Negotiations are underway to reach a three-day humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza in exchange for the release of about a dozen hostages held by Hamas. That’s according to two officials from Egypt, one from the United Nations and a Western diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic efforts.
The deal would enable more aid, including limited amounts of fuel, to enter the besieged territory to alleviate worsening conditions for the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped there. It is being brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, according to the officials and the diplomat.
The war, now in its second month, was triggered by the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel.
The number of Palestinians killed in the war passed 10,500, including more than 4,300 children, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said.
In the occupied West Bank, more than 160 Palestinians have been killed in the violence and Israeli raids. More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, most of them in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that started the fighting, and 239 hostages were taken from Israel into Gaza by the militant group.
Currently:
— US launches airstrike on site in Syria in response to Iranian-backed militia attacks on bases housing U.S. troops
— Israel pressured by allies over plight of civilians in Gaza as thousands flee enclave’s north
— Americans divided over Israel response to Hamas attacks, AP-NORC poll shows
— U.S. House of Representatives censures only Palestinian American in Congress
— Blinken urges united future Palestinian government for Gaza and West Bank, widening gulf with Israel
— Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
Here’s what is happening in the latest Israel-Hamas war:
50,000 PALESTINIANS MOVE SOUTHWARD FROM NORTHERN GAZA, UN SAYS
BEIRUT — About 50,000 Palestinians fled southward from northern Gaza on Wednesday, the United Nations said, the largest number of evacuees through an Israeli-controlled corridor that was first opened days ago.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs agency estimated that a total of 72,000 Palestinians have evacuated since Sunday. The Israeli military allowed Palestinians to evacuate from 10am until 3pm.
Clashes between the Hamas militant group the controls the besieged Palestinian enclave and the Israeli military have intensified in Gaza City.
“Clashes and shelling on and around the road reportedly continued, endangering evacuees with reports of corpses alongside the road,” UNOCHA said in its daily report. “Most evacuees are moving on foot and Israeli military reportedly forced those evacuees who use vehicles to leave them at the southern edge of Gaza City.”
The UN estimates that some 1.5 million Gazans out of the strip’s population of 2.3 million have been internally displaced. Many have found shelter in overcrowded hospitals and schools.
2 ISRAELIS SHOT AND WOUNDED IN WEST BANK
JERUSALEM — Two Israelis were shot overnight into Thursday and moderately wounded while driving in the northern West Bank, Israeli media reported. A baby in the back seat of their car was unharmed, they said.
It was the second shooting attack on Israeli drivers in the West Bank in a week. On Nov. 2, an Israeli man was killed after his car was shot at, then crashed and overturned.
NEGOTIATIONS UNDERWAY FOR 3-DAY HUMANITARIAN CEASE-FIRE IN GAZA
CAIRO — Negotiations are underway to reach a three-day humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza in exchange for the release of about a dozen hostages held by Hamas. That’s according to two officials from Egypt, one from the United Nations and a Western diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic efforts.
The deal would enable more aid, including limited amounts of fuel, to enter the besieged territory to alleviate worsening conditions for the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped there. It is being brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, according to the officials and the diplomat.
One of the Egyptian officials says details of the deal were discussed this week in Cairo with the visiting CIA chief and an Israeli delegation. The official said mediators are finalizing a draft deal.
A senior U.S. official said the Biden administration has not put forward any specific time frame for a pause in Israel’s military operations but has suggested that Israel consider tying the length of a pause to the release of a certain number of hostages.
If an agreement on the duration of the pause and the number of hostages to be freed can be reached and the deal successfully implemented, the same formula could be revisited for additional pauses and releases, according to the official.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said any temporary cease-fire would have to be accompanied by the release of the hostages who were seized by Hamas during the militant group’s Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel. Israel has said around 240 hostages, both Israelis and those with foreign passports, are currently held in Gaza.
A three-day cease-fire would allow the delivery of humanitarian aid across Gaza, including the northern area, the focus of Israel’s military campaign to crush the territory’s Hamas rulers. Under the proposed deal, some fuel would also enter Gaza for the first time since the start of the war, to be distributed to hospitals and bakeries under U.N. supervision.
Israel has barred fuel shipments to Gaza since the start of the war, arguing Hamas would divert them for military use. Over the past month, only limited amounts of aid, such as medicine, food and water, have entered Gaza. Aid workers say it’s not nearly enough to meet mounting needs.
Under the proposed truce deal, Hamas would release a dozen civilian hostages, most of them foreign passport holders, and provide a complete list of hostages to mediators, according to the officials. The International Committee of the Red Cross would be allowed to visit the hostages.
The diplomat said the talks are complex because of the involvement of different parties in the region and in Western capitals.
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Associated Press writers Samy Magdy in Cairo and Matthew Lee in Seoul, South Korea, contributed.
US LAUNCHES STRIKE ON SITE IN SYRIA IN RESPONSE TO ATTACKS BY IRANIAN-BACKED MILITIAS
WASHINGTON — The U.S. launched an airstrike Wednesday on a facility in eastern Syria used by Iranian-backed militias, in retaliation to an increasing number of attacks over the past several weeks on bases housing U.S. troops, the Pentagon said.
Two U.S. F-15 fighter jets carried out the strike on a weapons storage facility linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
President Joe Biden “directed today’s action to make clear that the United States will defend itself, its personnel, and its interests,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement.
This is the second time in less than two weeks that the U.S. has bombed facilities used by the militant groups, many operating under the umbrella of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which U.S. officials say have carried out at least 40 such attacks in the region since Oct. 17.
UN RIGHTS CHIEF SAYS GAZA TURNED INTO A ‘LIVING NIGHTMARE’ BY ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR
GENEVA — The U.N. human rights chief said collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians and their forced evacuation, as well as atrocities committed by Palestinian armed groups on Oct. 7 and their continued holding of hostages, amount to war crimes.
Volker Türk, standing in front of Egypt’s Rafah border crossing into Gaza, told reporters Wednesday: “These are the gates to a living nightmare.”
“We have fallen off a precipice. This cannot continue,” he said later in Cairo.
Türk said international human rights and humanitarian law must be respected to help protect civilians and allow desperately needed aid to reach Gaza’s beleaguered population of some 2.3 million people.
He said the U.N. rights office received reports in recent days about an unspecified orphanage in northern Gaza with 300 children who need urgent help, but communications were down and access were impassable and unsafe, so “we cannot get to them.”
“I feel, in my innermost being, the pain, the immense suffering of every person whose loved one has been killed in a kibbutz, in a Palestinian refugee camp, hiding in a building or as they were fleeing,” Türk said. “We all must feel this shared pain — and end this nightmare.”
GAZA HOSPITALS STRAIN UNDER ISRAELI SIEGE, WITH PREMATURE BIRTHS ON THE RISE
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza City — Hospitals in Gaza are nearing collapse under Israel’s wartime siege, which has cut power and deliveries of food, fuel and other necessities to the territory.
Inside the maternity department at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, the workload has doubled because of the mass displacement from Gaza’s north. That’s according to neonatal specialist Dr. Asaad al-Nawajha, who said Wednesday his team has seen an increase in premature births as the monthlong war intensifies.
Shouq Hararah is one of those mothers. She says her delivery took place with “no proper birth procedures, no anesthesia, painkillers or anything.”
“I gave birth to twins. The boy was discharged, but the girl remains in the maternity ward,” she said.
Standing before a row of beeping incubators, al-Nawajha emphasized the war’s life-threatening consequences.
“All of our work depends on electricity; all the machines you see here rely on it,” the doctor said. “When the electricity is cut, these devices stop working, and all the babies will face certain death.”
SYRIA SAYS ISRAELI AIRSTRIKES HIT MILITARY POSITIONS
Israel airstrikes hit several Syrian military positions late Wednesday, Syrian state media reported.
Quoting an unnamed military source, state news agency SANA said the strikes caused material damage, and did not mention any casualties nor the locations where the airstrikes took place. Pro-government radio station Sham FM said the sounds of explosions could be heard in southeast Sweida province and in some suburbs of the capital, Damascus.
Meanwhile, Britain-based opposition war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike in Sweida province targeted an air defense and radar unit, while at least three strikes in suburbs near Damascus were not far from Syria’s military airbase and wounded three people, without giving further details.
Israel, which has vowed to stop Iranian entrenchment next door, has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets in government-controlled parts of neighboring Syria in recent years, but it rarely acknowledges them. Israel did not immediately comment on the alleged airstrikes.
US DRONE SHOT DOWN BY YEMEN’S HOUTHI REBELS
WASHINGTON — A U.S. drone was shot down by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on Wednesday, according to the Iran-backed group’s military arm and a senior U.S. military official.
The Houthis said it was an MQ-9 Reaper drone that was in Yemeni air space and was shot down by air defenses. The senior U.S. official said the military is still analyzing the episode, including whether the drone was in international airspace or over Yemen. A second U.S. official said the MQ-9 Reaper was over international waters when it was shot down. The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet made public.
The Houthis have fired at least four batches of drones and missiles toward southern Israel since Oct. 7. The group controls the capital and much of northern and western Yemen where the majority of the county’s population lives.
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Associated Press writer Lolita Baldor contributed.
ISRAEL SAYS IT DESTROYED 130 HAMAS TUNNELS IN GAZA AND RELEASES VIDEO FROM INSIDE UNDERGROUND NETWORK
Israel’s military released video on Wednesday of what it says are combat engineers locating, entering and blowing up Hamas-built tunnels in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has destroyed 130 tunnels since the war began, according to Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief military spokesman.
The videos show a soldier’s body camera footage inside what Israel said was a Hamas tunnel, its walls lined with cement and the shaft partially filled with sand. Another clip shows the mouth of what appears to be a tunnel in an open area near damaged buildings. There are clips of armored excavators and bulldozers digging in the dirt, as well as explosions apparently destroying tunnel entrances.
The Israeli military did not provide locations where the videos were filmed, and the images did not include any visible landmarks except for one shot showing the sea in the background, so The Associated Press could not independently confirm the videos.
Hamas is believed to have a massive underground network throughout Gaza, allowing it to transport weapons, supplies and fighters.
Israeli warplanes have bombed crowded urban neighborhoods, saying the strikes target the tunnel system or Hamas commanders. But airstrikes can inflict only limited damage on the subterranean network.
WHITE HOUSE SAYS ISRAEL TO KEEP MILITARY IN GAZA AFTER WAR, BUT RE-OCCUPYING IS A ‘MISTAKE’
WASHINGTON: U.S. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said it was likely that Israel would maintain a military presence in Gaza for a “period of time” after the ongoing war, but said the U.S. believes it would be a “mistake” for Israel to re-occupy the territory.
“I think all of us can foresee a period of time after the conflict is over where Israeli forces will likely still be in Gaza and will have some initial security responsibilities,” Kirby told CNN on Wednesday. “But for how long and where and to what size and scale and scope, I think it’s too soon to know.” Kirby said the U.S. was focused on devising a long-term governance structure for Gaza after the current conflict, but said that as yet there has been little prospect of a viable plan.
“I think where we are is: a lot of questions, and not a lot of answers,” he said. “We know what we don’t want to see in Gaza post conflict, we don’t want to see Hamas in control, and we don’t want to see a re-occupation by Israel.”
He added: “We know that the United States can’t solve this alone,” and that the U.S. was engaging with regional and international partners on the matter.