Live updates: Israel-Hamas war, Gaza evacuations, Al-Shifa Hospital
From CNN’s Oliver Darcy
A coalition of 11 news organizations sent a letter on Monday to the leaders of Israel and Egypt, asking their governments to grant access for international journalists to enter the Gaza Strip to cover the ongoing war.
"As the current crisis enters its sixth week, the need for more journalists to document events on the ground is greater than ever — particularly when so much information is being shared informally via social media," the letter said.
The letter, which was addressed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, was signed by CNN, BBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, CBS News, ABC News, ITV News and Sky News.
The news organization noted in the letter that "while we have been able to see images and read accounts from inside Gaza, the only reliable reporting has come from a small number of incredibly brave journalists who are working to document events there."
More background: The lack of direct access to the Gaza Strip has posed significant challenges for news organizations trying to report on Israel’s campaign against Hamas.
Since the onset of the war, western news organizations have largely covered the war from Israel, having virtually no ability to get personnel inside the Gaza Strip independently. Instead, newsrooms have largely relied on freelancers and producers to get news out from the war-torn environment.
In the last few weeks, some journalists, including for CNN, have been granted the ability to embed with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as they carry out missions inside the Palestinian territory. But those journalists have had to agree to various conditions, including staying with the IDF during their brief time inside Gaza.
From CNN’s Niamh Kennedy in London
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said it has no fuel to fill its trucks in Gaza and will not be able to facilitate aid deliveries through the Rafah crossing on Tuesday.
Thomas White, director of UNRWA Affairs in the Gaza Strip, told a press briefing Monday that the agency had about 80 trucks in its fleet that have been transporting aid through the Rafah crossing, which connects Egypt to Gaza.
UNRWA had issued similarly bleak warnings regarding its dwindling fuel supplies on October 25. At the time it said that if it did not receive fuel deliveries within one day it would be forced to halt operations in Gaza.
During Monday’s briefing, White explained that for the past two and a half weeks, the agency had been using fuel from a strategic reservoir inside Gaza after brokering access with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). That reservoir, which receives fuel from a pipeline to Egypt and has a one-million-liter capacity, has now run completely dry, according to White.
UNRWA had been “signaling to various interlocutors” for the past few days that the reservoir’s supplies were set to run out, White said.
Negotiations to refuel the reservoir are currently “stalled” at the “highest level of the Israeli government,” he added.
CNN has reached out to the Israeli government for comment.
UNRWA’s aid operation in Gaza has been “strangled of resources,” White stressed, warning that the situation is “going to get exceptionally tough” in the coming days.
The agency will be forced to entirely halt some services, including desalination plants and waste removal, he said. There is a “real potential” that free-flowing waste in the streets will lead to a “devastating” cholera outbreak in Gaza, White warned.
From CNN's Jake Tapper
A US official with knowledge of American intelligence says Hamas has a command node under the Al-Shifa hospital, uses fuel intended for the hospital and its fighters regularly cluster in and around Al-Shifa.
The information comes after comments made Sunday by a top White House official that the hospital, which is the largest one in Gaza, was being used not just to treat civilians.
Israel has insisted it is justified in taking military action around the hospital, despite criticism from the UN and others. The Israeli government announced it has created evacuation corridors and called for the removal of civilians, in addition to providing fuel.
Hamas and hospital officials have denied the command center accusation.
"There's no reason why we just can't take the patients out of there, instead of letting Hamas use it as a command center for terrorism, for the rockets that they fire against Israel, for the terror tunnels that they use to kill Israeli civilians,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview on CNN's State of the Union.
Netanyahu added that Israel is "treading carefully when it comes to hospitals. But we're also not going to give immunity to the terrorists.”
The CIA declined to comment.
From Asmaa Khalil in Rafah and CNN’s Eyad Kourdi
Ten buses carrying 564 foreign nationals departed the Gaza Strip for Egypt via the Rafah crossing on Monday, an Egyptian border official told a journalist working with CNN at the crossing.
The official detailed that some 97 aid relief trucks also made their way into the Gaza Strip, loaded with essential supplies such as food, water, relief items, medical equipment, and medications.
Before the conflict, the United Nations reported that about 455 trucks on average would enter daily with aid supplies.
In addition, the official said that four injured Palestinians have been allowed entry into Egypt, each accompanied by another person.
Among the injured evacuees Monday was a 59-year-old with grave head injuries who was transported in an ambulance. Another evacuee, a 38-year-old woman, arrived with a fractured right limb and meningitis, conditions she developed after being trapped for six days under the rubble of her bombed house, according to someone accompanying her.
From CNN’s Kareem Khadder and Eyad Kourdi
The Palestinian Health Ministry in the occupied West Bank has reported updated casualty figures in Gaza.
In its update Monday, the ministry, which is based in Ramallah, said that 11,180 Palestinians, including 4,609 children and 3,100 women, have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, citing medical sources in the Hamas-controlled enclave.
Injuries from the attacks have affected 28,200 individuals, the ministry said.
According to the ministry, 15 patients at Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza have died in recent days, among them six newborns, due to power outages and a shortage of medical supplies. Previously health officials at the hospital had said three neo-natal babies had died.
Additionally, 202 health care workers have lost their lives, and 53 ambulances have been disabled, the ministry added.
The ministry did not issue a daily report on the death toll on Sunday, saying it was unable to update casualty figures due to Israeli attacks on hospitals.
The Ministry of Health in Ramallah draws data from medical sources in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
From CNN's Jo Shelley
The Israeli military said on Monday it had killed a group of Hamas fighters “embedded” among civilians at Gaza’s Al-Quds Hospital after its troops were fired on from the hospital entrance.
The IDF said its forces fired towards the fighters, some of whom were killed in the exchange.
“During the incident, approximately 21 terrorists were killed and there were no casualties to our forces,” the IDF said.
CNN cannot confirm whether any civilians were injured during the firefight.
The IDF also sent journalists a highly edited video, apparently shot from a drone, showing what it said was a video of a man carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher at the entrance to the hospital and aerial footage purporting to show an RPG being launched at an IDF tank. “After the terrorists fired RPGs, they returned to hide in the hospital,” it said.
CNN has verified that the video shows that this is the hospital entrance steps.
The Al Quds hospital is the second largest medical facility in the Gaza Strip and is no longer operational because of the lack of fuel and electricity.
Earlier Monday, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) had said “intense gunfire” was continuing in the vicinity of the Al-Quds hospital. A convoy accompanied by the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) to evacuate patients and staff from Al Quds Hospital had to turn back because of the "relentless bombardment and dangerous situation” in the area, the PRCS said.
From CNN's Ben Wedeman, Sarah El Sirgany and Eyad Kourdi
The Lebanese state-run news agency (NNA) said two Israeli missiles struck a convoy of media in the town of Yaroun on Monday near the Israeli-Lebanese border.
There were no reported injuries, according to NNA. CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment.
Journalists in the convoy were reporting on recent exchanges across the border between the Israeli military and Lebanese militia Hezbollah.
The Lebanese TV news channel Al-Jadeed was broadcasting live from the area when an explosion occurred, starting a fire nearby. Several vehicles in the convoy appeared to have been damaged, according to video from the scene.
In the aftermath of the explosion, media personnel were urgently advised to leave the area to "avoid further attacks," NNA reported.
Last month, Reuters cameraman Issam Abdallah was killed and others injured when a media convoy was hit in southern Lebanon.
Tensions rising: The incident on Monday comes amid rising cross-border exchanges. The IDF reported Monday that “in response to the launches over the past day, IDF fighter jets struck a number of Hezbollah military sites and terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon. These targets included terror infrastructure, weapons storage compounds, and an operational command center used by Hezbollah.”
Earlier on Monday, Hezbollah announced that it had targeted a site in Al-Ramtha within the Shebaa Farms area, claiming a direct strike. It also said that one of its fighters had been killed, but did not say where or when.
Additionally, the Lebanese state news agency reported Monday that two civilians were killed and several others injured in an Israeli air strike that hit a house in the settlement of Eyeta.
From CNN’s Amir Tal
An employee of the Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) was killed Sunday in Hezbollah’s missile attack on Dovev in northern Israel, the company said in a statement Monday.
The electric supplier said that “an anti-tank missile hit a team of employees of the electric company while they were working, in coordination with the security forces, in the area of Moshav Dovev to repair power lines damaged by previous firing.”
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah claimed responsibility for an attack with anti-tank missiles on northern Israel on Sunday, saying it was aimed at a military logistical team setting up communication towers. The group, which has fired anti-tank missiles across the border on multiple occasions over the past month, claimed in its statement that the attack killed and injured an unspecified number of individuals.
Israel responded to the attack by striking what it described as "a terrorist cell embedded in a civilian area in Lebanon."
Some background: Hezbollah is an Iran-backed Islamist movement with one of the most powerful paramilitary forces in the Middle East. The group, which has its main base on the Israel-Lebanon border, could become a wildcard player in the Hamas-Israel war, and spark a wider regional conflict.
From CNN's Kareem Khadder and Eyad Kourdi
Doctors at Al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza have refused a mandatory evacuation order of the hospital from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), because they fear the approximately 700 at-risk patients will die if left behind, according to Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, director-general of the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.
Several thousand people have been sheltering in the hospital compound, according to doctors in the hospital.
The evacuation order, according to Dr. Al-Bursh, is not coordinated with any international humanitarian agencies, such as the International Red Cross. The lack of coordination raises concerns about the safety and feasibility of transferring such a large number of patients, many of whom are in critical condition and will die in transport, he said.
Earlier on Monday, the IDF announced that a safe passage for the inhabitants of northern Gaza had been reopened. IDF spokesperson Richard Hecht said on Sunday that the majority of Rantisi and Al-Nasr hospitals, both in Northern Gaza, are almost completely evacuated.
On Sunday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told CNN it could not confirm any evacuations from Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza.
Some context: Israel has repeatedly claimed that underneath the embattled Al-Shifa hospital, the largest in Gaza, there is a Hamas command center, which Hamas and hospital officials have denied.
CNN has requested comment from the IDF regarding al Bursh’s allegation that it has ordered the hospital’s evacuation.