Live updates | Israel intensifies strikes on Gaza including underground targets – WTOP News

The Israeli military intensified airstrikes in Gaza including near its largest hospital while thousands of people desperate for food and basic items broke into aid warehouses in the besieged enclave.

Internet and phone connectivity were restored for many people on Sunday after Israeli strikes had knocked out most communications in the territory late Friday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday called the 3-week-old Israel-Hamas war a fight for Israel’s existence and said “‘Never again’ is now.” He announced a “second stage” in the war and said Israel is determined to bring back 229 hostages taken by Hamas during its bloody Oct. 7 rampage.

The Palestinian death toll passed 7,700, most of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza. In the occupied West Bank, more than 110 Palestinians have been killed in violence and Israeli raids.

More than 1,400 people were slain in Israel during a surprise incursion by Hamas militants, including at least 310 soldiers, according to the Israeli government. Four of the 229 hostages have been released.

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Here’s what is happening in the latest Israel-Hamas war:

WHO RESTORES CONTACT WITH A TEAM IN GAZA

CAIRO — The head of the World Health Organization says they managed to communicate with the agency’s team in Gaza after internet and phone connectivity in the enclave were gradually restored.

“They said the last two nights were extremely tense with a lot of airstrikes – without fuel, water, electricity, connectivity and safe shelter to evacuate to,” Tedros Adhanom wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

He added that the WHO team, like others in Gaza, remain unsafe and called for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire.

WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said the agency has about 25 members on the ground in Gaza.

PALESTINIAN RED CRESCENT SAYS ISRAEL ORDERS GAZA HOSPITAL TO EVACUATE

JERUSALEM — A spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent says Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City received two calls from Israeli authorities Sunday morning demanding it evacuate.

A statement released by the organization said that the calls constituted a “clear and direct threat that the hospital must be evacuated at once, otherwise PRCS holds full responsibility for the lives of everyone inside the hospital.”

Spokesperson Nebal Farsakh said that since Sunday morning, Israeli airstrikes have been increasing in the area, reaching buildings as close as 50 meters (yards).

She said that 12,000 people are currently sheltering in the hospital. The intensive care unit is predominantly occupied by children injured in the latest airstrikes. “Most of them are connected to oxygen machines,” she said. “Evacuating them would be killing them.”

The Israeli military did not comment immediately Sunday. The military has told some 1 million people to evacuate to the southern part of the Gaza Strip ahead of an expected ground invasion.

WHO said it’s impossible to evacuate patients without endangering their lives. Hospitals across Gaza are already operating at maximum capacity due to the injuries from unrelenting bombardment, and are unable to absorb a dramatic rise in the number of patients, while sheltering thousands of civilians, the U.N. agency said.

UN SAYS THOUSANDS BREAK INTO GAZA WAREHOUSES TO TAKE FOOD

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees says thousands of people broke into its Gaza aid warehouses to take food and other “basic survival items.”

Thomas White, the agency’s director in Gaza, said Sunday that the break-in was “a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down” after three weeks of war between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

The agency, known as UNRWA, provides basic services to hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza. Its schools across the territory have been transformed into packed shelters housing Palestinians displaced by the conflict.

IRANIAN-BACKED IRAQI MILITIA SAYS IT HIT BASE HOUSING US FORCES IN SYRIA

DAMASCUS, Syria — An Iranian-backed Iraqi militia says it launched drone strikes on a base housing U.S. forces in eastern Syria.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which has claimed responsibility for a series of strikes on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria over the past two weeks, claimed responsibility on Sunday for the latest attack. The group has said the attacks are in retaliation for U.S. support for Israel.

According to the Pentagon, as of Friday there had been at least 20 attacks on U.S. bases and personnel in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17, and 21 U.S. personnel were injured in two of those assaults when drones targeted al-Assad airbase in Iraq and al-Tanf garrison in Syria.

ISRAELI AIRSTRIKES HIT AREAS NEAR GAZA’S LARGEST HOSPITAL, RESIDENTS SAY

CAIRO — Israeli airstrikes have hit areas around Gaza’s largest hospital, residents say, destroying roads leading to the facility, which is a major shelter for Palestinians fleeing Israeli bombardment.

The Israeli military has renewed longstanding allegations in recent days that top Hamas leaders and operatives have built underground bunkers below Shifa hospital and accused the militant group of using civilians as human shields. Israel has not presented evidence, and Hamas denies the claims.

“Reaching the hospital has become increasingly difficult,” Mahmoud al-Sawah, who was sheltering in the hospital, said over the phone on Sunday. “It seems they want to cut off the area.”

Another Gaza resident, Abdallah Sayed, described the Israeli air and land attacks in the past two days as “the most violent and intense” since the war started.

UN SECURITY COUNCIL SCHEDULES EMERGENCY MEETING ON MONDAY

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting on Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza on Monday afternoon at the request of the United Arab Emirates, the Arab representative on the council.

INTERNET AND TELEPHONE CONNECTIVITY RESTORED FOR MANY IN GAZA

CAIRO — Internet and telephone connectivity was restored Sunday morning for many people in Gaza, according to the telecoms company Paltel, Internet-access advocacy group NetBlocks.org and confirmation on the ground.

For more than 24 hours, people in the besieged Gaza Strip were not able to communicate with each other or seek help amid a relentless Israeli bombardment. The narrow coastal area had suffered a total communication blackout since late Friday, adding to the misery of more than 2.3 million people living there. Many residents, especially in the northern half of the strip, were not able to call ambulances to transfer injured people to hospitals or to seek help for those trapped under the rubble of bombed houses.

“The aggressive bombardment was horrible,” said Raed Sharif, a volunteer helping transport wounded people to hospitals in Gaza city. “There were striking everywhere.”

Doctors Without Borders medical group said the communication blackout had further isolated the population suffering under siege and bombardment. The blackout also limited the group’s ability to coordinate and provide medical assistance, it said.

RED CRESCENT SAYS BLACKOUT KEEPING AID OUTSIDE GAZA

JERUSALEM — No international aid entered the Gaza Strip on Saturday, as the communications blackout created by Israel continued.

Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent, told The Associated Press that no aid trucks entered Gaza on Saturday because communication was impossible and teams inside Gaza couldn’t connect with Egyptian Red Crescent or United Nations personnel.

Before Saturday, a total of 84 aid trucks were let into Gaza, a tiny amount for a population of 2.3 million people in need of power, food, medical supplies and clean drinking water.

2nd US AIRCRAFT CARRIER GROUP MOVES INTO MEDITERRANEAN

WASHINGTON — The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier and its strike group has moved through the Strait of Gibraltar, putting two American carriers in the Mediterranean Sea, a rare sight in recent years.

The USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group is already in the eastern Mediterranean, part of a buildup of forces as the U.S. supports Israel in its war against Hamas.

The Eisenhower sailed into the Mediterranean on Saturday and is slated to move through the Suez Canal to the U.S. Central Command region as the American forces expand their presence in the Middle East to deter Iran and its proxy militant groups from trying to widen the war.

COMMUNICATIONS BLACKOUT HAS PALESTINIANS PANICKING

Now that Israeli bombs have cut off cellular and internet service for most of the 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip, it has fallen to a rare few Palestinians with international SIM cards or powered-up satellite phones to get the news out.

They described scenes of panic and confusion as Israel’s military attacks from the air, land and sea in the most intense bombing yet in the three week war. Without social media to share their plight with the world, many seem consumed with fear and hopelessness.

Reached by WhatsApp, freelance photojournalist Ashraf Abu Amra in northern Gaza said the international community must intervene to save the people of Gaza from immediate death. Palestinian journalist Hind al-Khoudary reported that some 50,000 people have converged on Gaza’s largest hospital, where doctors are exhausted from operating on patient after patient using dwindling fuel and medical supplies.

GOP CANDIDATES OFFER UNBRIDLED SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL

LAS VEGAS — Republican presidential candidates are professing unbridled support for Israel in speeches to an influential GOP Jewish group in Las Vegas. The campaign stop came as Israel entered a new phase of its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Former Vice President Mike Pence suspended his campaign and used his last speech as a candidate to called on Democratic President Joe Biden to unconditionally support Israel’s response to a Hamas attack that killed more than 1,000 Israelis.

Candidates Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy also said Israel’s right to defend itself is unequivocal. Nikki Haley noted that former President Donald Trump had lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the Hamas attack and referred to the militant group Hezbollah as “very smart.” Trump, the frontrunner, called himself “the best friend Israel ever had.”

ISRAEL CALLS HAMAS PRISONER SWAP OFFER ‘PSYCHOLOGICAL TERROR’

JERUSALEM — Hamas’s top leader in Gaza Yehia Sinwar said the Palestinian militant groups are ready to release Israeli hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners in Israel’s jails.

“We are ready immediately to have an exchange deal that includes releasing all prisoners in the prisons of the Zionist occupation enemy in return for the release of all prisoners held by the resistance,” he said in a comment posted Saturday evening on Hamas media groups.

The Israeli military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, dismissed the offer as “psychological terror” andsaid Israel is working on multiple channels to free the hostages.

ISRAEL SAYS ITS WARPLANES HIT 150 UNDERGROUND TARGETS

JERUSALEM — Israel’s military said Saturday that its warplanes struck 150 underground Hamas targets in northern Gaza, including tunnels, combat spaces and other infrastructure. But the extensive labyrinth of tunnels built by Hamas is believed to stretch for hundreds of miles (kilometers), hiding fighters, an arsenal of rockets and now more than 200 Israeli hostages.

Clearing and collapsing those tunnels is crucial to dismantling Hamas. But Israeli’s military could be at a serious disadvantage underground. Urban warfare experts say the militants can be hiding in millions of places, choosing when and where to ambush their enemies.

Former Israeli soldier Ariel Bernstein described urban combat in northern Gaza as a mix of ambushes, traps, hideouts and snipers in tunnels so disorienting that it was like he was fighting ghosts.

ISRAELI PM SAYS GAZA WAR IS EXISTENTIAL, ‘NEVER AGAIN IS NOW’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the war against Hamas will be “long and difficult,” calling it a battle of good versus evil and a struggle for Israel’s existence.

Netanyahu told the nation in a televised news conference Saturday night that Israel has opened a “new phase” in the war – by sending ground forces into Gaza and expanding attacks from the ground, air and sea. He said these activities would only increase as Israel prepares for a broad ground invasion.

The goal, he said, is the complete destruction of Hamas.

“We always said, ‘Never again,’” he said. “’Never again’ is now.”

ROCKETS, AIR STRIKES AND ANOTHER HOSPITAL HIT

A Palestinian militant group in Gaza said it fired barrage of rockets Saturday evening on Tel Aviv and on Ashkelon and Ashdod in southern Israel. The rockets by Al-Quds Brigades, the military arm of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was the latest in a series of rocket attacks on Israel on Saturday.

Israeli forces continued a relentless bombardment. One Israeli airstrike late Saturday afternoon damaged the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia, according to freelance journalist Anas al-Sharif, one of the few journalists in Gaza able to connect to the outside world. He shared images of the hospital’s damaged roof.

The Israeli strikes cut off telecommunications and internet access for Gaza’s 2.3 million people, disrupting ambulances and aid groups and enabling Israel to control the narrative in the new stage of fighting.

Earlier Saturday, Israeli videos showed columns of armored vehicles moving slowly inside Gaza, the first visual confirmation of ground troops.

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