Here is the situation on Friday, October 13, 2023:
Fighting
- Israel says it attacked 750 “military targets” overnight in the densely populated Gaza Strip, including 12 high-rise buildings.
- An Israeli ground invasion of Gaza is likely to start over the weekend, former Australian ambassador to Lebanon Ian Parmeter told Al Jazeera, adding that the operation would result in heavy casualties.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Israeli government showed him photographs and videos of Hamas atrocities, including of a baby riddled with bullets, soldiers beheaded and young people burned.
- Gaza’s ruling Hamas called on Palestinians to rise up on Friday in protest against Israel’s bombardment of the enclave, urging Palestinians to march to East Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque.
- Human Rights Watch accused Israel of using white phosphorus munitions in its military operations in Gaza and Lebanon.
- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned violence against civilians.
- Egypt said it was directing international aid flights for Gaza to an airport in Sinai near the Gaza border.
- Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo, reporting from New York, said eight hours of the Israeli military’s 24-hour deadline have already apparently elapsed for the 1.1 million people who have been ordered out of northern Gaza.
- “The UN says that they received this [evacuation order] around midnight Gaza time. It’s now a little after 8am Gaza time, meaning that if these 24 hours began at midnight, we are now at about 16 hours, that’s an important thing to keep in mind,” Elizondo said.
Human impact
- The UN “considers it impossible for the relocation to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said of the Israeli military’s call to depopulate northern Gaza.
- “The United Nations strongly appeals for any such order, if confirmed, to be rescinded avoiding what could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation.”
- Israeli air attacks have made major cemeteries in Gaza too dangerous to reach so mourning families are burying their dead in informal graveyards dug in empty lots.
- Israel’s public broadcaster Kan said the Israeli death toll had risen to more than 1,300, and at least 3,000 wounded.
- Gaza authorities said more than 6,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 6,000 wounded.
Diplomacy and international reaction
- The United Kingdom is deploying two Royal Navy ships and surveillance aircraft to the eastern Mediterranean to support Israel and reinforce regional stability.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Jordan where he will meet King Abdullah II and Palestine’s President Mahmoud Abbas.
- Israel, the White House and some rival Republican presidential candidates criticised former US President Donald Trump after he described Hezbollah as “smart” and said Netanyahu “was not prepared” for the attack.
- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that a sovereign Palestinian state should be established for a lasting solution to the conflict, the Turkish presidency said.
- French police used tear gas and water cannon to break up a banned rally in support of the Palestinian people in Paris.
- China’s top diplomat and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the Palestinian issue is the core of the Middle East conflict, and that crux of the matter was that “justice” had been denied to the Palestinian people.
- Iran’s foreign minister said the continuation of crimes against Palestinians will receive a response from “the rest of the axis” and Israel will be responsible for the consequences.
