Hamas freed two Israeli women who were among the more than 200 hostages taken during its October 7 rampage in southern Israel while according to some reports the US had advised Israel to hold off on a ground assault in the Gaza Strip.
"We decided to release them for humanitarian and poor health grounds," Abu Ubaida, spokesman for the armed wing of the Palestinian Hamas militant group, said on Telegram.
The Israeli prime minister's office issued a statement confirming that the women, whom it named as Nurit Cooper, 79, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, were handed over to the Israeli military and would be taken to a medical facility.
Israel launched an immediate war on Hamas and more than 5,000 people have since been killed in its air attacks on Gaza, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Here are the live updates on the Israel-Hamas war:
Breaking its silence on the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on Tuesday said Beijing hoped that the issue would be resolved in a "just and lasting manner" on the basis of the "two-state solution."
The Israeli army said Wednesday that it had struck military infrastructure inside Syria in response to earlier launches towards Israel.
"IDF fighter jets struck military infrastructure and mortar launchers belonging to the Syrian Army in response to the launches toward Israel yesterday (Tuesday)," the IDF said in a statement. An IDF spokesperson told AFP the strikes were inside Syria.
Israel Defence Forces (IDF) on Tuesday announced that the ground personnel massing on the southern border were ready to 'invade' Gaza, The Jerusalem Post reported.
Briefing reporters at the country's southern border, IDF Chief-of-Staff, Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi said, "I want to be clear, we are ready to invade."
He added that the IDF was in the process of deciding on the 'exact timing' of the ground invasion of Gaza in coordination with the country's political echelons.
Israel has not launched a ground invasion of Gaza, despite announcing its imminence, a delay media reports and experts attribute to international pressure, political-military divisions and concerns over hostages.
Arab and Muslim Americans and their allies are criticizing President Joe Biden's response to the Israel-Hamas war, asking him to do more to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Gaza or risk losing their support in the 2024 election.
The United Nations said 20 trucks that had been due to deliver aid to the besieged Gaza Strip via the Rafah crossing from Egypt on Tuesday had not entered the enclave.
"We hope the materials can enter Gaza tomorrow," U.N. aid spokesperson Eri Kaneko said.
Senior UN aid official Lynn Hastings earlier told the U.N. Security Council that 20 trucks were due to cross on Tuesday. Since Saturday, 54 trucks have crossed into Gaza carrying food, medicine and water, which U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described as "a drop of aid in an ocean of need."
Amid the unwavering support to Israel, US President Joe Biden on Tuesday affirmed that Washington remains committed to the Palestinian people and the terror attack by Hamas doesn't take that right away.
A leading Arab Israeli actor has been detained on suspicion of "incitement to terrorism" over a social media post about Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel, police and her lawyer said Tuesday.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday warned Iran that the United States would respond "decisively" to any attack by its proxies, as tensions rise with the Israel-Hamas war.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati reaffirmed on Tuesday Beirut's commitment to a UN resolution that ended a 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, amid border tensions as Israel fights Palestinian militants in Gaza.
Hamas fighters stormed into Israel from the blockaded Gaza Strip on October 7, killing at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities, and taking more than 200 others hostage.
Israel's retaliatory bombing campaign has killed more than 5,700 in Gaza, mainly Palestinian civilians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
After 16 days of mobilising and massing near the Gaza Strip, an eerie calm lingers among Israeli troops as they await the highly anticipated invasion of the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory.
The parched desert floor is now filled with hundreds of armoured vehicles along with columns of tanks primed for the expected onslaught.
The mechanised steel is adorned with the blue and white Israeli flags, while soldiers labour away with the everyday maintenance of their vehicles.
This entire first line is protected by an immense trench, about two kilometres (more than a mile) long, that was dug by engineering units outfitted with heavy machinery.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas told France's Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday that the international community must halt Israel's "aggression" as it battles Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
"We urge you, President Macron, to stop this aggression," Abbas said after the two leaders held talks in Ramallah dominated by the war that has left thousands of civilians dead in Gaza and Israel.
The Palestinian leader strongly condemned Israeli air strikes which he said "kill innocent civilians in a barbaric way".
When night falls, Sarina Blumenfeld gets flashbacks from what she endured during the Holocaust and struggles to process the carnage that took place when Hamas Islamists entered Israel from Gaza and killed 1,400 people.
Blumenfeld, 89, is one of tens of thousands of elderly survivors of the Nazi Holocaust who live in Israel and are once again facing up to the reality of war, with more than 220 Israelis taken hostage in Gaza.
"This all reminds me of what we went through during the Holocaust and how much we suffered," Blumenfeld told Reuters from her home in the coastal city of Ashdod, which is 40 km (25 miles) from Gaza and frequently a target of Hamas rocket fire.
Amid the unwavering support to Israel, US President Joe Biden on Tuesday affirmed that Washington remains committed to the Palestinian people and the terror attack by Hamas doesn't take that right away.
More than 700 Palestinians were killed overnight by Israeli air strikes, Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry said on Tuesday, the highest 24-hour death toll in Israel's two-week-old "total siege", as pressure grew for aid to be allowed into the enclave unimpeded.
The Israeli military said it had hit over 400 Hamas militant targets and killed dozens of its fighters overnight, but that it would take time to destroy Gaza's ruling Islamist group, whose deadly cross-border attack on Oct. 7 shocked Israel.
With international aid agencies warning of a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza, French President Emmanuel Macron flew to Israel to offer it support.
UN chief Antonio Guterres on Tuesday asserted that no party to an armed conflict is above international humanitarian law as he expressed deep alarm over the "relentless bombardment" of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip by Israeli forces.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen on Tuesday denounced UN chief Antonio Guterres over his criticism of Israel's Gaza campaign, as Cohen recounted graphic details of Hamas attacks on civilians.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Tuesday the "terrorist attack" by Palestinian militants against Israel on October 7 did not justify killing "millions of innocents" in Gaza.
"Just because Hamas committed a terrorist attack against Israel doesn't mean Israel has to kill millions of innocents," the veteran leftist said in his weekly live address on social media.
Thousands of civilians have been killed on both sides since the conflict began when Hamas fighters stormed across the border, indiscriminately killing civilians in the deadliest attack since Israel was created in 1948.
With schools and businesses shut, the streets were unusually quiet in Acre, an Israeli town home to Jewish and Arab communities hoping their fragile yet time-honoured ties survive the latest war.
When Israel and Palestinian armed group Hamas last fought in 2021, violence spilled over into towns like Acre, shared by both Jewish and Arab residents, with bouts of rioting resulting in deaths.
In Acre, a placid town of some 50,000 inhabitants along Israel's northern Mediterranean coast, a joint Jewish-Arab theatre and a restaurant that long served as a symbol of coexistence were both set ablaze during the 2021 melee.
During more than two weeks since the latest war erupted on October 7, triggered by a bloody Hamas assault on Israeli soil near the border of the blockaded Gaza Strip, Uri Jeremias has kept his iconic eatery open -- but it has remained largely deserted.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday accused the United Nations Security Council of deepening the Gaza crisis by bowing to the "Israeli regime".
"The international community is not rising to the challenge in the face of the Israeli regime's unlawful and unrestrained attacks against civilians," Erdogan said in a statement, adding that the UN Security Council "has deepened the crisis with its one-sided attitude".
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala and Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer will fly to Israel on Wednesday in a show of support for the country in the wake of Hamas's large-scale attack on Israelis, government spokespeople confirmed on Tuesday.
The leaders will hold talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog, spokespeople for both governments said.
Nehammer will also meet with the family of an Austrian-Israeli national who is currently being held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Austrian government said in a statement.
Hamas official Osama Hamdan urged Arab, Islamic countries and the United Nations to try to halt Israel's assault on Gaza, in a press conference held in Beirut on Tuesday.
Hamdan also called on Arab countries to end any normalisation of diplomatic relations with Israel.
The official called for humanitarian aid crossings to be opened, allowing fuel, aid and rubble removal equipment into Gaza.
The Gaza war raging between Israel and Hamas could deal a heavy blow to the global economy, banking titans told a glitzy investment forum in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
The dour mood from some of the gathering's most high-profile speakers underscored how the conflict threatens attempts by the world's biggest oil exporter to diversify its economy away from fossil fuels.
Hamas militants who stormed into Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7 killed at least 1,400 people and took more than 220 hostages, according to Israeli officials.
More than 5,700 Palestinians have been killed across the Gaza Strip in retaliatory Israeli bombardments, the territory's Hamas-run health ministry said.
Doctors in Gaza say patients arriving at hospitals are showing signs of disease caused by overcrowding and poor sanitation after more than 1.4 million people fled their homes for temporary shelters under Israel's heaviest-ever bombardment.
Aid agencies have repeatedly warned of a health crisis in the tiny, crowded Palestinian enclave under an Israeli blockade that has cut off electricity, clean water and fuel, with only small U.N. convoys of food and medicine getting in.
"The crowding of civilians and the fact that most schools used as shelters are housing lots of people, it's a prime breeding ground for disease to spread," said Nahed Abu Taaema, a public health doctor at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
The World Health Organization said on Tuesday it remains unable to distribute fuel or life-saving health supplies to major hospitals in northern Gaza due to a lack of security guarantees.
The WHO called for an "immediate humanitarian ceasefire so health supplies and fuel can be delivered safely throughout the Gaza Strip".
The United Nations on Tuesday called for improved coordination among humanitarian groups in making sure the small amount of aid now moving into the Gaza Strip contained only the most needed items.
UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said that some of the food delivered into Gaza so far, such as rice and lentils, had been impractical given the dwindling availability of fresh water and fuel.
Hamas militants stormed into Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7 and killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved to dampen media pressure over the government's conduct of the war against the Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza, issuing a statement insisting he was in full accord with his defence and army chiefs.
Netanyahu, Israel's longest serving prime minister, has seen his already falling approval ratings plunge following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, which killed some 1,400 people in the deadliest day for Israel in its 75-year history.
On Monday, amid growing expectations of an imminent ground operation against Hamas in Gaza, Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's largest circulation newspaper, published a stinging attack on the government, saying that a "crisis of confidence" had developed between Netanyahu and the army leadership.
French President Emmanuel Macron called Tuesday for the international coalition fighting the Islamic State group to be expanded to also fight Hamas after the October 7 attacks on Israel.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Tuesday a blast at a hospital in Gaza City last week was not caused by a missile fired by Israel and also said around 50 people had been killed, not the almost 500 reported by Palestinian officials.
Tajani, who did not say what evidence his comments were based on, was commenting on the Oct. 17 explosion at Al Ahli hospital, among the most hotly disputed events of the Gaza war.
The Gaza health ministry has put the death toll at 471.
The Israeli army deluged the Gaza Strip with leaflets on Tuesday urging residents to provide information about the hostages held by Hamas in return for financial rewards, AFP journalists reported.
The messages were dropped by Israeli aircraft amid the waves of air strikes targeting Gaza, which Hamas health officials said have killed more than 5,000 people.
"If you want a better future for yourself and your children, do the right thing and send us safe and useful information about kidnapped people in your area," said the Arabic message on leaflets seen by AFP.
Hamas says at least 140 killed in Israel night strikes on Gaza: news agency AFP
- Palestinian militant group Hamas said on Monday it had freed two more women hostages abducted to the Gaza Strip from Israel during the October 7 attacks.
- The Islamist group's military wing said in a statement the two had been freed for "compelling humanitarian" reasons following mediation by Qatar and Egypt.
- There was no immediate confirmation by Israeli authorities but Israeli media reported that the women had been taken to the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt.
- Two American women, a mother and daughter, were freed on Friday.
- Israel on Monday increased the number of hostages it has confirmed to 222 people seized when Hamas gunmen crossed the border and attacked kibbutz communities, towns and military bases in southern Israel.
