Staff at Gaza's Kamal Adwan, al-Awda, and Indonesian hospitals report that food supplies are rapidly depleting as Israel's siege of Jabalia in the northern part of the region enters its 13th day.
Meanwhile, Gaza’s civil defence forces state that they have been unable to retrieve the bodies of dozens of individuals trapped beneath the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli airstrikes on Jabalia.
In a separate development, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has reported that its peacekeepers have once again come under "direct and apparently deliberate fire" from an Israeli tank in southern Lebanon, marking the latest in a series of such attacks.
Additionally, Israel bombed a target in the Syrian coastal city of Latakia on Thursday and the United States conducted strikes in Yemen, after Iran conducted a missile strike on Israel on October 1.
According to Gaza Health Ministry official Medhat Abbas, an Israeli airstrike on a school in Jabalia has resulted in 19 fatalities and numerous injuries, including children.
The school, located in the northern Gaza Strip, was housing displaced individuals at the time of the attack, as reported by medics earlier to news agency Reuters on Thursday.
As reported by Al Araby al Jadeed, the Arabic-language sister site of The New Arab, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is looking into claims that a German vessel shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle off the Lebanese coast.
The incident involving the German ship could have implications for the ongoing operations of UNIFIL and its mandate to maintain peace and security in southern Lebanon.
A 60-year-old Palestinian woman was shot and killed by Israeli forces in the village of Faqqua, located northeast of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, according to Wafa news agency.
Mahmoud al-Saadi, the director of the Red Crescent Society in Jenin, reported that the woman was picking olives with her family near the separation and expansion wall constructed on the village's land at the time of the incident.
This attack follows an earlier incident in which Israeli forces opened fire on an event organised by the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, aimed at assisting farmers from the village of Kafr al-Labad, east of Tulkarem, with olive picking.
On Wednesday, UN experts warned that farmers in the occupied West Bank are facing their most perilous olive harvest season yet, citing intimidation, restricted access to land, severe harassment, and assaults by armed settlers as significant threats.
My family harvested their olive trees made beautiful fresh oil directly.
— Georgina Ismael (@HamdanGeorgina) October 17, 2024
They made a day out of it
Bringing food, making memories under the sun.
Other families did the same. Zionist Jewish forces shot a Palestinian woman in Jenin who was harvesting as well, she died today. https://t.co/vSmFM8xesJ pic.twitter.com/Sgz6BHepWA
Israeli strikes killed several Palestinians at a school sheltering displaced people in the northern Gaza Strip, medics told news agency Reuters on Thursday.
More updates to come.
US President Joe Biden takes off for Berlin on Thursday for a rapid visit to discuss Russia's invasion of Ukraine with the leaders of Germany, France and Britain as Kyiv urges its western allies to take urgent steps to end the fighting.
The rapidly expanding conflict in the Middle East is also expected to be high on the agenda in talks between the leaders as diplomatic efforts to halt the fighting have stalled.
The president now will land late on Thursday in Berlin and hold bilateral talks on Friday morning with Germany's president and chancellor, before a planned meeting with the so-called European quad in the afternoon.
The United States and Germany are close allies of Israel, which has become increasingly isolated over its military campaign in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza that local authorities say has killed more than 42,000 people.
"We will not accept Iran attacking Israel with missiles," German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Wednesday.
"That must not happen. There must be no further destabilisation of the region. And Iran is playing with fire. That must stop."
The health ministry in Gaza said on Thursday that at least 42,438 people have been killed in the ongoing war on Gaza.
The toll includes 29 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 99,246 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023.
Hezbollah said it hit two Israeli tanks in south Lebanon near the border with guided missiles on Thursday, as the Israeli army battles the Iran-backed group in the area.
Hezbollah fighters targeted "two Merkava tanks" near the border village of Labbouneh "with guided missiles", causing a fire and casualties, the Iran-backed group said in a statement.
A German warship operating as part of the United Nations' UNIFIL mission brought down an unmanned flying object off the coast of Lebanon on Thursday, a spokesperson for the German defence ministry told news agency Reuters.
"The corvette brought an unidentified unmanned aerial vehicle into the water in a controlled crash," the spokesperson said, reporting no damage to the German vessel or its crew.
The corvette Ludwigshafen am Rhein is continuing its duties, he added.
The dpa news agency first reported on the incident.
The EU's foreign policy chief on Thursday appeared to criticise the United States giving Israel one month to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, saying that during that time, too many people would die.
"The US has been saying to Israel that they have to improve humanitarian support to Gaza, but they gave one month delay. One month delay at the current pace of people being killed. It's too many people," Josep Borrell told reporters in Brussels, adding that the situation was a "catastrophe."
Israel must take steps over the next month to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza or face potential restrictions on US military aid, US officials said on Wednesday, in the strongest such warning since Israel's war on the devastated territory began a year ago.
On Thursday, 38 organisations, including ActionAid, the Council for Arab-British Understanding (Caabu), and Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), issued urgent calls to draw attention to the "atrocities" occurring during Israel's prolonged siege of northern Gaza.
In a joint statement, they demanded accountability and justice, urging world leaders to intervene swiftly.
The statement condemned the forced displacement of an estimated 400,000 Palestinians under Israeli orders, stating: "This is not an evacuation—this is forced displacement under gunfire."
The organisations also called for unimpeded humanitarian access, an immediate ceasefire, and the end of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami warned Thursday of further retaliation against Israel if it attacks Iranian targets, which Israel has vowed to do after Iran's missile attack on October 1.
"If you make a mistake and attack our targets, whether in the region or in Iran, we will strike you again painfully," Salami said at the funeral of a Guards general killed in an Israeli strike last month.
Abbas Nilforoushan, a top commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force foreign operations arm, was killed on September 27 alongside Hassan Nasrallah, the chief of Lebanon's Hezbollah, in an Israeli strike on south Beirut.
Funeral services for Nilforoushan, whose body the Guards said was recovered last week, began on Monday in Iraq. His body was then moved to Iran for burial in his hometown of Isfahan later Thursday.
During his speech Salami criticised as "not reliable" the THAAD missile defence battery which the Pentagon on Tuesday said arrived in Israel, along with about 100 American troops to operate it.
"Do not trust these systems. You cannot massacre Muslim nations and remain safe," he said.
"We know your weaknesses. You know them well," he added addressing Israel.
The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system is "designed to intercept targets outside and inside the atmosphere," according to its manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
The Israeli military on Thursday ordered residents to leave part of the Bekaa region in east Lebanon, warning Israeli forces would again target the area.
"Urgent warning to the residents of the Bekaa region, specifically those located in the building marked on the map in the Tamnine area," military spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X.
"You are located near facilities and interests that belong to Hezbollah, which will be targeted by the [Israeli army] in the near future."
Minutes later Adraee posted a second call for residents of nearby Saraain al-Tahta, also in the Bekaa region, to evacuate as well.
Israeli airstrikes killed 11 Palestinians in Gaza City on Thursday, medics said, while Israeli forces sent tanks into Jabalia in the north, where Palestinians and United Nations officials expressed alarm over shortages of food and medicine.
Residents of Jabalia said Israeli forces blew up clusters of houses from air, by tank shells and by placing bombs in buildings before blowing them up remotely.
Gaza's civil emergency service said it evacuated several wounded people from a school sheltering displaced Palestinians that caught fire after being hit by Israeli tank shells.
Residents said Israeli forces had effectively isolated Beit Hanoun, Jabalia, and Beit Lahiya in the far north of the enclave from Gaza City, blocking movement except for those families with permission to heed evacuation orders and leave the three towns.
"We have written our death notes, and we are not leaving Jabalia," one resident told news agency Reuters via a chat app.
"The occupation (Israel) is punishing for not leaving our houses in the early days of the war, and we are not going now either. They are blowing up houses, and roads, and are starving us but we die once and we don't lose our pride," the father of four said, refusing to give his name fearing Israeli reprisal.
Israel bombed a target in a Syrian coastal city on Thursday and the United States conducted strikes in Yemen nearly a month into Israel's war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
According to Syrian state media, an Israeli strike on the city of Latakia, a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad, wounded two civilians.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said the Israeli raid targeted a "weapons depot belong to Hezbollah".
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike.
In Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, Israel's main ally the United States conducted multiple B-2 bomber strikes on weapon storage facilities, according to the US military and defence department.
"US forces targeted several of the Houthis' underground facilities housing various weapons components of types that the Huthis have used to target civilian and military vessels throughout the region," US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement.
The B-2 is a stealth aircraft capable of flying non-stop from the United States, with a payload of 40,000 pounds of bombs, the US Air Force says on its website. That is a far heavier weapons load than on most other modern warplanes.
