Israel-Hamas war updates: Israeli attacks hit children’s hospital in Gaza

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For more on the US announcement of daily four-hour pauses in the fighting in northern Gaza, click here.

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We will soon be closing this live page. Here’s a recap of today’s main events.

• Palestinian Health Ministry spokesprson says an Israeli attack hit a car in the yard of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City; Exact casualties are not yet known.
• The US says Israel has agreed to suspend fighting for four hours per day to allow Palestinian civilians to flee from northern Gaza.
• The vicinity of the Indonesian Hospital was struck with 11 missiles, damaging parts of the facility, its director said.
• Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital has been attacked twice, according to the director.
• At least 18 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, including 14 in Jenin.
• Yemen’s Houthis have launched a batch of ballistic missiles at various targets in Israel, including military targets in Eilat, the group’s military spokesperson said. An armed drone hit a building in Eilat earlier on Thursday.
• Two bases housing US troops in Iraq came under attack. They are the Ain al-Assad and the al-Harir air bases in al-Anbar and Erbil, respectively.
• Israel said it struck ‘Hezbollah infrastructure’ in Lebanon, a day after cross-border fighting resumed.
• At least 10,812 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7. In Israel, the death toll over the same period stands at more than 1,400.

Ashraf al-Qudra told our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic that there appears to be a number of casualties.

“The medical teams are still inspecting the area to find out if there were dead or wounded [victims],” the Palestinian Health Ministry spokesman said.

UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese has suggested that the daily four-hour pause in the fighting announced by the White House shows that Gaza has been bombarded by Israeli forces around the clock.

“A ‘humanitarian pause’ of [four] hours has been announced in Gaza,” Albanese wrote on social media.

“Think of what it may have felt, for the [people] trapped in Gaza, Palestinians [and] hostages alike, especially the children, to be bombed incessantly night [and] day for 33 days. Not even a few hours of respite.”

CAIR said the move announced earlier today does not go far enough.

“Instituting a four-hour pause on Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of northern Gaza so that Palestinians can flee their homes and face Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of southern Gaza makes no sense,” the group’s deputy director, Edward Ahmed Mitchell, said in a statement.

“We need a ceasefire across Gaza, not the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza,” Mitchell said.

“President Biden already has the power to demand an end to Netanyahu’s self-serving campaign of mass murder, secure the release of everyone wrongfully held in both Gaza and Israel and then pursue a just, lasting peace. He only needs the heart and courage to exercise that power.”

Palestinian Red Crescent officials in the occupied West Bank were able to get in touch with their director of ambulance and emergency centres in Gaza, Mohammed Abu Msbeh, who gave an update on the increasingly perilous situation in Gaza City’s al-Quds Hospital.

Abu Msbeh said that the hospital had around 24 hours until fuel for its generator ran out, which would lead to “a total shutdown of all hospital services”.

He said that internet communications had been cut in the area for two days and that roads around the hospital were cut for the fourth day in a row.

“[In the coming hours] very difficult decisions will have to be taken as to whether to continue working at the hospital or evacuate everyone to areas that may be more dangerous,” Abu Msbeh said.

⚠️💢Despite the interruption of communication with colleagues at Al-Quds Hospital, our colleague, Mohammed Abu Msbeh, the Director of Ambulance and Emergency Centers in the #Gaza Strip, managed to risk contacting us to update us on the critical situation the hospital is facing,… pic.twitter.com/LeqWBKWt6O

— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) November 9, 2023

Doctors Without Borders, known as MSF, said the Israeli military raid in Jenin comes as part of a “dramatic increase” in violence in the city, located in the north of the occupied West Bank.

The humanitarian group said its teams treated a paramedic on Thursday morning who was shot inside an ambulance, while Israeli army vehicles blocked ambulances from accessing hospitals.

An Israeli soldier fired at the emergency unit of a hospital on Wednesday night, “hitting the wall in full view of our colleagues who were standing outside”, MSF said.

“Today, our team witnessed Israeli forces fire at the entrance of the hospital, with bullets hitting the wall directly above the door.”

The group stressed that “hospitals are not targets and must remain safe spaces”.

“Medical care must not be impeded. We call on the Israeli military to stop firing on hospitals and to stop their military vehicles from blocking ambulances and medical staff from reaching healthcare facilities,” it said.

Since October 7 we have seen a dramatic increase in violence from Israeli forces in Jenin. Since then, our teams have treated over 30 patients with gunshot and blast wounds.

— Doctors w/o Borders (@MSF_USA) November 9, 2023

The update comes after US officials said a US MQ-9 drone was shot down off the coast of Yemen by the group on Wednesday.

“We know that there was an attempt by Houthis to try and recover the MQ-9, but it is unlikely that they will be able to retrieve anything of significance,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters.

Singh added that the US was not currently looking to recover the downed drone.

Reporting from New York City, Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey said thousands of protesters have again taken to the streets in demonstrations organised by student groups.

The protests come “even as these groups in many cases are being attacked and accused of being anti-Semitic”, she said. “Many schools here in the United States are facing pressure to stop such demonstrations and in some cases, even deny these groups the right to exist in the college campuses.”

Speaking to Al Jazeera, one demonstrator who only provided her first name, Afrin, said that many protesters must cover their faces for fear of facing repercussions.

“People who have been talking about the Palestinian issue [have] been recently kicked out of law schools, dental schools … they’ve been discriminated [against], and then got backlash from their schools, colleges, professors,” Afrin said.

She said support for Palestine is being conflated with hate towards the Jewish community, “which is completely not our purpose or our goal, and they are missing our messages”.

The protest is now underway outside the New York Public Library at Bryant Park pic.twitter.com/VL3eQT3hfA

— katie (@probablyreadit) November 9, 2023

The American Postal Workers Union, which represents US Postal Service employees, has called for a ceasefire in Gaza, joining a growing list of groups and advocates urging Washington to push for an end to the fighting.

“We call on our government, which is the primary foreign benefactor of the Israeli government, to use all its power to protect innocent lives and to help bring about peace in the region, and not use our tax dollars for more war,” the union said in a statement.

“We join the calls for an immediate ceasefire, the release of hostages, and urgently needed massive humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. The cries of humanity demand nothing less.”

We have an update from our correspondent on the ground in Gaza, Tareq Abu Azzoum.

Reporting from Khan Younis in southern Gaza, Abu Azzoum said a residential building was “completely flattened” in the Rafah area, killing several people.

Israeli attacks also took place in the north of Gaza, including artillery bombardments in the Remal neighbourhood of Gaza City.

The headquarters of the Jawwal telecommunications company in Remal was destroyed, Abu Azzoum said.

He added that Israeli ground forces are pushing deeper into Gaza City.

The political future of British Home Secretary Suella Braverman hangs in the balance as she faces anger within her own Conservative Party after making unauthorised comments about the country’s pro-Palestine demonstrations, which she called “hate marches”, and for criticising the police.

In an opinion piece published in The Times on Thursday, Braverman said that the police “play favourites” and have taken a soft stance towards rallies in support of Gaza, which she described as “pro-Palestinian mobs”.

“The content was not agreed with Number 10,” a spokesperson for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told reporters, referring to the prime minister’s Downing Street office. The ministerial code is clear that any ministerial media interventions need approval from No 10.

Sunak is under pressure to sack Braverman, but his spokesperson Max Blain also said the prime minister still had full confidence in her.

Read more here.

A meeting earlier today in Doha between the heads of the US and Israeli external intelligence agencies – the CIA and Mossad – and Qatar’s prime minister was part of the “hardest work that’s being done right now to save lives”, political analyst Colin Clarke told Al Jazeera.

“This is basically the highest level, outside of heads of state, that you’re going to get,” said Clarke, the director of policy and research at The Soufan Group.

“First to free the hostages, and secondly, to secure some kind of a humanitarian pause because the situation in Gaza is dire. People are sick and suffering. There are just scenes of desperation,” he said.

“This is crucial humanitarian work that’s being done on a diplomatic level right now.”

Analysts have noted that CIA chief Bill Burns, who had previously served as a diplomat based in the Middle East, is one of the most respected members of the Biden administration in the region. Many have described him as an important asset in the ongoing talks.

The Israeli military has announced the death of a soldier in fighting in the Gaza Strip, bringing the total number of soldiers killed there to at least 35 since the beginning of ground operations at the end of last month.

Moshe Kogan, 32, was a soldier in the air force’s elite Shaldag unit.

The military also confirmed the death of Roni Eshel, a soldier who had previously been listed as missing since Hamas’s attack on October 7.

The deaths bring the total number of Israeli military personnel killed since October 7 to 354.

The vicinity of the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza has been hit with “11 missiles” in an attack earlier today, the facility’s director Atef Kahlout said.

The hospital was partially destroyed as a result of the bombing, he told Al Jazeera.

Videos of the attack showed bright lights rising in the sky near the hospital building, where thousands of internally displaced people have been sheltering.

The videos also showed people frantically running from the hospital yard, where tents are set up, towards the hospital building itself for cover.

Kahlout said that “large pieces of shrapnel flew into the hospital”. He added the facility won’t be operational in 24 hours due to a lack of fuel.

Daniel Hagari, the Israeli army spokesman, says Israeli warplanes targeted the infrastructure in Lebanon in response to launches towards Israel over the past day.

The military also attacked with artillery fire and the so-called “steel sting” weapon, Hagari said.

He added that an anti-tank missile was fired towards northern Israel, resulting in no casualties and that the Israeli army responded with artillery fire.

Human Rights Watch said children are among the thousands of people seeking safety at Gaza’s largest hospital, including in tents set up in a courtyard next to the facility’s emergency room.

“Videos and photos taken in recent days show civilians and emergency workers bringing hundreds of injured and dead people to the hospital day and night, by ambulance, by car, on foot and by donkey cart. People regularly walk in and out of the hospital’s main entrance,” the group said.

HRW said Israeli evacuation orders also raise “grave concerns”, as telling civilians to flee “without a safe passage or safe place to go does not suffice”.

“Civilians who remain in place after an evacuation warning – including those who can’t leave, fear moving, or don’t want to be displaced – don’t lose their protections as civilians under the laws of war,” the rights group said.

“No area is a free-fire zone.”

Israeli ground forces are encircling and moving deeper into Gaza City, within 2 km of Gaza’s largest medical facility, al-Shifa Hospital, where staff are overwhelmed by the number of patients amid a month-long blockade & heavy bombardment.

THREAD 🧵⤵️ (1/16)

— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) November 9, 2023

The figure represents a stark reminder of the ongoing medical emergency in Gaza, where a critical shortage of fuel and other supplies has left overcrowded hospitals either forced to shutter or operating in a skeletal capacity.

The UN Population Fund has said there are 50,000 pregnant women in the enclave in total.

“If you have 180 women giving birth every day under these conditions, food, water, medicines, the access to caesarian sections and to care for the newborn, depend on fuel,” said Dr Natalia Kanem, the executive director of the agency.

While a limited amount of aid deliveries have been allowed to enter Gaza, fuel has been blocked by Israel. Humanitarian groups say the limited supplies are also barely reaching those in need in the north of Gaza.