Live updates | Blinken urges aid for civilians as Israeli troops tighten encirclement of Gaza City

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday to urge protections for civilians in the fighting with Hamas, as Israeli troops tightened their encirclement of Gaza City.

Tensions escalated along the northern border with Lebanon ahead of a speech planned later Friday by Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Hamas ally. It is his first public speech since Hamas attacked Israel last month, stoking fears the conflict could become a regional one.

Roughly 800 people – including hundreds of Palestinians with foreign passports and dozens of injured – have been allowed to leave the Gaza Strip via the Rafah crossing under an apparent agreement among the U.S., Egypt, Israel and Qatar, which mediates with Hamas.

Israel has allowed more than 260 trucks carrying food and medicine through the crossing, but aid workers say it’s not nearly enough. Israeli authorities have refused to allow fuel in, leaving hospitals with dwindling supplies.

The Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war reached 9,227, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. In the occupied West Bank, more than 140 Palestinians have been killed in violence and Israeli raids.

More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, most of them in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that started the fighting, and 242 hostages were taken from Israel into Gaza by the militant group.

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

JERUSALEM – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out a temporary cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, saying he will press ahead with a devastating military offensive until hostages held by the Hamas militant group are released.

Netanyahu spoke shortly after meeting Friday with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who pressed Israel for a temporary pause in its offensive to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza. Blinken also urged Israel to do more to protect civilians from its attacks.

In a statement, Netanyahu said Israel is continuing with “all of its power” and “refuses a temporary cease-fire that doesn’t include a return of our hostages.”

Hamas kidnapped about 240 people in its Oct. 7 cross-border attack that triggered the Israel-Hamas war. The attack killed about 1,400 people, while over 9,200 Palestinians in Gaza have died in Israeli strikes that began the same day, according to Palestinian health officials.

TEL AVIV – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said more needs to be done to “protect Palestinian civilians” in Gaza and that, without that, there will be “no partners for peace.”

Speaking to reporters in Tel Aviv on Friday, Blinken also said, “we need to substantially and immediately increase the sustainable humanitarian assistance” into Gaza.

He said it was critical to restore the path toward a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, calling it the only “guarantor” of a safe and democratic Israel and independent Palestine. He said work on that must begin “not tomorrow, not after today, but today.”

Blinken landed in Tel Aviv on Friday for his third trip to Israel since the war began with Hamas’ incursion into Israel on Oct. 7. Blinken will also visit Jordan and may make additional stops in the region before traveling to Asia early next week.

He met Friday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials to urge them to do everything possible to protect civilians caught in the fighting, while underscoring Israel‘s right to defend itself.

“We stand strongly for the proposition that Israel has not only the right but the obligation to defend itself, and to make sure that October 7 should never happen again,” Blinken said. “How Israel does this matters and it is very important that when it comes to the protection of civilians who are caught in the crossfire of Hamas’ making that everything to be done to protect them and to bring assistance to those who so desperately need it.”

U.S. President Joe Biden has called for a “humanitarian pause” in the fighting in order to arrange the evacuation of dual citizens and foreigners still trapped in Gaza as well as to try to secure the release of more than 240 hostages Hamas is holding.

BEIRUT – Celebratory gunshots rang out over Beirut as thousands packed into a square in the Lebanese capital’s southern suburbs on Friday to watch a televised speech by Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the militant Lebanese Hezbollah group, which is an ally of Hamas.

It was Nasrallah’s first public remarks since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, sparked by the Palestinian militants’ deadly Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel.

The speech came a day after the most significant escalation in clashes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces on the border since the war started, and on the same day as a visit to Israel by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to urge protections for civilians in the fighting with Hamas.

In his lengthy remarks, Nasrallah praised the Hamas attack four weeks ago on farming villages and military posts in southern Israel. More than 1,400 people were killed in Israel in the attack.

“This great, large-scale operation was purely the result of Palestinian planning and implementation,” Nasrallah said, suggesting his militia had no part in the attack. “The great secrecy made this operation greatly successful.”

Nasrallah’s speech had been widely anticipated throughout the region as a sign of whether the Israel-Hamas conflict would spiral into a regional war.

Since the beginning of the war, Hezbollah has taken calculated steps to keep Israel’s military busy on its border with Lebanon, but not to the extent of igniting an all-out war.

The Israeli military said seven of their soldiers and one civilian had been killed on the northern border as of Friday. More than 50 Hezbollah fighters and 10 militants with allied groups, as well as 10 civilians, including a Reuters journalist, have been killed on the Lebanese side of the border.

The United States is flying MQ-9 drones over Gaza to gather intelligence and help Israel locate more than 240 hostages taken into the territory by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing operations.

Since the attacks, families of the hostages have increased pressure on the Israeli and U.S. governments to find them and bring them home before Israel carries through with any large-scale ground operations. The drone use was first reported by Reuters.

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Reported by Tara Copp in Washington, DC.

GENEVA – Alongside the blistering Israeli military campaign in Gaza, the U.N. human rights office warned Friday that the situation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is “alarming and urgent” because of “multi-layered human rights violations of Palestinians” there.

Large-scale raids overnight by Israeli forces in the West Bank killed seven Palestinians, Palestinian health officials said, raising the death toll to 144 since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants in Israel left at least 1,400 people dead.

Spokesperson Liz Throssell said Israeli forces have increasingly used military tactics and weapons in law enforcement operations, and settler violence “which was already at record levels” has escalated.

“We have serious concerns that the principles of distinction and proportionality are not being respected by both sides,” Throssell said at a news briefing in Geneva. “We strongly urge Palestinian armed groups to immediately stop launching inherently indiscriminate rockets into Israel.”

PARIS – France is sending two new flights to Egypt with aid for Palestinian civilians in Gaza and is seeking to augment its military deployment in the area to provide medical support, the defense minister said Friday.

Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu told BFM television that the new flights would leave Friday and Sunday. France sent an initial flight last week with 54 tons of aid, and is urging the creation of a humanitarian corridor that would allow Palestinian civilians to flee Gaza and for aid to be brought in.

Lecornu spoke from a French helicopter carrier sent to the eastern Mediterranean to serve as a mobile hospital for people from Gaza.

‘’While Israel should defend itself and should ensure that Hamas can no longer inflict harm, … the civilian populations of Gaza must be preserved and the best way to protect them is to give them medical care,’’ he said.

Two French children have been killed in northern Gaza and their mother and another sibling were injured, according to the French Foreign Ministry.

They are among more than 30 French citizens who have been killed since the conflict began Oct. 7, most in the initial Hamas attacks. Nine remain missing, including some believed held hostage by Hamas, according to the government.

Five French citizens were evacuated from Gaza this week, and the French government is demanding safe passage out for the remaining French citizens in Gaza -– around 50 people, the ministry said.

GAZA — The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza says 196 people were killed over the past day, raising the total death toll in the territory since the Israel-Hamas war started on Oct. 7 to 9,227.

The ministry said the dead include 3,826 children and 2,405 women. It said 2,100 people are still missing under the rubble.

Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said Friday that hospitals in Gaza are running out of fuel, with two, al-Shifa and the Indonesian hospital, shifting to smaller generators that only keep the intensive care units, incubators and operating rooms running.

He called on the International Committee of the Red Cross to help bring all types of blood from outside Gaza for use in treating people.

He thanked Egypt for evacuating dozens of wounded people for treatment over the past three days, adding that there are hundreds of serious cases that still need to be evacuated.

GENEVA – The U.N. humanitarian aid coordinator says it will more than quadruple its initial appeal for funds to help respond to the crisis in Palestinian areas to about $1.2 billion.

Spokesperson Jens Laerke of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the current appeal, launched Oct. 12, for $297 million has been only about one-quarter funded -– by countries and donors led by the United States, which has provided $24 million.

Laerke told reporters in Geneva on Friday that the number of people displaced within Gaza has swelled to nearly 1.5 million, or about 70% of its population.

OCHA said nearly 700,000 are sheltering in almost 150 facilities of the U.N. agency for Palestinians, more than four times their intended capacity.

“This means that in some shelters up to 240 people are living in classrooms of 40 to 60 square meters (430 to 645 square feet),” it said.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip – Israeli shelling has repeatedly struck cars carrying people fleeing from north Gaza along the two main roads to southern Gaza.

Because the Gaza Strip’s main road, Salah al-Din, and the coastal highway are so dangerous, medics say it’s virtually impossible to recover bodies or save the wounded without being targeted.

Israeli shelling struck a convoy of mostly women and children who had tried to escape bombardment in the north on Friday, killing about 10-15 people, according to a freelance journalist who traveled with emergency workers to the site.

The local journalist, Fuad Abu Khamad, said he saw the bloodied bodies sprawled on the road with the few belongings they managed to take with them – mostly just bread and some canned food.

Israeli forces resumed shelling before the medics had time to determine who was alive or dead, he said. Rescuers grabbed two survivors and rushed to Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in central Gaza, south of the Israeli military’s evacuation zone.