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Agence France-Presse

Israel’s military says it will intensify strikes on Hamas-controlled Gaza ahead of a planned ground invasion, as UN agencies warned of a “catastrophic” humanitarian situation in the blockaded territory.
Overnight raids killed at least 55 people, the Hamas government said on Sunday. “More than 55 martyrs,” the government press office said in a statement on the latest night of bombing in response to the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.
The press office added that more than 30 homes had been destroyed in the hours after an Israeli military spokesman said that raids would be increased.
A first trickle of aid entered the Palestinian enclave from Egypt on Saturday, but the 20 trucks permitted to cross with food and medicine, but no fuel, have been described as a “drop in the ocean” given the needs of 2.4 million residents.
Aid trucks – minus fuel – enter Gaza via Egypt’s Rafah crossing
Hundreds of trucks carrying aid entered Gaza daily before Israel’s bombardment.
The military has pounded the territory with relentless strikes in response to Hamas’s murderous October 7 attack, in which militants killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians who were shot, mutilated or burnt to death, according to Israeli officials.
Tel Aviv’s bombing campaign has killed more than 4,300 Palestinians, mainly civilians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, and reduced swathes of the tiny and densely-populated territory to smouldering ruins.
Over 40 per cent of all housing has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN citing local authorities, and Israel has halted the delivery of food, water, fuel and electricity.

Israel will now intensify its bombardment, to minimise the risks to its troops when they begin a ground invasion, military spokesman Admiral Daniel Hagari said Saturday.
“We have to enter the next phase of the war in the best conditions, not according to what anyone tells us,” military spokesman Admiral Daniel Hagari told a press conference.
“From today, we are increasing the strikes and minimising the danger. We will increase the attacks and therefore I called on Gaza City residents to continue moving south for their safety.”

Bombardment has continued in southern parts of the Gaza Strip, though.
The UN says more than half the enclave’s population is already internally displaced.
Israel added 14 communities to its evacuation plan in the north of the country, a joint statement by the defence ministry and military said on Sunday.
The communities outlined in the statement, which were approved by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, lie close to Lebanon and Syria.


Hundreds of thousands of civilians are believed to remain in and around Gaza City in the north, unwilling or unable to leave.
Israeli troops have massed on the border with Gaza and commanders visited frontline units on Saturday to rally troops.
“We will enter Gaza,” chief of staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi told one infantry brigade on a visit. “Gaza is densely populated, the enemy is preparing a lot of things there, but we are also preparing for them,” Halevi said.
A ground invasion poses myriad challenges for Israeli troops, who are likely to be confronted by Hamas booby traps and tunnels in a densely packed urban environment.




The safety of over 200 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 and held in Gaza is another complicating factor.
Two American hostages were released on Friday evening, after mediation from Qatar, which said more could be freed “very soon”.
“We are taking a path that will very soon lead to release of the hostages, especially civilians,” Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari told the German Welt am Sonntag newspaper on Saturday.
“We are currently working on an agreement under which all civilian hostages will be initially released,” he added.
After negotiations and US pressure, 20 trucks crossed from Egypt into Gaza on Saturday. The Rafah crossing, the only crossing not controlled by Israel, closed afterwards, and UN officials warned much more aid was needed.
“Gaza was a desperate humanitarian situation before the most recent hostilities,” five UN agencies said in a statement. “It is now catastrophic. The world must do more.”

UN pleads for peace
At a peace summit organised by Egypt, UN chief Antonio Guterres again pleaded for a humanitarian ceasefire “to end this godawful nightmare”.
In a sign of international divisions however, the meeting was unable to agree any joint call, with Western officials demanding a clear condemnation of Hamas, and Arab attendees opting to issue their own statement criticising world leaders.
Inside Gaza, shell-shocked residents said they were unsure where to go or how to protect their families.
“Even in my worst nightmares, I never thought this could be possible,” said Rami Abu Wazna, staring at the destruction in central Gaza’s Al-Zahra neighbourhood.
The scale of the bombing has left basic systems unable to function, with the UN reporting around 40 unidentified bodies were buried in a mass grave in Gaza City on Saturday because cold storage ran out before they could be identified.




Across the border in Israel’s Kibbutz Be’eri, where Hamas militants killed 10 per cent of the population, preparations were under way for funerals on Sunday.
Romy Gold, 70, said residents were still struggling to comprehend the horror of their experience.
“Around us whole families were shot or butchered or burned alive,” he said.
Like many, he feels the ground invasion of Gaza “cannot come fast enough. Something needs to be done”.
“We need some kind of assurance that it will not happen again,” he said.
The conflict has sparked fears of a wider conflagration, with Israeli raids and settler attacks killing dozens of Palestinians in the West Bank.
Israel’s military said on Sunday it targeted “terror operatives” with an air strike on a mosque in the West Bank’s Jenin, where it said a group of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants were planning fresh attacks.

One person was killed and three injured in the strike, the Palestinian news agency Wafa said, citing the local Red Crescent.
Exchanges of fire also continued across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where the military has traded strikes with militant group Hezbollah.
In south Lebanon, Hezbollah said four of its fighters were killed, along with a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Israeli authorities reported three soldiers wounded, one of them seriously, in Hezbollah anti-tank fire on the village of Baram, and two Thai farm workers were also wounded.
Western leaders have warned Hezbollah against intervening in the conflict, but the group’s number two said it stood ready to step up involvement.
Why Gaza’s Rafah border crossing matters, and why Egypt is keeping it shut
“Let’s be clear, as events unfold, if something comes up that calls for greater intervention by us, we will do so,” Naim Qassem said.
Israel has evacuated dozens of northern communities, and nearly 4,000 people in Lebanon have fled border areas.
“All my children are young. If the apocalypse comes, how will I get them all out in one go?” said Mustafa al-Sayyid, in a classroom stripped of desks and dotted with thin mattresses. “So I thought, better to leave now.”
Hospital strike
Canada’s National Department of Defence said on Saturday that Israel was not behind the Al-Ahli hospital strike in Gaza.
“Analysis conducted independently by the Canadian Forces Intelligence Command indicates with a high degree of confidence that Israel did not strike the Al-Ahli hospital on 17 October 2023,” it said in a statement.
The strike was more likely caused by an errant rocket fired from Gaza, the defence department said, based on analysis of open source and classified reporting.
Officials in Hamas-ruled Gaza quickly blamed an Israeli air strike for the explosion at the hospital on Tuesday. Israel denied it was involved and released live video, audio and other evidence it said showed the blast was caused by a rocket misfired by Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian militant group. Islamic Jihad denied responsibility.
The death toll remains in dispute. Within just over an hour of the blast, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said 500 had died. It then revised that number slightly to 471 on Wednesday, without giving details of the dead. The Israeli military told reporters that number was inflated.
Additional reporting by Associated Press, Reuters


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Israel-Gaza war

Israel vows to step up Gaza strikes, warns civilians to keep moving south

Two men help two wounded girls following an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. Photo: EPA-EFE

The first trucks carrying vital humanitarian aid to Gaza, after crossing into the enclave via Egypt on Saturday. Photo: Bloomberg

Palestinians inspect the rubble after an Israeli strike on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday. Photo: AFP

Israeli tanks near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip on Saturday. Photo: Reuters

A Palestinian walks by buildings destroyed in the Israeli bombardment on al-Zahra, on the outskirts of Gaza City. Photo: AP

Israel-Gaza war: pro-Palestinian demonstrators take to streets around world in anger at siege, strikes

Around 100,000 people took part in a ‘March For Palestine’ in London on Saturday. Photo: AFP

People wave the Palestinian flag during a protest to express their solidarity with Gaza in the Tunisian capital Tunis on Saturday. Photo: AFP

A rally in Sydney on Saturday. Thousands of people, both Israelis and Palestinians, have died since October 7, when Palestinian Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip attacked Israel, which soon declared war on Hamas in Gaza. Photo: AFP

Israel-Gaza war: Egypt peace summit grapples with conflict as risks to region rise

A view of residential buildings destroyed by Israeli strikes in Gaza, amid the conflict between Tel Aviv and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. Photo: Reuters




A woman sits amid the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli bombardment in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday. Photo: AFP

The Cairo Peace Summit on Saturday. Photo: EPA-EFE

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi (L) with the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani (C), and Secretary General of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, at the Cairo Peace Summit on Saturday. Photo: EPA-EFE

Israel-Gaza war: Russia’s Putin plays for time in Ukraine with US, EU distracted by Mideast crisis

A police officer stands in front of a damaged building in Avdiivka, Ukraine’s Donetsk region, on October 17. Photo: Reuters

A formation of Israeli tanks is positioned near the country’s southern border with the Gaza Strip on Saturday. Photo: Reuters

News

World

Middle East

Israel military says it wants to enter the next phase of the war ‘in the best conditions, not according to what anyone tells us’
Hours after first international aid into Gaza since the Hamas attack on Israel enters the enclave, officials say 55 people killed overnight


Hours after the military says it wants to enter the next phase of war ‘in the best conditions, not according to what anyone tells us’, dozens are reported killed in the besieged enclave in the latest raids.


Israel

Egypt

War and conflict

Israel vows to step up Gaza strikes, warns civilians to keep moving south

Israel military says it wants to enter the next phase of the war ‘in the best conditions, not according to what anyone tells us’ Hours after first international aid into Gaza since the Hamas attack on Israel enters the enclave, officials say 55 people killed overnight

Israel military says it wants to enter the next phase of the war ‘in the best conditions, not according to what anyone tells us’

Hours after first international aid into Gaza since the Hamas attack on Israel enters the enclave, officials say 55 people killed overnight