Updates

4 November 2023

A spokesperson for Benjamin Netanyahu shared a video purporting to show Israeli military attack dogs going after Hamas fighters “inside their tunnels in the Gaza Strip.” It didn’t take long for it to be revealed that the footage was in fact an old training video.

“I was raised in Jabaliya refugee camp, northern Gaza,” writes Tamer Ajrami, now living abroad, in a love letter to the place he knows so well. Many of the people killed when Israel attacked the camp earlier this week were “my relatives, neighbors and friends.”

A young man with an agonized look on his face holds the body of a toddler while being embraced by two other men

A man carrying a baby rushes into al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City after Israeli strikes hit a home in the Mansura neighborhood of Shujaiya, 4 November.

Bashar Taleb APA images

No foreign passport holders or medical patients left Gaza via Rafah crossing. “Media reports indicated that Hamas, demanding guarantees of safe passage, had prevented people from reaching the crossing, following an Israeli attack on the ambulance convoy leaving Shifa hospital to Rafah on 3 November,” UN OCHA’s daily report stated. More than 1,100 people reportedly crossed from Gaza to Egypt on 2 and 3 November.

UN OCHA’s daily report states that Israeli bombardments have reportedly destroyed multiple solar panels on the roofs of buildings, particularly in Gaza City, in recent days. “Affected facilities include al-Shifa and Nasser hospitals, several water wells and bakeries,” the UN added. “This has eliminated one of the remaining sources of energy, which is not dependent on fuel.”

Israeli airstrikes reportedly hit the entrances of two Gaza City hospitals: Nasser Children’s Hospital and Al-Quds Hospital. “Two people were reportedly killed, dozens were injured and damage was caused to the entrances of these health facilities,” the UN said, adding that around 14,000 displaced people are currently sheltering at Al-Quds Hospital. That facility is administered by the Palestine Red Crescent Society, which published videos of the aftermath of the strike.

“Residents of south Lebanon reported some of the fiercest Israeli strikes yet during weeks of cross-border clashes,” Reuters reported, as Hizballah “said it carried out simultaneous attacks on Israeli positions at the Lebanese border.” A Lebanese security official confirmed to the Associated Press that Hizballah fired for the first time in this conflict the heavier Burkan rocket, which can carry a several-hundred kilogram warhead. Nearly 60 Hizballah fighters have been killed since 7 October and on 3 November, Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese resistance organization, made his first speech since the battle began one month ago.

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said Israel had perpetrated 10 massacres, killing more than 230 people, in recent hours, bringing to nearly 9,500 the number killed in the territory since 7 October, including 3,900 children. The actual number of fatalities is likely much higher, with 2,000 people, among them 1,250 children, missing under the rubble of destroyed buildings. The ministry said Israel was targeting medical staff and wounded people by striking the surroundings of hospitals, including the bombing of an ambulance near al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on 3 November.