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 U.S. 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 military said Sunday that it would not target a specific route south for several hours, again urging Palestinians to leave the north en masse. The military offered two corridors and a longer window the day before. It says hundreds of thousands have already fled south
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 4,000 livessince 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 U.N., which said that that would endanger the lives of thousands of patients
Here's what's happening in the latest Israel-Hamas war:
The U.N.'s Palestinian refugee agency says Gaza “is being strangled” and the number of people seeking shelter at their schools and facilities in the south of the territory is overwhelming.
“If we look at the issue of water — we all know water is life — Gaza is running out of water, and Gaza is running out of life,” said Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of UNRWA at a press conference in Jerusalem on Sunday.
“Soon, I believe, with this there will be no food or medicine either,” he said.
“Last week’s attack on Israel was horrendous,” he said. “The attack and the taking of hostages are a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law. But the answer to killing civilians cannot be to kill more civilians.”
At least 1 million people were forced to flee their homes in the previous week. At least 400,000 displaced people are crammed into UNRWA schools and buildings, and most are not equipped as emergency shelters. Conditions are unsanitary and appalling.
Most of the agency’s 13,000 staff in the Gaza Strip are now displaced or out of their homes, said Lazzarini.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department says the number of Americans killed since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas has risen to 30.
“At this time, we can confirm the deaths of 30 U.S. citizens. We extend our deepest condolences to the victims and to the families of all those affected," the State Department said in a statement released Sunday. The U.S. is also aware of 13 missing citizens and has been in contact with their families.
Hamas militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7 and murdered more than 1,400 Israelis, the vast majority of them civilians. The militants also kidnapped at least 155 people — a number that includes babies and the elderly — and are holding them hostage in Gaza. Their whereabouts are not publicly known, but their families have been urgently pressing for their release.
“The U.S. government is working around the clock to determine their whereabouts and is working with the Israeli government on every aspect of the hostage crisis, including sharing intelligence and deploying experts from across the United States government to advise the Israeli government on hostage recovery efforts,” the statement said.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 2,670 Palestinians have been killed so far.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned Sunday that the Middle East is “on the verge of the abyss” and repeated his entreaties for Hamas to release hostages and for Israel to allow humanitarian aid and workers into besieged Gaza.
“Each one of these two objectives are valid in themselves. They should not become bargaining chips,” the U.N. chief said in a statement.
He said the U.N. has food, water, fuel and medical and other supplies stockpiled in Egypt, Jordan, the West Bank and Israel, ready to be mobilized to Gaza if it can be done safely.
The goods can be dispatched within hours, he said.
BEIRUT — An Israeli drone fired two missiles late Sunday evening at a hill west of the town of Kfar Kila in south Lebanon, the state-run National News Agency reported. There were no casualties reported in the strikes, which hit near a Lebanese army center.
The Israeli army said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that it had hit Hezbollah targets but did not specify what they were.
Cross-border clashes between armed factions in Lebanon and Israel intensified Sunday, with Hezbollah 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.
Hezbollah said in a statement Sunday 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.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday that he would work with Senate Republicans in the coming weeks to assemble a “generous” package of wartime aid for Israel.
“America will stand with its ally Israel,” he said at a news conference in Israel that capped a visit by a bipartisan group of senators. “I, along with my colleagues here, will lead the effort in the United States Senate to provide Israel with the support required to fully defend itself from this monstrous attack.”
Schumer, a Democrat who is the highest-ranking Jewish official in the U.S., said he openly wept when he heard from the families of people taken hostage by Hamas. The group of senators also met with Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz, who have formed a wartime Cabinet.
“We will work to move this aid through the Senate ASAP, and the Israeli leaders made it clear to us they need the aid quickly,” Schumer said.
The Senate leader said he would not wait for the House to consider an aid package because it is facing its own political crisis as Republicans struggle to unite around a speaker. The chamber is practically paralyzed from advancing legislation while lawmakers work to elect a new speaker, but Schumer said he hoped a bipartisan effort out of the Senate would push the House to act.
Schumer has said he expects any package should include aid for Israel and Ukraine, along with possible aid for Taiwan as it faces threats from Beijing and money for the U.S. border. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has also indicated that he wants war aid for the two countries tied together, along with aid for Taiwan.
WASHINGTON — FBI officials say they’ve noticed an increase in threatening rhetoric targeting both the Jewish and Muslim communities in the week since the brutal Hamas attacks in Israel.
Director Chris Wray said on a call with reporters Sunday that the FBI is moving quickly to mitigate the threats and that the FBI does not discount the possibility that Hamas and other groups could exploit the conflict in the Middle East to call for or plot attacks in the United States.
A senior FBI official who spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the bureau said the majority of the threats that the FBI has responded to were not judged to be credible. But the official said the FBI takes them all seriously nonetheless.
The official also said that agents have been encouraged to be “aggressive” and proactive in communicating over the last week with faith-based leaders. The official said the purpose of that outreach is not to make anyone feel targeted but rather to ask clerics and others to report to law enforcement anything that seems suspicious.
Besides responding to an escalating number of threats, Wray said the FBI was also working through its legal attache office in Tel Aviv to do what it can to locate and identify Americans who remain unaccounted for after last weekend’s attacks.
PARIS — France says it now counts 19 of its citizens who were killed in Hamas’ assault on Israel just over a week ago, with no news of 13 others who are missing and who, in some cases, may be held hostage.
The latest tally was given by France’s foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, on a visit Sunday to Israel. She vowed that “everything will be done” to free the hostages.
Colonna also urged that the United Nations be allowed to organize deliveries of food and other essentials to displaced people in southern Gaza “who are lacking everything.”
Israel is entitled to defend itself against “the monstrosity of Hamas and the danger it represents,” Colonna said after talks with Israeli officials but she also appealed for civilians to be safeguarded.
She urged Israel to abide by “international law, in particular international humanitarian law” and preserve Gaza's civilian population.”
Colonna will also be traveling to Egypt and Lebanon in an effort to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from spreading to other parts of the region.
BEIRUT — A rocket hit the headquarters of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon in the coastal town of Naqoura as clashes between the militant Hezbollah group and its allies and the Israeli military escalated Sunday.
The U.N. mission said no one was hurt even though the peacekeepers were not in shelters. It did not specify where the rocket came from but expressed disappointment saying that despite the mission's efforts to get the sides "to de-escalate the situation,” the violence continues.
It later added that the mission was working to verify from where the rocket was fired.
Some local Lebanese media said the rocket was fired from positions of Palestinian Hamas militants in southern Lebanon, intending to reach Israel but that it fell short. The Associated Press could not confirm the source of the rocket.
The U.N. peacekeepers have been patrolling the Lebanon-Israel border as tensions flare. Hezbollah, a key ally of Hamas, has vowed to retaliate against Israel should they launch a ground offensive into the blockaded Gaza Strip.
The U.N. mission, known as UNIFIL, was created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon in 1978 and expanded its role after a monthlong in 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah that ended in a stalemate.
