Jerusalem:

Israeli soldiers captured around 100 suspected Hamas militants during a raid in Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, the military said on Monday.

Gaza health officials and Hamas have denied any militant presence at the hospital, which Israeli forces stormed on Friday and left on Saturday.

“The soldiers apprehended approximately 100 terrorists from the compound, including terrorists who attempted to escape during the evacuation of civilians. Inside the hospital, they found weapons, terror funds, and intelligence documents,” the military said.

Gaza’s health ministry said the troops had detained dozens of male medical staffers and damaged the hospital, which had already been struggling to operate with heavy Israeli raids in the area.

“A few of the fully identified terrorists disguised themselves as medical staff so we didn’t have any alternative but to check the medical staff as well,” a military official told journalists in an online briefing.

Footage circulated by Gaza’s health ministry on Saturday – which Reuters could not immediately verify – showed damage to several buildings after the Israeli forces withdrew.

The military official said that troops had caused limited damage to the hospital when entering it and that soldiers also had to destroy what he described as “dual use” equipment, like oxygen tanks, which if detonated could have harmed anyone at the complex.

Medical staffers refused to evacuate the hospital or leave their patients unattended. Hundreds of displaced Palestinians had also been sheltering there.

“They evacuated all those who were sheltering here…They separated men from women and made two queues, it was very humiliating for our men since they took them without clothes and nothing to cover with,” said Mayssoun Alian, a hospital nurse.

The military official said that suspected Hamas men arrested were stripped to check them for weapons. “After checking them we supplied them with clothes,” he said.

Gaza medics said at least two children had died inside the intensive care unit after Israeli fire hit the generators and oxygen station in the facility on Friday.

The military said civilians at the hospital were kept safe, despite heavy fighting near the complex. Fuel, medical equipment and blood units had been provided to the hospital and electricity and oxygen supply had been ensured, it said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Victoria stands in front a picture of her sister, Yulia Waxer Daunt, as she visits the site of the Nova music festival, where hundreds of revelers were killed and abducted by Hamas and taken into Gaza, on the one-year anniversary of the attack, near Kibbutz Reim, southern Israel on October 7, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

The United States has spent a record of at least $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza began and led to escalating conflict around the Middle East, according to a report for Brown University’s Costs of War project, released on the anniversary of Hamas’ attacks on Israel.

An additional $4.86 billion has gone into stepped-up U.S. military operations in the region since the Oct 7, 2023, attacks, researchers said in findings first provided to The Associated Press. That includes the costs of a Navy-led campaign to quell strikes on commercial shipping by Yemen’s Houthis, who are carrying them out in solidarity with the fellow Iranian-backed group Hamas.

Also Read: West Asia crisis updates (October 7, 2024)

The report — completed before Israel opened a second front, this one against Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, in late September — is one of the first tallies of estimated U.S. costs as the Biden administration backs Israel in its conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon and seeks to contain hostilities by Iran-allied armed groups in the region.

The financial toll is on top of the cost in human lives: Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 people in Israel a year ago and took others hostage. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed nearly 42,000 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.

At least 1,400 people in Lebanon, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians, have been killed since Israel greatly expanded its strikes in that country in late September.

The financial costs were calculated by Linda J. Bilmes, a professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, who has assessed the full costs of U.S. wars since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and fellow researchers William D. Hartung and Stephen Semler.

Here’s a look at where some of the U.S. taxpayer money went: Record military aid to Israel, who is a protege of the United States since its 1948 founding — is the biggest recipient of U.S. military aid in history, getting $251.2 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1959, the report says.

Even so, the $17.9 billion spent since Oct. 7, 2023, in inflation-adjusted dollars, is by far the most military aid sent to Israel in one year. The U.S. committed to providing billions in military assistance to Israel and Egypt each year when they signed their 1979 U.S.-brokered peace treaty, and an agreement since the Obama administration set the annual amount for Israel at $3.8 billion through 2028.

The U.S. aid since the Gaza war started includes military financing, arms sales, at least $4.4 billion in drawdowns from U.S. stockpiles and hand-me-downs of used equipment.

Much of the US weapons delivered in the year were munitions, from artillery shells to 2,000-pound bunker-busters and precision-guided bombs.

Expenditures range from $4 billion to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defence systems to cash for rifles and jet fuel, the study says.

Unlike the U.S. publicly documented military aid to Ukraine, it was impossible to get the full details of what the U.S. has shipped Israel since last October 7, so the $17.9 billion for the year is a partial figure, the researchers said.

They cited Biden administration “efforts to hide the full amounts of aid and types of systems through bureaucratic maneuvering”. Funding for the key US ally during a war that has exacted a heavy toll on civilians has divided Americans during the presidential campaign. But support for Israel has long carried weight in U.S. politics, and Mr. Biden said on Friday (October 4, 2024) that “no administration has helped Israel more than I have”. The Biden administration has bolstered its military strength in the region since the war in Gaza started, aiming to deter and respond to any attacks on Israeli and American forces.

Those additional operations cost at least $4.86 billion, the report said, not including beefed-up US military aid to Egypt and other partners in the region.

The U.S. had 34,000 forces in the Middle East the day that Hamas broke through Israeli barricades around Gaza to attack. That number rose to about 50,000 in August when two aircraft carriers were in the region, aiming to discourage retaliation after a strike attributed to Israel killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. The total is now around 43,000.

The number of U.S. vessels and aircraft deployed — aircraft carrier strike groups, an amphibious ready group, fighter squadrons, and air defense batteries — in the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden has varied during the year.

The Pentagon has said another aircraft carrier strike group is headed to Europe very soon and that could increase the troop total again if two carriers are again in the region at the same time.

People walk on rubble at the damaged UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) building complex in western Gaza City’s Al-Sinaa neighbouhood on July 12, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

A senior Hamas official told AFP on July 14 that the Palestinian militant group was withdrawing from talks on a ceasefire in the Gaza war because of Israeli “massacres” and its attitude in negotiations.

The senior official said Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh had told international mediators of the “decision to halt negotiations due to the occupation’s (Israel) lack of seriousness, continued policy of procrastination and obstruction, and the ongoing massacres against unarmed civilians.”

Top Hamas official says military chief Deif ‘fine’ after Israeli strike

A top Hamas official said Sunday that the group’s military leader Mohammed Deif is “fine” despite an Israeli attempt to kill him in an air strike.

“Commander Mohammed Deif is well and directly overseeing” the operations of the Hamas military wing, the official told AFP. Israel staged a huge bombing raid on a camp for displaced in southern Gaza on Saturday that it said was an attempt to kill Deif.

The Israeli Army dropped thousands of leaflets over Gaza City on July 10 urging all residents to flee a heavy offensive that has rocked the main city of the besieged Palestinian territory.

The leaflets, addressed to “everyone in Gaza City”, set out designated escape routes to the south and warned that the urban area, previously home to more than half a million people, would “remain a dangerous combat zone”.

The warning follows three partial evacuation orders and came as Israeli troops, backed by tanks and aircraft, have fought Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants in the heaviest combat operations the city has seen in months.

In one operation, the Army said it had killed militants and found weapons inside the long-vacated Gaza City headquarters of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

Elsewhere across Gaza, deadly strikes have hit four schools used as shelters in four days, sparking international outrage.

The upsurge in fighting and displacement came as mediator Qatar was due to resume talks on Wednesday toward a truce and hostage release deal to end the war, now grinding on into its 10th month.

An Israeli delegation led by Mossad chief David Barnea arrived in Doha for the talks, a source with knowledge of the negotiations said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of their sensitivity.

CIA director William Burns was also expected in the Qatari capital, after holding talks in Cairo on Tuesday.

The latest fighting in Gaza has newly displaced 3,50,000 civilians, said UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, who spoke before the latest leaflet drop and said “there is absolutely no safe space in Gaza”.

One woman carrying her scant belongings through the bombed-out wasteland, Nimr al-Jamal, told AFP on Tuesday that “this is the 12th time” her family has had to flee.

“How many times can we endure this? A thousand times? Where will we end up?”

Hamas, whose October 7 attack started the war, has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of escalating the fighting to derail the latest ceasefire talks.

Also Read | Israel’s new strikes in Gaza City threaten truce talks: Hamas

The Islamist group’s armed wing said this week the resurgent battles in Gaza City were “the most intense in months”, while deadly strikes have also hit elsewhere across the territory.

Israel’s military said it had “eliminated” Palestinian militants operating from inside the city’s UNRWA headquarters and found “large amounts of weapons” inside.

The U.N. agency’s head of communications Juliette Touma told AFP it was hard to know if people were sheltering in the building “as we don’t have regular access to Gaza City”.

‘Death and misery’

The Israeli Army said it was reviewing an attack on Tuesday in which hospital sources said at least 29 people were killed in a school used as a shelter in the southern Khan Younis area.

Germany said the strike was “unacceptable” and called for a rapid investigation into the incident.

“Civilians, especially children, must not get caught in the crossfire,” the Foreign Ministry posted on X. “The repeated attacks on schools by the Israeli army must stop and an investigation must come quickly.”

Gaza’s Hamas government said a “majority” of the dead were women and children.

AFP footage showed the wounded being rushed to the nearby Nasser hospital, many screaming in pain, as relatives wailed in grief for the dead.

One wounded man, Osama Abu Daqqa, recounted that “suddenly the strike hit, people were injured and martyred and there was no one to help them”.

Also Read | Airstrike kills 25 in southern Gaza as Israeli assault on Gaza City shuts down medical facilities

Another survivor, Mohamed Sukkar, said that “without any warning, rockets were fired at a group of people who were browsing the internet. They were not part of the resistance nor were they armed, they were all civilians.”

The military said that the strike had killed a Hamas “terrorist” who had taken part in the October 7 attack and that it was “looking into the reports that civilians were harmed, adjacent to the Al Awda school”, which it acknowledged was “near the location of the strike”.

“The incident is under review.”

Three previous Israeli strikes since Saturday on Gaza schools used by displaced Palestinians have killed a total of at least 20 people, according to Gaza officials and rescue services.

Mr. Lazzarini wrote on social media site X that “schools have gone from safe places of education and hope for children to overcrowded shelters and often ending up a place of death and misery”.

‘She is alone’

Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The militants seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 42 the military says are dead.

Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 38,295 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Israel has also imposed a punishing siege on Gaza’s 2.4 million people, eased only by sporadic aid deliveries.

Independent U.N. rights experts on Tuesday accused Israel of carrying out a “targeted starvation campaign” that constituted “a form of genocidal violence”.

Israel’s mission to the U.N. in Geneva accused the panel’s members of “spreading misinformation” and “supporting Hamas propaganda”.

Elad Goren of Israel’s COGAT, the military department handling aid to Gaza, said an average of 250 trucks were entering through the Kerem Shalom crossing, half of the daily capacity — a shortfall he blamed on problems on the Palestinian side.

In Israel, meanwhile, protesters have regularly taken to the streets to demand the Netanyahu government strike a deal to bring home the hostages.

Some of the captives’ relatives spoke about their fear, especially of the risk of female captives being abused, at a virtual press conference by the Hostages Families Forum.

“My life stopped on the 7th of October,” said Simona Steinbrecher, mother of the hostage Doron Steinbrecher. “I know she is alone there and I cannot help her.”

Smoke rises from Gaza, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, near the Israel-Gaza border, as seen from Israel on July 9, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

U.N. rights experts on July 9 accused Israel of carrying out a “targeted starvation campaign” that has resulted in the deaths of children in Gaza.

“Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza,” 10 independent United Nations experts said in a statement.

The U.N. has not officially declared a famine in the Gaza Strip.

But the experts, including the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food Michael Fakhri, insisted there was no denying famine was under way.

“Thirty-four Palestinians have died from malnutrition since 7 October, the majority being children,” said the experts, who are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, but who do not speak on behalf of the United Nations.

Also Read | UNICEF finds 90% of Gaza’s children lack food needed for proper growth

Israel’s mission to the U.N. in Geneva slammed the statement, charging that “Mr. Fakhri, and many so-called ‘experts’ who joined (him), are as much accustomed to spreading misinformation, as they are to supporting Hamas propaganda and shielding the terrorist organisation from scrutiny”.

Complicit

The U.N. experts meanwhile listed three children who had recently died “from malnutrition”, after a number of others were said to have starved to death in northern Gaza earlier this year.

Six-month-old Fayez Ataya and 13-year-old Abdulqader Al-Serhi had died on May 30 and June 1 at Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Hospital, while nine-year-old Ahmad Abu Reida died on June 3 in the tent sheltering his displaced family in Khan Yunis, they said.

“With the death of these children from starvation despite medical treatment in central Gaza, there is no doubt that famine has spread from northern Gaza into central and southern Gaza,” they said.

The experts decried that the world had not done more to avert this disaster.

“When a two-month-old baby and 10-year-old Yazan Al Kafarneh died of hunger on 24 February and 4 March respectively, this confirmed that famine had struck northern Gaza,” they said.

“The whole world should have intervened earlier to stop Israel’s genocidal starvation campaign and prevented these deaths.”

“Inaction is complicity.”

Gaza has been facing a deep humanitarian crisis since the war erupted following Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

In response, Israel has carried out a military offensive that has killed at least 38,243 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.

‘Starvation warfare’

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that 60 cases of severe acute malnutrition, also known as severe wasting —the most deadly form of malnutrition — had been detected last week at the Kamal Adwan paediatric hospital in the north of the Strip.

The U.N. has long been warning of looming famine, especially in the north, but one has not been officially declared.

Also Read | The politics of humanitarian aid

The Israeli mission highlighted Tuesday that the latest assessment by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) partnership determined that famine had not materialised after aid access improved somewhat.

“Israel has continuously scaled up its coordination and assistance in the delivery of humanitarian aid across the Gaza Strip,” it said, claiming Hamas “intentionally steal and hide aid from civilians”.

Hamas authorities meanwhile issued a statement Tuesday describing a “humanitarian catastrophe and escalating famine”.

They accused “the terrorist Israeli government” of continuing “its policy of starvation”, and “preventing the entry of food aid trucks for the 64th consecutive day”.

“Continued starvation warfare threatens a humanitarian disaster and further loss of innocent children,” that statement warned.

Israeli forces advanced deeper into the Gaza Strip’s largest city in pursuit of militants who had regrouped there, sending thousands of Palestinians fleeing on July 8 from an area ravaged in the early weeks of the nine-month-long war.

Hamas warned that the latest raids and displacement in Gaza City could lead to the collapse of long-running negotiations over a ceasefire and hostage release, after the two sides had appeared to have narrowed the gaps in recent days.

Israeli troops were again battling militants in areas that the Army said had been largely cleared months ago in northern Gaza. The military ordered evacuations ahead of the raids, but Palestinians said nowhere feels safe. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are packed into sweltering tent camps.

Also Read | Israel targets Gaza school for second day, killing four

Israel ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza in the first weeks of the war and has prevented most people from returning. But hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain, living in shelters or the shells of homes.

“We fled in the darkness amid heavy strikes,” said Sayeda Abdel-Baki, a mother of three who had sheltered with relatives in the Daraj neighborhood. “This is my fifth displacement.”

Residents reported artillery and tank fire, as well as airstrikes. Gaza’s Health Ministry, with limited access to the north, did not immediately report casualties.

Israel issued additional evacuation orders for areas in other neighborhoods of central Gaza City. The military said it had intelligence showing that militants from Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group were in the area, and called on residents to head south to the city of Deir al-Balah.

Israel accuses Hamas and other militants of hiding among civilians. In Shijaiyah, a Gaza City neighborhood that has seen weeks of fighting, the military said troops raided and destroyed schools and a clinic that had been converted into militant compounds.

The war has decimated large swaths of urban landscape and sparked a humanitarian catastrophe.

Israel and Hamas seem to be the closest they have been in months to agreeing to a cease-fire deal that would pause the fighting in exchange for the release of dozens of hostages captured by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war.

CIA Director William Burns returned to the region Monday for talks in Cairo, according to Egypt’s state-run Qahera TV, which is close to the security services. An Israeli delegation was also heading to the Egyptian capital, Israeli media reported.

But obstacles remain, even after Hamas agreed to relent on its key demand that Israel commit to ending the war as part of any agreement. A key part of that shift, officials told AP, is the level of destruction caused by Israel’s rolling offensive.

Hamas still wants mediators to guarantee that negotiations conclude with a permanent cease-fire, according to two officials with knowledge of the talks. The current draft says the mediators — the United States, Qatar and Egypt — “will do their best” to ensure that negotiations lead to an agreement to wind down the war.

Israel has rejected any deal that would force it to end the war with Hamas intact — a condition Netanyahu reiterated Sunday.

Hamas on Monday said it is “offering flexibility and positivity” to facilitate a deal, while accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “putting more obstacles in the way of negotiations.”

Meanwhile, Hamas’ top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, warned mediators of “catastrophic consequences” if Israel continued its operations in Gaza City, saying Netanyahu and the army would bear “full responsibility” for the collapse of the talks, the group said in a subsequent statement.

The two officials said there’s also an impasse around whether Hamas can choose the high-profile prisoners held by Israel that it wants released in exchange for hostages. Some prisoners were convicted of killing Israelis, and Israel does not want Hamas to determine who is released. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the sensitive talks with the media.

Inside Gaza, residents saw no end to their suffering.

Maha Mahfouz fled her home with her two children and many neighbors in Gaza City’s Zaytoun neighborhood. She said their area was not included in the latest evacuation orders but “we are panicked because the bombing and gunfire are very close to us.”

Fadel Naeem, the director of the Al-Ahli hospital, said patients fled the facility even though there was no evacuation order for the surrounding area. He said those in critical condition had been evacuated to other hospitals in northern Gaza.

Marwan al-Sultan, director of the Indonesian Hospital, said it received 80 patients and wounded people from Al-Ahli who were packed into “every corner.”

“Many cases require urgent surgeries. Many cases suffer from direct shots in the head and require intensive care. Fuel and medical supplies are dwindling,” he said in a text message. He said the hospital also received 16 bodies of people killed in the Israeli incursion, half of them women and children.

Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for the Civil Defense first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government, said the neighborhoods of Tufah, Daraj and Shijaiyah had become inaccessible because of Israeli bombing. In a voice message, he said the military shelled houses in Gaza City’s Jaffa area and first responders “saw people lying on the ground and were not able to retrieve them.”

The war has killed more than 38,000 people in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

Hamas’ cross-border raid on October 7 killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, most of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities. The militants took roughly 250 people hostage. About 120 are still in captivity, with about a third said to be dead.

Jerusalem:

The bloodiest ever war in Gaza that broke out exactly six months ago has taken an appalling human toll.

At least 33,175 people have been killed in the besieged Palestinian territory in Israel’s campaign of retaliation for the Hamas attack of October 7, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The unprecedented Hamas raid on southern Israel killed 1,170 Israelis and foreigners, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

While Hamas has refused to say how many fighters it has lost, Israel claims to have killed more than 12,000.

Like many of the casualty figures from the war, this is impossible to confirm independently.

Israel losses

The Hamas attack on October 7 resulted in the death of 1,170 Israelis and foreigners, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

The Israeli army said Sunday that it has lost some 600 troops since the war began, 260 of them killed in Gaza itself since it went in on the ground on October 27.

Seventeen Israelis — soldiers, settlers and civilians — have been killed in violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Eight civilians and 10 Israeli soldiers have died in the north in Hezbollah rocket and missile attacks from Lebanon, with tens of thousands of people displaced.

Of the around 250 Israeli and foreign hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7, 129 remain in Gaza, of which the military says 34 are dead.

The bodies of 12 hostages have been returned to Israel.

The Israel military said 9,100 rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza since October 7.

It has called up 300,000 reservists, 17 percent of them women.

Palestinian losses

Most of the 33,175 people who have been killed in Gaza in Israel’s retaliatory campaign have been women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.

The Israeli military claims to have “eliminated” 12,000 enemy fighters there, including five brigade commanders and 20 battalion commanders.

At least another 459 Palestinians have been killed in violence in the occupied West Bank, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry.

The Israeli military claims to have “eliminated 420 terrorists” in its West Bank operations.

Israel says it has struck 32,000 targets in Gaza from the air since the war began.

Lebanon and Syria

Israeli fire since October has killed at least 359 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters, while at least 70 civilians have also died, according to an AFP tally.

The cross-border fire has displaced tens of thousands of people in southern Lebanon.

Fighters from other groups in Lebanon including Hamas and the Hezbollah-allied Amal movement are also included in the total.

At least 23 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in Israeli strikes in Syria, according to an AFP tally, with seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards killed in a strike on Damascus last week.

Israel says it has struck 1,400 targets from air in Lebanon and 3,300 with artillery, rockets and tanks.

Its military said 3,100 rockets have been fired over the border from Lebanon and 35 from Syria.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A large explosion ripped through the densely packed Jabaliya camp before nightfall, tearing facades off nearby buildings and leaving a deep, debris-littered crater on October 31, with rescuers clawing through the destruction to pull men, women and children from the rubble.

Wails filled the air as hundreds of bystanders and volunteers clawed at concrete blocks and twisted metal looking for survivors.

Israel-Hamas war Day 26 | Follow live updates

Israel said the strike, which targeted a senior Hamas military leader, destroyed a militant command centre and an underground tunnel network.

In the latest war between Israel and Hamas, children were targets on both sides. Israel started its heavy bombardment of Gaza, a tiny Mediterranean land strip of 2.3 million people, on October 7 after Hamas, the Islamist militant group that runs the enclave, carried out an unprecedented cross-border raid, killing at least 1,400 Israelis.

Of the victims, 447 were children and 248 were women, according to Israeli authorities. In retaliation, Israel has cut off food, fuel and power supplies to Gaza, laid siege to the enclave and started bombing it disproportionately. Israel’s President Isaac Herzog suggested there are no innocent civilians in Gaza. In the Israeli attacks, in 22 days, at least 7,700 people were killed, some 70% of them women and children.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the toll includes more than 3,500 minors. The Israeli attacks have also turned more than a million people refugees. Israel ordered one million people living in northern Gaza to move towards the south. Since children make up half of Gaza’s population, they are the hardest hit age category by the displacement as well.

Now that Israel launched its ground invasion, many more Palestinians will be killed, wounded and displaced, which means many more children would be victimised.

Tel Aviv:

The head of Hamas’ aerial unit, Issam Abu Rukbeh, was killed in an overnight airstrike, as confirmed by the Israel Defence Forces and Shin Bet security services. Abu Rukbeh was responsible for overseeing Hamas’ drones, unmanned aerial vehicles, paragliders, aerial detection systems, and air defences.

He played a significant role in planning and executing the October 7 attack by directing terrorists who used paragliders to enter southern Israel and coordinating drone attacks on Israel Defence Forces observation posts.

On October 14, the IDF announced the killing of the previous head of Hamas’s aerial forces, Murad Abu Murad.

The Israel Defence Forces also identified Sgt Shirel Haim Pour, a 20-year-old from Rishon Lezion, as one of the soldiers killed in the October 7 Hamas attack. Her name was cleared for publication after notifying her family, as reported by The Times of Israel.

Sgt Pour served in the Gaza Division, and her death brings the total number of soldiers, officers, and reservists killed in the conflict to 311.

During the Israel Defence Forces’ overnight ground operation in the Gaza Strip, there were several clashes between troops and Hamas terrorists.

Video activity of the IDF Ground Forces in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/FWt0pFO53q

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 28, 2023

However, no soldiers were reported injured in these confrontations.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Air Force fighter jets attacked about 150 underground targets in the northern Gaza Strip tonight.

“During the attack, terrorists of the terrorist organisation Hamas were eliminated and combat tunnels, underground combat spaces and other underground terrorist infrastructures were destroyed,” said IAF in a post on X.

מטוסי קרב של חיל-האוויר תקפו הלילה כ-150 מטרות תת-קרקעיות בצפון רצועת עזה.
במהלך התקיפה חוסלו מחבלים של ארגון הטרור חמאס והושמדו מנהרות לחימה, מרחבי לחימה תת-קרקעיים ותשתיות טרור תת-קרקעיות נוספות. pic.twitter.com/Ojwb7vo285

— Israeli Air Force (@IAFsite) October 28, 2023

The IDF’s infantry, combat engineering forces, and tanks are still present within the Gaza Strip as the ground operation continues. Additionally, the IDF conducted airstrikes targeting approximately 150 underground sites belonging to the Hamas terrorist group, resulting in the deaths of several Hamas militants, The Times of Israel reported.

Separately, on Friday night, the Houthis, an Iranian proxy terrorist organisation based in Yemen, launched a cruise missile toward Israel. The missile struck Taba in Egypt near the border with Israel, injuring six Egyptian security personnel, informed the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi.

This marks the second time the Houthis have launched missiles targeting Israel, with a previous attempt being intercepted by an American battleship. The Israeli embassy also noted that the Houthis follow a policy originating in Tehran, aiming to escalate conflict between Israel and Iranian proxies.

Israel remains committed to using any means necessary to defend itself, and the international community must hold Iran responsible for the potential escalation of conflict between Israel and the Houthis.

Israel also condemned the harm inflicted on Egypt’s security forces by the missiles and drones launched by the Houthi terrorist organisation with the intention of harming Israel.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)