Israel pounds sealed-off Gaza Strip to punish Hamas

Numerous countries also offered to play a role in mediating an end to the fighting, which already has killed at least 1,600 people. The death toll was expected to grow as Israel pummeled the Gaza Strip with airstrikes and sent Palestinians fleeing into UN shelters.

Here’s what is happening on Day 4 of the conflict:

Israel shells Syria after rockets hit open land in Golan Heights

The Israeli military said it shelled Syria on Tuesday after rockets hit open land in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

The military did not accuse any group of the rocket attack.

The Syrian government did not comment. However, Britain-based opposition war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says a Palestinian faction conducted the rocket attack from Syrian territory.

US intelligence didn’t see attack coming, security adviser says

US intelligence did not pick up signs of the Hamas attack on Israel, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday.

“We did not see anything that suggested an attack of this type was going to unfold any more than the Israelis did,” Sullivan told reporters.

As other White House officials have done in recent days, Sullivan also reiterated that the US government has also not seen any direct linkage between Iran and the Hamas attack over the weekend.

“While Iran plays this broad role — sustained, deep and dark role — in providing all this support and capabilities to Hamas, in terms of this particular, gruesome attack on Oct. 7, we don’t currently have that information,” Sullivan said.

At least 20 US citizens unaccounted for after Hamas attacks, national security adviser says

Twenty or more US citizens are unaccounted for as US President Joe Biden’s administration continues to determine how many were killed in the Hamas attacks or are being held hostage, Sullivan said Tuesday.

He said the US does not know precisely how many citizens are being held hostage, or their conditions.

Biden confirmed earlier Tuesday that 14 Americans have been killed in the bloody Hamas incursion.

Gaza health ministry says death toll in has risen to 900

Israeli airstrikes since Saturday have resulted in 900 deaths in Gaza, including 260 children and 230 women, with an additional 4,500 individuals wounded, the Ministry of Health in Gaza said Tuesday.

The airstrikes have caused the deaths of 150 members of 22 families, six health workers, and eight journalists, while 15 health workers and 20 journalists have been wounded, the ministry said.

Airstrikes in residential neighbourhoods have displaced approximately 140,000 citizens to UN shelters and hospitals, the ministry said. The UN is reporting that at least 200,000 residents have been displaced.

The strikes have targeted nine health institutions, including the Ministry of Health building, the Rimal Clinic, and the International Eye Center, and bombed 15 ambulances, the ministry said.

The situation is further complicated by fuel shortages and electrical outages affecting generators, the ministry said.

US says special operations forces working with Israelis

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday that a small group of US special operations forces is now working with the Israelis to help with planning and intelligence in their counteroperations against Hamas.

Austin released the information to reporters travelling with him to a Ukraine contact group meeting in Brussels.

Carrier strike group arrives in Eastern Mediterranean, US official says

The Ford carrier strike group has arrived in the far Eastern Mediterranean, within range to provide a host of air support or long-range strike options for Israel if requested, but also to surge US military presence to prevent the now four-day-old war with Hamas from spilling over into a more dangerous regional conflict, a US official told the Associated Press.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the arrival ahead of an official announcement.

The Pentagon has said that the US warplanes, destroyers and cruisers that sailed with the Ford will conduct maritime and air operations which could range from intelligence collection and interdictions to long-range strike.

Along with the Ford, the US is sending the cruiser USS Normandy and destroyers USS Thomas Hudner, USS Ramage, USS Carney, and USS Roosevelt, and augmenting regional Air Force F-35, F-15, F-16, and A-10 fighter aircraft squadrons in the region.

Erdogan: US deployment to the region could lead to “massacres”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has criticized Israel’s blockade of Gaza saying cutting off electricity and water is against the Palestinians’ human rights.

Speaking at a joint news conference with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer on Tuesday, Erdogan criticized US plans to send an aircraft carrier to the region, saying the deployment could lead to “massacres.”

" What is the U.S. aircraft carrier doing in Israel? What is it coming to do? It will take down Gaza by striking the surrounding areas and start committing serious massacres," he said.

The Turkish leader reiterated his offer to mediate between the sides and said he would continue his efforts to end the war. He said he also would hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres later on Tuesday.

6 rockets were fired into northern Israel, Lebanese official says

A Lebanese security official said six rockets were fired from southern Lebanon into northern Israel Tuesday evening.

The officials said it was not immediately clear who fired the rockets from the area of the Lebanese southern village of Qlaileh. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. A statement from UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, also confirmed the rocket fire and urged “everyone to exercise restraint at this critical time.”

Officials from the Hezbollah militant group did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Spokespeople with Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad said they had no information on the rockets.

The firing of the rockets from southern Lebanon came a day after three Hezbollah fighters were killed along the border and an Israeli army officer as well.

Putin says the latest Gaza war is a result of US policy failures

Russian President Putin on Tuesday described the latest Israel-Palestinian war as a result of failed US foreign policy.

Speaking at the start of his talks with visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Sudani, Putin said in his first comment on the war that “many will agree with me that this is a vivid example of the failure of the US policies in the Middle East.”

He added that the US has “tried to monopolize the settlement, but, regrettably hasn’t bothered to search for compromises that would be acceptable to both parties and, just the opposite, sought to enforce their own view of how it should be done, exerting pressure on both parties.”

Putin said the US has failed “to take vital interests of the Palestinian people into account,” ignoring UN General Assembly resolutions envisaging the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

Palestinians scramble for safety as Israel pounds sealed-off Gaza Strip to punish Hamas

Israeli warplanes hammered the Gaza Strip neighbourhood by neighbourhood Tuesday, reducing buildings to rubble and sending people scrambling to find safety in the tiny, sealed-off territory now suffering severe retaliation for the deadly weekend attack by Hamas militants.

Humanitarian groups pleaded for the creation of corridors to get aid into Gaza and warned that hospitals overwhelmed with wounded people were running out of supplies. Israel has stopped entry of food, fuel and medicines into Gaza, and the sole remaining access from Egypt shut down Tuesday after airstrikes hit near the border crossing.

The war is expected to escalate. The weekend attack that Hamas said was retribution for worsening conditions for Palestinians under Israeli occupation has inflamed Israel’s determination to crush the group’s hold in Gaza. New exchanges of fire over Israel’s northern borders with militants in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday pointed to the risk of an expanded regional conflict.

Israel stepped up its offensive on Tuesday, expanding the mobilization of reservists to 360,000. Israel’s military said it had regained effective control over areas Hamas attacked in its south and of the Gaza border.

A looming question is whether Israel will launch a ground assault into Gaza — a 40-kilometer-long (25-mile) strip of land wedged among Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea that is home to 2.3 million people and has been governed by Hamas since 2007.

Rescue officials in Gaza said “large numbers” of people were still trapped under the remnants of levelled buildings, with rescue equipment and ambulances unable to reach the area.

On Tuesday, a large part of Gaza City’s Rimal neighbourhood was reduced to rubble after hours of airstrikes the night before. Residents found buildings torn in half or demolished to mounds of concrete and rebar. Cars were flattened and trees burned out on residential streets transformed into moonscapes.

Palestinian Civil Defense forces pulled Abdullah Musleh out of his basement together with 30 others after their apartment building was flattened.

“I sell toys, not missiles,’’ the 46-year-old said, weeping. “I want to leave Gaza. Why do I have to stay here? I lost my home and my job.”

The Israeli military said it struck hundreds of targets in Rimal, an upscale district home to ministries of the Hamas-run government, universities, media organizations and the aid agency offices.

In a new tactic, Israel is warning civilians to evacuate neighborhood after neighborhood, and then inflicting devastation, in what could be a prelude to a ground offensive. On Tuesday, the military told residents of the nearby al-Daraj neighbourhood to evacuate. New explosions soon rocked it and other areas, continuing into the night.

In all, dozens of fighter jets hit more than 70 targets in the area, according to Israeli military officials, who said Hamas had directed attacks against Israel from the neighbourhood.

One blast hit Gaza City’s seaport, setting fishing boats aflame.

“There is no safe place in Gaza right now. You see decent people being killed every day,” Gaza journalist Hasan Jabar said after three Palestinian journalists were killed in the Rimal bombardment. “I am genuinely afraid for my life.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Hamas fired barrages of rockets toward the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon and Tel Aviv. There were no immediate reports of casualties. On Tuesday night, a group of militants entered an industrial zone in Ashkelon, sparking a gunbattle with Israeli troops, the military said. Three militants were killed, and troops were searching the area for others.

Israel’s new tactics could point to its new objective.

Four previous rounds of Israel-Hamas fighting between 2008 and 2021 all ended inconclusively, with Hamas battered but still in control. This time, Israel’s government is under intense pressure from the public to topple Hamas, a goal considered unachievable in the past because it would require a reoccupation of the Gaza Strip, at least temporarily.

“The objective is for this war to end very differently from all of the previous rounds. There has to be a clear victory,” said Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser in Israel. “Whatever has to be done to fundamentally change the situation will have to be done,” he said.

The devastation also sharpened questions about Hamas’ strategy and objectives. Hamas officials have said they planned for all possibilities, including a punishing Israeli escalation. Desperation has grown among Palestinians, many of whom see nothing to lose under unending Israeli control and increasing settlements in the West Bank, a 16-year-long blockade in Gaza and what they see as the world’s apathy.

Hamas may have been counting on the fight to spread to the West Bank and possibly for Lebanon’s Hezbollah to open a front in the north. Days of clashes between rock-throwing Palestinians and Israeli forces in the West Bank have left 15 Palestinians dead, but Israel has clamped down heavily on the territory, preventing movement between communities. The violence also spread into east Jerusalem, where Israeli police said they killed two Palestinians who hurled stones at police late Tuesday.

Brief exchanges of fire across Israel’s northern border have taken place nearly daily. Palestinian militants fired rockets into northern Israel from Lebanon and from Syria on Tuesday, each bringing Israeli artillery and mortar fire in return. But so far they have not escalated.

In hopes of blunting the bombardment in Gaza, Hamas has threatened to kill one Israeli civilian captive any time Israel targets civilians in their homes in Gaza “without prior warning.”

The militants’ attack stunned Israel with a death toll unseen since the 1973 war with Egypt and Syria — and those deaths happened over a longer period of time. It brought horrific scenes of Hamas militants gunning down civilians in their homes, on streets and at a mass outdoor music festival, while dragging men, women and children into captivity.

The Israeli military said more than 1,000 people, including 155 soldiers, have been killed in Israel. In Gaza, 900 people have been killed, including 260 children and 230 women, according to authorities there; Israel says hundreds of Hamas fighters are among them. Thousands have been wounded on both sides.

US President Biden added an apparent warning to Hezbollah, saying, “To any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of the situation, I have one word: Don’t.”

The State Department announced that Secretary of State Antony Blinken would travel in the coming days to Israel to deliver a message of solidarity and support.

Hamas responded to Biden, saying his administration should “review its biased position” and “move away from the policy of double standards” over Palestinian rights to defend themselves against Israeli occupation.

The bodies of roughly 1,500 Hamas militants were found on Israeli territory, the military said. It wasn’t clear whether those numbers overlapped with deaths reported by Palestinian authorities. Tens of thousands of people in southern Israel have been evacuated since Sunday.

The UN’s World Health Organization said that supplies it had pre-positioned for seven hospitals in Gaza have already run out amid the flood of wounded. The head of the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders said surgical equipment, antibiotics, fuel and other supplies were running out at two hospitals it runs in Gaza.

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