Live Updates | Current US assessment is Israel ‘not responsible’ for Gaza hospital blast, White House says

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.”

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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.

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military says it had no involvement in an explosion that killed hundreds of people at a Gaza City hospital and that the blast was caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket.

The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza says an Israeli airstrike caused the blast, which killed some 500 people, many of whom had sought shelter from an ongoing Israeli offensive.

The Israeli military, however, said Palestinian militants fired a barrage of rockets near the hospital.

“Intelligence from multiple sources we have in our hands indicates that Islamic Jihad is responsible for the failed rocket launch,” it said.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — A chaotic scene unfolded at Al Shifa hospital Tuesday night as Palestinians injured in an attack on another hospital in Gaza City arrived for treatment.

The Hamas-run Health Ministry said an Israeli airstrike killed at least 500 people at al-Ahli Hospital.

Photos purportedly taken at al-Ahli Hospital shared widely on social media showed fire engulfing the building, with bodies scattered among the wreckage. Those photos could not be independently verified.

Footage captured by The Associated Press showed ambulances and private cars converging on Al Shifa hospital, where medics and others rushed the injured inside on stretchers and a wheelchair.

One person had a bloody stump where their left leg was missing. Four men carried a body bag to a civil defense vehicle.

Inside Al Shifa, the wounded were laid out on bloody floors, screaming in pain, as shouting people surrounded them. Some of the injured were not moving. Workers in scrubs ran outside and sirens wailed as more Red Crescent ambulances arrived.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — A senior Palestinian official says President Mahmoud Abbas has canceled his participation in a meeting scheduled Wednesday with President Joe Biden and other Mideast leaders.

Abbas was scheduled to join Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi at Wednesday’s summit in Amman, Jordan, where they are to discuss the Israel-Hamas war with Biden.

But the senior official said Abbas was withdrawing to protest an alleged Israeli airstrike on a hospital in Gaza that health officials say has killed over 500 people.

“The president is very angry after the news of the Israeli massacre at the hospital in Gaza, and he decided to immediately return to Ramallah,” the official said.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the cancelation has not been formally announced.

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Associated Press writer Isabel DeBre contributed to this report from Jerusalem.

LONDON — The families of Israel’s dead are holding funerals and mourning in the wake of Hamas’ deadly rampage. The loved ones of people thought to have been taken hostage are demanding the captives’ release.

But nearly two weeks after the worst civilian massacre in Israel’s history, the families of the missing are wandering through a landscape of pain and numbness with no clear horizon and few, if any answers. The not-knowing, they say, plunges them into cycles of sorrow and hope.

“I don’t know what will be,” said Rachel Goldberg, whose 23-year-old son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin was last seen being loaded into a pickup with other hostages abducted by the Hamas militants from the Tribe of Nova music festival. Witnesses said he lost part of an arm in a grenade attack.

“So in the meantime, I just keep walking through hell, because if I stop, then I’m just in hell,” his mother said.

The Associated Press has documented more than 250 people who disappeared in the attacks. Of those, around 140 are confirmed as likely hostages, whether by witnesses who saw them being taken away by Hamas militants, army information given to their families, or by their appearances on social media posted by Hamas.

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NUSAIRAT, Gaza Strip _ Palestinians desperate for water lined up to fill bottles and large jugs Tuesday at a desalination plant in Gaza.

Children and men took turns using a hose in Nusairat to fill containers that they hauled away using bicycles, a wheelchair and a cart pulled by a donkey.

Ismael Al-Hafi said people are rationing the water they can find and wait two or three days to clean themselves.

“This is suffering,” Al-Hafi said. “Gaza is in complete collapse. There is no solar to operate the desalination plants. This means that you have to struggle to fill two gallons of water. This is suffering. May God help the people.”

The Gaza Health Ministry said an Israeli airstrike Tuesday hit a Gaza City hospital packed with wounded and other Palestinians seeking shelter, killing hundreds. If confirmed, the attack would be by far the deadliest Israeli airstrike in five wars fought since 2008.

Photos from al-Ahli Hospital showed fire engulfing the hospital halls, shattered glass and body parts scattered across the area. The ministry said at least 500 people had been killed.

Several hospitals in Gaza City have become refuges for hundreds of people, hoping they would be spared bombardment after Israel ordered all residents of the city and surrounding areas to evacuate to the southern Gaza Strip.

Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said there were still no details on the hospital deaths: “We will get the details and update the public. I don’t know to say whether it was an Israeli air strike.”

CAIRO — Egypt is still negotiating with Israel on the delivery of humanitarian assistance and fuel to Gaza from its crossing points, Rafah and Kerem Shalom, a senior Egyptian official said as trucks loaded with aid waited for permission to cross into the besieged territory.

The official said Israel is searching all aid deliveries and wants to “ensure that such aid won’t benefit Hamas.” The official requested anonymity because he does not have permission to discuss the negotiations.

He said they’re also negotiating a compromise that would allow foreign passport holders to cross into Egypt. Egypt has proposed that the United Nations oversee the process with help from Egyptian forces, the official said. Israel has yet to respond to the proposal.

The U.S., Qatar, the U.N. and several European countries are involved in the talks, which are led by security agencies in Egypt and Israel, the official said.

___

Associated Press writer Sam Magdy contributed to this report.

The World Food Program says it has tons of aid arriving in Egypt from warehouses around the region, ready to enter Gaza.

The Rome-based agency warned earlier Tuesday that stores in Gaza only have four or five days’ worth of essential food stocks available.

Video provided by WFP showed crates of aid arriving by cargo plane at the Arisha airbase in Egypt from warehouses in Dubai, bound for the Rafah crossing. WFP said it has mobilized 310 metric tons (305 tons) of food so far, including fortified biscuits and ready-to-eat meals sufficient to feed 244,000 people for a week, as well as canned food and date bars.

WFP’s Palestine country director, Samer Abdeljaber, said the agency is waiting for the green light to enter Gaza and warned that food stocks are running out. He said the number of bakeries WFP works with in Gaza is decreasing daily because they don’t have enough water or electricity to bake bread.

A hospital in the southern Gaza city of Rafah says it has received two Israeli warnings to evacuate the facility even though it is in the area where Israel told civilians to take refuge.

Sohaib al-Hams, director of the Kuwaiti Specialist Hospital, said staff would not abandon the hospital, which continues to receive patients amid relentless Israeli airstrikes.

“We will not leave our places and we will not let our people down,” al-Hams said in a video on the hospital’s official Facebook page, adding that Gazan hospitals are the final red line and that Israel had crossed all the others.

Officers in the office of the Israeli army spokesman were not immediately available for comment on why a hospital located in an area where civilians were told to flee was receiving an evacuation order.

Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, said Tuesday that an Israeli airstrike in the central Gaza Strip killed top militant commander, Ayman Nofal.

Nofal is most high-profile militant to be killed so far in Israeli bombardment on the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military says it is targeting Hamas hideouts, infrastructure and command centers.

Clashes erupted again Tuesday on the border between Lebanon and Israel, where Israeli forces and armed groups in Lebanon have engaged in a series of low-level skirmishes since the outbreak of the latest war in Gaza.

An anti-tank missile fired from Lebanon landed in the town of Metula in northern Israel Tuesday morning, injuring three people, according to the Ziv Medical Center in Safed.

No group in Lebanon has immediately claimed responsibility. It was not clear if the injured were civilians or soldiers, but Israel has ordered civilians to evacuate the area near the border with Lebanon.

Israel responded by striking several areas along the border in southern Lebanon with artillery fire and white phosphorus, the state-run National News Agency in Lebanon reported. The Israeli military said its tanks fired back into Lebanon after an anti-tank missile was launched across the border.

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The mother of a young Israeli woman held by Hamas appealed for her release on Tuesday, calling the seizure of some 200 hostages by the Palestinian militant group “a crime against humanity.”

A day earlier, Hamas’ military wing released a video showing a dazed Mia Schem, 21, having her arm wrapped with bandages. It was the first sign of life from any of the hostages since Gaza-based gunmen smashed through border fortifications on Oct. 7, killing more than 1,400 people in Israel.

“I didn’t know if she’s dead or alive until yesterday,” her mother, Keren Schem, said at a news conference. “All I knew is that she might be kidnapped. I’m begging the world to bring my baby back home. She only went to a party, to a festival party to have some fun. Now she’s in Gaza.”

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The United States has responded to Hamas’ release of a hostage video by calling on the group to immediately release all hostages.

“There should be no reason for them to have any hostages in the first place,” said U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby on American TV Tuesday.

Asked if he believed the woman in the video, identified as 21-year-old Mia Schem, was being treated OK, Kirby said she was “probably forced” to record the message.

“There’s no question in my mind that that woman gave that video testimony under duress, probably forced to do it,” Kirby said on NBC’s “Today.”

“It’s a propaganda video much more than it is proof of life or, certainly, proof of concept for Hamas. It’s despicable, deplorable that they would take these hostages and then advertise how well they’re treating them when they’re the ones who hurt them in the first place.”

The Israel-Hamas war is affecting oil markets already stretched by cutbacks in oil production from Saudi Arabia and Russia and expected stronger demand from China, the head of the International Energy Agency said Tuesday.

“As we see the tensions in the Middle East, the market becomes much more jittery, and it is definitely not good news coming out of this crisis,” Fatih Birol, executive director of the Paris-based IEA, told The Associated Press.

“We may very well see much more volatile prices, and it can push prices higher, which is definitely bad news for inflation,” he added.

Developing countries that import energy would be the most affected by higher prices, Birol said.

International benchmark Brent crude traded close to $90 per barrel on Tuesday, up from $85 on Oct. 6, the day before Hamas attacked Israel. Fluctuations last week pushed prices as high as $96.

In addition to dire water shortages, Gaza is running out of food stocks with only a few days worth of supplies remaining in shops, the World Food Program says.

Shops only have four or five days’ worth of essential food stocks available, said spokeswoman Abeer Etefa. There is enough food in warehouses to last about two weeks, but these are difficult to access because they are located in Gaza City, where Israel has ordered residents to evacuate.

Out of five mills in Gaza, only one is operating due to security concerns and the unavailability of fuel and electricity. Etefa said the primary challenge for WFP is being able to get food to shops amid the constant bombardment. Long lines have formed outside the few bakeries that are still able to operate.

The U.N. human rights office is decrying “appalling reports” that civilians who were trying to flee to southern Gaza were hit and killed by a military strike.

Spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani urged Israeli forces to avoid “aerial bombardments, indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks” and to “take precautions to avoid – and in any case, to minimize – loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.”

She said those who managed to evacuate are now trapped in southern Gaza with scant access to shelter, food, water, sanitation and medicine.

“Appalling reports that civilians attempting to relocate to southern Gaza were struck and killed by an explosive weapon, must be independently and thoroughly investigated as must all allegations of serious violations of international humanitarian law,” she said.

Shamdasani also reiterated the call from the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights to Palestinian armed groups “to immediately and unconditionally release all civilian hostages and to halt the use of inherently indiscriminate projectiles against Israel.”

From its first months in office, the Biden administration made a distinctive decision on its Middle East policy: It would deprioritize a half-century of high-profile efforts by past U.S. presidents, particularly Democratic ones, to broker a broad and lasting peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

Since Richard Nixon, successive U.S. administrations have tried their hands at Camp David summits, shuttle diplomacy and other big-picture tries at coaxing Israeli and Palestinian leaders into talks to settle the disputes that underlie 75 years of Middle East tensions. More than other recent presidents, Joe Biden notably has not.

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For hours and hours, Moen Abu Aish digs through the rubble of demolished homes to find survivors of Israeli airstrikes, toiling in a vast and desperate search complicated by the shortage of critical supplies and the sheer scope of destruction across the Gaza Strip.

Even as rescue worker Abu Aish, 58, and his colleagues struggle to pry lifeless bodies from the concrete and twisted metal where residential towers once stood, the death toll keeps rising. Gaza’s Health Ministry has reported that Israel’s bombardment — launched after Hamas mounted a bloody, unprecedented attack on Israel on Oct. 7 — has killed more than 2,700 Palestinians, many of them women and children.

But far more Palestinians have been killed than have been officially reported, with 1,200 people, among them some 500 minors, believed to be trapped under the rubble awaiting rescue, or recovery, health authorities said. They based their estimates on distress calls they received.

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Palestinians in Gaza are taking stock of the latest deadly airstrikes from Israel.

A strike in Deir al Balah, south of Gaza City, reduced a house to rubble, killing nine members of the family living there, mostly women and children. Three members of another family that had evacuated from Gaza City were killed in a neighboring home. Witnesses said there was no warning before the strike.

In Khan Younis, in a neighborhood just a few hundred meters away from Nasser Hospital, Samiha Zoarab looked around at the destruction in shock as children rummaged through the piles of debris and detritus around a leveled home, which lies within a dense cluster of buildings. At least four people from the same family were killed in the attack, locals said. “There are only two survivors,” Zoarab said.

Clashes erupted again Tuesday on the border between Lebanon and Israel, where Israeli forces and armed groups in Lebanon have engaged in a series of low-level skirmishes since the outbreak of the latest war in Gaza.

An anti-tank missile fired from Lebanon landed in the town of Metula in northern Israel Tuesday morning, injuring three people, according to the Ziv Medical Center in Safed.

No group in Lebanon has immediately claimed responsibility. It was not clear if the injured were civilians or soldiers, but Israel has ordered civilians to evacuate the area near the border with Lebanon.

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Turkey and other regional powers should act as guarantors of a two-state solution between Israel and Palestinians to ensure peace, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said late Monday.

The international community should insist that Israel accept the creation of a Palestinian state, Fidan said in a briefing with the Turkish media.

“After an agreement is reached ... the guarantor countries should assume responsibility for fulfilling its requirements,” state-run Anadolu news agency quoted Fidan following a briefing with Turkish media.

He added: “Unless peace is guaranteed, the state of Israel and its people can never feel safe in the region.” The minister did not provide further detail on the plan. Turkey, along with the U.K. and Greece, has acted as a guarantor on the divided island of Cyprus since 1960.

Fidan has had a series of diplomatic meetings focused on Gaza in recent days and has others scheduled Tuesday and Wednesday.

Fidan said he had presented the idea of guarantors to those he had spoken with.

“The important thing is to realize the two-state solution by using this crisis as an opportunity,” he said. “It is to bring permanent peace to the region.”

King Abdullah II of Jordan has said at a meeting with German Chancellor OIaf Scholz in Berlin that neither Jordan nor Egypt would be willing to take in any Palestinian refugees.

The Jordanian king told reporters on Tuesday that “this is a red line ... no refugees to Jordan and also no refugees to Egypt.”

“This is a situation that has to be handled within Gaza and the West Bank,” he said. “And you don’t have to carry this out on the shoulders of others.”

Abdullah also said that everything needs to be done to prevent a further escalation of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

“The whole region is on the brink,” Abdullah said. “This new cycle of violence is leading us towards the abyss.”

Scholz, who is traveling to Israel later on Tuesday, stressed that the country has every right to defend itself and can count on Germany’s support.

The Israeli military said it killed four militants attempting to cross into the country from Lebanon with an explosive device, its Arabic spokesperson, Avichay Adraee said.

A video from a reconnaissance drone the Israeli army shared showed the militants near the separation wall before they were targeted, causing an explosion.

No group in Lebanon immediately claimed responsibility. Last week, militants from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in southern Lebanon crossed the border and clashed with Israeli troops, killing 3 and wounding several others. The militants were killed, and the Palestinian group held funerals for two of them.

Tensions have flared along the Lebanon-Israel border between the Hezbollah group and the Israeli military. While shelling has been limited to towns along the border, there are fears Hezbollah and other Iran-backed groups would escalate their actions to support Hamas should Israel begin a ground operation in Gaza.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim says the crisis in Gaza could turn into genocide if Israel’s war against Hamas in the territory continues.

Anwar said Tuesday that civilian safety must be given top priority. He said he expressed Malaysia’s unwavering support for the Palestinian people during a phone conversation Monday with Hamas political bureau chief, Ismail Haniyeh.

“Given the dire situation in Gaza, I strongly advocate for the immediate cessation of bombardment and the establishment of a humanitarian corridor in Rafah,” he wrote on social media. He urged Israel to “genuinely pursue a peaceful resolution” to end the conflict.

Anwar told Parliament on Monday that Malaysia rebuffed calls by Western countries to condemn Hamas for its Oct. 7 incursion into Israel that set off their latest war. Malaysia blames years of injustice and Israeli oppression on the Palestinian people for the Hamas incursion.

“If no action is taken, it will turn into a genocide war,” he said. “If the world is unable to do anything, it means that the world is allowing the mass killing of Palestinians.”

Malaysia, a moderate, mostly Muslim nation, has long been a critic of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. It does not have diplomatic ties with Israel.

Anwar plans to attend a meeting of Gulf leaders in Saudi Arabia this week and has said he would discuss the issue with his counterparts.

Malaysia has allocated $2.1 million to the U.N. relief agency helping Palestinian refugees and hopes to raise up to $22 million for Palestinian humanitarian aid.

Palestinians in Gaza reported intense bombardments near the southern towns of Khan Younis and Rafah, where Israel ordered civilians to seek refuge, early Tuesday. Details of causalities were not immediately available.

Israeli bombs hit areas west and southeast of Khan Younis and west of Rafah, according to local reports.

Thousands of people trying to escape Gaza are gathered in Rafah, which contains the territory’s only border crossing to Egypt, as international mediators press for a deal to allow aid in and refugees with foreign passports out.

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Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a written statement Monday evening that she will travel to Israel on Tuesday for a “solidarity mission.”

She said she plans to meet with diplomatic leaders and communities devastated after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants on Israeli towns.

“During these difficult times, it’s more important than ever for New York to show up in support of Israel,” Hochul said.

New York has the largest percentage of Jews among all the U.S. states, according to the American Jewish Population Project at Brandeis University.

President Joe Biden will travel to Israel on Wednesday to show support for the U.S. ally amid concerns the Israel-Hamas war could become a larger regional conflict, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said early Tuesday in Tel Aviv.

Biden will then go to Jordan to meet with Arab leaders, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.

Blinken’s announcement followed hours of talks with Israeli officials, as well as an invitation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip grows more dire, Blinken also said the U.S. and Israel had agreed to develop a plan to enable humanitarian aid from donor nations to reach civilians in Gaza, “including the possibility of creating areas to help keep civilians out of harm’s way.”

“We share Israel’s concern that Hamas may seize or destroy aid entering Gaza or otherwise prevent it from reaching the people who need it,” Blinken said.

Calling this “the worst of times,” the U.N. humanitarian chief said the United Nations is in “deep discussions” with the Israelis, Egyptians and others about getting aid through the Rafah crossing, “hugely helped” by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken who has been traveling in the region.

Martin Griffiths, who is heading to Cairo on Tuesday “to try to help in the negotiations,” said in an interview with the U.N. Monday that he was hoping for “some good news” soon.

Griffiths said the U.N.’s “overwhelming priority” is to get access to Gaza, saying humanitarian rules of war are being violated.

“You cannot ask people to move out of harm’s way without assisting them to do it,” by providing safe places and humanitarian aid, and right now Israel has not made these provisions for Gazans moving from the north to the south, Griffiths said.

He also called for the immediate release of all hostages taken from Israel, many of them children, women, the elderly and the sick, which he said is “unacceptable” and illegal.

The conflict between Israel and the Hamas fighter has become the deadliest of five Gaza wars for both sides, with more than 4,000 dead. AP’s News Director for Israel and the Palestinian territories explains the deepening humanitarian crisis in the region.

Thousands dead and thousands more wounded or missing. As the war between Israel and Hamas rages, the countless individual lives upended by the conflict can be overshadowed by the enormity of the toll.

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Injured Palestinians arrive at al-Shifa Hospital following Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City, central Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Abed Khaled)

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Rockets are fired toward Israel from the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, Monday, Oct. 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

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U.S. citizens make their way to board an emergency evacuation ship bound for Cyprus at the port of Haifa, Israel, as fighting continues between Israel and Hamas militants, Monday, Oct. 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

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Palestinians take shelter from Israeli bombardment at a school in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct.16, 2023. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)

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Israeli soldiers patrol along a road near the border between Israel and Lebanon, in Israel, Monday, Oct. 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

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Liyam 20, pays respects at the grave of his fellow commander at Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem, Monday, Oct. 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

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But in streets and shelters, homes and hospital wards, moments with those affected offer stark reminders of that impact.

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A lack of clean water in the Gaza Strip is raising major concerns for human health.

Gaza normally gets its water supplies from a combination of sources, including a pipeline from Israel, desalination plants on the Mediterranean Sea and wells. Those supplies were slashed when Israel cut off water, along with the fuel and electricity that power water and sewage plantContinue reading here. s, in the wake of the Hamas attacks.

The United Nations recognizes access to water as a human right, and on a basic level, the human body needs a constant supply of water to survive. “Next to air,” water is “really the most important thing for maintenance of your health,” said Dr. Tsion Firew, an emergency physician at Columbia University who has worked on water access in humanitarian settings.

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Air raid sirens interrupted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s return to Israel three times on Monday, twice as he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet for discussions over Israel’s war with Hamas.

The sirens signaling incoming rocket fire followed by the loud booms of Iran Dome air defenses intercepting rockets underscored an often-daily reality for Israelis, especially in the past week.

Blinken and his team got their first taste of the warning system and Iron Dome response as they drove from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, minutes after sirens sounded in both cities causing motorists to pull over and take cover.

Blinken’s motorcade did not slow or alter its route but sped quickly to the Israeli Ministry of Defense as motorists on the shoulders of the road returned to their vehicles.

Later, Blinken and his aides were meeting Netanyahu and his war cabinet at the prime minister’s office when sirens sounded again. Blinken, Netanyahu and the others took shelter in a bunker, according to State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.

Others huddled in defense ministry stairwells until the all clear was given.

Israeli air strikes continue to lay waste to Gaza, hitting homes sheltering people seeking safer ground and wiping out 18 members of the same family.

Three families who had fled Gaza City were in a house that was struck early Monday in the southern city of Rafah. The attack killed a dozen people and left nine buried in the rubble, according to surviving family members.

A vast crater marked where the building had stood.

In the Nuseirat refugee camp in the middle of the besieged Gaza Strip, the bodies of 18 members of the Ghabayen family were loaded onto a truck.

“This is an entire family,” said Mustafa Ghabayen, a relative. “Eighteen martyrs and three are still under the rubble.”

JERUSALEM — The head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service has taken responsibility for the bloody Oct. 7 Hamas rampage that killed over 1,400 Israelis.

In a message sent to Shin Bet workers and their families over the weekend, Ronen Bar wrote that “despite a number of actions we took, unfortunately, on Saturday we were unable to create enough early warning to prevent the attack.”

The letter was obtained by The Associated Press on Monday.

The Shin Bet leads Israel’s efforts to track and monitor Palestinian militants. The Israeli news site Ynet has reported that on the eve of the attack, Bar was summoned to the office because of abnormal activity detected in Gaza. But officials believed that only a limited attack would take place, according to the report.

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin has spoken with Egyptian, Iranian, Syrian and Palestinian leaders, urging a quick end to the hostilities.

The Kremlin said in its readout of Monday’s phone calls that Putin emphasized “the unacceptability of any form of violence against civilians” and noted that Moscow has submitted a draft U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian truce.

It noted that Putin and his interlocutors expressed “extreme concern” about the escalation of hostilities, “a catastrophic increase in the number of civilian casualties and a deepening humanitarian crisis” in Gaza.

Putin reaffirmed Russia’s call for the resumption of a political process to help “reach a long-term and fair solution to the Palestinian problem on a well-known international legal basis, which would envisage the creation of an independent Palestinian state coexisting in peace and security with Israel.”

Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov said Putin was also scheduled to talk Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group says its fighters have targeted five Israeli posts along the border in the country’s south.

Hezbollah said in a terse statement that various types of “direct weapons” were used in the late Monday afternoon attack.

Hezbollah fighters have been destroying surveillance cameras placed on Israeli posts along the border amid heightening tensions.

European Union leaders will hold an emergency summit on Tuesday as concern mounts that the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas could fuel inter-communal tensions in Europe and bring more refugees in search of sanctuary.

The leaders will also attempt to restore some order after a series of social media messages, statements and visits by EU officials sowed confusion about the 27-nation bloc’s intentions after Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, triggering a new war in Gaza.

More than 4,000 people have been killed in Israel and Gaza since Hamas launched its bloody rampage and almost 200 Israelis, including children, were taken hostage. Rallies in support of both sides have been held around Europe. Some have been banned.

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Across besieged Gaza, food shortages are causing desperation. With trucks full of humanitarian goods idling at the Rafah border, unable to get through, many in Gaza not only have no running water but also don’t have enough food.

Residents said they ate whatever morsels they could find in their fridge from before the war and were scared about the coming days. The worsening shortages were most visible in U.N. shelters, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have taken refuge after fleeing intensifying bombardment, and in houses where dozens of family members were sheltering.

Hourslong lines snaked from bakeries, where Palestinians waited anxiously to get whatever basic food they could to distribute among their relatives.

“I have been waiting for 10 hours to get bread ... and of course this amount is not enough,” said Ahmad Salah in Deir al-Balah, where he said he had to feed 20-30 family members. “This is a painful suffering for us.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has renewed pledges of American support for Israel in its war against Hamas as he returned to the country for the second time in less than a week.

In Jerusalem on Monday to consult with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials, Blinken also briefed them about discussions he had with Arab leaders on the conduct of the war and the need to protect civilians.

Blinken “underlined his firm support for Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas’ terrorism and reaffirmed U.S. determination to provide the Israeli government with what it needs to protect its citizens,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

Blinken also discussed U.S. efforts with the U.N. and others to provide humanitarian assistance to civilians, and the U.S. commitment to helping in attempts to rescue nearly 200 hostages held by Hamas.

Blinken arrived after a six-nation tour of Arab states during which he heard the concerns of Arab leaders about an impending Israeli ground invasion of Gaza causing a humanitarian catastrophe for Palestinians and possibly igniting a broader regional conflict.

After visiting Israel last Thursday to express U.S. solidarity, Blinken toured the region, meeting with the leaders of Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, all of whom have said civilians must be protected and given assistance to survive the Israeli operation.

As those concerns have grown, the U.S. has also stepped up its emphasis on the importance of Israel respecting the laws of war regarding the treatment of civilians as it pursues Hamas. Blinken and other U.S. officials have been exploring ideas on setting up safe zones in the Gaza Strip and ensuring that badly needed humanitarian supplies reach civilians there.

Blinken has twice extended his diplomatic mission and plans to return to Jordan after his visit to Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and their Iranian backers that they will pay a high price if they become involved in the war.

Speaking to the Israeli Knesset on Monday, Netanyahu warned Iran and Hezbollah, “Don’t test us in the north. Don’t make the mistake of the past. Today, the price you will pay will be far heavier,” referring to Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah.

With a ground invasion of Gaza expected, Israel is preparing for the potential of a new front opening on its northern border with Lebanon, where it has exchanged fire repeatedly with the Hezbollah. The military has ordered residents from 28 Israeli communities close to the border to evacuate.