Israel-Hamas War Highlights: 'We must remain human while Hamas fights like animals,' IDF chief says

Biden will ask Israelis 'tough questions' during Middle East trip: White House

US President Joe Biden will ask "tough questions" during his visit with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli leaders, White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Air Force One.
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31 Americans killed in Hamas attack on Israel: White House

The number of Americans killed from the Hamas attack on Israel now stands at 31, White House spokesperson John Kirby said on Tuesday.

Kirby said the United States would continue to speak to Israel about the need to protect innocent civilian life.

(Reuters)

Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah intensifies on border with Lebanon

Fighting intensified on the border between Lebanon and Israel on Tuesday, as Hezbollah said that five of its fighters had been killed in what would be the deadliest day for the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group since clashes erupted more than a week ago.

The violence between Israel and Hezbollah has been mostly contained, but the two sides have traded fire nearly daily, raising fears of another conflict in the region that could further devastate crisis-hit Lebanon and push Israel into another battle as it responds to the largest attack on its soil in 50 years.

(International New York Times)

Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement calls for a 'day of rage'

Dozens attempt to storm Israeli embassy in Amman, Jordan

Hamas attacks do not justify 'collective punishment' of Palestinians: UN's Guterres

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said Hamas attacks do not justify "collective punishment" of Palestinians and called for an "immediate humanitarian ceasefire", according to news agency AFP.

He also condemned the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.

Drone attack on American troops in Iraq has been thwarted

Reports Spectator Index

Israeli forces ask Northern Gaza residents to evacuate

UN Relief and Works Agency says their schools in Gaza are filled with 5,00,000 displaced people

Reports Spectator Index

Israel-Hamas war stokes fear and divisions in Europe

Monuments in cities across Europe were lit up in blue and white on the night of Oct 7 in solidarity with Israel after 1,400 of its citizens, mostly unarmed civilians, were killed in the worst attack the country has suffered in decades.

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Video captures aftermath of Gaza hospital explosion

World Health Organization says humanitarian aid has been held up at the Egyptian side of Rafah border crossing for four days

Reports Spectator Index

Israel blames militants for Gaza hospital blast, says has 'evidence'

The Israeli army Wednesday said it had "evidence" that militants were responsible for the Gaza hospital blast that killed hundreds, saying a review proved others were at fault, according to AFP.

"The evidence - which we are sharing with you all - confirms that the explosion at the hospital in Gaza was caused by an Islamic Jihad rocket that misfired," AFP quoted military spokesman Daniel Hagari as saying at a press conference in Tel Aviv.

US President Joe Biden lands in Israel in show of solidarity

Civilian casualties matter of serious concern; those involved should be held responsible: PM Modi on Israel-Hamas conflict

Netanyahu says current level of support from the United States at an 'unprecedented level'

Reports Spectator Index

Biden says US will make sure Israel has what it needs to defend itself

Netanyahu tells Biden 'civilised world' must unite against Hamas

Reports AFP

Mehbooba Mufti condemns attack on Gaza hospital

PDP president Mehbooba Mufti has condemned the attack on the Gaza hospital, which killed at least 500 people. Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry blamed an Israeli airstrike for the explosion, but Israel said the blast was caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket.

Biden says Gaza hospital blast appears to have been caused by ‘other team’

US President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken attend a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as Biden visits Israel amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Tel Aviv, Israel, October 18, 2023.

Iran calls on Islamic countries to sanction Israel

Members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) should impose an oil embargo and other sanctions on Israel and expel all Israeli ambassadors, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Wednesday.

An urgent meeting of the OIC is taking place in the Saudi city of Jeddah to discuss the escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict, after a blast at a Gaza hospital late on Tuesday killed large numbers of Palestinians.

"The foreign minister calls for an immediate and complete embargo on Israel by Islamic countries, including oil sanctions, in addition to expelling Israeli ambassadors if relations with the Zionist regime have been established," the Iranian foreign ministry said in a statement.

Amirabdollahian also called for the formation of a team of Islamic lawyers to document potential war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian. 

Putin calls blast at Gaza hospital a catastrophe, calls for negotiations

"As for the strike on the hospital, the tragedy that happened there is a terrible event," Putin said after talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. "Hundreds of dead and hundreds of wounded are of course a catastrophe."

"I really hope this will be a signal that we need to end this conflict as soon as possible. In any case, we need to focus on the possibility of starting some contacts and negotiations."

Russia, which has relationships with Iran, Hamas, major Arab powers, as well as with the Palestinians and with Israel, has repeatedly said the United States and the West have ignored the need for an independent Palestinian state within 1967 borders.

Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Israeli war cabinet convenes, set to host Biden

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, former IDF Chief Benny Gantz, and observer Gadi Eisenkot, also a former IDF Chief, have convened a meeting in the hotel where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden are meeting. The war cabinet will host the US President once talks with Netanyahu conclude.

Reports Times of Israel

US President Joe Biden attends a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu , as he visits Israel amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Tel Aviv, Israel, October 18, 2023.

China 'shocked by', strongly condemns' Gaza hospital strike

"China is shocked by and strongly condemns the heavy casualties caused by the attack on a Gaza hospital," Beijing's foreign ministry said, adding: "China calls for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the war".

Reports AFP

Scholars warn of Israel committing 'potential genocide in Gaza'

Palestinian human rights organisations, Jewish civil society groups, Holocaust and genocide studies scholars and others have by now warned of an imminent genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza.

They write, "The undersigned urgently appeal to states to take concrete and meaningful steps to individually and collectively prevent genocidal acts, in line with their legal duty to prevent the crime of genocide. They must protect the Palestinian population, and ensure that Israel refrains from any further incitement to genocide and from the perpetration of conduct prohibited by Article II of the Genocide Convention."

Their full statement can be accessed here.

A child walks past as Palestinians inspect a site of Israeli strikes on houses in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 18, 2023.

Gaza hospital blast: UK PM Rishi Sunak tells Parliament his country is 'working independently and with allies to find out what happened'

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak leaves 10 Downing Street to attend Prime Minister's Questions at the Houses of Parliament in London, Britain, October 18, 2023.

US sanctions entities related to Hamas

The United States on Wednesday issued terrorism-related sanctions, targeting nine individuals and one entity linked to Hamas, according to a notice posted on the US Department of Treasury's website.

Gaza Health Ministry places hospital attack toll at 471, cumulative enclave toll at 3,478

Gaza healthy ministry spokesman, Ashraf Al-Qidra said in a statement on Wednesday that 471 Palestinians were killed and more than 314 wounded in what he called an "Israeli massacre", at the Al-Ahli al-Arabi Hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian officials have blamed an Israeli air strike for the blast at the hospital on Tuesday. Israel has said the blast was caused by a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group, which denied blame.

People react at the Al-Ahli hospital, where hundreds of Palestinians were killed in a blast that Israeli and Palestinian officials blamed on each other, in Gaza City, October 18, 2023.

IDF responds to gunfire targeting military posts along the border with Lebanon

Reports Times of Israel

Israeli tanks are seen on a road near Israel's border with Lebanon, in northern Israel. 

Two Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in West bank, says Palestinian Health Ministry

Palestinians hurl stones during clashes with Israeli forces near Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank October 18, 2023.

Biden claims US 'data' shows Israel not behind Gaza hospital strike

“Based on what I've seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting. Biden later said he based his conclusion on “the data I was shown by my Defence Department."

Reports AP

US President Joe Biden with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli war cabinet, as he visits Israel amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Tel Aviv, October 18, 2023.

French PM Elisabeth Borne says number of French citizens killed in Hamas attacks in Israel has risen to 24

The mother of French-Israeli citizen Maya Schem holds up a picture of her daughter who was kidnapped into the Gaza Strip, following a deadly infiltration by Hamas gunmen from Gaza, in Tel Aviv, Israel, October 17, 2023.

Iranian President Raisi accuses US of being an accomplice in 'crimes of the Zionist regime'

"The people of the world consider America to be an accomplice in the crimes of the Zionist regime," Raisi told thousands of people who had gathered for a rally in central Tehran in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Reports AFP

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

US vetoes UNSC resolution urging humanitarian aid to Gaza

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said after the vote that President Joe Biden is in the region engaging in diplomacy “and we need that diplomacy to play out.”

She also criticised the resolution for not saying anything about Israel's right to self-defense.

Reports Associated Press

A man stands next to a damaged car in the area of Al-Ahli hospital where hundreds of Palestinians were killed in a blast that Israeli and Palestinian officials blamed on each other, and where Palestinians who fled their homes were sheltering amid the ongoing conflict with Israel, in Gaza City, October 18, 2023.

Saudi Arabia asks citizens in Lebanon to evacuate immediately

Netanyahu says Israel won't allow any humanitarian aid from its territory into Gaza as long as hostages are not returned, but promises not to block aid via Egypt

A convoy of trucks carrying humanitarian aid from Egyptian NGOs for Palestinians start to move from Al-Arish to Rafah city as they wait for an agreement on the opening on the Rafah border crossing to enter Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in the city of Al-Arish, Sinai peninsula, Egypt.

UN Middle East envoy warns spillover risk 'very real and extremely dangerous'

The United Nations Middle East peace envoy warned the Security Council on Wednesday that the risk of expansion of the conflict between Israel and Hamas Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip is "very real, and extremely dangerous."

"I fear that we are at the brink of a deep and dangerous abyss that could change the trajectory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if not of the Middle East as a whole," said Tor Wennesland, addressing the 15-member body via video from Doha.

The United States exercised its veto power to block a United Nations Security Council resolution that called for humanitarian aid to Gaza, citing the omission of a reference to Israel's right to self-defense.

Lebanese protesters hang the Palestinian flag and signs on fence of the US embassy fence after hundreds of Palestinians were killed in a blast at Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza that Israeli and Palestinian officials blamed on each other, in front of the US embassy in Beirut, Lebanon October 17, 2023. the sign reads : "Jihad ".

EU asks social media platforms to prepare for risk of Hamas live-streaming executions

The European Union's (EU) industry chief Thierry Breton said on Wednesday that he had asked social media platforms to prepare for the risk of Hamas live-streaming executions.

"As part of our interactions with the platforms, we have specifically asked them to prepare for the risk of live-streaming executions by Hamas – an imminent risk from which we must protect our citizens – and we are seeking assurances that the platforms are well prepared for such possibilities," Breton said in a speech at the European Parliament.

Flyers reading "Kidnapped" and showing Israelis taken hostage are posted on a public notice board, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.

Turkish President Erdogan criticises non-adoption of UNSC resolution urging humanitarian aid to Gaza

He tweets, "The United Nations Security Council, which has become completely ineffective, has once again failed to fulfill its responsibility.

Western countries, which leave no stone unturned when it comes to human rights and freedoms, have taken no steps other than adding fuel to the fire.

International media organs have entered a race to whitewash human slaughter with their biased and hypocritical publications."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Israeli police forcibly disperse anti-war protest in Haifa, arrest 3 people

Reports Haaretz

'We must remain human while Hamas fights like animals,' IDF chief says ahead of expected ground invasion

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi warned that the war against Hamas would not be a short one, especially if Hezbollah decides to attack Israel from the north, along the country's border with Lebanon.

Halevi also accused Hamas of “fighting like animals”.

Reports Times of Israel

Israeli soldiers gather on and around a tank near the country's border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, October 15, 2023.