Israel Hamas war live: ‘Dozens killed’ in Gaza refugee camp blast

The UN has warned of the risk of infant deaths due to dehydration in Gaza.

James Elder, a spokesperson for the UN children’s agency in Geneva, added that children in the Strip were getting sick from drinking salty water.

About 940 children are reported missing in Gaza, he said, with some thought to be stuck beneath the rubble of buildings flattened by Israeli air strikes.

Significantly fewer humanitarian aid trucks than needed have reached the besieged enclave, UN officials said. Aid trucks have been trickling into Gaza from Egypt over the past week via Rafah, the main crossing that does not border Israel.

More than 50 Palestinians have been killed and another 150 wounded in Israeli air strikes on Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, the Director of Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital has told Al-Jazeera.

Hired to cater for an all-night Israeli music festival, Rada and Raif Rashed fled for their lives just after dawn, when Hamas militants rampaged through the crowd on 7 October turning the celebration into a place of horror.

The brothers saw partygoers falling around them as 250 people were killed in the surprise cross-border attack that precipitated the worst hostilities for decades in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“What I lived through on 7 October are unbelievable things. What I have seen I never imagined to see,” Rada, 33, said when back with family in northern Israel, nearly 200km (125 miles) from the festival site near Kibbutz Re’im.

“On this day, I was reborn. I now have two birth dates; the original one on March 15 and the new one is on 7 October.”

Rada and his brother Raif, 39, were caterers at the Nova festival, close to Gaza, when the Hamas gunmen arrived. Both are from Israel’s Druze Arab minority, a sect whose faith draws its roots from Islam.

Israeli sources have claimed over 20,000 troops have entered Gaza since Israel launched its ground offensive on the Strip, it has been reported.

Two Israeli sources told Axios that at least two armoured and infantry divisions, which amounts to more than 20,000 Israeli troops, had entered the besieged enclave since Friday night.

The attack by Hamas on Israel will inspire the most significant terror threat to the US since the rise of ISIS nearly a decade ago, FBI Director Christopher Wray said at a congressional hearing on Tuesday.

Wray said that since the start of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza earlier this month, multiple foreign terrorist organizations have called for attacks against Americans and the West, significantly raising the threat posed by homegrown US violent extremists.

“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 several years ago,” Wray said.

The remarks came during a hearing before the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee focused on threats to the United States. The US government has seen an increase in threats against Jews, Muslims and Arab Americans since fighting broke out in Gaza, US officials have said.

NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday condemned the attacks on Israel by Hamas and said the Israeli response in Gaza must respect international law.

“We condemn Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israel,” Stoltenberg said in a speech in Oslo.

“At the same time it is important that Israel’s response takes place within international law, that civilian lives are protected and that humanitarian aid reaches Gaza,” he added.

At least 8,525 Palestinians, including 3,542 children, have been killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry has claimed.

Norway believes Israel may have broken international law in its bombardment of Gaza that has levelled neighbourhoods and killed thousands of Palestinians, its foreign minister said on Tuesday.

Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide told Reuters in an interview that while Oslo supports Israel‘s right to self-defence, humanitarian law must be adhered to.

This meant distinguishing between combatants and civilians and ensuring military attacks are proportionate to avoid excessive harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure, he said.

“We believe that there have been cases where this proportionality and this distinction have not been fully respected,” he said, speaking in the United Arab Emirates.

Sir Keir Starmer has set out his two reasons for not supporting a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

The Labour leader was speaking at Chatham House in central London following a surfeit of calls within his own party to back calls for a ceasefire.

During his speech today, he responded to these calls by saying that a “ceasefire always freezes any conflict in the state where it currently lies”, suggesting this would “embolden Hamas”.

He said: “As we speak, that would leave Hamas with the infrastructure and the capability to carry out the sort of attack we saw on 7 October, attacks that are still ongoing.

“Hamas would be emboldened and start preparing for future violence immediately.

“And it is this context that explains my second reason, which is that our current calls for pauses in the fighting for clear and specific humanitarian purposes, and which must start immediately, is right in practice as well as principle.

“In fact, it is at this moment the only credible approach that has any chance of achieving what we all want to see in Gaza, the urgent alleviation of Palestinian suffering: aid distributed quickly and space to get hostages out.

“That is why it is also the position shared by our major allies.”

Members of Sir Keir’s frontbench are in open revolt about his stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict.

And Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has called for those who break ranks to call for a ceasefire not the be branded disloyal.

Frontbencher Alex Cunningham calling for an “immediate ceasefire” less than an hour before Sir Keir delivered his speech.

Sir Keir said he understood calls for a cessation to the violence.