Thousands of people have broken into and ransacked several aid warehouses and distribution centers storing essential survival items in the southern area of the Gaza Strip, the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees revealed Sunday.
“This is a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down after three weeks of war and a tight siege on Gaza. People are scared, frustrated and desperate,” said Thomas White, Director of UNRWA Affairs in the Gaza Strip.
One of the warehouses is where the UN stores supplies from the humanitarian convoys from Egypt.
Israel-Hamas war: How we got here
2005: Israel unilaterally withdraws from the Gaza Strip more than three decades after winning the territory from Egypt in the Six-Day War.
2006: Terrorist group Hamas wins a Palestinian legislative election.
2007: Hamas seizes control of Gaza in a civil war.
2008: Israel launches military offensive against Gaza after Palestinian terrorists fired rockets into the town of Sderot.
2023: Hamas launches the biggest attack on Israel in 50 years, in an early-morning ambush Oct. 7, firing thousands of rockets and sending dozens of militants into Israeli towns.
Terrorists killed more than 1,200 Israelis, wounded more than 4,200, and took at least 200 hostage.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to announce, “We are at war,” and vowed Hamas would pay “a price it has never known.”
The Gaza Health Ministry — which is controlled by Hamas — reported at least 3,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 12,500 injured since the war began.
Cornell University was on high alert Sunday night after a series of “horrendous, antisemitic” messages threatening the school’s Jewish community were posted earlier on a public forum, school officials said Sunday night.
The school notified law enforcement agencies and campus police were taking precautions after a series of disturbing online posts made threats directed at Jewish students and the Center for Jewish Living, according to the university’s president Martha Pollack.
The FBI has been contacted of a potential hate crime at the upstate New York Ivy League school amid the Israel-Hamas war, Pollack said.
“Earlier today, a series of horrendous, antisemitic messages threatening violence to our Jewish community and specifically naming 104 West — the home of the Center for Jewish Living — was posted on a website unaffiliated with Cornell,” Pollack wrote.
In the long litany of death notices that fill my Facebook feed — the friends and family of Israelis I met years ago as the lone Egyptian American studying at Tel Aviv University — one entry popped out: Ofir Libstein.
I met Ofir exactly one year ago when I visited Israel at the invitation of Sharaka, a nongovernmental organization that promotes peace and normalization among young people in the Middle East and North Africa.
Chairman of the Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Council in southern Israel, Ofir proudly shared his vision for improving his community by helping Palestinians in neighboring Gaza obtain permits to work in agriculture and a new industrial zone in his kibbutz, Kfar Aza, and throughout the area.
“It is good for people-to-people peace,” I clearly remembering him saying.
Ofir’s killers were poisoned by extremist Hamas indoctrination that portrays Israelis as the embodiment of evil — how else could they have carried out such a heinous attack?
A US Marines assault ship is reportedly rushing to the eastern Mediterranean, as fears grow that the war between Israel and Hamas could explode into a regional conflict.
The USS Bataan, carrying the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, began making its way toward the Suez Canal late last week after being stationed off the Middle East, a pair of military officials told CNN.
At least two US aircraft carriers and their supporting warships are already stationed in the eastern Mediterranean in response to Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel, which left at least 1,400 civilians dead.
The USS Bataan is still sailing through the Red Sea, but is expected to arrive off the coast of Israel any day now, the sources said.
The USS Bataan is currently sailing toward Israel over fears the war with Hamas could explode into a wider conflict. AP
In addition to mounting amphibious assaults, Marine Expeditionary Units are sometimes used to conduct civilian evacuations.
Last week, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said “prudent contingency planning” was underway to prepare for the possibility of evacuating Americans from the region.
“It would be imprudent and irresponsible if we didn’t have folks thinking through a broad range of contingencies and possibilities,” Kirby said, adding there were no “active efforts” to evacuate Americans en-masse at the time.
Those comments came shortly after Israeli officials reportedly agreed to delay their ground invasion of Gaza in response to pleas from President Biden to allow more time for hostages to be released.
The USS Bataan carries the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit. REUTERS
Israel's full ground assault has not yet been launched, but armored columns of troops were seen entering the Gaza Strip over the weekend to continue softening Hamas' defenses in preparation for the operation.
US officials have cautioned that the conflict in Israel could expand if Hezbollah, Lebanon's Iranian-backed Islamist political, throws its weight behind Hamas.
President Biden urged Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu to protect the lives and well-being of Gazan civilians as Israel continues to bombard the city in preparation for an expected ground assault, the White House said.
"The President reiterated that Israel has every right and responsibility to defend its citizens from terrorism," a White House summary of the Sunday call read, adding Biden "underscored the need to do so in a manner consistent with international humanitarian law that prioritizes the protection of civilians."
They also discussed ongoing efforts to locate the more than 200 hostages Hamas captured from Israel during its October 7 sneak attack on the country -- some of whom are American citizens.
Biden also stressed that Israel needs to "immediately and significantly" increase the flow of humanitarian supplies and aid to Gaza, where an unknown number have been killed by Israeli rocket strikes.
Hamas has claimed over 5,000 people have been killed during the bombardment -- compared to the 1,400 Israelis verifiably murdered by the terror group during its October attack -- but Biden has scoffed that he has "no confidence" those numbers are real.
“I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people were killed," he told reporters on October 25.
Hundreds of people on Sunday stormed into the main airport in Russia's Dagestan region and onto the landing field to protest the arrival of an airliner coming from Tel Aviv, Russian news agencies and social media reported.
Authorities closed the airport in Makhachkala, capital of the predominantly Muslim region, and police converged on the facility.
There were no immediate reports of injuries or arrests.
Russian news reports said people in the crowd were shouting antisemitic slogans and tried to storm the airliner belonging to Russian carrier Red Wings that had landed from Tel Aviv.
Video on social media showed some in the crowd on the landing field waving Palestinian flags.
In a statement released Sunday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel “expects the Russian law enforcement authorities to protect the safety of all Israeli citizens and Jews wherever they may be and to act resolutely against the rioters and against the wild incitement directed against Jews and Israelis.”
Netanyahu’s office added that the Israeli ambassador to Russia was working with Russia to keep Israelis and Jews safe.
Gaza’s second-largest hospital said it was told by Israel on Sunday to clear its building ahead of an airstrike targeting it even though the facility has repeatedly warned evacuating would be impossible.
After Israel’s warning, videos were uploaded on social media showing the apparent aftermath of airstrikes in Tal Al Hawa, where the Al Quds Hospital is located, with smoke clouds visible just a few blocks away from the site.
Dust clouds from an airstrike in Gaza could be seen encroaching on the Al Quds Hospital on Sunday after a warning from the Israeli army. @jacksonhinklle/X
Hospital officials said they received two calls Sunday to empty their building, as the IDF had planned a series of airstrikes on it and in the area to kill Hamas terrorists, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which runs the facility.
The hospital has said it also has many patients in intensive care and children in incubators who cannot be moved so easily.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday deleted a controversial social media post in which he appeared to blame the Israeli military and intelligence establishment for not providing him sufficient warning ahead of Hamas' surprise attack on Oct. 7.
The Israeli leader's post to X on Saturday drummed up outrage, including from members of his own war cabinet. Netanyahu deleted the post and later issued an apology, writing, "I was wrong."
He went on to say, "The things I said following the press conference should not have been said, and I apologize for that. I fully support the heads of [Israel's] security services."
Saturday's post that drew backlash asserted that "Under no circumstances and at no stage was Prime Minister Netanyahu warned about Hamas' intending to go to war."
The post went on to say that “every defense official, including the heads of MI and the Shin Bet, believed that Hamas was deterred and sought accommodation. This was the assessment that was presented time and time again to the prime minister and the cabinet by all defense officials and the intelligence community up to the outbreak of the war."
Israeli troops appear to have advanced more than 2 miles into Gaza, raising the Jewish nation’s flag in the Palestinian territory for the first time in 18 years, according to a new video.
Images of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers waving their country’s flag inside Gaza were published on social media by the Jewish media outlet Israel Hayo on Saturday evening, ahead of Israel’s planned full-out invasion.
@IsraelHayomHeb/X
“Soldiers of the 52 Battalion of the 401 Brigade are waving the Israeli flag in the heart of Gaza by the beach,” a soldier narrates in the video. “We will not forgive nor forget, and we’ll not stop until the victory.”
It is believed to be the first time the Israeli flag has flown over an area of Gaza since 2005, when Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territory were dismantled and evacuated, the JerusalemPost reports.
ISLAMABAD — Thousands of supporters from Pakistan’s main religious political party rallied in the capital, Islamabad, on Sunday against Israel’s bombing of Palestinians in Gaza, chanting anti-American slogans and accusing the US of “backing the aggressor.”
The Jamaat-e-Islami party initially announced a march to the US Embassy in the city’s high-security diplomatic enclave.
But tough action from authorities the previous night forced the party to change its plans and hold the rally in a major street away from the protected enclave.
Supporters of Jamaat-e-Islami party at a rally to protest the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza in Islamabad on October 29, 2023. Photo by AAMIR QURESHI/AFP via Getty Images
Police pulled down the party’s encampments on Saturday night, detaining the local leadership and dozens of supporters.
Because of the Jamaat-e-Islami plan and the risk of violence, the US Embassy issued an advisory for American citizens living in Islamabad and the surrounding area to “limit unnecessary travel on Sunday.”
The United Nations Security Council will hold an emergency meeting Monday about Israel's ground invasion of Gaza, as UN Secretary-General António Guterres repeated calls for a ceasefire Sunday.
The council will be briefed by the under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator and an official from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, according to a test of the request from the United Arab Emirates seen by CNN.
The emergency meeting comes after 120 countries voted for a UN resolution Friday that called for a "sustained humanitarian truce" in Gaza. The US was one of 14 countries that voted against the ceasefire, while 45 countries abstained from voting.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said civilian deaths are "totally unacceptable." AFP via Getty Images
On Sunday, Guterres reiterated calls for a humanitarian ceasefire, telling reporters "We must join forces to end this nightmare for the people of Gaza, Israel and all those affected around the world."
After condemning Hamas' Oct. 7 attack, the UN chief repeated that under international humanitarian laws, parties to conflict still must protect civilians and provide them with food, water, medicine and other essentials.
“The number of civilians who have been killed and injured is totally unacceptable,” Guterres said.
A Jewish settler shot dead a Palestinian man harvesting olives near the West Bank city of Nablus, the man’s uncle said Sunday. This brings the number of Palestinians reported killed by settlers to seven since Hamas’s bloody incursion into Israel three weeks ago.
Tayseer Mahmoud said his nephew, Bilal Saleh, was working in the grove in the village of Sawiya with his wife and their four children on Saturday when a group of settlers attacked them. Saleh, concerned about the safety of his children, tried to leave the area, but a settler shot him in the chest, Mahmoud said.
Mahmoud said he didn't witness the confrontation but was close by and reached the scene within minutes of the shooting. Saleh died before he could be taken for medical care, he said.
Settler leader Yossi Dagan said in a video posted on the social media platform Facebook Saturday that the shooter was accompanied by family members and fired in self-defense after they were “attacked with rocks by dozens of rioting Hamas supporters.”
Dramatic new video released by Israel on Sunday reveals how Hamas uses its biggest advantage against the Israeli army — a remarkably complex maze of tunnels — to transport terrorists and weapons across Gaza.
The chilling footage also features Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ political leader, touting the 300-mile underground network’s sprawling reach and boasting that it is filled with “hundreds and thousands of traps.”
Hamas has turned a 300-mile tunnel network under Gaza into a well-oiled system to move weapons and terrorists. REUTERS
The Israeli Defense Forces, which released the video, slammed the booby-trapped tunnels as a cowardly tactic used by Hamas to hide behind “millions of civilians,” as several of their entrances lie inside homes, schools, mosques and hospitals.
The IDF has vowed to decimate the network ahead of an expected all-out invasion of Gaza to destroy the terrorist group and rescue more than 200 hostages.
