Israel-Hamas war updates: Death toll rises as Israeli jets pound Gaza

Several airlines in Asia have cancelled their flights to Israel citing the security situation in the country.

Hainan Airlines, the only Chinese airline to fly between China and Israel, cancelled flights between Shanghai and Tel Aviv on Monday, while Cathay Pacific also cancelled its flight between Hong Kong and Tel Aviv on Tuesday.

Korean Air cancelled its flight between the port city of Incheon and Tel Aviv on Monday and said it expects future flights to be irregular.

The UN Security Council has met behind closed doors in an emergency session amid the war between Israel and Hamas but failed to achieve the unanimity needed for a joint statement.

The US called on the council’s 15 members to strongly condemn Hamas but diplomats said members led by Russia were hoping for a broader focus than condemning the Palestinian armed group.

The council met for about 90 minutes and heard a briefing from the UN Middle East peace envoy Tor Wennesland.

Read more here.

Iran has denied any involvement in the unprecedented attacks launched by Hamas within Israel.

“We emphatically stand in unflinching support of Palestine, however, we are not involved in Palestine’s response as it is taken solely by Palestine itself,” Iran’s mission to the UN said in statement.

“The resolute measures taken by Palestine constitute a wholly legitimate defence against seven decades of oppressive occupation and heinous crimes committed by the illegitimate Zionist regime,” the statement added.

Gun battles are continuing between Hamas fighters and Israeli forces in three main areas in southern Israel – at a kibbutz in Karmia and in the cities of Ashkelon and Sderot – with an Israeli army commander reportedly injured, according to Al Jazeera correspondents.

Israeli special forces were brought in to try to retake the sites held by Hamas, said Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Jamjoom, reporting from West Jerusalem.

Israeli troops have also been called to the scene of an exchange of fire with Hamas fighters near the city of Sderot, he added.

Israeli air attacks and shelling aimed at houses and apartment buildings have displaced some 123,538 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the UN humanitarian relief agency.

Many of those forced to flee their homes are sheltering in some 64 schools in the coastal enclave, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its latest update.

Notable buildings destroyed in Israeli attacks include four large towers with multiple floors of residential units, it said, adding that a total of 159 housing units have been destroyed while 1,210 have suffered severe damage.

A senior Hamas official has said the group is holding more than 100 people captive after its attack on Israel.

Mousa Abu Marzouk made the remarks to the Arabic language news outlet al-Ghad on Sunday. “Senior Israeli officers are among those being held,” he said.

The figure is in addition to more than 30 people said to be held by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group.

The captives that Hamas fighters dragged into Gaza include women, children and the elderly. Their precise number has not been clear until the announcements from Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

An eight-year-old Israeli boy has been wounded after rockets launched from Gaza hit a residential building in the southern city of Ashkelon, according to local media reports.

ילד בן 8 נפצע קל-בינוני מהפגיעה הישירה; מטחים נוספים לעבר העיר בשעה זו https://t.co/wqDiqTQN0H

— גלצ (@GLZRadio) October 8, 2023

Unofficial translation: An eight-year-old boy was moderately wounded from the direct impact. Additional volleys of rockets seen at this time.

A spokesman for the Israeli military said his country has gathered 100,000 reserve troops near Gaza for the ongoing war with Hamas.

“We have amassed around 100,000 reserve troops who are currently in southern Israel,” said Jonathan Conricus in a video posted to X.

“Our job is to make sure that at the end of this war, Hamas will no longer have any military capability to threaten Israeli civilians,” he said. “In addition to that, we are also to make sure that Hamas will not be able to govern the Gaza Strip.”

Conricus added that Israeli troops are hunting down the last Palestinian fighters who had infiltrated southern Israel.

Israeli forces are pounding Gaza after the country’s security cabinet formally declared war on Hamas.

Here are some pictures from the ongoing bombardment.

The “UN Member States hold primary responsibility for the violence in Palestine through their inaction and complicity in Israel’s systematic and widespread violations,” three Palestinian human rights organisations have said in an open letter to members of the UN Security Council (UNSC).

The Palestine-based organisations – Al-Haq, Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights – called on UN member states to address the “root causes and protect the Palestinian people from Israeli attacks”.

The groups sent the letter as the 15 members of the UNSC held emergency consultations in New York on Sunday afternoon.

“The past two years have been marked as the bloodiest of Israeli violence since the second Intifada,” the letter said.

It described the land, air and maritime closures imposed on Palestinians in Gaza as “measures of collective punishment, in violation of international law”.

“Israel has carried out at least seven massive military offensives since 2008, which have rendered the Gaza Strip uninhabitable,” the letter added.

The Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights are civil organisations based in the Gaza Strip while Al-Haq has its headquarters in Ramallah in the West Bank.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has held calls with Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud and the Foreign Minister of the UAE Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

According to a statement from Blinken’s spokesperson, the US top diplomat “reiterated Israel’s right to self-defence” and encouraged the UAE and Saudi Arabia to “[continue] engagement”.

Blinken also “highlighted the United States’ unwavering focus on halting the attacks by Hamas and securing the release of all hostages,” on the calls which took place late on Sunday night GMT.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said she was “petrified by what is happening” in Israel and Gaza.

“Before anything else, I’m horrified by the narrative,” Albanese added. “It’s possible, and necessary, to stand with both the Palestinians and Israelis without resorting to ethical relativism, selective outrage or worse: calls for violence.”

Albanese, who has been in the role as an independent UN human rights expert for 16 months, said that “violence escalating against defenceless Palestinians [is] something that has been ongoing for over six decades now. Fifty six years just in the context of the occupation.”

She acknowledged that Israelis were in pain but that this needed to be put in the “context of decades of oppression imposed on the Palestinians”.

“The militarized, settler-colonial occupation that Israel maintains traps both people,” she added.

Politicians and policymakers “should prioritise restoring legality and accountability, using diplomacy and peace as conflict resolution methods,” said Albanese, “rather than advocating for more violence or standing with one side or another”.

Here is the latest from Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum:

• Israel has renewed air strikes on the Gaza Strip and is continuing to hit targets in the besieged enclave, including government and military-related sites.
• The Ansar military training compound was among the buildings targeted in the attacks.
• In retaliation, dozens of rockets were launched from Gaza into the southern Israeli town of Ashkelon.

Israeli air attacks have killed more than 400 people and damaged numerous residential buildings in the besieged Gaza Strip.

In Gaza City, Israeli aeroplanes hit an 11-storey building in the Al-Nasr neighbourhood – home to approximately 80 families – leaving many homeless.

Mohammed Salah, from the Beit Lahia neighbourhood in the north of Gaza, said he left his home and took shelter in a UN-run school with other families from the area amid what he called “indiscriminate bombing” by Israel.

You can read more here about Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza and the deaths and destruction it has caused.

Hamas does not fit neatly into the labels some try to fit it into – terrorist, freedom fighter, armed group or political party.

The Take looks at the context that made the group what it is and, most importantly, how it has affected Palestinians living in Gaza.

Listen here.

Al Jazeera’s Laura Khan takes a deep dive into the discussions happening on social media amid the ongoing war in Gaza.

Watch below:

Vassily Nebenzia, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, has said his message at the UN Security Council meeting was “to stop the fighting immediately and to go to a ceasefire and to meaningful negotiations, which was told for decades” by the Security Council.

“This is partly the result of unresolved issues,” he said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a call with Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fiden called for Istanbul’s continued engagement in halting Hamas’ offensive, the state department said in a statement.

“The Secretary encouraged Turkey’s continued engagement and highlighted the United States’ unwavering focus on halting the attacks by Hamas and securing the release of all hostages,” it added.

The United Arab Emirates has described the Hamas attacks as a “serious and grave escalation”.

“The ministry deeply mourns the loss of Israeli and Palestinian lives as a result of the outbreak of violence, and calls on both parties to de-escalate and avoid an expansion of the heinous violence with tragic consequences affecting civilian lives and facilities,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The ministry added that it was “appalled” by reports Israeli civilians were taken as hostages from their residences by Hamas fighters.

Robert Wood says the global community must condemn the activities of Hamas and the killing of Israelis, calling it an “unprovoked” attack.

“This conflict could grow and we don’t want that to happen,” Wood said, following an emergency meeting of UN Security Council members.

When asked by a reporter about the killing of Palestinians by Israeli forces, he said the US condemned “civilians being hurt or killed anywhere in the world”.

“What’s important now is that the international community needs to show its solidarity with Israel … and the condemnations of Hamas needs to continue,” he added.