Hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents sought to heed Israel’s order to evacuate roughly the northern half of the territory, while others huddled at hospitals in the north on Sunday.
Gaza’s 2.3 million civilians faced a deepening struggle for food, water and safety, and braced for a looming invasion more than a week after Hamas militants launched a deadly assault on Israel. Israeli forces, supported by a growing deployment of US warships in the region, positioned themselves along Gaza’s border and drilled for what Israel said would be a campaign by air, land and sea to dismantle the militant group.
Israel dropped leaflets over Gaza City in the north and renewed warnings on social media, ordering more than 1 million Gaza residents to move south.
Currently :
1. People are struggling to flee from northern Gaza while also grappling with a growing water crisis after Israel stopped the flow of resources to the Gaza Strip
2. The Israeli military said Sunday that it would refrain from targeting a single route south from 10 am to 1 pm, again urging Palestinians to leave the north en masse. The military offered two corridors and a longer window the day before.
3. No decision on a ground offensive has been announced, although Israel has been massing troops along the Gaza border
4. The war has claimed more than 3,600 lives since Hamas launched an incursion on Oct. 7
5. Gaza’s hospitals are expected to run out of fuel for emergency generations within two days, according to the UN, which said that that would endanger the lives of thousands of patients
Here’s what’s happening in the latest Israel-Hamas war :
Cross-border fighting between Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Israel only a warning, says Group’s spokeswoman
Cross-border clashes between Lebanon and Israel intensified Sunday, with the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group firing rockets and Israeli forces responding with shelling.
The Israeli army also reported a shooting at one of its border posts. The fighting has killed at least one person on the Israeli side and wounded several on both sides of the border.
Iran-backed Hezbollah, an ally of Gaza’s Hamas rulers and an archenemy of Israel, said in a statement that it had fired rockets towards an Israeli military position in the northern border town Shtula in retaliation for Israeli shelling that killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah on Friday and two Lebanese civilians on Saturday.
However, a Hezbollah spokeswoman, Rana Sahili, said Sunday’s increase in the intensity of the exchanges doesn’t indicate Hezbollah has decided to fully enter into the Hamas-Israel war. The fighting on the border is “only skirmishes” and represents a “warning,” she said.
Pope Francis renews his call for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas
Pope Francis on Sunday renewed his call for the release of Israeli hostages held by Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers and called for humanitarian corridors to help those under siege in Gaza.
“I continue to follow with much sorrow what is happening in Israel and Palestine,” Francis said during his Sunday’s Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square. “I think back to the many people, especially the little ones and the elderly.” The Pope reiterated his appeal for the release of scores of Israeli hostages snatched during Hamas’ deadly incursion into southern Israel last weekend and taken to Gaza.
“I strongly ask that the children, the elderly, women and all civilians don’t become victims of the conflict,” Francis said. He added that humanitarian law must be respected, “especially in Gaza where there is an urgent need to guarantee humanitarian corridors and to rescue the entire population.”
The Pope appealed for the world not to “shed any more innocent blood, neither in the Holy Land, nor in Ukraine, nor anywhere else. Enough! Wars are always a defeat, always.”
Thousands march in Morocco’s capital in support of Gaza Palestinians
Thousands took the streets of the Moroccan capital on Sunday to rally in support of Palestinians in Gaza and denounce Israel’s actions in the latest war with Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers.
Waving Palestinian flags, the rally also marked a major showing for the banned Islamist movement Al Adl Wa Ihssane, which supports Hamas. After Hamas’s unprecedented and deadly October 7 incursion into Israel, Morocco issued a statement condemning the violence.
Royal Air Maroc, temporarily cancelled flights from Casablanca to Tel Aviv — a route that began in 2021.
Demonstrators marched in central Rabat and threw smoke bombs and fireworks as riot police stood between them and the Parliament building and other landmarks.
Hassan Ait Amar, a 52-year-old from Casablanca, carried a sign demanding Morocco’s lawmakers revoke a normalisation of ties with Israel.
“If they want peace, they (Israel) should respect Palestinians, international law and a two-state solution,” he said. Israel and Morocco normalised relations as part of the 2020 Abraham Accords, a series of diplomatic agreements between Israel and four Arab countries brokered by then-President Donald Trump.
Israel is home to a large community of Jews of Moroccan descent. Morocco and Israel have agreed to military cooperation and boosted trade. Israelis in the Southern city of Sderot near Gaza board buses to escape Hamas’ rockets
Residents of the southern Israeli city of Sderot boarded buses for other parts of the country on Sunday to escape the rocket barrages from the Gaza Strip.
