Israel-Hamas war live updates: Thousands break into UN warehouses in Gaza; Israel vows to continue ‘large scale’ strikes

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office says he has spoken to French President Emmanuel Macron about the importance of getting urgent humanitarian support into Gaza and maintaining regional security following the expansion of Israel’s military operation against Hamas.

The leaders “agreed to work together on efforts both to get crucial food, fuel, water and medicine to those who need it, and to get foreign nationals out,” Downing Street said in a statement Sunday,

“They expressed their shared concern at the risk of escalation in the wider region, in particular in the West Bank. The Prime Minister and President Macron updated on the conversations they have had with leaders in the region to stress the importance of working to ensure regional stability.”

Sunak and Macron agreed that it was important not to lose sight of the long-term future of the region and, in particular, the need for a two-state solution, the statement said.

“They underscored that Hamas does not represent ordinary Palestinians and that their barbarism should not undermine the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people.”

— Associated Press

Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that his country does not want the war between Israel and Hamas to unfurl into other parts of the Middle East.

“We do not want this war to spread out,” Amir-Abdollahian said in a Thursday interview, which aired Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”

Since the war began, speculation has swirled over Iran’s potential involvement in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, which the foreign minister said is a “baseless claim.”

His comments come after a speech at the United Nations where he said that if Israel’s bombardment against Palestine continues, then the United States “would not be spared from this fire.”

That speech happened on the same day the U.S. launched strikes against Iranian military sites in Syria in retaliation for Iranian-backed militia attacks against U.S. military bases in Syria and Iraq. U.S. officials maintained that those attacks were “separate and distinct” from the Israel-Hamas war.

— Rebecca Picciotto

Palestinian women wash their clothes using seawater due to the lack of fresh water and electricity, along the beach in Deir el-Balah in the southern Gaza Strip on October 29, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas.

— Mahmud Hams | AFP | Getty Images

United States National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Sunday that the Israeli government and its military should do everything in their power to protect the civilians in Gaza who have been caught in the crossfire of the country’s war against Hamas.

“Every hour, every day of this military operation, the IDF, the Israeli government should be taking every possible means available to them to distinguish between terrorists who are legitimate military targets and civilians who are not,” Sullivan said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

He added that President Joe Biden will speak to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reiterate that point.

Sullivan explained that Hamas’ military strategy involves using civilians as “human shields.” The military group, for example, does not wear uniforms to make it difficult to distinguish fighters from civilians. As a result, when Israel targets Hamas, it also may end up harming civilians. Sullivan noted that by the U.S. count of the death toll, thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

“That creates an added burden for Israel but it does not lessen Israel’s responsibility under international humanitarian law to distinguish between terrorists and civilians, and to protect the lives of innocent people,” Sullivan said.

— Rebecca Picciotto

Pope Francis repeatedly called for a ceasefire in Gaza on Sunday.

“Let’s continue to pray for Ukraine and for the serious situation in Palestine and Israel and for other regions with wars,” Francis said.

“In particular, in Gaza, leave space to guarantee humanitarian aid. And let the hostages be freed immediately. Let no one abandon the possibility to stop the arms. Ceasefire,” he added, speaking from the window of the Apostolic Palace above St. Peter’s Square.

The pope cited the Rev. Ibrahim Faltas, the vicar of the Holy Land, as joining him in the urgent plea for a cease-fire.

“Stop yourselves, brothers and sisters, war is always defeat. Always! Always!” he concluded.

— Associated Press

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday morning walked back his comments about the intelligence failures leading up to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

Late Saturday night, he took to social media to deny that he had received any warning about the attack that has now triggered a war between Israel and Hamas. He said that in the days leading up to the war, security advisors had repeatedly assured him that Hamas had been deterred and was not a threat.

That comment came hours after his press conference with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Minister Benny Gantz where he was asked whether he had received any notice prior to the Hamas attack. There has been ongoing speculation as to whether Netanyahu had anticipated the attacks.

That initial Saturday night social media post triggered an onslaught of criticism directed at Netanyahu for pointing fingers at his military chiefs for the intelligence failure of the Oct. 7 attack.

“Netanyahu crossed a red line tonight,” Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “While IDF soldiers and commanders are fighting valiantly against Hamas and Hezbollah, he is trying to blame them instead of backing them up.”

“The Prime Minister must retract his statement last night,” Gantz said in his own X post.

Hours later, Netanyahu deleted the post and issued an apology.

“I was wrong. Things I said following the press conference should not have been said and I apologize for that,” Netanyahu wrote in a new social media post on Sunday. “I give full backing to all the heads of the security arms.”

— Rebecca Picciotto

The head of self-driving auto technologies firm Mobileye and one of Israel’s leading businessmen, Amnon Shashua, on Sunday urged the immediate ouster of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government.

Shashua, in a high-profile public rebuke from Israel’s private sector, said Netanyahu’s government was guilty of “failures, dissonance and incompetence” since Hamas gunmen crossed from Gaza in a deadly rampage of southern Israeli towns on Oct. 7.

“We must cut our losses and do it quickly. The only solution to the current situation in Israel is to replace the government, and it needs to happen immediately,” Shashua wrote in an opinion piece in financial daily Calcalist.

Netanyahu caused his own uproar on Sunday by taking a jab at his intelligence chiefs, saying they never warned him Hamas was planning its attack, but later retracted his comments and issued an apology.

Netanyahu’s office, asked by Reuters, declined to comment on Shashua’s editorial.

— Reuters

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi reiterated his criticism of Israel in a post on X, suggesting the country’s measures against Gaza could force others to respond.

“Zionist regime’s crimes have crossed the red lines, which may force everyone to take action,” Raisi wrote in the post. “Washington asks us to not do anything, but they keep giving widespread support to Israel. The US sent messages to the Axis of Resistance but received a clear response on the battlefield.”

Iran refuses to acknowledge the state of Israel and is its top adversary. It is also a primary funder of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group whose terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7 killed more than 1,300 people. Israel says its offensive into Gaza is aimed at eliminating Hamas and defending its people.

— Natasha Turak

Three Palestinian men were shot and killed overnight by Israeli forces in the West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry wrote in a post on its Facebook page.

The deaths bring the number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank, which is under Israeli military occupation, to 114 since Oct. 7. Tensions between Palestinians and Israeli settlers and military forces in the territory were already high before the Hamas attack on southern Israel that killed more than 1,300 people.

Hamas governs the Gaza Strip but not the West Bank, where its secular rival Fatah exercises control and coordinates with Israeli authorities in many areas.

— Natasha Turak

The World Health Organization has restored contact with its team in the Gaza Strip after heavy Israeli bombardment led to a connectivity blackout, its director-general said.

“As with everyone in Gaza, they and their families are not safe. They said the last two nights were extremely tense with a lot of airstrikes — without fuel, water, electricity, connectivity and safe shelter to evacuate to,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on social media platform X.

The WHO director stressed the need to protect health facilities and humanitarian workers and reiterating his calls for a cease-fire. He warned that hospitals in the besieged territory were running out of medical supplies and overwhelmed with patients.

“Because of the siege, Gaza is also running out of insulin and anesthetic,” he wrote in a separate post on X.

— Natasha Turak

Palestinians wait in front of a bakery shop to meet their daily food needs during the 23rd day of Israeli airstrikes in Rafah, Gaza on October 29, 2023. 

Forty more aid trucks are expected to enter Gaza on Sunday, a representative from the UN World Food Programme said, as the humanitarian situation on the ground worsens and Israeli bombardment intensifies.

“We hope today we will be able to allow more trucks into Gaza – 40 trucks are expected to be crossing,” WFP Country Director for Palestine Samer Abdeljaber said in an interview with CNN. “However, we have to also note that that’s not enough compared to the soaring needs … at the moment in Gaza, we need more than that.”

“Just for WFP to be able to reach 1 million people, we need 40 trucks a day. If we’re going to be supporting 2 million people, we need 100 trucks of food,” he said.

Abdeljaber said that the trucks will be bringing aid including food, water and medical equipment, but not fuel. He added that the internet and communications blackout as a result of Israeli bombing created a major challenge for coordinating facilities on the ground.

— Natasha Turak

The Palestinian Red Crescent said the IDF has warned it to evacuate its hospital ahead of a bombardment.

“Urgent: @PRCS has just received serious threats from the occupation authorities to immediately evacuate Al-Quds Hospital in the Gaza Strip, as it is going to be #bombarded. Since this morning, there has been raids 50 meters away from the hospital,” the PRCS wrote in a tweet.

“Two phone calls were received, with a clear and direct threat, that the hospital must be evacuated at once, otherwise PRCS holds full responsibility for the lives of everyone inside the hospital,” the organization said in a separate statement.

Israel has directed the 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza to evacuate the area amid a heavy bombing campaign, but the Palestinian Red Crescent said it would stay to keep providing urgent care to patients in its hospital. Evacuations are also becoming significantly more difficult as ambulances are running out of fuel, aid organizations say.

— Natasha Turak

Internet and telephone connectivity was restored Sunday morning for many people in Gaza, according to the telecoms company Paltel, Internet-access advocacy group NetBlocks.org and confirmation on the ground.

For more than 24 hours, people in the besieged Gaza Strip were not able to communicate with each other or seek help amid a relentless Israeli bombardment. The narrow coastal area had suffered a total communication blackout since late Friday, adding to the misery of more than 2.3 million people living there. Many residents, especially in the northern half of the strip, were not able to call ambulances to transfer injured people to hospitals or to seek help for those trapped under the rubble of bombed houses.

“The aggressive bombardment was horrible,” said Raed Sharif, a volunteer helping transport wounded people to hospitals in Gaza City. “There were striking everywhere.”

Doctors Without Borders medical group said the communication blackout had further isolated the population suffering under siege and bombardment. The blackout also limited the group’s ability to coordinate and provide medical assistance, it said.

— Associated Press

The Israeli Defense Forces hit more than 450 targets in Gaza over the past day, the IDF said in a statement. It said the targets included command centers, missile launch sites and observation posts.

“As part of the expansion of ground activities, combined combat forces struck terrorist cells that attempted to attack the forces and terrorist cells that planned to carry out anti-tank missile launches,” the statement said. It added that an IDF officer in northern Gaza was badly injured by a mortar shell in the north of Gaza and has been evacuated for treatment.

Aid groups and journalists in Gaza say the bombings that began Friday night were the heaviest they have seen from Israel since the country began its retaliatory strikes against the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.

— Natasha Turak

The United Nations Security Council plans to hold an emergency meeting on Israel’s ground offensive into Gaza on Monday.

The United Arab Emirates, currently a rotating member of the UN Security Council, condemned the violence and called for a ceasefire. Members Russia and China have also called for ceasefires, while the United States has so far voted against any such efforts by the international body.

In a U.N. vote on Friday, the General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian truce between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas, with 120 countries in favor, 14 against and 45 countries abstaining. The U.S. and Israel voted against the resolution.

— Natasha Turak

Thousands of people broke into several warehouses and took belonging to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency in the Gaza strip, the agency said in a statement. Wheat flour, hygiene materials, and other basic items were taken, the statement added.

“This is a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down after three weeks of war and a tight siege on Gaza,” said Thomas White, director of UNRWA affairs in Gaza. “The needs of the communities are immense, if only for basic survival, while the aid we receive is meager,” he added.

Only 80 trucks have passed through the Rafah Crossing with Egypt, bringing supplies to Gaza, compared to 200 aid trucks per day prior to Oct. 7., the statement said.

They are subject to strict checks, an ongoing ban on the distribution of fuel, and heightened demand due to the exodus of residents to the south, the statement said, adding that no trucks passed into the strip on Saturday, when the strip was under total blackout.

The IDF is reiterating its calls for the citizens of Gaza to move south, saying the “urgency” for them to move away from what it describes as a Hamas stronghold has increased.

In a post on X, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in English: “Civilians in northern Gaza and Gaza City should temporarily move south of Wadi Gaza to a safer area where they can receive water, food and medicine.”

Israel has cut off water, food, fuel and aid from the besieged enclave since the early days of the war in a bid to weaken Hamas militants, and Palestinians trapped inside Gaza say there’s nowhere to hide.

Hagari said the IDF has been warnings citizens for over two weeks to move away from Hamas strongholds.

“Today, we increase the urgency of that warning,” he said.

— Joanna Tan

Israel will press on with “large-scale, significant strikes” as it seeks out Hamas militants and their leadership in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces said.

“The IDF is continuing with large-scale, significant strikes from the air and from the sea, and the targeting of terrorists,” spokesperson, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said in the latest press update.

Covered by aerial support, IDF forces — from infantry, armor, and artillery — entered northern Gaza overnight and “expanded ground activities,” he said.

He also said the IDF has killed key Hamas leaders including the commander of the naval force of the Gaza Brigade and other brigade commanders. CNBC could not verify those claims.

“These commanders are the operational commanders of Hamas, Hamas’ tactical leaders. Eliminating them facilitates the war’s progress and enables the forces on the ground to fight against a weaker enemy,” he said.

“The expansion of the IDF’s operational activity furthers the war’s goals,” he added.

— Joanna Tan

“Our people in the Gaza Strip are facing a war of genocide and massacres committed by the Israeli occupation forces in full view of the entire world,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a meeting with officials from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

Abbas is president of the Palestinian Authority, the internationally recognized government of the Palestinian people, which governs parts of the occupied West Bank. His Fatah movement, a rival to the Hamas, controls the PLO.

Meeting with leaders of the PLO in Ramallah, Abbas called on the international community to end Israel’s aggression in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

He questioned how it was possible “to remain silent in the face of over 3,000 Palestinian children killed and the shelling of hospitals, along with the ruthless destruction and collective punishment of civilians.”

“Gaza will remain an integral part of the Palestinian state, alongside the West Bank, including East Jerusalem… Jerusalem will remain our eternal capital, with its Islamic and Christian sanctities,” he declared, vowing to rebuild everything destroyed in Gaza by Israel’s bombardment.

— Joanna Tan

Israel’s chief military spokesperson declined to say whether Israel was behind the telecommunications blackout that hit Gaza on Friday and which has left the besieged enclave largely cut off but said it would do what it needed to protect its forces.

Asked whether Israel had knocked out cellular services at the start of the ground offensive that began on Friday night, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said: “We do what we have to do to secure our forces for as long as we must, temporary or permanent, as much as we need to and we will not say anything further about that.”

— Reuters

The Palestinian Red Crescent says three of its ambulances can no longer operate as they have run out of fuel.

“From Gaza operations room to Palestine Red Crescent central headquarters operations room, we would like to inform you that due to the shortage of fuel (gasoline) 3 ambulance vehicles that operate on this type of fuel have been stopped,” according to voice message from a humanitarian worker inside Gaza, the PRCS said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Consequently, the operational capacity has been reduced to 27 ambulance vehicles only,” he added, according to the translation from Arabic.

He said that due to the communication blackout, “ambulance vehicles have been geographically distributed across all areas … this action increases the danger to the field teams.”

— Joanna Tan

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a Saturday press conference that Israel is in its second phase of what he expects will be a long and difficult war as the country expands its ground presence in Gaza.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Minister Benny Gantz also spoke at the briefing, reiterating that the war against Hamas is likely not near its end.

Netanyahu doubled down on Israel’s two goals in the war: to eradicate the military and governing powers of Hamas and to rescue all of the group’s hostages. In response to a question about the potential conflict between those goals, he rejected the idea that there was any tension between eliminating Hamas and saving the hostages.

The prime minister warned civilians in Gaza to find safe areas as Israel intensifies its presence in the region. On Friday night, Israel launched a series of bombings in Gaza. Since then, there have been a variety of reports that civilians have lost connection to internet and cellular communication.

Gallant spoke on the complications of returning the hostages under Hamas. He said there might be a higher probability of rescuing the abductees as Israel’s military pressure escalates, which Gantz emphasized in his own remarks.

Earlier on Saturday, a Hamas spokesperson reportedly said in a broadcast on a Hamas-run television channel that the militant group was prepared to return its hostages in exchange for Israel’s Palestinian prisoners.

— Rebecca Picciotto

The spokesman for the military wing of Hamas says the group is ready to swap dozens of hostages it is holding for all the Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

The spokesman, using the nom de guerre Abu Obeida, said in a televised speech Saturday that such a deal also could be conducted in stages, but that Israelis “should know the price that they have to pay.”

On Saturday, hundreds of relatives of hostages gathered in a square in downtown Tel Aviv and demanded that the government put the return of their loved ones ahead of Israel’s military objectives.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expected to meet with the hostage families later Saturday. Military officials have said they are trying to both topple Hamas and bring back the hostages but have not explained how they could obtain both objectives at the same time.

The families of the hostages fear Israel’s ramped-up offensive in Gaza is endangering the captives.

— The Associated Press

Israeli Minister of Communications Shlomo Karhi on Saturday staunchly criticized Elon Musk’s announcement to deploy Starlink, the SpaceX-operated internet provider, in Gaza where access to internet and cellular communication has been cut off.

Earlier on Saturday, Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that he would use Starlink to “support connectivity” for internationally recognized aid organizations in Gaza.

The communications minister responded to Musk with a post of his own, saying that Israel will use “all means at its disposal” to fight the launch of Starlink in Gaza. He added that Hamas would end up using Starlink for “terrorist activities.”

“Perhaps Musk would be willing to condition it with the release of our abducted babies, sons, daughters, elderly people. All of them!” Karhi wrote in the social media post. “By then, my office will cut any ties with starlink.”

Starlink has been used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in its fight against Russia.

But Musk has come under fire for his reported interference during some episodes of Russia’s war against Ukraine. In September, a Ukrainian adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy criticized Musk for shutting down Starlink’s connection in the region in order to prevent a Ukrainian attack against Russian warships.

— Rebecca Picciotto