Israel war Day 43 updates: Death toll in Gaza reaches 12,300, claims Hamas

Palestinians from the northern Gaza Strip, including evacuees from Al-Shifa hospital, flee towards southern areas as Israel pursues its relentless air and ground campaign against Hamas militants. The director of Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza's main hospital, said the Israeli army ordered evacuation of the facility where more than 2,000 patients, medics and displaced people were trapped by the war.
 

Images posted on social media on November 18, 2023 show bodies, some covered in blood, others in dust, on the floors of the building of al-Fakhura School in Jabalia, the Palestinian territory's biggest refugee camp. A Hamas health official said more than 80 people were killed Saturday in twin strikes on a northern Gaza refugee camp, including a UN school used as a shelter for people displaced by the Israel-Hamas war.
 

Gaza's Hamas government said Saturday the death toll from fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas militants in the Palestinian territory had reached 12,300 since hostilities started on October 7.

The Hamas government said more than 5,000 children were among the dead, alongside 3,300 women, with 30,000 more people wounded. Its health ministry has previously said it can no longer give exact tolls as intense fighting has prevented bodies from being recovered.
 

Palestinians from the northern Gaza Strip, including evacuees from Al-Shifa hospital, flee towards southern areas as Israel pursues its relentless air and ground campaign against Hamas militants. The director of Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza's main hospital, said the Israeli army ordered evacuation of the facility where more than 2,000 patients, medics and displaced people were trapped by the war.

"Hamas cannot be in control of Gaza any longer," European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told the Manama Dialogue, an annual conference on foreign and security policy.

"So who will be in control of Gaza? I think only one could do that - the Palestinian Authority," Borrell added. 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of an 'urgent need' to ease Gaza's humanitarian crisis amid the Israel-Hamas war, AFP reported while quoting an official statement. 

Images released by the Israeli army show troops undertaking military operations in the Zaytun and Jabalia areas on the outskirts of Gaza City.
 

Hezbollah released video on Saturday (November 18) purporting to show the aftermath of an Israeli air strike near Nabatieh, southern Lebanon, one of the deepest Israeli strikes inside Lebanese territory since fighting began last month.
 

Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila said on Saturday that 34 premature babies were still inside the Al-Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip.

"The occupation army this morning, had demanded the evacuation of the hospital of patients, the injured and the medical staff, as well as those seeking shelter in the hospital, within one hour, meaning, within one hour they should evacuate, to face their unknown fate, where they were evicted under gunpoint, and those who remained are 126 patients, 5 doctors, and 34 premature babies remained in different hospital wards," health minister al-Kaila said.

She called on international organisations and health organisations to put pressure on the Israeli forces and work on the transfer of the premature babies. 

A US official said on Saturday that there would be no significant pause in war-torn Gaza before Israeli hostages were freed.

Addressing a security conference in Bahrain, US President Joe Biden's main adviser on the Middle East Brett McGurk said, "The surge in humanitarian relief, the surge in fuel, the pause... will come when hostages are released."

McGurk said the release of a large number of hostages would result in a significant pause and a massive surge of humanitarian relief. 

European Union (EU) President Ursula von der Leyen said on Saturday that she was opposed to the forced displacement of Palestinians during a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Sharing a post on X, Von der Leyen "thanked Egypt for its key role in providing and facilitating humanitarian aid to vulnerable Palestinians", during her meeting with Sisi.

The two discussed "the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza" and a "political horizon based on a two-state solution."

The group of Palestinian children wounded in the Israel-Hamas war reached the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Saturday. According to a report by the news agency Associated Press, the group of 15 people- including children and their family members- made it across the Gaza Strip’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Friday.

They then took a flight from the Egyptian city of El-Arish to the UAE's capital Abu Dhabi.

An official of the Hamas-run health ministry in the Gaza Strip said "at least 50 people" were killed Saturday when Israeli forces struck a UN school being used as a shelter for displaced people.

The strike on the UN-run Al-Fakhura school in the Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip happened "at dawn", the official told AFP.

Reuters reported that Israeli air strikes on residential blocks in south Gaza killed at least 32 Palestinians on Saturday, medics said. 

Gaza health authorities raised their death toll on Friday to more than 12,000, 5,000 of them children. 

Overnight on Saturday, 26 Palestinians were killed and 23 injured by an air strike on two apartments in a multi-storey block in a busy residential district of Khan Younis, according to health officials.

Anwar Gargash, who is Diplomatic Adviser to the UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, on Saturday said that statements from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are worrying. 

At the IISS Manama Security summit in Bahrain, Gargash said: "We hear now from the Israeli prime minister and indeed the Israeli president about the sort of longer term Israeli connection to Gaza. They are very worrying." 

"This indicates that perhaps the lesson that we as the majority of people in region are taking away from the Gaza crisis which is the need to go back to the two state solution, we need to go back to an Israeli and Palestinian state living side by side. That lesson has perhaps not been the same," he added. 

The newly appointed British foreign secretary David Cameron on Friday spoke to Eli Cohen.

In a statement on social media, he posted: "I spoke to Israeli Foreign Minister @EliCoh1 yesterday and shared my condolences for the Israeli civilians killed in Hamas' brutal October 7th terror attack." 

"We discussed the situation in Gaza and the need for humanitarian pauses. We are committed to preventing wider regional instability," he added. 

Israel has denied the claim that it ordered the evacuation of Gaza City's Al-Shifa hospital. But reports claim that hundreds of people left blockaded Palestinian region's biggest hospital on foot.

The Hamas-run health ministry said in a statement 120 wounded were still at the facility, along with an unspecified number of premature babies.

Officials said a few medical staff stayed behind to care for those who could not be moved. 

Columns of sick and injured -- some of them amputees -- displaced people, doctors and nurses, made their way towards the seafront.

The army "acceded to the request of the director of the Shifa Hospital to enable additional Gazans who were in the hospital, and would like to evacuate, to do so" an army statement said.

The Israel Defense Forces denies it demanded that Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital evacuate within an hour.

"This morning, the IDF acceded to the request of the director of Shifa Hospital to enable additional Gazans who were in the hospital, and would like to evacuate, to do so via the secure route," the IDF said in a statement. "At no point did the IDF order the evacuation of patients or medical teams and in fact proposed that any request for medical evacuation will be facilitated by the IDF," it said. "Medical personnel will remain in the hospital to support patients who are unable to evacuate," the IDF added. 

Hamas-run Gaza's health officials said that a total of 450 patients are left behind at the Al-Shifa hospital, a claim which couldn't immediately be verified. 

AFP reported that its journalist witnessed hundreds leaving Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital on foot shortly after Israel issued an alert for all civilians to leave. 

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Saturday that only the Palestinian Authority can run Gaza once the Israel-Hamas war is over. 

"Hamas cannot be in control of Gaza any longer," Borrell said in Bahrain.

"So who will be in control of Gaza? I think only one could do that - the Palestinian Authority," he said.
 

Jordan’s foreign minister said he does not understand how Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas could be achieved.

Ayman Safadi said on Saturday:

"Israel says it wants to wipe out Hamas. There’s a lot of military people here, I just don’t understand how this objective can be realised."

He warned that Jordan would do "whatever it takes to stop" the displacement of Palestinians, amid Israeli retaliatory bombardment of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip after Hamas attack on southern Israel on 7 October.

Pakistan is suspected to be supplying 155mm shells to Israel amid war with Hamas despite Islamabad's historic support to Palestinian cause and specific opposition to the existence of state of Israel. An account on X, formerly Twitter, cited flight-tracker data to claim that a British Air Force place flew from Bahrain to Nur Khan base in Pakistan's Rawalpindi, and reached an allied base in Cyprus via Oman. 

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Pope Francis will meet the relatives of hostages held by Hamas militants and with a delegation of Palestinians with family members in Gaza next week, Reuters reported on Friday.

"With these meetings, which are of an exclusively humanitarian character, Pope Francis wants to show his spiritual closeness to the sufferings of both," Reuters quoted a Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni as saying.

US State Department targeted Iran-backed militia in its latest sanction campaign, accusing them of staging attacks on its military assets in Syria and Iraq.

The US State Department designated Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada and its secretary general as Specially Designated Global Terrorists, while the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on six people affiliated with Kata'ib Hizballah in Iraq.

US assets have been targeted at least 58 times in the two West Asian nations since the Oct 7 assault by Hamas.

Israeli forces have ordered the evacuation of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza in the “next hour,” AFP reported on Saturday.

(This is developing story)

Israel has issued a warning for residents of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, urging them to move southwards away from conflict areas. "We're asking people to relocate. I know it's not easy for many of them, but we don't want to see civilians caught up in the crossfire," Mark Regev, an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC on Friday. 

Israel's left-wing Hadash party said it will organise a Jewish-Arab anti-war protest and call for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza on Saturday afternoon.

Hadesh party leader and lawmaker in Knesset (parliament), Ayman Odeh told mediapersons on Friday that the demonstration in Tel Aviv has been called to project before the world the atrocities being carried out amid the raging war.

Israeli forces prevented Palestinians from entering into Al-Aqsa Mosque for Friday prayers using tear gas and water cannon. Israeli restrictions have led to a dramatic reduction in worshipper numbers in recent weeks, from about 60,000 a week to only 4,000, reported Al Jazeera.

The Israeli shekel rebounded to its highest value against the US dollar (USD) since the war with Hamas started on October 7.

According to official rates issued by the country's central bank, the ongoing appreciation of the Israeli currency against the green back stood at 3.728 shekels per USD on Friday, reports Xinhua news agency.

Australia's football team has declared it will donate some of its match fees against Palestine to support humanitarian causes in Gaza, Reuters reported.

Australia will play Palestine in Kuwait on Tuesday in a game that was to be held in the occupied West Bank but was relocated due to the war in Gaza.

At least 26 people have been killed in a strike on a residential building in the southern Gaza Strip's Khan Yunis region, the director of a local hospital said Saturday. The director of the Nasser hospital told AFP the facility had received 26 dead bodies and 23 people with serious injuries after a strike on the residential building in the city of Hamad.

(With inputs from agencies)

The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Israeli military strikes killed 26 people overnight on buildings in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Wafa stated dozens have been injured in the strikes.

The agency further stated that area surrouding the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza was hit, along with the targets in the Jabaliya camp, which is also in northern Gaza.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva stated that the economies of Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and the West Bank have been suffering because of escalating war between Israel and Hamas which started after October 7 assault on Israel.

Speaking to Reuters, Georgieva siad that the conflict is also “devastating” Gaza and has “severe impacts” on the economy of West Bank while also increasing difficulties for neighboring nations amid higher energy costs and lack of tourism.

United Nations' top official have renewed calls for a “humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza so that aid can reach civilians as the war between Israel and Hamas escalates.

“Call it what you will, but the requirement, from a humanitarian point of view, is simple. Stop the fighting to allow civilians to move safely,” stated UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths, while speaking in an address to the UN General Assembly.

“We are not asking for the moon. We are asking for the basic measures required to meet the essential needs of the civilian population and stem the course of this crisis,” Griffiths stated.

The Palestinian telecommunications company Paltel stated that phone and internet services started partially working in Gaza, after delivery of fuel to restart generators which provide power to the networks.

NetBlocks, a group which has been tracking internet outages, stated that “internet connectivity is being partially restored” in the Gaza Strip.

The IDF stated that a surface-to-air missile was “successfully intercepted” by its air defenses after it was launched at a remotely manned military aircraft from Lebanese territory, because of which air raid sirens went off in northern Israel.

The alerts went off because of the interceptions, stated the military, in a brief announcement, further stating that “no crossing into Israeli territory was detected.”

Elon Musk stated that users who will use the terms “decolonization”, “from the river to the sea” and other “similar euphemisms” that “necessarily imply genocide” will get suspended from X.

“Clear calls for extreme violence are against our terms of service and will result in suspension. Anyone calling for a genocide of any people will be suspended,” Musk wrote.

Since the outbreak of Israel-Hamas war, there has been extreme shortage of fuel in the Gaza Strip owing to Israeli blockade. The shortage threatened to derail aid deliveries and caused 'communication blackout' in the Palestinian enclave.

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The Palestinian Red Crescent has said that five people were killed in a strike on refugee camp in West Bank. Two others are hurt. The agency said that the strike was carried out on a building in West Bank's Balata refugee camp.

The camp administration has said that the aerial strike was aimed at local headquarters of Fatah, the Palestinian group.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari has said that Israel will hit Hamas targets wherever they exist, including southern Gaza.

"It will happen wherever Hamas exists, including in the south of the strip. It will happen at the time, place and conditions that are best for the military," said Hagari.

The European Union's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has met Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and also Israeli minister Benny Gantz.

Israeli war cabinet has agreed to a more frequent supply of fuel to Gaza. BBC cited a US State Department official to say that Israel has agreed for 140,000 litres of fuel to enter Gaza every two days. The decision was reportedly taken after a request from the US.

Earlier, Israel had agreed for only two fuel tankers to enter the Palestinian enclave every day.

AFP has reported citing a Palestinian border official that first shipment of 17000 litres of fuel has entered Gaza from Rafah crossing. 

The official reportedly said that the fuel was meant "for the telecommunications company" Paltel.

The telecom company said on Thursday that there was total communication blackout in Gaza due to no availability of fuel.

Prince Salman Bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the crown prince of Bahrain has appealed for a 'hostage trade' between Israel and Hamas. He condemned the October 7 Hamas attack as well as Israeli air campaign in the Gaza Strip. He appealed both sides to release women and children in respective custodies.

He also expressed support for the two-state solution. He added that in order to achieve this, the United States was "indispensable".

US President Joe Biden has stressed to Qatar the 'urgent' need for Hamas to free hostages. Qatar is mediating between the warring sides to secure a deal for hostage release. Biden spoke on phone with Qatar Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani A White House statement said that the president "discussed the urgent need for all hostages held by Hamas to be released without further delay."