Israel-Hamas war highlights: Hamas calls for protest in East Jerusalem, West Bank

Gaza's ruling Hamas militants called on Palestinians to rise up on Friday in protest at Israel's bombardment of the enclave, urging Palestinians to march to East Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque and clash with Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank.

Israel has been pounding Gaza with air strikes and artillery fire in retaliation for a Hamas rampage in Israel this week that has killed at least 1,300 people, the deadliest attack on civilians in Israeli history. More than 1,500 Palestinians have been killed.

The Gaza violence has reignited tensions in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank, where Israeli troops have killed at least 34 Palestinians during clashes since the Saturday Hamas attack, according to Palestinian officials.

The morgue at Gaza’s biggest hospital overflowed Thursday as bodies came in faster than relatives could claim them on the sixth day of Israel's heavy aerial bombardment on the territory of 2.3 million people.

With scores of Palestinians killed each day in the Israeli onslaught after an unprecedented Hamas attack, medics in the besieged enclave said they have run out of places to put remains pulled from the latest strikes or recovered from the ruins of demolished buildings.

The morgue at Gaza City's Shifa hospital can only handle some 30 bodies at a time, and workers had to stack corpses three high outside the walk-in cooler and put dozens more, side by side, in the parking lot. Some were placed in a tent, and others were sprawled on the cement, under the sun.

“The body bags started and just kept coming and coming and now it’s a graveyard,” Abu Elias Shobaki, a nurse at Shifa, said of the parking lot. “I am emotionally, physically exhausted. I just have to stop myself from thinking about how much worse it will get.”

Nearly a week after Hamas militants crossed through Israel’s heavily fortified separation fence and killed over 1,200 Israelis in a brutal rampage, Israel is preparing for a possible ground invasion of Gaza for the first time in nearly a decade. A ground offensive would likely drive up the Palestinian death toll, which already has outpaced the past four bloody wars between Israel and Hamas.

The sheer volume of human remains has pushed the system to its limit in the long-blockaded territory. Gaza's hospitals are poorly supplied in normal times but now Israel has stopped the water flow from its national water company and blocked electricity, food and fuel from entering the coastal enclave. (AP)

France’s interior minister on Thursday ordered local authorities to ban all pro-Palestinian demonstrations amid a rise in antisemitic acts since Hamas attacked Israel over the weekend. President Emmanuel Macron urged French people not to allow the war in the Mideast erupt into tensions at home.

Soon before Macron spoke in a televised address to the nation about the Mideast conflict, Paris police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse pro-Palestinian protesters who had defied a ban and demonstrated Thursday against the Israeli government.

’’Let us not bring ideological adventures here (to France) by imitation or by projection. Let us not add national fractures ... to international fractures,″ Macron pleaded. ’’Let us stay united.″

Iran's foreign minister, whose government supports Hamas and other Middle East militant groups, said on Thursday opening a "new front" against Israel would depend on Israel's actions in Gaza.

Although Tehran has been a long-term backer of Hamas, Iranian officials have been adamant that the country had no involvement in the militants' attack against its arch enemy Israel on Saturday.

Nevertheless, the United States fears the opening of a second front on Israel's northern border with Lebanon if Hezbollah, another heavily armed Islamist group backed by Iran, were to intervene.

"Officials of some countries contact us and ask about the possibility of a new front (against Israel) being opened in the region," said Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian during a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.

"We tell them that our clear answer regarding future possibilities is that everything depends on the actions of the Zionist regime in Gaza," he said, according to a statement from the Iranian foreign ministry.

"Even now, Israel's crimes continue and no one in the region asks us for permission to open new fronts."

At least 1,200 Israelis, foreigners and dual citizens were killed by Hamas militants during its attack on Saturday.

In Gaza, health officials reported 1,417 Palestinians killed by Israel's retaliatory barrages against the coastal enclave.

The West has been cautious about Iran since Saturday, but its leaders have warned Tehran in no uncertain terms against intervening in the war.

US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that he had "made it clear to the Iranians: Be careful".

After Iraq, Amir-Abdollahian will travel to Lebanon, where Hezbollah has, so far, been content to hold back from joining the war triggered by its ally Hamas.

In a call with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Wednesday appealed to "all the Islamic and Arab countries" to "reach serious convergence and cooperation on the path of stopping the crimes of the Zionist regime against the oppressed Palestinian nation".

Gaza's Health Ministry said on Thursday that 1,537 Palestinians, including 500 children and 276 women, were killed and 6,612 were wounded in Israeli air strikes on the blockaded enclave since Saturday.

The first charter flight carrying 212 Indians, including an infant, wishing to leave Israel departed from the Ben Gurion Airport on Thursday, amid the country's raging war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

The Indians left for the home country on a "first come first serve" basis, informed sources told PTI.

The flight, which took off at 22:14 local time, was arranged to facilitate the return of those who were unable to do so because Air India had immediately suspended its flight on the day fighting began on October 7, and its commercial operation remains suspended till now.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned violence against civilians on Thursday in the wake of the devastating attack by Hamas gunmen on Israel and the relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip by Israeli jets that followed.

The comments, made during a visit to Jordan, come ahead of a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and mark a shift from Abbas' previous failure to condemn Saturday's attack, during which more than 1,000 Israelis were killed.

"We reject the practices of killing civilians or abusing them on both sides because they contravene morals, religion and international law," the official Palestinian news agency Wafa quoted Abbas as saying.

Canada supports Israel's right to defend itself in accordance with international law, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday, condemning Palestinian group Hamas for taking hostages during its incursion last weekend.

Trudeau though side-stepped questions about whether Israel's decision to seal off the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and cut off water and power supplies to the enclave was justified. Israel on Thursday said there would be no pause of its siege of Gaza until all hostages were freed.

Foreign Minister Melanie Joly on Wednesday said she was worried about what might happen next in Gaza given the signs Israel was preparing for a possible assault.

French anti-terror prosecutors on Thursday said they had opened a terrorism probe into the attack by Hamas on Israel which has left 13 French citizens dead with several others feared held hostage.

The probe is into murder, attempted murder and kidnapping, including of minors, by a "terrorist organisation", National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutors (PNAT) said in a statement.

The United States has no plans to deploy troops in the war between Israel and Hamas, the White House said Thursday, adding that the Israeli government itself would not "welcome" such a move.

"There is no intention, no plan and, frankly, no desire by the Israelis for US combat troops to be involved in this conflict," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is deploying two Royal Navy ships, helicopters and surveillance aircraft to the eastern Mediterranean to support Israel and reinforce regional stability, his office said on Thursday.

Israeli police has said that at least two people have been injured as shots were fired towards Shalem station outside Herod’s Gate entrance to Jerusalem city, Times of Israel reported.

Rocket sirens sound in Beersheba and neighbouring Negev. No immediate reports of casualties or damage.

The Biden administration is expected to announce soon that the US government will begin operating evacuation flights to help Americans leave Israel as Israel prepares to escalate retaliatory action against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, according to two people familiar with the plans.

The evacuation flights are expected to begin operating as early as Friday, according to the people, who requested anonymity to discuss the plans before the official announcement.

The US government is arranging for at least four charter flights a day out of Israel through Frankfurt, Germany.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will arrive in Qatar on Friday to discuss with its prime minister developments in the Israel-Hamas conflict, ways to de-escalate it and the protection of civilians, the Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson said.

Earlier on Thursday, a senior U.S. official said that Blinken would travel to Qatar to meet with senior officials in the Gulf Arab state.

The first batch of Indian passengers in Israel are gearing up to board their flight back to India under the Narendra Modi government's ‘Operation Ajay’.

The government on Wednesday launched ‘Operation Ajay’ to facilitate the return of Indian nationals from Israel, which is witnessing fierce fighting with terrorist group Hamas. Read more

Israel and the White House on Thursday condemned remarks by Donald Trump in which he praised the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah and criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over an attack by Palestinian Hamas militants that killed more than 1,300 people in Israel.

Trump, a former Republican president who is the frontrunner to become the party's 2024 presidential nominee, called the Lebanese Hezbollah, a sworn enemy of Israel, "very smart" and accused Netanyahu of being "not prepared" for the Hamas attack, which also killed 22 Americans.

The Israel Defence Forces have struck over 3,600 targets in the Gaza Strip, using at least 6,000 rounds of ammunition, reported The Times of Israel.

A senior Hamas operative and several other members of the terrorist organisation were targeted in recent attacks, according to the IDF.

The military claims to be assaulting all of Hamas's resources throughout the Gaza Strip, including war rooms, military installations, facilities for manufacturing weapons, and locations connected to the terror organisation's top leadership, according to The Times of Israel.

Issuing a stern warning to the Hamas terror group, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on Thursday, said that "2023 is not 1943" and in an indirect reference to the persecution of Jews under the Nazi regime in Germany, adding that today's Jewish people possess "different capabilities."

ANI

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said on Thursday that he will not join an emergency government with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. Lapid earlier said he would join the emergency government if far-right parties were not a part of the security cabinet.

“My offer stands. Let’s remove the extremists from the government and join forces to a sane, wide, strong and effective one,” he said.

He added that his Yesh Atid party will continue to support the war effort from the outside.

France is banning pro-Palestinian protests as they are "likely to generate disturbances to public order", Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Thursday in a letter to prefects across the country.

Earlier this week, Hamas called for protests across the Muslim world on Friday to support Palestinians amid the bloody conflict between the Islamist movement and Israel.

Reuters

Mounting threats to gas supply are sending most global fuel prices higher as fear takes hold of the market just ahead of the first signs of winter.

Natural gas in Asia and Europe jumped this week, with the latter hitting the highest level in seven months, driven by the Israel-Hamas war, potential strikes at key export plants and infrastructure vulnerabilities, including a leak in a Baltic Sea pipeline where sabotage is suspected.

The US stands apart, and price swings there have been much more muted thanks to ample domestic production.

The multiple risks highlight the fragility of other markets, in particular Europe, which is starting its second winter without much of the pipeline gas flows from Russia that it once took for granted. The continent’s benchmark futures continued their rally Thursday, adding as much as 13%.

Bloomberg

Locals in Tel Aviv hold a demonstration urging the government of Israel for the exchange of hostages/prisoners between Israel and Palestine

“Hamas is inhuman. Hamas is ISIS,” Prime Minister's office in Israel tweets while sharing pictures of babies killed by Hamas terrorists.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Doha later this week to discuss Hamas with Qatari leaders amid a devastating war between Israel and the militant group.

"Tomorrow, Secretary Blinken will travel to Qatar to meet with senior officials there," a US official said.

AFP

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said Thursday that Washington did not place any conditions on the way Israel can use the weapons it provides for fighting Hamas.

"We have not placed any conditions on the provision of this equipment. This is a professional military, led by professional leadership, and we would hope and expect that they would do the right things in the prosecution of their campaign," Austin said, after a meeting of NATO ministers in Brussels.

AFP