Palestinians walk past the rubble of residential buildings destroyed during the war, at the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The Palestinian embassy in Egypt says the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will reopen on Monday (October 20, 2025) for people returning to Gaza.

The embassy announced the development in a statement on Saturday (October 18).

“The number of people registering to return to Gaza is very big,” Naji al-Naji, cultural counsellor at the embassy, told The Associated Press without saying how many.

There was no immediate comment from Israel.

The crossing is Gaza’s only gateway to the outside world that wasn’t controlled by Israel before the war. It has been closed since May 2024, when Israel took control of the Gaza side.

Gaza ‘s ruins were being scoured for the dead on Saturday (October 18), over a week into a ceasefire as newly recovered bodies brought the Palestinian toll above 68,000.

Israel said the remains of a tenth hostage that Hamas handed over the day before were identified as Eliyahu Margalit.

The handover of hostages’ remains, called for under the ceasefire agreement, is among key points — along with aid deliveries into Gaza and the devastated territory’s future — in a process backed by much of the international community to help end two years of war.

Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office said Margalit’s family had been notified. The 76-year-old was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack that sparked the war. His remains were found after bulldozers ploughed up pits in the southern city of Khan Younis.

The effort to find the remaining 18 hostages followed a warning from U.S. President Donald Trump that he would green-light Israel to resume the war if Hamas doesn’t live up to its end of the deal and return them all.

In a statement, the hostage forum that supports the families of those abducted said they won’t rest until the remaining hostages come home. The forum said it will continue holding weekly rallies until all are returned.

Hamas has said it is committed to the terms of the ceasefire deal but that the retrieval of remains is hampered by the scope of the devastation and the presence of unexploded ordnance. The group has told mediators that some remains are in areas controlled by Israeli troops.

As part of the ceasefire agreement, Israel on Saturday (October 18) returned the bodies of a further 15 Palestinians to Gaza. Gaza’s Health Ministry said the International Committee of the Red Cross handed over the bodies to Nasser Hospital, bringing the total number Israel had returned to 135.

In announcing the updated Palestinian death toll, the ministry said the number has climbed since the ceasefire began, with the majority of the newly counted bodies being found during recovery efforts.

Thousands of people are still missing, according to the Red Cross.

Hamas again accused Israel of continuing attacks and violating the ceasefire, asserting that 38 Palestinians had been killed since it began. There was no immediate response from Israel, which still maintains control of about half of Gaza.

On Friday (October 17), Gaza’s Civil Defence, first responders operating under the Hamas-run Interior Ministry, said nine people were killed, including women and children, when their vehicle was hit by Israeli fire in Gaza City. The Civil Defence said the car crossed into an Israeli-controlled area in eastern Gaza.

The Civil Defence said Israel could have warned the people in a manner that wasn’t lethal. The group recovered the bodies on Saturday (October 18) with coordination from the United Nations, it said.

Israel’s army said it saw a “suspicious vehicle” crossing the so-called yellow line and approaching troops. It said it fired warning shots, but the vehicle continued to approach in a manner that posed an “imminent threat.” The army said it acted in accordance with the ceasefire.

Hamas has urged mediators to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza for its 2 million people, expedite the opening of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and start reconstruction of the battered territory.

The flow of aid remains constrained because of continued closures of crossings and Israeli restrictions on aid groups.

U.N. data on Friday (October 17) showed 339 trucks have been offloaded for distribution in Gaza since the ceasefire began. Under the agreement, some 600 aid trucks per day should be allowed to enter.

COGAT, the Israeli defence body overseeing aid in Gaza, reported 950 trucks — including commercial trucks and bilateral deliveries — crossing on Thursday (October 16) and 716 on Wednesday (October 15), the U.N. said.

Throughout the war, Israel restricted aid to Gaza, sometimes halting it altogether.

International food security experts declared famine in Gaza City, and the U.N. says it has verified more than 400 people who died of malnutrition-related causes, including over 100 children.

Israel has long said it let in enough food and accused Hamas of stealing much of it. The U.N. and other aid agencies deny the claim.

Gaza’s Health Ministry is part of the Hamas-run government. It maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. Israel has disputed them without providing its own toll.

Published – October 18, 2025 09:00 pm IST

Palestinians inspect a school sheltering displaced people following an Israeli strike, amid Israel-Hamas conflict, in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, on July 27, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israeli airstrikes hit a school and a hospital in central Gaza on Saturday as the country’s negotiators prepared to meet international mediators to discuss a proposed cease-fire.

At least 30 people sheltering at a girls’ school in Deir Al-Balah were taken to Al Aqsa Hospital and pronounced dead after a strike that Israel’s military said targeted a Hamas command and control centre used to store weapons and plan attacks.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said 11 people were killed in other strikes on Saturday.

Israel’s military ordered the evacuation of a part of a designated humanitarian zone in Gaza ahead of a planned strike on Khan Younis on Saturday, as the country’s negotiators prepare to meet international mediators to discuss a proposed cease-fire.

The evacuation order is in response to rocket fire that Israel said originated from the area. The military said it planned an operation against Hamas militants in the city, including parts of Muwasi, the crowded tent camp in an area where Israel has told thousands of Palestinians to seek refuge throughout the war.

The planned strike comes a day before officials from the US, Egypt, Qatar and Israel are scheduled to meet in Italy and discuss the ongoing hostage and cease-fire negotiations. CIA Director Bill Burns is expected to meet Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani, Mossad director David Barnea and Egyptian spy chief Abbas Kamel on Sunday, according to officials from the U.S. and Egypt who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to discuss the plans.

It’s the second evacuation order issued in a week that has included striking part of the humanitarian zone, a 60-square-kilometer (roughly 20-square-mile) blanketed with tent camps that lack sanitation and medical facilities and have limited access to aid, United Nations and humanitarian groups say. Israel expanded the zone in May to take in people fleeing Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population at the time had crowded.

According to Israeli estimates, about 1.8 million Palestinians are currently sheltering there after being uprooted multiple times in search of safety during Israel’s punishing air and ground campaign. In November, the military said the area could still be struck and that it was “not a safe zone, but it is a safer place than any other” in Gaza.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it was increasingly difficult to know how many people would be affected by the evacuation order because those sheltering under there were constantly being displaced.

“Referring to the orders as evacuation orders don’t do any justice to what this means,” said Juliette Touma, the agency’s director of communications.“These are forced displacement orders. What happens is when people have these orders, they have very little time to move.”

Further north, Palestinians mourned the deaths of seven killed by Israeli airstrikes overnight on Zawaida, in central Gaza. Members of two families — parents and their two children as well as a mother and her two children — were wrapped in traditional Islamic white burial shrouds as community members gathered to perform funeral rights. As men lined up to pray in front of the bodies, weeping friends and neighbours approached individually to pay their final respects.

Deir al-Balah’s Al Aqsa hospital confirmed the count and Associated Press journalists saw the bodies.

The war in Gaza has killed more than 39,100 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The UN estimated in February that some 17,000 children in the territory are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.

The war began with an assault by Hamas militants on southern Israel on October 7 that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. About 115 are still in Gaza, about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.

Palestine Red Crescent Society evacuates casualties, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip, June 16, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Armenia announced on June 21 its recognition of the State of Palestine, the latest country to do so during the war in Gaza, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“Armenia supports a U.N. resolution on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and is in favour of a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” the same statement said.

Also read | 145 countries now recognise a Palestinian state

“Based on the above and confirming its commitment to international law, equality of nations, sovereignty and peaceful coexistence, the Republic of Armenia recognises the State of Palestine,” Yerevan said.

Israel’s war in Gaza since the October 7 attack has revived a global push for Palestinians to be given a state of their own.

The other countries who recognised a state of Palestine are Norway, Spain and Ireland, breaking with the long-held view of Western powers that Palestinians can only gain statehood as part of a negotiated peace with Israel.

(With inputs from agencies)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Tirana, Albania, on October 16, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

The European Union will launch a humanitarian air corridor to Gaza through Egypt with the first flights expected this week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Monday.

Follow Israel-Hamas war, day 10 LIVE updates here

“Palestinians in Gaza are in need of humanitarian help and aid. That is why… we are launching an EU humanitarian air bridge to Gaza through Egypt. The first two flights will start this week,” Ms. von der Leyen told a press conference in the Albanian capital Tirana, where she attended a regional Balkan summit.

The operation is consisting of “several flights to Egypt to bring lifesaving supplies to humanitarian organisations on the ground in Gaza”, a statement from the Commission’s Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid (ECHO) department said.

The first two flights this week will be carrying humanitarian cargo from UNICEF including shelter items, medicines and hygiene kits, it said.

Earlier Monday, Egypt and France’s foreign ministers urged the delivery of humanitarian aid and the exit of foreign nationals from the bombarded Gaza Strip, as the war between Israel and Hamas entered its tenth day.

Israel has been at war since Gaza’s Hamas militants staged an unprecedented attack on October 7 in which its gunmen shot, stabbed and mutilated people in a surprise onslaught that shocked the nation.

The attack and fighting since have killed more than 1,400 in Israel, mainly civilians.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and responded with a heavy bombing campaign on Gaza that has killed around 2,750 people.

According to the United Nations, a million people have been displaced inside Gaza.

Ms. von der Leyen said that there could be “no justification for Hamas’ heinous act of terror.”

“In the face of this horror Israel has the right to defend itself in line with humanitarian and international law,” she said and stressed that Palestinians in Gaza “cannot pay the price of Hamas’ barbarism”.

She reminded that the EU was tripling humanitarian aid to 75 million euros ($79 million) for the Gaza Strip.