “not be spared from this fire.”

“I say frankly to the American statesmen, who are now managing the genocide in Palestine, that we do not welcome (an)expansion of the war in the region. But if the genocide in Gaza continues, they will not be spared from this fire,” he told a meeting of the 193-member General Assembly on the Middle East.

One way Iran projects power is by arming and funding militant groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Houthis in Yemen and Shi’ite militias in Iraq.

In the last such known US retaliation, the US military carried out multiple air strikes in Syria on 23 March against Iran-aligned groups it blamed for a drone attack that killed an American contractor, wounded another and hurt five US troops.

President Joe Biden has sent a rare message to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warning Tehran against targeting US personnel in the Middle East, the White House said on Thursday after a spate of attacks on American forces in the region.

“There was a direct message relayed,” White House spokesperson John Kirby said at a news briefing, declining to elaborate.

US officials want to avoid a wider conflict in the Middle East following the 7 October attack by the militant Hamas group on Israel that killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians.

About 900 additional US troops are headed to the Middle East or have recently arrived there to bolster air defenses to protect US personnel amid a surge in attacks in the region by Iran-affiliated groups, the Pentagon said.

US troops have been attacked at least 12 times in Iraq and four times in Syria in the past week, it added.

Two US fighter jets struck weapons and ammunition facilities in Syria on Friday in what Washington said was a retaliation for attacks on US forces by an Iran-backed militia.

Joe Biden ordered strikes on the two facilities used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and militia forces it backs, the Pentagon said, warning the US will take additional measures if attacks by Iran’s proxies continue.

US and coalition troops have been attacked at least 19 times in Iraq and in Syria by Iran-backed forces in the past week, the US officials said. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Lebanon’s Hezbollah are all backed by Tehran.

Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said at the United Nations on Thursday that if Israel’s offensive against Hamas did not stop, the United States will “not be spared from this fire”.

The US air strikes took place at roughly 4.30am on Friday in Syria near Abu Kamal, a Syrian town on the border with Iraq, and were carried out by two F-16 fighter jets using precision munitions, a US defence official said.

“These precision self-defence strikes are a response to a series of ongoing and mostly unsuccessful attacks against US personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups that began on 17 October,” US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement.

“These Iranian-backed attacks against US forces are unacceptable and must stop,” Mr Austin said.

Doctors scribble on notepads in overflowing morgues, struggling to account for bodies trapped under rubble and tossed in hastily dug mass graves. Yet the Gaza-based Ministry of Health continues to tally casualty numbers: