Israel has designated a safe zone in southern Gaza, but its widening air and ground offensive has left Palestinians packed together in dire humanitarian conditions.
United Nations monitors said Thursday that a hospital in the southern town of Khan Younis received its first delivery of supplies since Nov. 29. Aid groups are severely limited by fighting and restrictions placed by the military. The United Nations estimates 1.9 million people have been displaced and new military evacuation orders are squeezing people into ever-smaller areas. Most lack food, water and medicine.
Around 1,200 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war. The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the death toll in the territory has surpassed 17,100, with more than 46,000 wounded. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths, but said 70% of the dead were women and children.
Currently:
— Palestinians try to survive war’s new chapter in southern Gaza.
— Israel designates a safe zone in Gaza. Palestinians and aid groups say it offers little relief.
— Israel’s war with Hamas claims more journalists than any conflict in over 30 years, a journalists’ rights group says.
— Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
Here’s what’s happening in the war:
ISRAELI MILITARY SAYS IT FOUND WEAPONS AND A TUNNEL AT A GAZA UNIVERSITY
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said Friday that it found weapons and a tunnel under the campus of Al-Azhar University in Gaza.
The military said the tunnel stretched one kilometer (0.6 mile) from the university to a nearby school. It did not provide video or photo evidence of the tunnel, but released photos of weapons it said soldiers found at the university, including explosives and rocket parts.
The military said it also found a Hamas control room with cameras, phones, walkie-talkies and weapons near a hospital in northern Gaza, as well as an additional tunnel entrance. A photo released by the military showed an opening to an underground passageway with a ladder stretching downward.
Israel said the discoveries show that Hamas is embedded in civilian zones — a claim central to Israel’s justification for heavily striking civilian areas in Gaza and calling for mass evacuations. Israel says the militants use an extensive tunnel network running underneath civilian infrastructure such as schools and hospitals to conduct military operations.
ISRAELI DRONE STRIKE KILLS FOUR IN SOUTHERN SYRIA, REPORTS SAY
DAMASCUS, Syria — An Israeli drone strike hit a car in southern Syria on Friday, killing four people instantly, two Syrian pro-government media outlets reported.
The attack came a day after the Israeli military said shells were fired from Syria toward areas controlled by Israeli troops in the Golan Heights.
There was no comment from Israel on the drone strike. Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy said Friday that the Israeli military struck a number of targets in Syria in response to two launches on Thursday that fell in open areas.
The newspaper Al-Watan said the strike targeted a car in the southern town of Baath, and that the bodies were taken to a hospital in the Syrian town of Quneitra on the edge of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Sham FM, a pro-government radio station, also reported the strike in Baath.
Israel captured the Golan Heights during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. It annexed the Golan Heights in 1981, a move not recognized by most of the international community.
POET KILLED IN ISRAELI STRIKE ON GAZA CITY
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Friends and colleagues of a locally celebrated poet, editor and professor of English literature in Gaza say he has been killed by an Israeli strike on Gaza City.
Refaat Alareer, a 45-year-old English-language writer and activist known for poems of protest against Israel’s military campaigns, was killed Thursday.
Alareer’s death was confirmed by his colleagues at “We Are Not Numbers,” a Palestinian group he helped establish in 2015 that seeks to “tell the stories behind the numbers of Palestinians in the news.”
He was killed along with his brother, sister and her four children in a strike on their house in Gaza City where they had stayed despite Israeli military demands that the population evacuate south.
On Monday, Alareer wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that his walls were shaking with the thunder of bombing, shelling and gunfire that was getting closer and closer. The last poem he wrote and shared on social media read, “If I must die/let it bring hope/let it be a tale.”
Alareer taught English literature with a focus on Shakespeare at Gaza’s Islamic University and wrote and edited several books of poetry and short stories, including “Gaza Unsilenced” and “Gaza Writes Back,” featuring the work of young Palestinian writers from the blockaded enclave.
Alareer drew fierce criticism for his rhetorical attacks on Israel, particularly his praise of Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted about 240 others, including women and children. In an interview with the BBC, he described the rampage as “legitimate and moral.”
“For Refaat, English was a tool of liberation, a way to break free from Gaza’s prolonged siege, a teleportation device that defied Israel’s fences and the intellectual, academic, and cultural blockade of Gaza,” Jehad Abusalim, a Palestinian writer and former student, wrote on social media.
US EMBASSY IN BAGHDAD IS ATTACKED FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR
BAGHDAD — A rocket attack at the sprawling United States Embassy in Baghdad set off alarms Friday morning and caused minor material damage but no casualties, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
It’s the first confirmed attack on the U.S. Embassy since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, hitting Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses Iraqi government buildings and embassies on the west bank of the Tigris River.
Iran-backed militias in Iraq have claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks that targeted bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria since the Israel-Hamas war began two months ago. The U.S. military says a total of 78 attacks have been carried out against U.S. facilities over the past weeks of which 37 were in Iraq and 41 in Syria.
Later Friday morning no specific group had claimed responsibility, but a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations said indications are the attacks were from Iran-aligned militias.
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Associated Press writers Abby Sewell and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.