Israel-Hamas war, Day 35 updates | Israel lowers Oct. 7 death toll to 1,200 people

(JERUSALEM) Israel’s Foreign Ministry says the official death toll in Hamas’ bloody Oct. 7 cross-border attack into Israel has been lowered to 1,200 people.

Israeli officials have previously estimated the death toll at 1,400.

The ministry gave no reason for the revision. But an Israeli official said the number had been changed after a painstaking weekslong process to identify bodies, many of which were mutilated or burned.

The official said the final death toll could still change. He said a number of bodies have not been identified and it is unclear whether all of the nearly 240 hostages believed to be held by Hamas are still alive.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity pending an official government announcement. - AP

(JERUSALEM)The Israeli military says it has arrested 41 Palestinians in another large-scale raid in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli military said on Friday that 14 of those arrested in the previous evening’s raid were militants.

The Israeli military said it also destroyed the homes of two militants who it said carried out an attack that killed an Israeli woman and seriously wounded an Israeli man in August. At the time, an offshoot of the secular nationalist Fatah party, the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, claimed responsibility for the attack,

Israeli forces “sealed” a shop in Hebron which they said was used to print “incendiary material for Hamas.” They also raided three West Bank refugee camps where they confiscated weapons.

The Israeli military says it has arrested 1,540 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the war, identifying 930 of them as affiliated with Hamas. The Palestinian Prisoner’s Club, which represents Palestinian detainees, puts the numbers much higher, at 90 detained Thursday night and 2,400 arrested in the West Bank since the start of the war. - AP

(AMMAN, Jordan) United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk is calling for an investigation into what he called the “indiscriminate effect” of Israel’s bombardment and shelling in densely populated areas in the Gaza Strip.

Speaking in the Jordanian capital on Friday, Mr. Turk said Israel “must immediately end the use of such methods and means of warfare and the attacks must be investigated.”

He said the high levels of civilian casualties and the wide destruction of civilian infrastructure raises “serious concerns that these amount to disproportionate attacks in breach of international humanitarian law.”

Mr. Turk pointed to strikes on and near hospitals as being “particularly intense,” adding that any use by Palestinian armed groups of civilians or civilian structures to shield themselves from attack contravenes the laws of war.

But he said such conduct by Palestinian armed groups “does not absolve Israel of its obligation to ensure that civilians are spared.” - AP

(BEIRUT) The United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon says the spillover of the Hamas-Israel war has already caused “significant damage” in Lebanon where Hezbollah and allied groups have been clashing with Israeli forces on the border for more than a month.

Imran Riza said in a statement Friday that there have been “concerning signs of escalating tensions” along the border.

Mr. Riza said there have been “alarming attacks killing and injuring civilians in South Lebanon, including women, children, and media personnel” and much damage to private property, public infrastructure and farmland which as forces more than 25,000 to be displaced.

On Sunday, an Israeli airstrike hit a car driving between the towns of Ainata and Aitaroun and killed four civilians, including three children and their grandmother, and wounded the children’s mother. An Israeli military statement later said the car had been “identified as transporting terrorists” and that it was reviewing “allegations that there were civilians in the vehicle.” - AP

(NEW DELHI) U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says “far too many” Palestinians have died and suffered as Israel wages relentless war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and that while recent Israeli steps to try to minimise civilian harm are positive they are not nearly enough.

Speaking in New Delhi at the end of an intense nine-day diplomatic tour of the Middle East and Asia, Mr. Blinken said on Friday that the U.S. “appreciates” Israel’s formalisation of pauses in their military operations to allow Palestinians to move from northern to southern Gaza and its creation of a second safe corridor for them to use to escape harm. But, he said much more needs to be done.

Mr. Blinken said Israel’s steps “will save lives and will enable more assistance to get to Palestinians in need,” but at the same time, “much more needs to be done to protect civilians and to make sure that humanitarian assistance reaches them.”

The U.S. top diplomat said “far too many Palestinians have been killed, far too many have suffered these past weeks” and that everything possible should be done to prevent them harm and maximise the assistance they need.

He said the U.S. has proposed additional ideas to the Israelis about how to accomplish that. U.S. officials have said they would like to see Israel introduce longer “humanitarian pauses” that would cover areas wider than just the two corridors as well as exponentially expanding the amount of assistance getting into Gaza from Egypt by increasing the flow of trucks carrying food, water, medicine, shelter and other supplies. - AP

(BEIRUT) The spokesman for the Hamas-run Health Ministry says a main children’s hospital is being repeatedly targeted putting the lives of children, staff, and displaced people in danger.

Mr. Ashraf al-Qidra said in a statement that ambulances cannot reach Nasr Children’s Hospital to evacuate casualties because it is being targeted.

Mr. Al-Qidra called on the United Nations and the International Committee to be present at Nasr and Rantisi hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip to protect them and make room for ambulances to evacuate the wounded.

He said authorities in Gaza have made all attempts to keep health services running, but there are only a “few hours” remaining until the hospitals in northern Gaza stop providing services.

Mr. Al-Qidra appealed for Arab and Muslim countries “and the free people of the world” to take immediate action to bring medical supplies and fuel into hospitals before “the major disaster occurs.” - AP

(ANKARA, Turkey) Turkey’s President says he hold U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the number of aid trucks entering Gaza each day should be increased to at least 500.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters on Friday after returning from a trip to Uzbekistan that he raised the issue with Blinken during talks earlier this week.

Mr. Erdogan said Mr. Blinken’s approach to the proposal -conveyed to him by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in Ankara — was “positive.”

Mr. Erdogan was quoted as saying by NTV television and other media that the current number of aid trucks crossing into Gaza is “20 to 30 trucks” but that he proposed to increase that to “at least 500 trucks.”

Mr. Erdogan said Turkey wanted to address a shortage of ambulances in Gaza and was cooperating with other countries to supply food and medicine. He added that Ankara was also ready to treat Gaza civilians with chronic illnesses, such as cancer, in its hospitals. - AP

(ADELAIDE, Australia) Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, described Israel’s decision to allow a four-hour humanitarian pause each day in combat operations in northern Gaza to allow civilians to flee to the south as “very cynical and cruel”.

“There has been continuous bombings, 6,000 bombs every week on the Gaza Strip, on this tiny piece of land where people are trapped and the destruction is massive. There won’t be any way back after what Israel is doing to the Gaza Strip,” Ms. Albanese told reporters in Adelaide, Australia, on Friday.

“So four hours cease-fire, yes, to let people breathe and to remember what is the sound of life without bombing before starting bombing them again. It’s very cynical and cruel.” - AP

Israeli forces will kill Hamas militants if they are seen firing from hospitals in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said on Nov. 10 as deadly fire hit hospitals in the Palestinian territory. “If we see Hamas terrorists firing from hospitals, we’ll do what we need to do... If we see Hamas terrorists we’ll kill them,” military spokesman Richard Hecht told reporters. “Hamas are operating from within the hospital,” Mr. Hecht claimed, after Palestinian medics said Israeli strikes and sniper fire on Friday killed multiple people at Gaza City hospitals. - AFP

Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani met with Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh on Friday to discuss recent developments in Gaza, state media reported.

“The leaders met in the presence of ministers and other senior officials from both countries to focus on efforts to stop Israel’s aggression against Gaza, the allowance of aid and other ways to support security and stability in the region,” Qatar’s Emiri Diwan office said in a statement. - Reuters

The Red Cross called on Friday for medical facilities and workers in war-ravaged Gaza to be protected, warning the health system there had “reached a point of no return”.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that its teams in recent days had distributed critical supplies to medical structures across Gaza, and had seen “horrendous images that have now gotten worse due to sharpened hostilities”. - AFP

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday denounced the soaring number of Palestinians killed as Israel pushed ahead with its war against Hamas in Gaza, saying more needs to be done to protect the civilians.

In his strongest comments to date on civilians bearing the brunt of the war, Mr. Blinken welcomed the four-hour humanitarian Israeli pauses the White House announced on Thursday but said further action was required to protect Gaza’s civilians. - Reuters

Thousands of Palestinians sheltering from the Israel-Hamas war at Gaza City’s main hospital fled south on Friday after several reported strikes in and around the compound overnight. They joined a growing exodus of people escaping intense urban fighting in the north -- including near other hospitals -- as Gaza officials said the territory’s death toll surpassed 11,000. - AP

Drone and missile attacks by Huthi rebels in Yemen have barely troubled Israel but the Iran-backed group’s overriding target is strategic rather than military, analysts say.

A series of launches over most of the Arabian Peninsula targeting Israel from war-torn, impoverished Yemen have either been shot down by missile defences or fallen short.

- AFP

At least three Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike on a road used by displaced Palestinians heading south in the enclave, Hamas-affiliated media cited Gaza health officials as saying on Friday. - Reuters

Israel’s finance ministry said on Friday it would divert to the war effort some 1.6 billion shekels ($440 million) this year out of billions earmarked for parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition government.

Leading Israeli economists and central bankers estimate the war with Hamas will cost the government tens of billions of shekels, and have called on Mr. Netanyahu to cancel billions of dollars of non-essential spending. - Reuters

The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says the Palestinian death toll in the war has surpassed 11,000 people. The ministry osaid n Friday that 11,078 people had been killed since hostilities that began on October 7 when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel. - AP

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler on Friday denounced the conduct of Israeli forces fighting Hamas in Gaza, ahead of weekend summits that will focus on the unfolding violence in the Palestinian territory.

“We condemn the military aggression witnessed in the Gaza Strip, the targeting of civilians, and the continued violations of international humanitarian law by the Israeli occupation forces,” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told a summit with African leaders, his first public comments on the Israel-Hamas war. - AFP

The director of Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital, Mohammad Abu Selmeyah, told Reuters on Friday that at least 20 Palestinians had been killed in an Israeli strike on Al-Buraq school in Gaza city. - Reuters

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said on Friday that Israeli snipers were shooting at Gaza City’s Al-Quds hospital, reporting at least one death and 20 wounded.

“Fierce clashes now and occupation (Israeli) snipers shooting at Al-Quds hospital, casualties among the displaced” Palestinians sheltering at the facility, the medical organisation said in a statement. - AFP

Indonesia’s top Islamic clerical body issued a fatwa on Friday calling for a boycott of goods and services from companies that support Israel in a show of solidarity with the Palestinians.

The religious edict by the Indonesian Ulema Council, or MUI, said Muslims in the country must support the Palestinians’ struggle against “Israeli aggression”, while also\ declaring that support for Israel or its supporters is “haram”, or against Islamic law.

“MUI call on every Muslim to avoid as much as possible transactions and use of Israel products and those that affiliated with Israel, as well as those who support colonialism and Zionism,” Asrorun Niam Sholeh, an executive of the council, told reporters Friday.

- AFP

Sirens were sounded in Tel Aviv and surrounding areas on Friday as Hamas said it fired rockets deep into Israel in what the Palestinian militant group described as a response to mounting civilian deaths in the Gaza war.

Medics reported two women in Tel Aviv suffered shrapnel wounds from the salvo, which followed a relative lull in rocket fire as Israeli forces press a ground offensive in Gaza in the fifth week of the war. - Reuters

The Hamas government in the Gaza Strip said on Friday an Israeli strike at the territory’s largest hospital compound killed 13 people.

“Thirteen martyrs and dozens wounded in an Israeli strike on Al-Shifa compound today” in central Gaza City, a government statement said, while the Israeli military did not offer an immediate comment. - AFP

Russia is suggesting that a ministerial meeting on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict be held involving representatives of Middle Eastern states, Russia’s ambassador to Israel Anatoly Viktorov told Russian state TV on Friday.

Russia on Monday called for an end to the bombing of Gaza and said a resumption of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations was essential to avoid the risk of a broader war and an increase in “terrorist activity”. - Reuters

France says it has been the target of a Russian online destabilization campaign that used bots to whip up controversy and confusion about spray-painted Stars of David that appeared on Paris streets and fed alarm about surging antisemitism in France during the Israel-Hamas war.

The 250 or so quickly erased blue stars are now the subject of French police investigations seeking to determine whether the graffiti were antisemitic, as Paris’ police chief and others initially suspected, and if they were organized from outside France.

The stars’ stenciling on walls in Paris and its suburbs last month quickly fomented debate and alarm on social media and concerns about the safety of France’s Jewish community, the largest in Europe.

AP

The top diplomats and defense chiefs from India and the United States met Friday to discuss security issues involving the Indo-Pacific, China and the Israel-Hamas war.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. and India are continuing to “deepen our partnership, deepen our collaboration on everything from emerging technologies to defense to people-to-people ties, as well as our shared diplomacy to try to advance an Indo-Pacific region that’s free, that’s open, that’s prosperous, that’s resilient.”

He said the two sides discussed the crisis in the Middle East and “we appreciate the fact that from day one India has strongly condemned the attacks of Oct. 7. And as our joint statement makes clear, India and the United States stand with Israel against terrorists.”

AP

As a Jewish student, Eden Roth always has felt safe and welcome at Tulane University, where more than 40% of the students are Jewish. That has been tested by the aftermath of last month’s Hamas incursion into Israel.

Graffiti appeared on the New Orleans campus with the message “from the river to the sea,” a rallying cry for pro-Palestinian activists. Then came a clash between dueling demonstrations, where a melee led to three arrests and left a Jewish student with a broken nose.

AP

Israeli strikes hit near several hospitals in Gaza City early Friday as the military pushed deeper into dense urban neighborhoods in its battle with Hamas militants, prompting increasing numbers of civilians to flee toward the south of the besieged territory.

Israel has accused Hamas fighters of hiding in hospitals and using the Shifa Hospital complex as its main command center, which the militant group and hospital staff deny, saying Israel is creating a pretext to strike it.

AP

Dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters blocked the entrances to a BAE Systems factory in southeast England on Friday, targeting Britain’s biggest military supplier to call for an end to arms sales to Israel.

Holding up a sign saying “Stop Arming Israel” and waving Palestinian flags, about 50 people stood in front of one entrance at the Rochester, Kent, site, where BAE tests and assembles electronic equipment used on military aircraft and in surveillance systems.

Tens of protesters gathered at other entrances.

Reuters

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Friday that Israel must take immediate measures to protect Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as they find themselves targeted by more violence since the Israeli-Hamas war erupted last month.

Volker Turk said at least 176 Palestinians, including 43 children and one woman, had been killed in incidents involving Israeli security forces since the beginning of October. At least eight Palestinians had been killed by Israeli settlers.

Before the start of the Gaza war between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas on Oct. 7, it was already the deadliest year on record for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, with about 200 killed.

Reuters

Turkey has made necessary preparations to take injured Palestinians and patients with chronic illnesses from Gaza to its hospitals for treatment, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday.

Speaking to reporters after a visit to Uzbekistan, Erdogan also said Turkey will make efforts to increase pressure on Israel to ensure injured Palestinians could be evacuated from Gaza.

Reuters

Israel’s Ministry of Defense reported that a cargo ship carrying approximately 2,500 tons of equipment for IDF use was received in Israel on Thursday. 123 cargo planes and 7 ships carrying more than 7,000 tons of military equipment arrived in Israel since the beginning of the war in Gaza to ensure the IDF has the resources to achieve its objectives.

ANI

Internet access across the war-torn nation of Yemen collapsed early Friday without explanation, web monitors said.

The outage began early Friday around 0000 GMT and saw all traffic halt at YemenNet, the country’s main provider to some 10 million users which is now controlled by Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

Both NetBlocks, a group tracking internet outages, and the internet services company CloudFlare reported the outage. The two did not offer a cause for the outage.

-AP

A U.N. report says the gross domestic product shrank 4% in the West Bank and Gaza in the war’s first month, sending over 400,000 people into poverty — an economic impact unseen in the conflicts Syria and Ukraine, or any previous Israel-Hamas war.

At least 45% of all housing in the Gaza strip has also been damaged or destroyed by Israeli bombardment, according to the assessment.

If the war continues for a second month, the U.N. projects that the Palestinian gross domestic product, which was $20.4 billion before the war, will drop by 8.4%. That’s a loss of $1.7 billion. And if the conflict lasts a third month, Palestinian GDP will drop by 12%, with losses of $2.5 billion and more than 660,000 people pushed into poverty.

-AP

Israel’s military said Friday it struck an organisation in Syria that was behind a drone crash into a school in southern Israel a day earlier.

“In response to a UAV (drone) from Syria that hit a school in Eilat, the IDF struck the organisation that carried out the attack,” the Israeli army said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

It did not identify the organisation behind the drone.

-AFP

Nearly half of American Democrats disapprove of how President Joe Biden is handling the Israel-Hamas conflict, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research — showing a deep divide within his party over the war.

The poll found 50% of Democrats approve of how Biden has navigated the conflict while 46% disapprove — and the two groups diverge substantially in their views of U.S. support for Israel. Biden’s support on the issue among Democrats is down slightly from August, as an AP-NORC poll conducted then found that 57% of Democrats approved of his handling of the conflict and 40% disapproved.

-AP

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupied the lobby of The New York Times on Thursday, accusing the media of betraying a bias toward Israel in its coverage of the war and demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.

Hundreds of protesters led by a group of media workers calling themselves “Writers Bloc” gathered outside the publication’s Manhattan headquarters, with many of them entering the building’s atrium for a sit-in and vigil that lasted more than an hour.

It wasn’t immediately clear if anyone was arrested during the sit-in. An email sent to New York Times staffers obtained by The Associated Press described the protest as “peaceful.”

-AP

Around four tyre fires belching black smoke, Palestinians clashed with Israeli soldiers in Jenin on Thursday in the deadliest army raid the occupied West Bank has seen since 2005.

The Palestinian city, a militant stronghold and the site of frequent army raids, was rocked by dozens of explosions as Israeli armoured vehicles tore through the streets, fighting running battles with Palestinian gunmen using assault rifles and pipe bombs.

The Palestinian health ministry said 14 were killed in the raid, with the violence continuing until Thursday evening, making it the deadliest single incursion in the West Bank since 2005, according to United Nations records.

-AFP

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving Prime Minister who is now heading its most rightwing government, is not known for moderation. He built a career promising security to Israelites and has emerged as the most powerful and influential leader in the Jewish state’s history after David Ben-Gurion. Yet, he will go down in history as the leader under whose watch Israel’s greatest security crisis unfolded.

Read the analytical piece by Stanly Johny...