Israel-Hamas War highlights: US, UN seek safe zones for Gaza civilians after 1 million evacuation order

US President Joe Biden on Friday said he was making a priority of urgently addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, adding he was committed to returning the Americans who had been taken hostage, Reuters reported.

"Our teams are working in the region - including communicating directly with the governments of Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab nations and the United Nations - to surge support," Biden told reporters during the tour of a shipping terminal in Philadelphia.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the United States, in collaboration with the United Nations and various international relief organizations, is actively engaged in the establishment of secure zones for Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Blinken's statement coincided with a mass movement of Palestinians toward the southern areas of Gaza, using both vehicles and on foot. This relocation was prompted by Israel's 24-hour evacuation notice. However, the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN) have criticized the short deadline as impractical, particularly considering that over 1 million people reside in the designated area Israel called for evacuation.

(With Bloomberg inputs)

US President Joe Biden had a conversation with the relatives of 14 Americans who are currently missing following the Hamas attacks in Israel, news agency Reuters reported citing the White House. Biden and his team assured the families that American authorities would make every effort to reunite these individuals with their loved ones.

Regarding the casualties, the White House has officially confirmed the deaths of 22 Americans in the Hamas assaults on Israel, which commenced last Saturday. Kirby mentioned that U.S. authorities are still actively seeking more information about the number of Americans who may have been held as hostages by Hamas.

The conflict commenced last Saturday when Hamas initiated a surprise assault on Israel. In response, Israel declared a state of war against Hamas. As of now, there hasn't been a ground invasion, as launching an attack on the densely populated Gaza Strip, home to both Israelis and Palestinians, would result in a dire humanitarian crisis. On Friday, Israel urged civilians in the northern region to evacuate and relocate to the southern area, clearly signaling that a ground invasion may be the next inevitable step.

Hamas officials say that 70 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israeli airstrikes on convoys fleeing Gaza City.

Hamas’ media office says the cars were struck in three places as they headed south from Gaza City. It was not immediately clear who the target of the airstrikes was, or whether militants were among the passengers.

The army ordered residents to evacuate the city early Friday ahead of an expected ground invasion.

External affairs minister S Jaishankar spoke to his Saudi Arabian counterpart Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud on Friday as part of India’s outreach to Arab states on the fallout of the Hamas attacks on Israel.

The conversation between the Indian and Saudi foreign ministers follows Jaishankar’s conversation with his United Arab Emirates (UAE) counterpart Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan on Wednesday.

“Appreciated the conversation with Foreign Minister HH @FaisalbinFarhan of Saudi Arabia. Discussed the grave situation in the Middle East,” Jaishankar said in a post on X.

Swiss International Air Lines said Friday it was suspending its repatriation flights from Israel until further notice, citing an expected Israeli ground offensive in the Gaza Strip.

SWISS said it was cancelling two special flights from Tel Aviv to Zurich, scheduled for Saturday, to evacuate Swiss nationals.

Israel on Friday gave Palestinians 24 hours to leave Gaza City.

"We must therefore expect the... Israeli ground offensive," SWISS said in a statement.

Palestinians began a mass exodus from northern Gaza Friday after Israel’s military told some 1 million people to evacuate toward the southern part of the besieged territory, an unprecedented order ahead of an expected ground invasion against the ruling Hamas militant group.

The U.N. warned that so many people fleeing en masse — almost half the Gaza population — would be calamitous, and it urged Israel to reverse the order. Families in cars, trucks and donkey carts packed with blankets and possessions streamed down a main road out of Gaza City, the biggest city.

Israel hammered neighborhoods in southern Gaza with airstrikes on Friday, and it said ground troops have conducted temporary raids in the territory to battle militants, search for weapons and evidence of the missing hostages.

Iran Envoy to India Iraj Elahi says Iran played no role in Hamas attack on Israel, says “Hamas an independent player”. In an email interview to ANI, the envoy said:

"Western media tries to deny the independent power of Hamas by attributing recent developments to Iran’s support. However, in truth, the strength of Hamas stands as an undeniable fact, and it remains an independent player that can steer the course of events on its own. As the Supreme Leader has stated, Hamas executed this operation without the assistance of Iran. Nonetheless, Iran will always support the Palestinian cause and the legitimate resistance of the Palestinians, consistently condemning the ruthless violence and occupation by the Zionists."

Indian IT services company HCL Technologies (HCLTech) on Friday said that it has about 130 employees in Israel and the staff is safe.

The company is constantly monitoring the situation, CEO and Managing Director C Vijayakumar told PTI.

HCLTech does not have any business in Israel but some software teams are located there.

"We have about 130 employees in Israel. They are all locals. We don't do any business in Israel, but we have some software teams that are located there. They are fortunately safe and we are constantly monitoring (the situation)," he said.

Asked about the impact on business, he said: "We have not had any impact (on business) at this point in time.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday he discussed with Qatar's Prime Minister preventing any state or non-state actor from widening the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Speaking to the media alongside Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani after their meeting, Blinken also said the United States was working intensively to secure the release of hostages taken to Gaza by Hamas fighters during their rampage on Saturday.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino wrote to the presidents of the Palestinian and Israeli Football Federations on Friday calling for "the immediate end of hostilities".

Infantino offered "our deepest condolences to the Israel Football Association and the Palestine Football Association in light of the horrendous violence that has been occurring over the past days."

The letter was sent to Moshe Shino Zuares, head of Israel's FA and Jibril Rajoub, the president of the Palestinian FA.

"FIFA joins in calling for the immediate end of hostilities and the immediate relief of the suffering of the people of both Israel and Palestine," Infantino said

Eighteen months have lapsed since Russia invaded Ukraine. Last week, even as the Russia-Ukraine war continued, Hamas’ attack on Israel set of another war that runs the risk of Israel bombing Gaza and Gazans into oblivion, and destabilising the entire Middle East.

In between these two events, the social media landscape has undergone a sea change, chief amongst them being the acquisition of the microblogging platform Twitter, now X, by the mercurial child-bot Elon Musk. At the same time, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, launched a direct Twitter competitor, Threads.

On comparing the response of the regulators and the governments to the spread of news and mis/disinformation about the two wars on different social media platforms — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube — it becomes increasingly clear that decisions about moderating content online are inextricably intertwined with geopolitics, how power is arranged along different blocs, and the impact of material realities of platforms on their content moderation decisions.

Turkey said on Friday that Israel's call for Gazans to move south in 24 hours ahead of its planned ground offensive was inhumane and a violation of international law.

Israel called on Friday for all civilians in the northern half of the Gaza Strip, more than 1 million people, to relocate south within 24 hours, as it amassed tanks for an expected ground assault in response to an attack by the militant Palestinian group Hamas.

"Forcing the Gaza population of 2.5 million, who have been under indiscriminate bombing and deprived collectively of electricity, water and food, to relocate in an extremely small area is a blatant breach of international law and inhumane," Turkey's foreign ministry said.

The Palestinian pro-Hamas Shehab news agency on Friday said 17 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian United Nations envoy appealed to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday to do more to stop a “crime against humanity” by Israel, which has warned nearly half of the population of the Palestinian Gaza Strip to relocate.

“He has to do more. Whatever was done was not sufficient. We need all of us to do more to stop this crime against humanity,” Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour told reporters ahead of a meeting of Arab Group ambassadors at the United Nations.

Israel’s call Friday for half of the Gaza Strip’s population to evacuate south is hiking Egypt’s fears of a massive influx of refugees across the heavily fortified border into its territory.

Since Hamas’ bloody attack on Israel sparked a massive retaliation in Gaza, Egypt’s leadership has frantically tried to negotiate the entry of humanitarian aid through its crossing into the Palestinian territory — partially in hopes of averting an exodus into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Officials say its efforts have received no response from Israel.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was expected to visit Cairo over the weekend and Egyptian officials are expected to discuss the entry of aid with him.

Israel sealed off the Gaza Strip, stopping all entry of food, water, medicine and fuel to its 2.3 million people, while bombardment has leveled swaths of its cities. That has left Egypt’s Rafah crossing as the sole access. But repeated Israeli airstrikes at the Palestinian side of the crossing have forced it to stop operating, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said, leaving trucks of aid stopped on the Egyptian side.

Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Vershinin met Israeli ambassador to Moscow Alexander Ben Zvi on Friday and discussed the current situation around the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the Russian foreign ministry said.

"In this regard, the current activities of the UN Security Council and its possible actions and moves were substantively reviewed, focusing on the urgent need to ensure the protection of civilians in both Israel and Palestine, to prevent catastrophic humanitarian consequences and the spread of the crisis to other countries in the region," the ministry said.

Earlier on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Israel was replying to an attack of unprecedented cruelty by using cruel methods of its own.

Thousands of Palestinians poured into the streets of Gaza City on Friday in a panic to head southwards after Israel warned them to evacuate. But for many others, there is simply nowhere to go.

The rush to leave came after the Israeli military urged around 1.1 million Gazans living in the north of the Palestinian territory to flee "for their own safety and protection", ahead of an expected ground incursion.

Some were in cars, many others were on foot as they sought to make the trip to the south of the densely populated territory that is home to 2.4 million people on its 362 square kilometres (140 square miles).

But for thousands like Umm Hossam, they are left with one crucial question: "Where to go?"

Saudi Arabia is putting U.S.-backed plans to normalise ties with Israel on ice, two sources familiar with Riyadh's thinking said, signalling a rapid rethinking of its foreign policy priorities as war escalates between Israel and Palestinian group Hamas.

The conflict has also pushed the kingdom to engage with Iran. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman took his first phone call from Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi as Riyadh tries to prevent a broader surge in violence across the region.

The two sources told Reuters there would be a delay in the U.S.-backed talks on normalisation with Israel that was a key step for the kingdom to secure what Riyadh considers the real prize of a U.S. defence pact in exchange.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said that calls to impose a blockade of Gaza similar to Nazi Germany's siege of Leningrad during World War Two were unacceptable and called for mediation to save civilian lives.

"Israel has faced such an unprecedented attack," Putin said. "But despite all the bitterness on both sides, I still think that we need to think about the civilian population."

He said there had been calls even in the United States for a blockade of Gaza on a par with "the siege of Leningrad during World War II" and that such calls were unacceptable.

Israel on Friday denied accusations from rights groups that it had deployed the incendiary weapon white phosphorus in its war against Hamas militants in the densely populated Gaza Strip, after the Islamists' deadly attack at the weekend.

"We deny those allegations, we have not made use of white phosphorus, not in Gaza and not in Lebanon," an Israeli military spokesman said.

Israel has been pounding Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip in recent days, after the Palestinian militants stormed across its border at the weekend, killing more than 1,200 people.

Thousands of Palestinians fled to southern Gaza in search of refuge Friday after Israel warned them to evacuate before an expected ground offensive against Hamas in retaliation for the deadliest attack in Israel's history.

The call to get out came six days after Hamas gunmen burst through the heavily militarised border around the Gaza Strip and killed more than 1,300 people -- most of them civilians -- in an attack compared to 9/11 in the United States.

Nearly 1,800 Gazans -- again most of them civilians and including over 580 children -- have been killed in waves of missile strikes on the densely populated enclave, the health ministry said.

Israel on Friday shelled a border region in southern Lebanon, two Lebanese security sources said, after a blast occurred on the border fence, according to the Israeli army.

One of the security sources said the shelling followed an infiltration attempt from the Lebanese side of the border, while the Israeli army said it was responding to a blast that caused "light damage" to the border barrier.

The massive Hamas attack on Israel cannot justify the "limitless destruction" of the Gaza Strip, the Red Cross said Friday, as Israel pounded the enclave.

"Nothing can justify the horrific attacks Israel suffered last weekend... but those attacks cannot in turn justify the limitless destruction of Gaza," the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement.

Hundreds of people across Pakistan staged demonstrations after Friday prayers in support of the Palestinians and to denounce the siege of Gaza by Israeli forces.

Responding to the call for a protest by various religious groups, people marched on roads after Friday prayers. They held the Palestinian flag and chanted slogans like saying ‘From land to the sea, Palestine will be free’ and ‘Stand in solidarity with Palestine’.

They also burnt the Israeli flag to show their anger at the rising deaths of Palestinians in Gaza.

Pakistan does not have diplomatic ties with Israel and refuses to recognise it as a sovereign country until the state of Palestine is established. Pakistanis cannot visit the Jewish state because their passport states it is "valid for all countries of the world except Israel."