October 17, 2023 - Israel-Hamas war news

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has canceled his meeting with US President Joe Biden after a strike on the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, according to Palestinian officials — a decision that comes on the eve of the US president's high-stakes visit to the region.

Abbas is traveling back to Ramallah and has called for an urgent meeting of the Palestinian leadership tonight following the strike on the hospital.

Palestinian officials have said between 200 to 300 people were killed in an Israeli strike, citing preliminary estimates.

Tal Heinrich, a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told CNN Tuesday that the “IDF does not target hospitals," adding, "we only target Hamas strongholds, arms depots and terror targets."

Heinrich's comments came after Palestinian officials said that preliminary estimates indicate between 200 to 300 people were killed in an Israeli strike on the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City.

While Israel says "IDF does not target hospitals,” the UN and Doctors Without Borders say during the past 10 days, Israeli airstrikes have struck medical facilities, including hospitals and ambulances.

The strike on the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City was a "cold-blooded massacre," according to a statement released late Tuesday by the Palestinian foreign ministry.

The hospital attack will “forever remain a stain on the conscience of humanity that has been witnessing the horrors committed against the Palestinian people without taking action to stop it,” the statement read.

Palestinian officials have said preliminary estimates indicate between 200 to 300 people were killed in the Israeli strike on the hospital in the center of Gaza City.

The statement continued:

Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the IDF is looking into the reported strike, saying since it was fairly recent, the IDF is still unclear whether the hospital was hit by an Israeli Air Force (IAF) strike or failed Hamas launch. 

Israel Defense Forces Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi warned Hezbollah against any attacks on Israel as he toured the military’s Northern Command near Lebanon on Tuesday.

“If Hezbollah makes a mistake and strikes us, it will be destroyed, destroyed, destroyed,” Halevi said.  

“Each one of us will do anything, including risking our own lives. Why is that?" he asked soldiers. "We’re fighting over our home, our civilians, our sovereignty, our deterrence and our existence in the future.”  

The crossfire on Lebanon’s border with Israel is dwarfed by the scale and intensity of the Hamas-Israel war to the south.

The border fighting is within a roughly four-kilometer (2.5-mile) radius of either side of the demarcation line, with at least 13 people killed since last Saturday.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared three days of mourning for the victims of the Israeli airstrike on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza, which the Palestinian Health Ministry said resulted in an estimated hundreds of deaths.

In a statement released by his office, the president also ordered that flags be flown at half-mast for the victims of the “Israeli aggression on al-Ahli hospital and for all the people killed by the occupation."

The hospital was sheltering thousands of displaced people, the ministry said.

Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari has said the IDF is looking into the reported strike. 

Preliminary estimates indicate between 200 to 300 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a hospital in the center of Gaza City, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said in a statement Tuesday, noting many people still remained beneath the rubble.

The Palestinian government in Gaza said in an earlier statement that the strike on the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital had resulted in dozens of deaths.

Hamas released a statement on the strike, calling it a "genocide."

“The Al-Ahli Hospital Massacre in the heart of Gaza Strip is a genocide. Enough silence on the aggression and recklessness of the occupation,” Hamas said in a statement.

Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the IDF is looking into the reported strike, saying since it was fairly recent, the IDF is still unclear whether the hospital was hit by an Israeli Air Force (IAF) strike or failed Hamas launch. 

Kareem Khadder contributed reporting to this post.

Survivors of the Nova festival who are being treated at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Israel’s largest acute care facility, shared their experiences with ambassadors and dignitaries from 30 different countries.  

The foreign dignitaries, who are all posted at their countries' embassies in Israel, joined an organized tour of the center, commonly referred to as Ichilov in Israel. 

Ambassadors from the European Union, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Greece, Slovakia, Cyprus, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Taiwan, Philippines, Ecuador, Colombia, Kosovo and Singapore were all in attendance. Senior representatives from Germany, Hungary, Russia, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Latvia were also there. 

Shirlee Gabay told the assembled crowd that she and her friends started to run as soon as they heard gunshots. They managed to drive away from the scene and found a shelter to hide in. 

“I was on the ground sitting and they came in and there were many gunshots,” she said, adding that she was shot in the knee. 

She said that “it became quieter” as the people around her began to die. She told the visitors that one woman’s body was slumped against hers “for hours.”

Taly Moalem, a resident of the city of Ofakim, asked for the world to support Israel. “We want our children, we want peace and we want to be a healthy nation in our country because we don’t have another,” Moalem said.

Remember: The music festival, which took place in a rural farmland area near the Gaza-Israel border, was just one of multiple locations where militant group Hamas carried out a surprise attack on October 7. At least 260 bodies have been discovered at the site, with others believed to have been taken hostage in Gaza.

"Intense discussions" are underway regarding the United Nations' humanitarian efforts in Gaza, the spokesperson for the UN secretary-general said Tuesday, as widespread displacement, dwindling supplies and fuel shortages contribute to a mounting crisis.

The spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, did not say whether UN Secretary-General António Guterres will visit Gaza or Israel during his travels to the Middle East later this week, adding the secretary-general’s travel plans are very fluid.

At least 20 humanitarians from the United Nations and Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement have been killed in Gaza, the UN said. Supplies continue to dwindle in what the agency described as "utter catastrophe."

Of those killed, 15 staffers were from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and five were from the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, according to Joyce Msuya, the assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and deputy emergency relief coordinator at the UN.

UNRWA schools shelter more than half of the displaced population in central-south Gaza, according to Msuya, but will only be able to operate small desalination plants in those shelters “for a few more days” without more fuel.

The UNRWA secured five trucks worth of fuel to operate Gaza’s main seawater desalination plans on Monday, but that will only keep facilities operating “for a week or so,” the UN said. 

Hospitals in Gaza have entered a stage of “actual collapse” due to electricity cuts and fuel shortages, a spokesperson from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said earlier Tuesday.