A deluge of Israeli airstrikes Tuesday on a refugee camp near Gaza City demolished apartment buildings, leaving gaping holes where they once stood, while ground troops battled Hamas militants across northern Gaza. Buoyed by the first successful rescue of a captive held by Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected calls for a cease-fire and again vowed to crush the militant group’s ability to govern Gaza or threaten Israel.
Though more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians have fled their homes, several hundred thousand remain in the north, where Israeli troops and tanks have reportedly advanced on multiple sides of Gaza City.
The Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war has reached 8,525, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. In the occupied West Bank, more than 122 Palestinians have been killed in violence and Israeli raids.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, most of them civilians slain in the initial Hamas rampage that started the fighting Oct. 7. In addition, 240 hostages were taken from Israel into Gaza by the militant group. One of the captives, a female Israeli soldier, was rescued in a special forces operation.
Currently:
1. A UN envoy says the Israel-Hamas war is spilling into Syria, adding to instability there.
2. UN agency in Gaza says urgent cease-fire is a matter of life and death for Palestinians.
3. An Israeli ministry proposes transferring Gaza civilians to Egypt’s Sinai.
4. This war might hit Israel’s economy harder than past wars with Hamas.
5. Biden’s Cabinet secretaries will push Congress to send aid to Israel and Ukraine.
6. Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
Here’s what is happening in the latest Israel-Hamas war:
WASHINGTON — Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said the total number of rocket and drone attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria has risen to 27, including 6 small scale attacks that have taken place since U.S. warplanes struck weapons storage areas for Iranian-backed militias in Syria last week.
In total there have been 16 attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and 11 in Syria.
In addition, Ryder said the Pentagon is sending an additional 300 troops to the Middle East who specialize in explosive ordinance disposal and communications. Those forces will be there to bolster U.S. troops already in the region, Ryder said.
UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations chief says he’s “deeply alarmed” at the intensifying conflict in Gaza and escalating civilian casualties, demanding that Israel and Hamas abide by international humanitarian law which makes protecting civilians paramount.
In a statement Tuesday, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres singled out “the expansion of ground operations by the Israel Defense Forces accompanied by intense air strikes, and the continued rocket fire towards Israel from Gaza.”
He expressed deep concern at the risk of a “dangerous escalation” beyond Gaza and called the level of aid getting into the Palestinian territory “completely inadequate.”
Guterres stressed that civilians “have borne the brunt of the current fighting from the outset.” He again condemned “the acts of terror perpetrated by Hamas” against Israel on Oct. 7, and also condemned the killing of civilians in Gaza, saying he is “dismayed by reports that two-thirds of those who have been killed are women and children.”
Declaring that the rules of international humanitarian law “cannot be ignored,” the secretary-general stressed, “It is not an a la carte menu and cannot be applied selectively.”
“All parties must abide by it, including the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution,” Guterres said.
He reiterated his call for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire and for unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza.
WASHINGTON — FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday that multiple foreign extremist groups have called for attacks against Americans and the West in the past few weeks and suggested Hamas’ attack on Israel could inspire threats like those motivated by the Islamic State group years ago.
“We assess that the actions of Hamas and its allies will serve as an inspiration the likes of which we haven’t seen since ISIS launched its so-called caliphate years ago,” Wray testified before a U.S. Senate committee.
Wray said the FBI isn’t currently tracking an “organized threat” in the U.S., but law enforcement is concerned about the war unfolding in the Middle East inspiring individual people or small groups to attack Americans in their daily lives.
The FBI expects cyber targeting of American interests and infrastructure, as well as the threat of other attacks, to get worse as the conflict expands, he said.
“It is a time to be concerned. We are in a dangerous period,” Wray said. “We shouldn’t stop going out but should be vigilant.”
CAIRO — In the Jabaliya refugee camp on Gaza City’s outskirts, at least six airstrikes Tuesday leveled a number of apartment blocks in a residential area, the Hamas-run Interior Ministry said. It reported a large number of casualties but did not immediately provide details.
Footage of the scene from Al Jazeera TV showed at least four large craters where buildings once stood, amid a large swath of rubble surrounded by partially collapsed structures. Dozens of rescue workers and bystanders dug through the wreckage, searching for survivors beneath the pancaked buildings. A group of young men pulled two children from the upper floors of a damaged apartment block, cradling them as they climbed down.
NICOSIA, Cyprus — Cyprus is working out logistics with partners in the European Union and the Middle East to establish a sea corridor to deliver a stream of vital humanitarian aid to Gaza from the island’s main port of Limassol once the situation on the ground permits it, authorities said Tuesday.
A senior government official — who spoke on condition of anonymity because he’s not authorized to publicly discuss details of the proposal — said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “wasn’t opposed” to the idea pitched by Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides last week.
Gaza’s humanitarian needs have escalated since the Israel-Hamas war erupted following the Palestinian militant group’s surprise Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, which left nearly 1,400 Israelis dead and at least 240 taken hostage. Israel retaliated with a military operation that has so far left over 8,500 Palestinians dead.
The underlying premise of Cyprus’ proposal is to have a constant flow of large quantities of assistance delivered by sea during what the official called “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting to enable aid to reach those in need.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday said that Iran, Hezbollah and other groups must not abuse the current situation and escalate the tensions in the Middle East.
“It is also important that this war does not escalate into a major regional conflict,” Stoltenberg said in Oslo, where he attended the annual meeting of the Nordic Council.
“The suffering we have seen in recent weeks reminds us once again that we must not give up the work for a lasting, peaceful political solution to the conflict,” he said.
The eight-member regional grouping includes Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, as well as the autonomous areas of the Aland islands, the Faeroe Islands and Greenland.
ASHKELON, Israel — The soldiers guarding Avi Chivivian’s organic vegetable farm in southern Israel must first scour every corner of his fields for militants before they give him the all clear: He has six hours to work.
It’s potato planting season for the farms of southern Israel, a region near the Gaza border that the Agriculture Ministry calls the country’s “vegetable barn” because it supplies at least a third of Israel’s vegetables. But Chivivian, one of the few remaining farmers in the area since the brutal Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas militants, no longer lives by the harvest cycle. He’s on the military’s timetable.
The Israel-Hamas war has plunged Israel’s agricultural heartlands, located around the Gaza Strip and in the north near the Lebanese and Syrian borders, into crisis. Israeli airstrikes, ground operations and a siege have also upendedall manner of lifein Gaza.
Near Gaza, the military has banned all farming within 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) of the border fence and tightly monitors farmers whose lands lie just outside the no-go zone.
In the north, entire communities have been evacuated because of rocket fire from Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group. As foreign laborers flee and farming towns have emptied out, the country has begun importing more vegetables. The few remaining farmers fret for the future of Israeli agriculture.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen issued a video statement on Tuesday claiming to have fired ballistic missiles and drones at Israel, saying it was the third such operation. They threatened to carry out more strikes “until the Israeli aggression stops.”
The claims by the Houthis draw Iran closer into the ongoing Israel-Hamas war as Tehran remains a main sponsor.
Earlier this month, a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Red Sea intercepted three cruise missiles and several drones launched toward Israel by the Houthis, who control much of northern Yemen, including its capital, Sanaa. Mysterious projectiles have also struck inside Egypt, near the Israeli border.
Iran has long denied arming the Houthis even as it has been transferring rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, missiles and other weaponry to the Yemeni militia using sea routes. Independent experts, Western nations and United Nations experts have traced components seized aboard other detained vessels back to Iran.
A U.N. arms embargo has prohibited weapons transfers to the Houthis since 2014, when Yemen’s civil war erupted.
There also has been at least one attack that the Houthis claimed where suspicion later fell fully on Iran. In 2019, cruise missiles and drones successfully penetrated Saudi Arabia and struck the heart of its oil industry in Abqaiq. That attack temporarily halved the kingdom’s production and spiked global energy prices by the biggest percentage since the 1991 Gulf War.
While the Houthis claimed the Abqaiq attack, the U.S., Saudi Arabia and analysts blamed Iran. U.N. experts similarly said it was “unlikely” the Houthis carried out the assault, though Tehran denied being involved.
CAIRO — The World Health Organization said services have been “severely reduced” at the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, the main facility treating cancer patients in Gaza, due to a lack of power and dwindling supplies.
Writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, the agency said reports of airstrikes in the hospital’s vicinity over the past two days were “extremely concerning.”
“Services have been severely reduced because of cut-off of electricity and restricted entry of medicines, other medical supplies, fuel and water,” the agency said.
BEIRUT — Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group says its fighters have fired anti-tank missiles toward an Israeli force along the border of the two countries.
Hezbollah said its fighters scored direct hits Tuesday on the Israeli force that was laying an ambush along the border.
Hezbollah and Israeli forces have been exchanging fire along the border following the Oct. 7 attack by the militant Hamas group on southern Israel.
CAIRO — The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said Tuesday it registered the deaths of at least 219 people in the past day, bringing the death toll to 8,525 since the war began.
Spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said in a televised news conference that the fatalities include 3,542 children and 2,187 women.
He said the main power generator in the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia, north of Gaza, has stopped working due to a lack of fuel.
He warned that more hospitals could go out of service in the coming days if fuel isn’t allowed into the besieged territory.
