Israel-Hamas war updates: Al-Shifa Hospital under threat

This live page is now closed. For the latest updates on the Israel-Gaza war, follow along on our new page here.

For more context on the conflict, read our explainer on which hospitals in Gaza are currently under threat, here.

Also read our analysis on why Biden is pressuring Israel on humanitarian pauses, here.

And read from experts on why daily four-hour pauses won’t mean much to the residents of Gaza, here.

We’ll soon be closing this live page. Here’s a recap of today’s main events.

• Local officials in Gaza have said Israeli forces were encroaching on several hospitals in the north, including ongoing attacks in the vicinity of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. That comes after several attacks were reported earlier on beleaguered medical facilities, including on al-Shifa and al-Quds hospitals.
• Amid the fighting, al-Shifa director Muhammad Abu Salmiya said medical staff would stay with patients until the “last moment”. That came as the head of WHO briefed the UN Security Council on “unimaginable conditions” in Gaza’s hospitals and again called for a ceasefire.
• A spokesperson for Israel’s military said: “If we see Hamas terrorists firing from hospitals, we’ll do what we need to do.”
• The bombardment of Gaza continued elsewhere, with at least 50 people killed at al-Buraq school in Gaza City and six others killed. Among the strikes, at least three people were reportedly killed west of Jabalia refugee camp in the north and at least three others were killed in an attack on al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
• Israel has said more than 100,000 Palestinians have fled southwards in Gaza in the last two days, although many say they remain trapped due to the ongoing fighting.
• Israel also revised the number of people killed in the October 7 Hamas attacks to about 1,200, saying the earlier figure of 1,400 included people later proven to be attackers.
• The Prime Minister of Israel reiterated that after the war, Gaza would remain under Israeli security control.
• Cross-border fighting continued along the Israel-Lebanon border.

They dart across the football pitch in a blur of red, white, black and green, the colours of their jerseys echoing the Palestinian flags waving in the stands. But the players of Club Deportivo Palestino are almost as far from Palestine as it is possible to be.

Located more than 13,000 kilometres (8,200 miles) away, the football club finds its home in La Cisterna, a suburb of Santiago, Chile – a sign of the unique role the South American country plays for the Palestinian diaspora.

Chile is home to the largest Palestinian population outside of the Middle East, with approximately 500,000 citizens of Palestinian descent. And as the latest war in Gaza unfolds, the rising death toll has hit close to home for many Chileans, for whom Palestinian culture is threaded into everyday life.

“We’re all subjects of this story,” Chilean rapper and musician Ana Tijoux told Al Jazeera, as she reflected on the ongoing war. “We all have to stand up.”

Read more here.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has shared a video of a pro-Israel, counter-protest in the US state of Maryland where a demonstrator shouted racial slurs and threats at pro-Palestine demonstrators.

“America is ours. We will protect America, we will secure America against you animals, against you traitors, against you barbarians,” the pro-Israel demonstrator can be heard shouting into a megaphone.

In a statement, CAIR Maryland Director Zainab Chaudry said the incident is a perfect illustration of the difference between the two sides”.

“While one calls for a ceasefire and an end to the slaughter of innocents, the other celebrates and threatens to murder them. This incident also exemplifies the dangerous levels to which anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim bigotry has risen in recent weeks, with the enabling of major voices in politics and the media,” Chaudry said.

As we reported earlier, the US university announced today that it is suspending Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine for the rest of the autumn term.

Author Naomi Klein said Columbia had “set a terrible and dangerous precedent”.

“Speaking out in anguish against war crimes is what we should all be doing … Students should not be punished and silenced for acting based on their conscience,” she wrote.

Palestinian American human rights lawyer Noura Erakat also slammed the move.

“So much for universities as sites of knowledge production and shaping future leaders. Nope, just shut down the anti-war voices,” she wrote on X.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry announced it will now host the joint summit in Riyadh on Saturday.

The kingdom initially said it would host two separate events, led by the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, respectively.

In a statement, the ministry said the objective was to “unite efforts and come out with a unified stance that reflects the wishes of the Arab and Islamic states in relation to the unprecedented situation unfolding in Gaza and the Palestinian territories”.

The Palestine Red Crescent said the looming closure of the hospital in Gaza City means patients in the intensive care unit and babies in incubators will die.

It would also leave 500 patients and injured people without access to medical care, PRCS warned.

Stephen Zunes, a professor of political science at the University of San Francisco, says that Israel’s revision of its death toll on October 7 from 1,400 to 1,200 came in response to demands for greater transparency from the Israeli public.

“The claim by the Israeli government that these were charred bodies of Hamas fighters does not make sense because the Hamas members that were killed were shot. It is not like they were in a bombed-out building,” Zunes told Al Jazeera.

“There have been demands for listing the names of those killed and kidnapped. They’ve been real slow in doing that.

“Finally, when they realised the names do not match the numbers, they had to come out and be honest that the total death toll was significantly lower than they had been claiming all these weeks,” said Zunes.

He added that there is increasing public discontent over the fact that 22 Israeli battalions are stationed in the occupied West Bank instead of along the borders with Gaza.

In the latest US diplomatic flurry related to the conflict, the US president and Omani leader Haitham bin Tariq Al Said discussed sustained humanitarian access and the protection of civilians, the White House said.

The pair also discussed “deterring threats from any state or non-state actor seeking to expand the conflict and of working towards a durable and sustained peace in the Middle East”.

Earlier today, US diplomats warned that the Biden administration’s approach towards Israel was “losing us Arab publics for generations”, according to a leaked diplomatic cable from the US embassy in Oman obtained by CNN.

The big picture here is that both [the head of the PRCS Marwan Jilani and the head of WHO Tedros Ghebreyesus] were calling for an immediate ceasefire. They say that is number one, beyond anything else.

Taking a step back here, it was really surreal, because as this briefing was taking place here in New York at the headquarters of the United Nations, we were watching on Al Jazeera live pictures of the attacks on al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, so as the diplomats were getting a briefing, what they were being briefed about was taking place simultaneously.

The Interior Ministry in Gaza says a “series of violent raids” by Israeli fighter jets have attacked the vicinity of the Indonesian Hospital in the enclave’s north.

Earlier, the Health Ministry announced that electricity, water, and communication have been completely cut off from the hospital.

Tedros Ghebreyesus was among those briefing the Security Council earlier, saying the “situation on the ground is impossible to describe”.

“Hospital corridors crammed with the injured, the sick, the dying; morgues overflowing; surgery without anaesthesia; tens of thousands of displaced people sheltering at hospitals; families crammed into overcrowded schools, desperate for food and water,” Ghebreyesus told diplomats.

He added that WHO health workers on the ground were “physically and mentally exhausted”, and said that half of the Gaza Strip’s 36 hospitals and two-thirds of primary healthcare centres were not functioning.

“Those that are functioning are operating way beyond their capacities. The health system is on its knees, and yet somehow, is continuing to deliver lifesaving care. The best way to support those health workers and the people they serve is by giving them the tools they need to deliver that care – medicines, medical equipment and fuel for hospital generators.”

“I went through the same thing. The sound of gunfire and shells whistling through the air; the smell of smoke after they struck; tracer bullets in the night sky, the fear, the pain, the loss – these things have stayed with me throughout my life.”

Later in his address, he turned to what he believes is the necessity to reform the Security Council, as it continues to be unable to pass a resolution on the fighting in Gaza.

“This crisis underlines once again the need for reform of the Security Council. It has long been my view that the Security Council no longer serves the purpose for which it was established. It represents the realpolitik of the Second World War, not the 21st century.”

The French president became one of the first Western leaders to call for a “ceasefire” yesterday, as France hosted a summit discussing humanitarian aid for Gaza. Many leaders have instead opted to use the term “humanitarian pause”.

He repeated the appeal today during an interview with the BBC: “De facto – today, civilians are bombed – de facto. These babies, these ladies, these old people are bombed and killed,” Macron said. “So there is no reason for that and no legitimacy. So we do urge Israel to stop.”

Macron also said he hoped the US and UK would join the call for a ceasefire. Still, he said he was a head of state, “not a judge”, and was thus not qualified to say if Israel had committed war crimes.

He said while he shared Israel’s “pain”, their approach risked further undermining security: “It’s extremely important for all of us because of our principles, because we are democracies. It’s important for the mid- to long-run, as well as for the security of Israel itself, to recognise that all lives matter.”

The demonstration is the latest seeking to pressure Western governments to lean on Israel for a ceasefire.

Israeli officials have said a ceasefire is not currently on the table.

The group also called for the immediate entry of aid into the bombarded enclave.

Israel has blocked fuel deliveries from being included in the small amount of aid that has been allowed to enter Gaza, leaving many hospitals forced to shutter and others working at a skeletal capacity.

The appeal came after fighting encroached on al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, that came after local health authorities said the facility had been hit five times in the preceding 24 hours.

At least six people have been killed in Israeli air strikes in northern and central Gaza, the Interior Ministry says.

Several injuries and three people were reportedly killed west of the Jabalia refugee camp in the north, and at least three others were killed in an attack on the al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.

A United Nations Security Council meeting is going on in New York as Israeli attacks in the vicinity of Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital intensify.

Speaking at the meeting, Palestine’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, told diplomats that “hospitals have become major Israeli targets” and they “must call for an end to this massacre”, as he highlighted the bombardment around al-Shifa.

Marwan al-Jilani, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society’s Director-General, told the meeting via video link that hospitals in Gaza were under attack “and hospitals are being deliberately targeted in a desperate attempt to force the civilian population out of Gaza”.

The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Ghebreyesus, warned that the Security Council needed to reform itself in light of its inaction over Gaza.

“In order to remain credible, relevant and a force for peace in our world, member states, especially the five permanent members, must take seriously the need to reform the Security Council,” Ghebreyesus said.

Tanya Haj Hassan is the co-founder of Gaza Medic Voices, an international group that seeks to highlight the voices of medical workers in Gaza.

Speaking to Al Jazeera amid reports of ongoing assaults in the vicinity of the al-Shifa Hospital, she called the accounts she has been receiving “horrific”. The medical complex was also repeatedly hit with strikes overnight.

She read an appeal from the director of surgery at the hospital: “Dear colleagues, the situation at al-Shifa now is extremely dangerous. We, as medical staff, want to leave but we cannot, we might not survive until morning.

“We don’t want to be killed here just only because we were committed to our patients and our medical profession. I am calling for help urgently. Please do whatever you can through your governments or through the International Red Cross to arrange a safe corridor for medical staff,” the appeal said.