Israel-Hamas War: Live Updates and Latest News

Israel’s forces close around Gaza City, a month into a costly war for both sides.

The military campaign — which Israel has said is aimed at both destroying Hamas and rescuing the more than 240 people who were abducted during its devastating Oct. 7 attacks on Israel — has resulted in thousands of deaths in Gaza, despite the United States and other allies urging Israel to be restrained.

The country’s diplomatic relations with a growing number of countries have been disrupted. The Bank of Israel has spent $7.3 billion to bolster the shekel. Arab countries intensified appeals for the United States to pressure Israel into a cease-fire in Gaza — or risk sabotaging the security of the entire Middle East.

Israeli leaders say there can be no cease-fire until Hamas releases the hostages, and say that without the destruction of Hamas, Israel cannot be safeguarded from future attacks from Gaza.

With no signs of when or how the war will end, the increasingly dire conditions are unlikely to ease for the two million civilians in Gaza, more than half of whom are displaced from their homes but unable to leave the territory. Food, water, medical supplies and fuel are critically short, especially in the north, where little aid penetrates. Many hospitals have been forced to shut down, and those still functioning have far too many patients. Doctors say they are performing surgery without anesthesia.

In recent days, Israel has set aside four hours around midday for more civilians to comply with its directives to evacuate to the south. But hundreds of thousands of people remain in northern Gaza, unable or unwilling to risk the journey. Of the many who have fled over the last month, some have been killed en route and some after reaching the southern part of the territory. Others are living on the streets or in makeshift camps.

Israel is unwilling to allow relief supplies to enter on the scale that international aid groups say is needed, and Hamas is unwilling to share with others the food, water, medicine and fuel that Israeli and Western officials say it has stockpiled.

The Hamas government in Gaza says that, in the month of war, the Israelis have killed more than 10,000 Palestinians, without distinguishing between Hamas fighters and noncombatants. Israeli and American officials contend that some of those killed have been Hamas terrorists, but do not dispute that thousands have died, including civilians.

“There’s no question that there have been many thousands killed,” John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday.

International aid organizations and the United Nations have denounced the wide-scale destruction and large numbers of civilian deaths, particularly those of the some 4,000 children reported by the Gaza Health Ministry.

“Ground operations by the Israel Defense Forces and continued bombardment are hitting civilians, hospitals, refugee camps, mosques, churches and U.N. facilities, including shelters,” the U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, said at a news conference in New York on Tuesday. “No one is safe. At the same time, Hamas and other militants use civilians as human shields and continue to launch rockets indiscriminately towards Israel.”

Israelis marked the month of war with memorials, funerals and prayer vigils. The Israeli police said that 834 civilian victims of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack had been identified so far. Hundreds of the dead from that day, which Israel numbers at more than 1,400, remained unidentified or unaccounted for. Experts were still sifting through the ashes of burned houses and incinerated cars in search of human remains.

What future Gaza faces after the war is unclear. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an ABC interview broadcast on Monday, said that Israel would need to oversee the security of the Gaza Strip “for an indefinite period” once the fighting ended to prevent future attacks.

President Biden has warned against another Israeli occupation of the enclave, which Israel withdrew from in 2005. “We’re having active discussions with our Israeli counterparts about what post-conflict Gaza conflict looks like,” Mr. Kirby, the White House national security spokesman, told reporters. “The president maintains his position that re-occupation by Israeli forces is not the right thing to do.”

Netanyahu says Israel could hold a security role in Gaza after the war.

Mr. Netanyahu did not say who he thought should govern the enclave after Hamas, which now governs it, is gone. But asked specifically, Mr. Netanyahu responded only that he thought Israel would “have the overall security responsibility” over the territory indefinitely.

“We’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it,” the prime minister told ABC’s David Muir. “When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale we couldn’t imagine.”

Israel has said its aim is to destroy Hamas, and eliminate the possibility of it repeating an attack like the one on Oct. 7 in southern Israel.

A spokesman for the U.S. State Department, Vedant Patel, said on Tuesday that the United States did not support another occupation of Gaza by Israel — but said that Israel did not either. Israel controlled the coastal enclave from 1967 until 2005, when it unilaterally withdrew, after which Hamas ousted rivals and took control.

Mr. Patel added that Palestinians must be at the forefront of decisions about what government should follow Hamas. “Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land,” he said. He added, however, that “there is no returning to the Oct. 6 status quo,” referring to a Gaza governed by Hamas.

There appeared to be broad political support in Israel for Mr. Netanyahu’s stance on the future of Gaza. Yair Lapid, the centrist opposition leader, said he agreed with the prime minister in an interview on Tuesday on Kan, Israel’s public radio. But he, too, cautioned against taking over Gaza’s government.

“We don’t want to finance schools for the children of Gaza and their hospitals,” he said. “It’s in Israel’s interest to return the Palestinian Authority.” The Western-backed Palestinian Authority exercises partial control over parts of the occupied West Bank and was forced out of Gaza by Hamas in 2007 in a violent struggle, after Hamas won elections the previous year.

“But,” Mr. Lapid added, “the prime minister is right. The security control has to be ours.”

Mr. Netanyahu and his government have not made any final or formal decisions and are having a wide range of discussions about the future of Gaza and the nature of Israel’s role in it, according to a person familiar with the discussions who asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the matter.

But Mr. Netanyahu is leery about giving the Palestinian Authority a role. Weeks before his comments on Monday, Israeli officials were discussing the possibility of dividing Gaza into different zones, similar to what was done with the West Bank under the Oslo Accords. It’s unclear if that idea is still on the table.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has made it clear that the Palestinian Authority should play a central role in the enclave’s future, according to a senior State Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Abbas, who has for years had a contentious relationship with Hamas, has not publicly condemned the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, as he has tried to strike a balance with Palestinians, who have struggled under an Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and with whom he is largely unpopular.

President Biden has warned that it would be “a big mistake” for Israel to reoccupy Gaza, which it withdrew from in 2005, and U.S. officials have said Israel has been “very clear” that it does not want to do so.

Mr. Netanyahu did not elaborate in the ABC interview on what “overall security responsibility” over Gaza would entail but said, “Those who don’t want to continue the way of Hamas” should be in charge.

Military analysts have said Israel faces a tough choice between reoccupying Gaza and withdrawing, warning that the mass displacement and civilian suffering caused by Israel’s airstrikes and ground invasion could risk the emergence of another militant organization promoting violent resistance to Israel.

Mr. Blinken told reporters in Tel Aviv last week that the United States was in talks with Israel and other regional leaders on what comes “the day after,” and that two things were clear: Hamas cannot remain in power, and Israel has no desire to reoccupy Gaza.

Livia Albeck-Ripka and Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.

‘Reoccupation by Israeli forces is not the right thing to do,” a White House spokesman says.

The words of caution came after Mr. Netanyahu said Israel would need to oversee the security of the Gaza Strip once the fighting is over to prevent future attacks. Mr. Netanyahu, in an interview with ABC News, did not say who should govern the enclave after Hamas, which now controls it, is gone. But he said he thought Israel would “have the overall security responsibility” over the territory indefinitely.

President Biden previously said that it would be “a big mistake” for Israel to reoccupy Gaza, from which it withdrew in 2005.

The United States has offered staunch support for Israel since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas, which killed more than 1,400 people, according to Israeli authorities. A post-conflict Gaza, Mr. Biden has said, “can’t be Hamas,” an organization whose founding covenant embraces “killing the Jews” and wiping out Israel. The United States and the European Union have designated Hamas a terrorist group.

But as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza deepens, the United States increasingly is trying to balance its backing for Israel with calls for the protection of Palestinian noncombatants and for “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting.

In just under a month, Israeli strikes have killed more than 10,000 people in Gaza and injured more than 25,000 others, the Gaza Health Ministry said on Monday. The figures from the ministry, which operates under the political arm of Hamas, could not be independently verified, but a Pentagon spokesman, Brig. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, acknowledged that “we know the numbers are in the thousands.”

Mr. Biden spoke with Mr. Netanyahu on Sunday and discussed the need to accelerate and increase the humanitarian assistance going into the enclave, Mr. Kirby said. “He also talked about the importance of pauses in the fighting.”

Mr. Kirby also said the White House is “keeping in our thoughts and prayers the many, many thousands of innocent Palestinians who have been killed in the conflict since Oct. 7, and many more who are injured and wounded in the conduct of the operations.”

“We’re mindful of that suffering as well,” he said.

On Monday, the Israeli prime minister said he would consider “tactical little pauses” of about an hour to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid or allow the exit of hostages held by Hamas.

Asked if the White House considers those sufficient, Mr. Kirby said, “It’s in keeping with the conversations that we’ve been having.”

As war closes in, many civilians remain in northern Gaza.

“It was a horror situation,” she said. “I’m in total shock.” Ms. Al Salya said she believed the shell that hit the car had been fired by an Israeli tank; the Israeli military declined to comment on the incident.

Despite intensifying Israeli ground operations, continued air and artillery strikes, a mounting death toll and a critical lack of resources, hundreds of thousands of people remain in northern Gaza. In interviews, some who have chosen to stay say the trip is too dangerous, or the way has been blocked, or that the south, also being bombed, seems no safer, despite Israeli assurances. For some, the indignities of forced displacement are too much to bear.

Even some foreign-passport holders and dual nationals who are being allowed to leave Gaza say they will not take the deadly risks involved in getting to the only exit, the Rafah border crossing into Egypt. That includes Ms. Al Salya and her family, who are British Palestinians living in Jabaliya, a built-up refugee camp just north of Gaza City, where some of the most intense ground combat has taken place. She said they hope to try again.

Ahmed Ferwana, who lives in the Al Shati camp a short distance to the west, is a Swiss national and was on the list of those who could have left the territory last week, but he thought it was too dangerous to venture to Rafah, about 25 miles away.

“I don’t want to walk to death with my own legs,” he said in a telephone interview on Sunday.

Hours later, his neighborhood was hit by heavy airstrikes that he said lasted all night. Videos on social media and verified by The New York Times showed that an entire block was leveled. It was the most difficult night of the war, Mr. Ferwana said later. But still, he felt it was “better to die at home than to die on the street.”

Asked about reports Israeli troops had fired on civilians on the road, the Israeli military said in a statement that it had been targeting Hamas throughout the Gaza Strip and that its strikes on military targets were subject to international law, including taking “feasible precautions to mitigate civilian casualties.”

The Gazan interior minister, Iyad al-Bazam, said on Tuesday that 900,000 people remained in northern Gaza, and that Jabaliya and Al Shati were the most densely populated areas. David Satterfield, U.S. special envoy for Mideast humanitarian issues, estimated on Saturday that at least 350,000 to 400,000 people remained in northern Gaza.

Others have chosen to head south despite the risks. The Israeli military, having cut off northern Gaza from the south, said it was offering four-hour windows for residents to head south safely in recent days.

About 5,000 people used that lull to make the trip on Monday through areas held by Israeli troops, United Nations monitors said. They trudged south on foot, carrying their small children and belongings.

On Tuesday, an Israeli military spokesman posted footage on X of a caravan of Gazans heading south on foot and waving white flags. The Israeli military has also claimed that Hamas has been physically hindering people’s movement to the south, which Hamas has denied.

Others have left the north only to come back. Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam International’s policy lead for the Palestinian territories, said that her in-laws were among the many people who had abandoned their homes in Gaza City, only to return. In their case, the place where they had sought refuge, in central Gaza, received an evacuation order from the Israeli military.

“My father-in-law said ‘I’d rather die with dignity in my own home than die in a stranger’s house,’” she said.

Their neighborhood, Rimal, once an elegant part of the city, has been pummeled by airstrikes. They are alternating between nights at home and camping out near Al Shifa Hospital, along with tens of thousands of other displaced people, Ms. Khalidi said.

Many Palestinians had hoped the hospital and the adjacent area would be spared, but there have been Israeli strikes there, too, including one on Friday that the hospital chief, Dr. Mohammad Abu Salmiya, said killed 13 people. The top floor of one hospital building was hit on Monday, killing a child and wounding 10 others, he said.

Israel has charged that Hamas is operating a command center underneath Al Shifa, which is the territory’s largest hospital; Hamas denies that.

“We won’t leave the hospital no matter what happens,” Dr. Abu Salmiya said.

Israel has besieged Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks in Israel, allowing only limited deliveries of food, water and medical supplies through the Rafah crossing — far less than humanitarian groups say is needed.

Conditions are worst in the north, where almost no aid has been delivered. And Israel has not allowed any fuel into Gaza, despite its importance to operating water and hospital equipment, the territory’s only power plant, delivery trucks, ambulances and generators.

Ms. Khalidi stressed that without a cease-fire, there was no way to safely deliver aid anywhere in the territory.

“How are humanitarian workers supposed to deliver aid when there’s bombings, the roads are damaged and we have direct evidence of indiscriminate attacks?” she said.

Arijeta Lajka, Riley Mellen, and Iyad Abuheweila contributed reporting.

A month after Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on Israel, victims’ remains are still being discovered.

But a month after the attacks on Israel in which hundreds of heavily armed Hamas assailants surged across the border from Gaza, Israel has yet to declare an official day, or days, of mourning for the roughly 1,400 people killed in the assault.

In Judaism, the 30th day after a funeral traditionally ends a formal mourning stage for bereaved relatives, a period known as shloshim. But with Israel now at war with Hamas in Gaza, hostages still being held in the enclave and the painstaking identification process ongoing, Israelis instead commemorated the deadliest day in Israel’s 75-year history in other ways.

On Tuesday, the police issued updated figures, saying that 834 civilian victims had been identified so far, and that the remains of 736 had been transferred for burial. Israeli archaeologists are still sifting through the ashes of burned houses and incinerated cars in search of human remains and in hopes of accounting for some of the missing.

Using the same techniques that they employ at ancient sites, archaeologists have found evidence of at least 10 more people who were previously considered missing, the government said.

The Israeli military has an online memorial site for fallen soldiers. About 311 were killed on Oct. 7 and at least 37 more have since been killed in the fighting in Gaza and along the northern border with Lebanon, nearly three times the number of soldiers killed in Israel’s last major war, a 34-day battle against Hezbollah in 2006.

Many in Israel, a country of some nine million people, know someone who was directly affected by the attacks. Many have been directly affected themselves.

Amir Zini, the father of Niral Zini, who was killed on Oct. 7, mourned his son during a memorial service held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Tuesday. “Time has come to a standstill,” he said.

Around the country, Israelis lit candles, or mourned in personal ways. They held out hope for the more than 240 hostages believed to have been abducted on Oct. 7. So far, Hamas has released four hostages, and Israeli forces rescued another one.

On Monday night, actors and singers read stories by 240 empty beds set up as an artistic installation in the Habima Theater Square in Tel Aviv, representing the hostages, who include infants, children and grandparents.

After nightfall on Tuesday, a group for families of those missing and held hostage planned a special ceremony and prayer vigil at the Western Wall, the Jewish holy site in Jerusalem.

The hostages’ families and supporters have set up a permanent vigil in another square in central Tel Aviv. David Goldstein, 73, whose son Nadav, 49, and granddaughter Yam, 20, were killed on Oct. 7, held a poster at a recent rally with portraits of four of the hostages in Gaza: his daughter-in-law, Chen Goldstein Almog, 49, and three grandchildren, Agam, 17; Gal, 11; and Tal, 9.

“I am very fearful,” Mr. Goldstein said. “What they took away from us won’t come back. What can be returned must be returned.”

Thailand hopes its hostages in Gaza will be the next to be released.

Thai nationals comprise the second largest group of the estimated 240 people taken hostage, after Israelis.

Thailand has been trying to reach Hamas through intermediary governments in Iran, Qatar, Egypt and Malaysia. Officials from Malaysia, which hosts Hamas-linked representatives and does not maintain diplomatic relations with Israel, have told their counterparts in Thailand that the Thai hostages are alive, and the Thai army chief has seen photos of the captives, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin of Thailand said on Monday.

Mr. Srettha did not specify how many hostages were shown in the photos. But he said that he was hopeful that the Thais would be released as soon as there is a lull in the Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

Mr. Parnpree went to the Middle East last week to work on securing their release. On Tuesday, he said that he, too, had seen photos of hostages in “the Gaza area” but that they were blurry and he could not be sure whether the people were Thais.

Few images of the hostages in captivity have been seen publicly since the abductions, apart from two videos that Hamas released. Last month, photos published on social media showed a group of Thai hostages, purportedly in Gaza, sitting cross-legged as a masked man aimed an assault rifle at them. It wasn’t clear if the photos Mr. Parnpree said he saw were different from the ones released earlier.

In total, four hostages have been released from Gaza, and one was rescued by Israeli forces.

The hostages in the photos seen by Mr. Parnpree had black hair, he said, and were sitting cross-legged in a room with people of other nationalities and looked “lively.” They were not obviously tied up, he said.

Officials in Qatar and Egypt told him that the Thais in Gaza are being held in two or three separate groups, and that some were being held by armed groups other than Hamas.

To be released, the Thais would need to be brought together to cross to safety in Egypt, Mr. Parnpree said. The Egyptian government is willing to receive the hostages at the Rafah border crossing, he said.

Roughly 30,000 Thais were working on farms in Israel when Hamas militants poured over the border from Gaza last month. At least 34 were killed in the terrorist attacks, the Thai Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday. Israelis who have been helping the traumatized Thai community there estimate that 80 Thais were killed, taken hostage or missing and presumed dead.

Muslim negotiators from Thailand traveled to Tehran late last month to meet with Iranian and Hamas officials who promised to work on the release of the hostages, one of the negotiators said. About 10 percent of people in Buddhist-majority Thailand are Muslim. Most of the Thai farmworkers in Israel are Buddhists from the country’s impoverished northeast.

On Tuesday, Watsana Yojampa, the mother of Anucha Angkaew, one of the presumed Thai hostages whose photo in confinement was published on social media last month, said that she had not had any communication with Thai or Israeli government officials about her son’s status.

Still, after having heard Thai news reports about the photos and the negotiations, Ms. Watsana’s mood had lifted, she said.

“I have hope now,” Ms. Watsana said. “I feel lighter.”

Iran’s leader emphasizes ties with Iraq, after the U.S. warned against widening the war.

The Biden administration is seeking to contain the war, and Mr. Blinken asked Mr. al-Sudani to hold responsible those found to have carried out attacks against U.S. personnel, making it clear that the United States would retaliate if Iran did not rein in its proxy forces.

Mr. Khamenei’s public remarks appeared to dismiss Washington’s warnings.

“The Islamic Republic and Iraq must coordinate with one another to have more impact,” said Mr. Khamenei in the meeting with Mr. al-Sudani, according to the Iranian media reports.

The Pentagon said on Monday that there had been 38 attacks on U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq since Oct. 17 and that at least 46 U.S. service members had been injured, 25 of whom had suffered traumatic brain injuries. On Oct. 27, the United States carried out airstrikes on two sites in Syria that it said were linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps in retaliation for the attacks on U.S. forces.

Mr. Khamenei has repeatedly pledged to destroy Israel and repel U.S. military forces from the region, and the leaders of militant groups in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Gaza view Mr. Khamenei as a powerful ally, often seeking his advice and consulting with him on strategic issues.

Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniya, was in Tehran on Sunday with a delegation of Hamas officials and also met with Mr. Khamenei, according to Iranian media. The two discussed Israel’s war with Hamas, the killing of Palestinian civilians and tensions in the West Bank, according to a brief official readout of the meeting in Iranian media.

Mr. Khamenei told Mr. Haniya that Iran would continue to “fully support Palestinian resistance groups,” in line with its long-held policy, and called on Islamic countries to support the people of Gaza. It was not clear from the Iranian news reports whether Mr. Haniya had requested more military or funding assistance from Mr. Khamenei or whether the two had discussed if and when Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the strongest of the proxy militia, should enter the war to aid Hamas. On Tuesday, Iranian media reported that Mr. Haniya was in Turkey to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkish media reported only that he might meet with the Turkish leader.

Iranian officials have publicly confirmed exchanging messages with Washington and said they do not seek a wider war, nor a direct confrontation with the United States. But they have also warned that if Israel’s military operations continue to kill Palestinian civilians, the region could, as Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, put it, “spiral out of control.”

Mr. Abdollahian said in an interview last week with The New York Times that the Israel-Hamas war had created a sense of unity among Iran and Arab Muslim countries, including Iranian allies like Iraq and Qatar, as well as rivals like Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

“The scope and intensity of Israeli regime’s crimes has resulted in unity, cohesion and cooperation among regional countries and Muslim countries,” Mr. Amir Abdollahian said. “We all feel security is an intertwined issue, if there is instability on one part of the region it will spread to other parts as well.”

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington and Safak Timur from Istanbul.

South Africa recalls diplomats from Israel in latest strain over the war in Gaza.

In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Haiat said Israel “totally rejects the accusation by the South African government.”

“The responsibility for the atrocities that happened on Oct. 7 and the resulting war in the Gaza Strip is entirely on Hamas,” Mr. Haiat said in the interview, referencing the date of the terrorist attack that killed 1,400 people and resulted in some 240 hostages being taken by the group.

The decision, which was announced at a news conference on Monday by Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, the South African minister in the presidency, comes days after Bolivia severed its relations with Israel, and after Chile and Colombia said they would recall their ambassadors. Several other countries, including Turkey and Jordan, have also recalled their ambassadors since the war in Gaza began.

In a statement announcing the decision, the office of the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, said Israel had refused to abide by international law during its military campaign against Hamas, which has killed more than 10,000 people in Gaza and injured more than 25,000 others, the Gaza Health Ministry said this week.

The world “sat helplessly and watched as intensifying airstrikes on Gaza and the West Bank have destroyed schools, health facilities, ambulances and civilian infrastructure and supposedly safe roads traveling to the south of Gaza,” the statement said.

Mr. Ramaphosa’s office also said it viewed Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as a form of apartheid, the racist system under which South Africans were governed between 1948 and the early 1990s. Mr. Ramaphosa was an anti-apartheid activist in the 1970s and 1980s.

Israel has vigorously rejected comparisons between itself and apartheid-era South Africa, but they have become more widespread in recent years, and the accusation of apartheid has been endorsed by international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as Israeli rights groups B’Tselem and Yesh Din.

In a tense debate at the United Nations last year, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., accused those who described his country as an apartheid state of engaging in “a jihad war against the only vibrant democracy in the Middle East,” according to the Associated Press.

“Make no mistake, this is a joint campaign between these organizations and the Palestinians with the mission of delegitimizing Israel as a Jewish democratic state,” Mr. Erdan said.

The accusation has also strained relations between Israel and South Africa. At the news conference on Monday, Ms. Ntshavheni said the position of Israel’s ambassador to South Africa, Eliav Belotserkovsky, “is becoming very untenable” following “disparaging remarks” Mr. Belotserkovsky has made toward South African critics of Israel.

Thousands of Gazans fled south during a window given by Israel, the U.N. says.

Because of heavy damage to roads leading to the main junction to travel south, the only option to flee south was on foot, according to a report from the United Nations’ humanitarian and emergency relief office on Monday. During the 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. window given by the Israeli military, during which it said it would allow traffic along the corridor, children and older and disabled people were walking long distances carrying their belongings to leave northern Gaza, the report said.

Over the weekend, Israeli officials renewed their calls for civilians to move south. The Israeli military said an attempt to open a passage on Saturday was thwarted by a Hamas attack, a claim that could not be verified. On Sunday, fewer than 2,000 people left during a four-hour window, according to the report.

Israel has accused Hamas of preventing Gazan civilians from leaving their homes in order to use them as “human shields,” which Hamas denies. Gazans who have heeded the warnings and gone south have said they faced Israeli bombardment along the way, as well as after arriving in the southern half of the territory.

Late Sunday, the military said that after two Israeli columns surrounded Gaza City, the Gaza Strip was in effect divided in half. “Essentially today there is a northern Gaza and a southern Gaza,” said Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military’s chief spokesman.

The U.N. says the war has been the deadliest ever for its personnel.

On Sunday, the leaders of United Nations agencies and other humanitarian groups issued a joint statement calling for an immediate cease-fire, saying, “Enough is enough. This must stop now.”

In the statement, they expressed “shock and horror” at the loss of life and called for the immediate release of hostages taken during the Hamas attacks in Israel last month. They noted that “more than 100 attacks against health care” had been reported and that “scores of aid workers” had been killed since the attacks and Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes on Gaza.

Of the loss of U.N. staff members, Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for UNRWA, said: “The number goes up every day.”

“They are killed in the north, the middle and the south, men and women, some at home, some at displacement shelters, some bringing refugees to the shelters,” she added.

One staff member was killed as he waited in line for bread, she said, and another was killed at home with his wife and eight children. Most worked in the agency’s schools in Gaza, she said.

The World Health Organization said 16 health care workers had died while on duty in Gaza, and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said its member organizations had lost seven staff members in the war.

The fatalities, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said, included three medical staff of Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency medical service, who were killed as they tried to rescue people from the kibbutzim under attack by Hamas and take them to the hospital.

It also said it lost four paramedics working for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Gaza as they treated casualties from the bombardment and tried to bring the wounded to the hospital.

“What happened in a couple of days is for us deeply worrying and shocking,” said Tommaso Della Longa, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. “It’s a reminder there is no respect for humanitarian teams in general.”

The humanitarian leaders, in their statement, condemned the deaths of some 1,400 Israelis and the continuing trauma for civilians exposed to rocket attacks. They also said the number of civilians killed in Gaza and the cutoff of essential supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel was “an outrage.”

The signatories included Martin Griffiths, the U.N.’s chief official for humanitarian and relief affairs, and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says the death toll there exceeds 10,000.

Last month, President Biden cast doubt on death toll numbers coming from the Health Ministry, without offering an explanation. However, its statistics were considered credible enough for the U.S. State Department to cite them in a report released this year that covered previous conflicts.

After Mr. Biden’s remarks, the Health Ministry released a list with the names, ages, genders and ID numbers of all those it counted in its death toll, except for 281 whose remains were unidentifiable. The list included multiple members of numerous families, including 88 from one extended family.

Even before the latest hostilities, more than two million people in Gaza, about half of them children, were trapped by a 16-year Israeli blockade of the territory. After Hamas launched terrorist attacks on Oct. 7 in which, Israeli officials say, more than 1,400 people were killed and more than 240 abducted, Israel began a military campaign it said was aimed at destroying the group.

The grim update on civilian deaths came as Gaza was emerging from a third communications blackout, which coincided with heavy Israeli attacks.

On Monday, the head of the United Nations again urged an immediate humanitarian cease-fire, painting a dire picture. “Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children,” Secretary General António Guterres told reporters.

“Hundreds of girls and boys are reportedly being killed or injured every day,” Mr. Guterres said. “More journalists have reportedly been killed over a four-week period than in any conflict in at least three decades. More United Nations aid workers have been killed than in every comparable period in the history of our organization.”

In the first days of its strikes, the Israeli Air Force said it had dropped more than 6,000 bombs on the Gaza Strip, which covers an area roughly half the size of New York City.

On Monday, Mr. Guterres said the bombardment had struck “civilians, hospitals, refugee camps, mosques, churches, and U.N. facilities, including shelters.”

Israeli officials have so far resisted calls from the United Nations, international aid groups and protesters in Israel and around the world for a humanitarian pause. But the need for a cease-fire is becoming more urgent by the hour, said the secretary general, pointing to what he said were “clear violations” of international law in the conflict.

“No one is safe,” he said.

The U.S. approves a $320 million sale of guided bomb equipment to Israel.

Israel has been using the kits during its bombing campaign in Gaza. According to the Gaza health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government in the enclave, the Israeli strikes have resulted in the deaths of about 10,000 Palestinians, 40 percent of whom are young children and teens.

Israel has ordered more munitions from the United States alongside the equipment for guided bomb kits. Modern militaries generally add the guidance systems on their bombs with the goal of minimizing civilian casualties, although the damage can still be devastating, especially in urban areas.

Israel’s arsenal of air munitions is made up largely of 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs, among the largest used by any military force. Israel dropped at least two 2,000-pound bombs in an airstrike on Oct. 31 on the dense Jabaliya neighborhood of Gaza. That strike killed dozens of people and injured many more, according to Gazan authorities and hospital officials.

Israel says it had successfully targeted a senior Hamas commander who helped plan the Oct. 7 attacks launched from Gaza, in which Hamas fighters and other armed men killed what Israel says was more than 1,400 people, most of them Israeli civilians, and abducted more than 240 others. Hamas denies that any of its commanders were in the Jabaliya area at the time of the Oct. 31 strike.

The State Department happened to send its letter on the new sale of bomb equipment to congressional offices on the day of that strike on Jabaliya. The letter says that Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, a weapons maker owned by Israel’s Defense Ministry, is paying $320 million for equipment and services for “Spice Family Gliding Bomb Assemblies,” a reference to a type of precision bomb kit made by Rafael. The seller of the equipment is Rafael USA, an American company based in Bethesda, Md., that has links to the Israeli enterprise.

The sale is one in which a foreign entity is purchasing armament directly from an American company rather than through the U.S. government, so the State Department is only required to disclose its approval in narrow channels. The congressional register notes the State Department filed the letter on Oct. 31, but the letter is not available on any public congressional websites or on the State Department’s site.

The letter was sent from Naz Durakoglu, the assistant secretary for legislative affairs, to House Speaker Mike Johnson, as well as to the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, both of which monitor the State Department’s approval of weapons sales.

The Israeli request for authorization to buy the $320 million of bomb equipment was placed earlier this year and had gone through an informal review process with the congressional committees, but had not received final State Department approval before the Oct. 7 attacks, said Josh Paul, a recent State Department official who worked in the political-military bureau, which oversees weapons sales.

The earlier order placed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems for the same type of equipment, and valued at almost $403 million, was approved by the department on Feb. 5, according to the letter.