People walk on rubble in the aftermath of a strike amid the conflict with Israel in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, October 12, 2023.IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA/Reuters
Israeli strikes levelled entire neighbourhoods in Gaza on Thursday as the war between Israel and the Hamas militants that rule the Palestinian territory entered its sixth day. Israel has vowed unprecedented retaliation against Hamas after its fighters stormed through the border fence Saturday. The deadly incursion has claimed at least 2,100 lives on both sides so far.
Follow our live coverage below
1:15 a.m. ET
Israel conducts ‘large-scale strike’ on Gaza as Blinken heads to region
WASHINGTON, JERUSALEM and GAZA – Israel’s military said it was conducting a “large-scale strike” on targets belonging to Hamas in Gaza on Thursday, but gave no details, as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed to the region to meet leaders on both sides of the conflict.
Israeli jets have pounded Gazan targets for days in retribution for a weekend attack by Hamas militants who breached the border fence enclosing the enclave and rampaged through towns and villages, killing 1,200 people, injuring over 2,700, and taking scores of hostages, the Israeli military said.
At around 4:30 a.m. on Thursday, Israel’s military said it was conducting a “large-scale strike” on targets belonging to Hamas in Gaza. It did not provide details.
Hamas media said 15 Palestinians had been killed and several wounded in Israeli air strikes.
Eyewitnesses reported Israeli aircraft heavily bombarding Gaza city and Gazan authorities also reported an air strike on the Jabalia refuge camp in northern Gaza.
The death toll in Gaza has risen to 1,200, with around 5,600 wounded, Palestinian media reported earlier, citing Gaza’s health ministry.
Biden dispatched his top diplomat to the Middle East to show Washington’s enduring support for Israel, seek to secure the release of captives, including Americans, and prevent a wider war from erupting.
Blinken will arrive on Thursday and will also visit Jordan, but will not visit the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where he ordinarily meets Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Blinken and Abbas will meet on Friday, Hussein Al-Sheikh, secretary general of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said on social media platform X, without elaborating.
Speaking to a roundtable of Jewish community leaders in Washington, Biden said his deployment of military ships and aircraft closer to Israel should be seen as a signal to Iran, which backs Islamist groups Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
“We made it clear to the Iranians: Be careful,” Biden said.
Iran likely knew Hamas militants were planning “operations against Israel” but initial U.S. intelligence reports showed that some Iranian leaders were surprised by the group’s unprecedented attack from Gaza, U.S. sources said on Wednesday.
Iran has said it was not involved in the Hamas attacks.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman discussed the conflict on Wednesday, in the first telephone call between the two leaders since a China-brokered deal between Tehran and Riyadh to resume ties.
Raisi and the Saudi crown prince discussed the “need to end war crimes against Palestine,” Iranian state media said.
The Saudi crown prince “affirmed that the Kingdom is making all possible efforts in communicating with all international and regional parties to stop the ongoing escalation,” Saudi state news agency SPA said.
– Reuters
Canadian woman missing in Israel attended music festival near Gaza border
A Canadian woman is among the missing in Israel after her family confirmed that 22-year-old Shir Georgy has not been heard from since she sent a message to her father early Saturday morning from the music festival near the Gaza border that was attacked by Hamas militants.
Ms. Georgy’s aunt, Michal Bouganim, told The Globe and Mail that her last message was just before 8 a.m. and the family has since been piecing together videos and photos from social media to try and find her.
Ms. Bouganim said her niece arrived at the Supernova festival in Kibbutz Re’im, just five kilometres east of the wall that separates Gaza from Israel, in the early morning hours of Saturday. The sound of sirens went off around 6:30 a.m. before gunfire from militants tore through the crowd, reportedly killing more than 200 people.
“We are just living with hope because we don’t know anything yet for sure,” said Ms. Bouganim, who spoke in English and Hebrew, which was translated by a family friend.
Ms. Georgy found shelter inside a migunit, a small above-ground room intended to protect people from blasts. A video sent to her family, and provided to the Globe, shows the Ms. Georgy sitting against the wall with her knees pulled up to her chest, surrounded by at least 11 others. Another woman inside the room tells everyone to be quiet in Hebrew while shouting can be heard outside.
Next to Ms. Georgy, who sits with her hand over her mouth, is another woman bleeding from a wound on her upper thigh. Blood is spattered on her legs and a white tourniquet is tied above the wound. There appears to be another injured person in the video laying on the floor, who is connected to an IV bag with a clear fluid inside.
Ms. Bouganim said three of her niece’s friends were killed at the festival while another managed to flee to safety. The family has been visiting hospitals in the area and have filed a police report on Georgy’s disappearance, but they have mostly been left to search for answers on their own. They believe she has been kidnapped and is still alive.
“We have to do everything we can, everything that there is to do to get her back to us safe,” said Ms. Bouganim. “She is an angel. She’s great. She’s the nicest person ever.”
Adi Vital-Kaploun’s last moments would have been pure horror. Not only were Hamas gunmen in her house, intent on killing her, they had her two young sons as well.
Ms. Vital-Kaploun, a 33-year-old Canadian citizen with ties to Ottawa, was shot in front of her two sons, four-year-old Negev and 4½-month-old Eshel, according to Dina Zaslacski, a family friend.
The family was told by the Israeli military that her body was then shoved under Negev’s bed and booby-trapped so it would explode whenever someone tried to pull her out, Ms. Zaslacski said.
“They put bombs all over her body and her dad was in the house. Thank God he didn’t open the door,” Ms. Zaslacski said, weeping as she spoke to The Globe and Mail.
Until Wednesday, friends and relatives believed Ms. Vital-Kaploun was a hostage of Hamas, somewhere in the Gaza Strip. That faint hope that she could somehow survive disappeared when the military found her body in the family’s home in Holit, a tiny kibbutz in the Negev Desert. It had taken days to find her because of the number of booby-traps Hamas had laid in the house.
Israel’s government, bolstered by the creation of an emergency cabinet with opposition membership, is pushing ahead with military preparations for a possible ground offensive in the Gaza Strip.
The new decision-making body, described by the government as a “war management cabinet,” includes Benny Gantz, a former defence minister who now leads an Israeli centrist opposition party. He agreed on Wednesday to join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in supervising Israel’s response to the weekend’s devastating attacks by Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza.
The death toll from those attacks, which began on Saturday in the country’s south, has now risen to more than 1,200, with more than 2,700 wounded. Israel’s retaliatory bombing strikes on the Gaza Strip have killed more than 1,100 people and wounded 5,339, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. In addition, Israel’s army says it has killed at least 1,000 Palestinian gunmen who participated in the attacks.
The Israeli military continued to mass its forces around Gaza on Wednesday. Large numbers of troops and tanks were visible near the kibbutzes of Be’eri and Re’im – both within sight of Gaza – where Hamas fighters carried out massacres of Israeli civilians on Saturday.
– Geoffrey York, Mark MacKinnon