Live Updates | Current US assessment is Israel ‘not responsible’ for Gaza hospital blast, White House says
Palestinians walk past the Al Nuseirat Bakery, destroyed in an Israeli airstrike, in Nusseirat refugee camp Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that limited humanitarian aid would be allowed into Gaza from Egypt following a request from President Joe Biden.
The president’s visit came after hundreds of people were reported killed in an explosion at a Gaza Strip hospital. There were conflicting claims of who was responsible for the hospital blast. Hamas officials in Gaza quickly blamed an Israeli airstrike, saying nearly 500 were killed. Israel denied it was involved and released a flurry of video, audio and other information that it said showed the blast was instead due to a rocket misfire by Islamic Jihad, another militant group operating in Gaza. Islamic Jihad dismissed that claim.
The Associated Press has not independently verified any of the claims or evidence released by the parties.
The war that began Oct. 7 has become the deadliest of five Gaza wars for both sides, with more than 4,000 dead.
More than a million people have fled their homes in the Gaza Strip ahead of an expected Israel invasion that seeks to eliminate Hamas’ leadership after its deadly incursion. Aid groups warn an Israeli ground offensive could hasten a humanitarian crisis.
Here’s the latest on the war:
U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council that the deadly destruction of a hospital has heaped further pressure on Gaza’s crumbling health system, depriving the territory of a facility that cared for 45,000 patients every year.
Speaking in a video briefing from Qatar, Griffiths also said the Al Ahli hospital was previously struck on Oct. 14.
He also said the death toll in the 11 days since Hamas’ surprise attack inside Israel has already exceeded what was seen during seven weeks of Israeli-Hamas hostilities in 2014.
Meanwhile the U.N. Mideast envoy warned that the risk of the conflict expanding is “very real and extremely dangerous.”
Tor Wennesland told the council that recent events “have served to reignite grievances and re-animate alliances across the region.”
Earlier in the day at the U.N., the United States vetoed a resolution that would have condemned violence against civilians in the Israel-Hamas war and pushed for humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza.
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said President Joe Biden was in the region engaging in diplomacy and “We need to let that diplomacy play out.”
A 6-year-old Palestinian American boy who authorities allege was stabbed 26 times by his landlord in response to escalating right-wing rhetoric on the Israel-Hamas war was being remembered as a kind child, while multiple authorities investigate the attack that has become a symbol of larger struggles with hate crime in the U.S.
Crowds of mourners in the heavily Palestinian Chicago suburb of Bridgeview, paid respects Monday as Wadea Al-Fayoume was buried. His mother, who was also critically injured in the attack that led to condemnation from local elected officials to the White House, remained hospitalized.
At a Tuesday evening vigil at a community center, Plainfield Mayor John Argoudelis said he had learned that Wadea liked his Lego toys and playing basketball and soccer and said Wadea sounded like a typical all-American boy.
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An Israeli family of five whose bodies were discovered in each other’s arms after being killed by Hamas militants were buried together in a funeral attended by hundreds of mourners.
Family and friends bid farewell Tuesday to the Kotz family — a couple and their three children who were gunned down in their home at kibbutz Kfar Azza during the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel. They were buried side by side in a graveyard 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Jerusalem.
Aviv and Livnat Kotz, their daughter, Rotem, and sons, Yonatan and Yiftach, were found dead on a bed embracing each other, a family member said.
With Israel simultaneously in a state of war and mourning, the funeral was one of many being held.
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LONDON — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is flying to Israel and nearby countries as part of diplomatic efforts to stop the crisis triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack from worsening.
Sunak’s office says he will meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog on Thursday. He will condemn Hamas’ “horrific act of terror” and express condolences for the “terrible loss of life” in both Israel and Gaza.
He’ll also visit “a number of other regional capitals,” Downing Street said, without providing details.
The British leader’s trip follows a visit to Israel on Wednesday by U.S. President Joe Biden.
Sunak said in a statement that Tuesday’s explosion at the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza “should be a watershed moment for leaders in the region and across the world to come together to avoid further dangerous escalation of conflict.”
U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly is also on a visit to the region that begins with talks in Egypt on Thursday. He is also due to visit Qatar and Turkey.
Survivors recount the al-Ahli Hospital blast that killed hundreds on Tuesday. There were conflicting claims about who was responsible. Hamas blamed Israel. Israel denied this and claimed it was due to a misfire by Islamic Jihad. Islamic Jihad dismissed that claim.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday said Egypt’s president has agreed to open a border crossing into Gaza to allow in 20 trucks with humanitarian aid.
Biden said he spoke with Egypt President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi after his visit to Israel, where leaders there agreed to allow the aid in. Biden was speaking to reporters on Air Force One during a refueling stop in Germany on his way back to the U.S. from Tel Aviv.
Israel sealed off the Gaza Strip, stopping all entry of food, water, medicine and fuel to its 2.3 million people following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.
White House officials said the aid would flow in the coming days. Biden said if Hamas confiscates the aid, “it will end.”
Hundreds of protesters clashed with Lebanese security forces on Wednesday near the U.S. embassy in Beirut. (Oct. 18)
U.S. President Joe Biden, who defended Israel during his visit to Tel Aviv, has become a target of angry protests in support of Palestinians.
Biden’s visit Wednesday came a day after a blast caused massive carnage at a Gaza hospital. Hamas said it was from an Israeli airstrike while Israel blamed a rocket misfired by other Palestinian militants. Biden sided with Israel, saying the explosion appeared to be the work of the “other team.”
The Associated Press has not independently verified any of the claims or evidence released by the parties.
In Amman, a sign hoisted by one protester labeled Biden and Netanyahu war criminals, saying: “Partner in Crime.”
“Today, the Jordanians declare that the Americans are an enemy, just as the Israeli enemy is,” political activist Rania al-Nimr said.
At the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh in south Lebanon, protesters set fire to a cardboard cutout of Biden’s head with a rope around his neck and blood painted over his mouth.
In Tokyo, protesters outside the U.S. Embassy chanted “USA, shame on you” and “Joe Biden, shame on you.”
Hamas is denying Israel’s claims that another militant group was responsible for the massive explosion at a Gaza City hospital that killed hundreds of people.
In a statement Wednesday, Hamas said that in the days before Tuesday’s blast at al-Ahli Hospital, Israeli authorities sent threats to several Gaza Strip hospitals and told each to evacuate otherwise “they will be responsible for what happens.”
Hamas said Israeli forces have targeted several emergency departments and ambulances since the violence began, adding that Israeli military officials contacted 21 hospitals including Al-Ahli, demanding that they evacuate “immediately because they are located in area of operations for the Israeli” army.
There have been conflicting claims about who was responsible for the explosion. Hamas officials in Gaza quickly blamed an Israeli airstrike, saying nearly 500 were killed. Israel denied it was involved and released a flurry of video, audio and other information that it said showed the blast was instead due to a rocket misfire by Islamic Jihad, another militant group operating in Gaza. Islamic Jihad dismissed that claim.
The Associated Press has not independently verified any of the claims or evidence released by the parties.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a Wednesday news release that an estimated 3,000 tons of humanitarian assistance are awaiting entry to Gaza from Egypt.
OCHA said it estimates about one million people are internally displaced, including about 352,000 people sheltering in UNRWA schools in central and southern Gaza “in increasingly dire conditions.”
It said Gaza is “still under a full electricity blackout.”
The families of hostages held in Gaza have harshly criticized the Israeli government’s decision to allow limited humanitarian aid into Gaza.
A statement released Wednesday by the Hostage and Missing Families Forum said the move only increased their suffering.
“Children, infants, women, soldiers, men, and elderly, some with serious illnesses, wounded and shot, are held underground like animals and without human conditions, and the Israeli government pampers the murderers and kidnappers with baklavas and medicines,” the statement read.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said earlier Wednesday that Israel would allow deliveries of food, water and medicine to Gaza, as long as the supplies do not reach Hamas.
Hamas says militants are holding 250 hostages in Gaza.
The United States has vetoed a U.N. resolution that would have condemned violence against all civilians in the Israel-Hamas war including “the heinous terrorists attacks by Hamas” against Israel, and would have pushed for humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza.
Twelve of the 15 Security Council members on Wednesday voted in favor of the resolution sponsored by Brazil. The United States voted against, while Russia and the United Kingdom abstained.
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said after the vote that President Joe Biden is in the region engaging in diplomacy to secure the release of hostages, prevent the conflict from spreading, and stress the need to protect civilians.
U.S. President Joe Biden says an explosion at a Gaza Strip hospital appears to have been caused by the “other team,” not Israel. Biden said his assessment was based on information he’s seen. He did not go into detail.
The White House said Wednesday that a current intelligence assessment shows Israel was “not responsible” for the explosion at a Gaza hospital, but that information was still being collected.
The assessment is “based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said Wednesday in a social media post, following President Joe Biden’s comment to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you.”
There have been conflicting claims of who was responsible for the hospital blast. Officials in Gaza quickly blamed an Israeli airstrike. Israel denied it was involved and released a flurry of video, audio and other information that it said showed the blast was instead due to a missile misfire by Islamic Jihad, another militant group operating in Gaza. The Islamic Jihad dismissed that claim.
The Associated Press has not independently verified any of the claims or evidence released by the parties.
Israel said Wednesday that it will allow Egypt to deliver limited quantities of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the decision was approved in light of a request from visiting U.S. President Joe Biden. In a statement, it said it “will not thwart” deliveries of food, water and medicine, as long as the supplies do not reach Hamas.
Biden said Wednesday that Israel had agreed to allow humanitarian assistance to begin flowing into Gaza from Egypt with the understanding it would be subject to inspections and that it should go to civilians and not Hamas militants.
The statement from Netanyahu’s office made no mention of badly needed fuel and it was not clear when the aid will start flowing. Egypt’s Rafah crossing has only a limited capacity, and Egypt says it has been damaged by Israeli airstrikes.
Israel, which controls most crossings into Gaza, says it will not allow deliveries from its territory. It also demanded that international Red Cross be allowed to visit kidnapped Israelis held captive in Gaza
Israel cut off the flow of food, fuel and water in Gaza following the attack. Mediators have been struggling to break a deadlock over providing supplies to desperate civilians, aid groups and hospitals.
Biden said that he had spoken with the Israeli cabinet “to agree to the delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance of civilians in Gaza.”
“Let me be clear,” Biden said. If Hamas diverts or steals the assistance, they will have demonstrated once again that they have no concern for the welfare of the Palestinian people.”
Biden also said an additional $100 million in humanitarian assistance would be delivered to Gaza and the West Bank.
Israel said Wednesday that it will allow Egypt to deliver limited quantities of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the decision was approved in light of a request from visiting U.S. President Joe Biden.
In a statement, it said it “will not thwart” deliveries of food, water and medicine, as long as the supplies do not reach Hamas.
The statement made no mention of badly needed fuel. It was not clear when the aid will start flowing.
Egypt’s Rafah crossing has only a limited capacity, and Egypt says it has been damaged by Israeli airstrikes.
Israel, which controls most crossings into Gaza, says it will not allow deliveries from its territory. It also demanded that international Red Cross be allowed to visit kidnapped Israelis held captive in Gaza.
A Hezbollah spokesperson says the Lebanese Red Cross has collected the remains of four of the group’s militants.
An AP photojournalist saw three three body bags and a bag of remains transferred from the Lebanese Red Cross to Hezbollah’s Islamic Health Unit at Hiram Hospital, which is near southern Lebanon’s city of Tyre.
The Hezbollah spokesperson said the bodies belonged to militants who were pronounced dead Tuesday. He did not provide details of how they died.
The Lebanese Red Cross had said it was on its way to Lebanon’s tense southern border with Israel to collect the bodies.
The Israeli military said Tuesday that its forces killed four militants who were allegedly carrying an explosive device and suspected of attempting a cross-border operation.
The U.S. announced sanctions on Wednesday against a group of 10 Hamas members and the Palestinian militant organization’s financial network across Gaza, Sudan, Turkey, Algeria and Qatar as it responds to the surprise attack on Israel that left more than 1,000 people dead or kidnapped.
Targeted for sanctions by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control are members who manage a Hamas investment portfolio, a Qatar-based financial facilitator with close ties to the Iranian regime, a key Hamas commander and a Gaza-based virtual currency exchange. Iran is Hamas’ main sponsor.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the U.S. “is taking swift and decisive action to target Hamas’s financiers and facilitators following its brutal and unconscionable massacre of Israeli civilians, including children.”
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The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry revised the death toll from an explosion at a Gaza City hospital down from 500 to 471 on Wednesday but did not elaborate on how authorities reached that figure.
Staff members at al-Ahli Hospital said they could not gauge the toll because the blast had dismembered so many bodies. Hospital director Suhaila Tarazi and Episcopal Church officials that run al-Ahli could only estimate that the toll was “in the hundreds” and refrained from giving an exact number.
Mohammed Abu Selmia, general director of Shifa Hospital where all the wounded and dead were transferred following the explosion, told The Associated Press early Wednesday he believed the death toll was closer to 250, with hundreds more wounded.
A displaced Gaza resident says he was wounded and not killed by a blast at a hospital because he had gone to fetch coffee for a group of men with whom he’d been sitting on a staircase.
“When I returned, they were torn to pieces,” Mohammed al-Hayek, wearing a head cloth covering one injured eye, said. The blood of his relatives and friends splattered the stone walls, he said.
He and his family, including several cousins, had gone to the hospital from the Zeytoun neighborhood, east of Gaza City, thinking it would be a safe place to find refuge.
“No one knows anyone,” al-Hayek said, referring to the difficulty of identifying the victims. “They became pieces, all of those poor people, civilian citizens.”
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki accused Israel of “intentionally” bombing a hospital in Gaza and said the strip’s residents are being subjected to genocide.
Malki, who spoke in Saudi Arabia during a Wednesday meeting of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, alleged the Israeli military had attacked the same hospital two days earlier and warned doctors there.
He added that he thinks the international community is allowing Israel to kill under the “slogan of self-defense.”
Malki asserted that Israeli bombing has killed 1,300 children in the Gaza Strip in past 11 days. Israel’s military retaliated after Hamas militants broke through a border fence and killed more than 1,400 people in the country, according to Israeli authorities.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it has mobilized a convoy carrying 60 tons of aid, including medical supplies, for deployment into Gaza, but it needs safe access to deliver them.
“The recent violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory is at a level that the ICRC has not witnessed in many years,” the Geneva-based humanitarian organization said in a statement Wednesday.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi declared three days of national mourning for those killed in the blast at al-Ahli Hospital and other Palestinians killed in the ongoing Hamas-Israel war. In a statement on social media, El-Sissi blamed Israel for a deadly blast at a Gaza City hospital. The Hamas-led Health Ministry in Gaza says the blast killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians, many of whom were sheltering from Israeli airstrikes at the hospital.
The director of al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza made an urgent and emotional appeal for an end to the latest Hamas-Israel war after a devastating blast there Tuesday night.
Speaking to The Associated Press by phone, Suhaila Tarazi said the grisly scenes she encountered in the aftermath of the explosion were “unlike anything I have ever seen or could ever imagine.” She was not at the hospital at at the time of the Tuesday night blast but described body parts of children strewn everywhere in the hospital and the courtyard.
“Our hospital is a place of love and reconciliation,” Tarazi said. “We are all losers in this war. And it must end.”
Tarazi declined to comment directly on the death toll reported by the Hamas-run Health Ministry of at least 500 victims. “It could be more, it could be less. There are so many body parts that no one can really tell.”
A spokesperson for Hamas in Lebanon praised the decision to cancel a summit in Jordan between Arab governments and U.S. President Joe Biden following a deadly hospital blast in Gaza.
Biden was supposed to meet with Jordanian, Egyptian, and Palestinian leaders on Wednesday in Amman in hopes of resolving the ongoing Gaza-Israel war.
Hamas spokesperson Osama Hamdan called for an immediate cease-fire, a humanitarian corridor into the blockaded Gaza Strip and the continuation of mass regional protests that took place after Tuesday night’s blast at the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City.
He also called for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and Israel to “rise up against the Zionist enemy and clash with it in all cities, villages, and camps.”
Fierce Israeli airstrikes hit houses in Gaza City and the southern border town of Rafah. Near the port, survivors said an Israeli airstrike hit a three-story building belonging to the Haboush family, killing 40 people and wounding 25.
In the central Gaza Strip, an airstrike hit a bakery at the Nuseirat refugee camp and ignited a massive fire that killed four bakers. Dozens of other bakeries across Gaza were forced to shut down due to a lack of water and electricity.
Supermarkets have dwindling supplies and are unable to restock because wholesalers cannot navigate the territory’s ravaged infrastructure to make deliveries.
The World Food Program has warned that Gaza’s population is at “the risk of starvation” if 310 tons of food aid languishing at the Gaza-Egypt Rafah crossing are not urgently let through.
Iran’s top diplomat is calling on Muslim nations to expel their Israeli ambassadors and launch an oil embargo on Israel after an explosion at a hospital in the Gaza Strip.
The comments Wednesday by Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian mark the first time an oil embargo has been discussed as Israel wages war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip after its unprecedented Oct. 7 attack.
“We expect the Islamic countries that have diplomatic relations with the Zionist regime to cut off their relations immediately and expel the Israeli ambassador from their country,” Amirabdollahian said in a clip aired by state television in Iran. “Secondly, the export of oil to the country of Israel and any project that exists between any Islamic state and Israel must be stopped immediately.”
There was no immediate acknowledgment of the call by Israel, nor any other nation. Amirabdollahian made the call while in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for an emergency meeting of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
As people in Gaza continue to suffer from dire shortages of water, food, electricity and fuel, aid organizations are pleading for a humanitarian corridor to allow for the entry of urgently needed supplies.
Jason Lee, Save the Children’s country director for the Palestinian territory, told The Associated Press that until that happens humanitarian agencies will be unable to deliver life-saving and essential assistance — and that time is running out.
“We have no visibility in our offices, on warehouses, the facilities that we have because we have all been told to move south,” he said. Despite this, some Save the Children staff are still delivering what services they can. “It is imperative once again, that the protection of civilians and adherence to international law is paramount. The rights of children apply all the time to every single child in every circumstance.”
Pope Francis has announced an evening prayer service in St. Peter’s Square next week to pray for peace as he begged for an end to the Israeli-Hamas conflict and the unfolding “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza.
Francis announced the day of fasting and prayer Oct. 27 during his weekly general audience Wednesday. He urged all Christians and believers of other faiths to join in with local initiatives, while he presides over an evening hour of prayer in the Vatican.
Francis begged for all sides to do whatever is possible to prevent the war from spreading and to avoid a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, where a blast Tuesday at a hospital killed hundreds.
Saying he was thinking of both Palestinians and Israelis, Francis said the situation in Gaza was desperate.
“Silence the weapons. Listen to the cry for peace of the poor, of the people, of children,” he said. “War never resolves any problem. It only sows death and destruction, increases hatred, multiplies vendettas.”
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi says his country rejects what he calls efforts to force Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, warning that such an effort would jeopardize his country’s peace with Israel.
Speaking at a joint press conference in Cairo with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, el-Sissi said Wednesday that his government views Israel’s siege on Gaza, including cutting off water, food and fuel and preventing humanitarian aid from flowing into the territory as a scheme to expel the Palestinians to Egypt.
“We are rejecting the liquidation of the Palestinian cause and the explosion of Palestinians to Sinai,” the Egyptian leader said, adding that Sinai would be turned into a launching ground for “terrorist attacks” against Israel, which would in turn blame Egypt for such attacks.
He said Egyptians reject such efforts and proposed that Israel move the Palestinians to Negev in Israel until it ends “its announced mission” of destroying Palestinian militant groups.
No humanitarian aid or people were passing through the Rafah border crossing as of Wednesday morning, an Egyptian official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity since he was not authorized to speak with the media.
During an interview with CNN on Tuesday evening, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said Rafah was not open due the damage inflicted by numerous Israeli airstrikes on the access roads linking the Egyptian and the Gaza sides of the crossing.
“The Rafah crossing over the last days has been bombed four times,” Shoukry said. “Among them, once when we were trying to repair some of the damage. Four Egyptian workers were injured.”
Hamas’ border authorities did not immediately respond to AP’s request for comment.
President Joe Biden has arrived in Israel on an urgent mission to keep the Israel-Hamas war from spiraling into a broader regional conflict and to encourage the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.
Air Force One landed at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv on Wednesday morning. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on the tarmac to greet Biden and the two embraced.
Biden and Netanyahu were to meet then hold a broader meeting with members of Israel’s war cabinet. White House officials say Biden will also meet with the country’s first responders and with family members of those who were killed, wounded or taken hostage as part of the surprise attack by Hamas militants on Oct. 7.
Israel responded with a vow to destroy Hamas. The Israeli government also cut off food, fuel, water and other supplies to the Gaza Strip, sparking a humanitarian crisis among Palestinian civilians living there.
Biden’s plans to also meet with Arab leaders in Jordan were called off after hundreds were reported killed in an explosion at a Gaza Strip hospital.
Wounded Palestinians arrive to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, central Gaza Strip, after arriving from al-Ahli hospital following an explosion there, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. The Hamas-run Health Ministry says an Israeli airstrike caused the explosion that killed hundreds at al-Ahli, but the Israeli military says it was a misfired Palestinian rocket. (AP Photo/Abed Khaled)
Shifa Hospital, where hundreds of victims of the al-Ahli Hospital blast were taken, will run out of fuel on Wednesday unless more supplies enter the Gaza Strip, the hospital’s general director says.
The hospital, Gaza’s largest, is stretched far beyond its capacity following the al-Ahli explosion, Mohammed Abu Selmia said Wednesday, adding that health workers were still treating severely wounded patients.
“They are all in a terrible situation,” he told The Associated Press. “A young woman whose limbs were amputated, a child whose intestines came out, many others have had limb amputations, bleeding in the brain, bleeding in the liver and spleen.”
He said earlier that doctors were performing operations on the floor without anesthesia and that a shortage of essential medical supplies was an urgent issue.
If the hospital runs out of fuel, it could be forced into a total shutdown of services, he said, adding that doctors would “remain with the sick and wounded.”
Gaza’s Interior Ministry said Israel renewed airstrikes before dawn on Wednesday and hit locations across the Gaza Strip after the blast at al-Ahli Hospital.
At least 37 people were killed following attacks in the al-Qasasib and Halima al-Saadia areas of Jabalia, north of Gaza, it said.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group says its fighters have hit an Israeli Merkava tank with an anti-tank missile, inflicting casualties among the troops.
The group said the attack early Wednesday targeted an Israeli army position across the border from the Lebanese village of Aita al-Shaab. The Israeli army said it is checking reports that an anti-tank missile was fired from Lebanon.
Jordan canceled a planned summit with President Joe Biden, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II because it “would not be able to stop the war now,” Jordan’s deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs said.
Ayman Al-Safadi said in a statement on Wednesday that “Jordan will continue to work with everyone so that when this summit is held, it will be able to achieve what is required of it, which is to stop the war, deliver humanitarian support to the people of Gaza, and put an end to this crisis.”
The summit, originally scheduled for later Wednesday, was cancelled after a blast at a Gaza City hospital killed hundreds of people, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. Hamas blamed an Israeli airstrike, while the Israeli military blamed a rocket misfired by other Palestinian militants.
The State Department has raised the travel advisory for Lebanon, urging people not to travel to the country “due to the unpredictable security situation related to rocket, missile, and artillery exchanges between Israel and Hizballah or other armed militant factions.”
The advisory issued on Tuesday also urged people to reconsider travel to Lebanon “due to terrorism, civil unrest, armed conflict, crime, kidnapping” and the U.S. Embassy in Beirut’s limited capacity to provide support to U.S. citizens. The State Department authorized the voluntary, temporary departure of family members of U.S. government personnel and some non-emergency personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Beirut due to the unpredictable security situation in Lebanon.
The advisory was hiked to Level 4, “Do not travel” — the highest level — from Level 3, “Reconsider travel.”
A Treasury official said the U.S. IS renewing plans to pursue Hamas funding streams and called on allies and the private sector to do the same or “be prepared to suffer the consequences.”
“We cannot, and we will not, tolerate money flowing through the international system for Hamas’ terrorist activity,” said Brian Nelson, under secretary for terrorism and illicit finance, at an anti-money laundering conference.
“Treasury will bring our tools to bear against Hamas’ financing and the overall funding of terrorism,” he said.
Leaders of Western intelligence services said they are attuned to the potential fallout in their home countries of the deadly attacks by Hamas on Israel.
Representatives from intelligence agencies from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Australia — a coalition known as the “Five Eyes” — convened in California to discuss Chinese economic espionage. But the meeting unfolded against the backdrop of the conflict in the Middle East.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said his agency is working with local law enforcement to address threats of violence against both the Jewish and Muslim communities. It is also working through its legal attache office in Tel Aviv, Israel, to locate and identify Americans who remain unaccounted for after the Oct. 7 attacks.
David Vigneault, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said events like the Hamas attack lead to “soul searching” about “what we know, what we knew, what we can do in our own countries” to protect against similar violence.
Wounded Palestinians sit in al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, central Gaza Strip, after arriving from al-Ahli hospital following an explosion there, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. The Hamas-run Health Ministry says an Israeli airstrike caused the explosion that killed hundreds at al-Ahli, but the Israeli military says it was a misfired Palestinian rocket. (AP Photo/Abed Khaled)
The 22 Arab countries at the United Nations joined in demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza following the devastating explosion and fire at a Gaza City hospital.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador, said Arab Group members are “outraged by this massacre” and also united in demanding the immediate delivery of humanitarian aid and preventing “forcible displacement” of Palestinians.
Mansour said that after the “massacre,” the highest objective is a cease-fire because “saving lives is the most important thing.”
Also Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “horrified” at the deaths and that “hospitals and medical personnel are protected under international humanitarian law.”
The Security Council scheduled a Wednesday vote on a draft resolution that currently condemns “the heinous terrorist attacks by Hamas” against Israel and all violence against civilians. It also calls for “humanitarian pauses” to deliver desperately needed aid to millions in Gaza.
U.S. President Joe Biden said he is “outraged and deeply saddened by the explosion at the Al Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza, and the terrible loss of life that resulted.”
Biden said he spoke “immediately” after hearing the news with King Abdullah II of Jordan and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and “directed my national security team to continue gathering information about what exactly happened.”
“The United States stands unequivocally for the protection of civilian life during conflict and we mourn the patients, medical staff and other innocents killed or wounded in this tragedy,” Biden said in a statement issued after he departed for the Middle East.
He is to visit Israel on Wednesday, but a meeting with Arab leaders in Jordan has been postponed following the destruction at the hospital.
The Palestinain Islamic Jihad group denied Israel’s claim that it was behind the deadly blast at Al-Ahli hospital. It accused Israel of “trying hard to evade responsibility for the brutal massacre it committed.”
“The accusations promoted by the enemy are baseless,” Islamic Jihad said, adding that the group “does not use places of worship or public facilities, especially hospitals, as military centers or weapons stores.”
The group said details such as “the angle of the bomb’s fall and the extent of destruction it left behind” confirm it was similar to Israeli strikes.
The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, also denied Israel’s claim, calling it “lies.”
Jordan has called off a four-way summit scheduled for Wednesday with U.S. President Joe Biden and other leaders, the country’s foreign minister told state-run television.
Ayman Safadi told al-Mamlaka TV that the war between Israel and Hammas was “pushing the region to the brink” and the summit would be postponed.
After visiting Israel Wednesday, Biden had planned to travel to Amman for the meeting.
The White House said Biden had hoped to use the summit to discuss the bloody Oct. 7 Hamas militant attack on Israel with the United States’ Arab allies and the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited autonomy in parts of the occupied West Bank.