Israel-Hamas war: ‘Hundreds of children and women killed’ in Israeli strikes on Gaza as troops assemble on border
Hundreds of children and women have been killed in Gaza following days of Israeli airstrikes, say Palestinian officials.
At least 447 children and 248 women were among the estimated 1,417 people who have died in the bombardment, according to the health ministry, adding more than 6,000 have been injured.
Israel has said it is targeting Hamas after the militant group carried out a wave of attacks in Israel at the weekend as gunmen stormed the border and killed hundreds in their homes as well as 260 others at a music festival.
Israel says a total of 1,300 of its people have died since Saturday’s raid as its troops continue to mass along the barbed wire fence ahead of a possible ground offensive on Gaza, with 300,000 reservists called up.
Among today’s key developments:
• UN warns of ‘dire situation’ in Gaza Strip
• UK navy to send ships and begin surveillance flights over Israel
• Blinken tells Netanyahu the US will always be by Israel’s side
• Palestinians accuse Israel of killing civilians
• Israeli PM says Hamas beheaded soldiers and raped women
• Israeli military admits it failed to protect its citizens in Hamas attack
• US secretary of state pledges support for Israel in Netanyahu meeting
Israel ‘strikes Syrian airports’ – follow live conflict updates
Food and water in Gaza ‘quickly running out’
Hamas has said 18 Palestinians died in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp in the heart of Gaza following one of the latest Israeli retaliatory raids.
Some 340,000 Palestinians have fled their homes seeking refuge in schools, according to the United Nations.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has warned crucial supplies were running dangerously low in the Gaza Strip after Israel imposed a total blockade on the territory.
“It’s a dire situation in the Gaza Strip that we’re seeing evolve with food and water being in limited supply and quickly running out,” said Brian Lander, the deputy head of emergencies at WFP.
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Bombardment at dawn in Gaza City
Israel has insisted it is giving prior warning of its strikes, though they are now hitting entire neighbourhoods as opposed to individual buildings.
Meanwhile, the chief of staff for Israel’s military, Herzi Halevi, admitted it failed to protect its civilians from Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Saturday.
“The IDF is responsible for the security of the country and its citizens, and on Saturday morning in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip, we did not,” Mr Halevi said. “We will learn, we will investigate, but now is the time for war.”
The scene in Jabalia in the Gaza Strip after an airstrike. Pic: AP
The overnight retaliatory strikes targeted Hamas’s elite Nukhba forces, including command centres used by the fighters who attacked Israel, and the home of a senior Hamas operative where unspecified weapons were stored, the Israeli military said.
Elsewhere, Israeli airstrikes have struck the international airports of the Syrian capital Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo, damaging their runways and putting them out of service, said Syrian state media.
An unnamed military official was quoted by the state news agency Sana as saying no one was hurt in the attacks. The Israeli military declined to comment.
Israel’s siege of Gaza has left Palestinians stricken as supplies of food, water, electricity and medicine have dwindled.
The death toll in Gaza is expected to rise as 650,000 people have been affected by the shortages, and hospitals are on the verge of collapse with diminishing power supplies.
IDF troops assemble
Troops from the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are building up near the Gaza border as an imminent ground invasion is possible – though no political decision on this has yet been announced, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht said.
Israel has also evacuated tens of thousands of residents from nearby communities.
Should the ground offensive go ahead it would be the first since the 50-day Gaza war in 2014, which left thousands of Palestinians and dozens of IDF troops dead.
Israeli soldiers near the Israel-Gaza border. Pic: AP
Hamas attack ‘the equivalent of 10 9/11s’, Blinken says
Meanwhile, US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said during a visit to Israel today that the country’s government had shared photographs and videos in meetings which showed victims of attacks by Hamas.
He said the images included a baby riddled with bullets, soldiers beheaded, and young people burned alive in their cars or hideaways
“It’s simply depravity in the worst imaginable way,” Mr Blinken told a news briefing in Tel Aviv.
“Images are worth a thousand words. These images may be worth a million.”
He added: “If you look at (the incursion) in proportion to the size of Israel’s population, this is the equivalent of 10 9/11s.
“That’s how big and how devastating the attack has been.”
Mr Blinken also said the US is “working as hard as it can” to ensure the conflict does not open on a second front with involvement from Iran-backed Hezbollah, based in Lebanon.
“[Joe Biden] has been very clear that no one state or non-state actor should try to take advantage of this moment,” he said.
Following his trip to Israel, Mr Blinken will head to Jordan to meet with King Abdullah and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, before travelling on to meet with leaders in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Qatar.
The US secretary of state said he will be “pressing countries to help prevent the conflict from spreading”.
Mr Blinken had earlier met with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv today, where said the US would “always be there by [Israel’s] side”.
“You may be strong enough on your own to defend yourselves, but as long as America exists you will never have to,” Mr Blinken said.
Mr Netanyahu announced a unity government on Wednesday and vowed to “crush and destroy” Hamas.
“Every Hamas member is a dead man,” Mr Netanyahu said in a televised address. He has also called Hamas an “enemy of civilisation”.
Israel estimates 1,500 Hamas militants have been killed on its soil following their infiltration of the border.
The IDF, which along with Western powers, considers Hamas as “terrorists”.
People mourn after an Israeli couple were killed by Hamas gunmen
Mr Netanyahu said that militants beheaded soldiers and raped women in its attack on Saturday.
Hamas is also believed to be holding around 150 hostages in Gaza, including soldiers, men, women, children and older adults, since the surprise weekend raid.
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Families appeal for hostages’ release
Israel’s energy minister, Israel Katz, said the blockade would remain until the captives were released.
“Not a single electricity switch will be flipped on, not a single faucet will be turned on, and not a single fuel truck will enter until the Israeli hostages are returned home,” he said on social media.
The US has stepped in by sending Israel a team of technical experts to assist with the recovery as it believes some of the captives are Americans.
World
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi confirmed dead in helicopter crash after charred wreckage found
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has died after the helicopter he was travelling in crashed in a mountainous area of northwest Iran.
Rescuers found the burned remains of the aircraft on Monday morning after the president and his foreign minister had been missing for more than 12 hours.
“President Raisi, the foreign minister and all the passengers in the helicopter were killed in the crash,” a senior Iranian official told Reuters, asking not to be named.
Live updates – Iranian president killed in crash
Iran‘s Mehr news agency reported “all passengers of the helicopter carrying the Iranian president and foreign minister were martyred”.
State TV said images showed it had smashed into a mountain peak, although there was no official word on the cause of the crash.
“President Raisi’s helicopter was completely burned in the crash… unfortunately, all passengers are feared dead,” an official told Reuters.
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President of Iran killed in crash
The crash happened in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province
As the sun rose, rescuers saw the wreckage from around 1.25 miles, the head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society, Pir Hossein Kolivand, told state media.
Iranian news agency IRNA said the president was flying in an American-made Bell 212 helicopter.
Read more:
Who is Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi?
Many will be fearing instability after ‘butcher of Tehran’ killed
Iranian TV showed the president on the helicopter during a trip to Azerbaijan
TV pictures from Sunday showed thick fog at the search site. Pic: IRNA
Mr Raisi, 63, who was seen as a frontrunner to succeed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Iran’s supreme leader, was travelling back from Azerbaijan where he had opened a dam with the country’s president.
Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, also died in the crash.
The governor of East Azerbaijan province and other officials and bodyguards were also said to have been on board when the helicopter crashed in fog on Sunday.
Iranian media initially described it as a “hard landing”.
The chief of staff of Iran’s army had ordered all military resources and the Revolutionary Guard to be deployed in the search, which had been hampered by bad weather.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first to react to the news of Mr Raisi’s death.
“India stands with Iran in this time of sorrow,” he said in a post on X.
A helicopter carrying Iran’s president crashed during bad weather on Sunday.
But who is Ebrahim Raisi – a leader who faces sanctions from the US and other nations over his involvement in the mass execution of prisoners in 1988.
The president, 63, who was travelling alongside the foreign minister and two other key Iranian figures when their helicopter crashed, had been travelling across the far northwest of Iran following a visit to Azerbaijan.
Follow live: Rescuers search for president after helicopter crash
Mr Raisi is a hardliner and former head of the judiciary who some have suggested could one day replace Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Because of his part in the sentencing of thousands of prisoners of conscience to death back in the 1980s, he was nicknamed the Butcher of Tehran as he sat on the so-called Death Panel, for which he was then sanctioned by the US.
Raisi and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev on Sunday. Pic: Reuters
Both a revered and a controversial figure, Mr Raisi supported the country’s security services as they cracked down on all dissent, including in the aftermath of the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini – the woman who died after she was arrested for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly – and the nationwide protests that followed.
The months-long security crackdown killed more than 500 people and saw over 22,000 detained.
People light a fire during a protest over the death of Mahsa Amini in Tehran, 2022. Pic: Reuters
In March, a United Nations investigative panel found that Iran was responsible for the “physical violence” that led to Ms Amini’s death after her arrest for not wearing a hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities.
The president is seen as a frontrunner to replace Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (pictured). Pic: Reuters
The president also supported Iran’s unprecedented decision in April to launch a drone and missile attack on Israel amid its war with Hamas, the ruling militant group in Gaza responsible for the 7 October attacks which saw 1,200 people killed in southern Israel.
Involvement in mass executions
Mr Raisi is sanctioned by the US in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 at the end of the bloody Iran-Iraq war.
Under the president, Iran now enriches uranium at nearly weapons-grade levels and hampers international inspections.
Iran has armed Russia in its war on Ukraine and has continued arming proxy groups in the Middle East, such as Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
He successfully ran for the presidency back in August 2021 in a vote that got the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history as all of his potentially prominent opponents were barred from running under Iran’s vetting system.
A presidency run in 2017 saw him lose to Hassan Rouhani, the relatively moderate cleric who as president reached Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
‘Very involved in anything’
Alistair Bunkall, Sky News’s Middle East correspondent, said the president is “a major figure in Iranian political and religious society” but “he’s not universally popular by any means” as his administration has seen a series of protests in the past few years against his and the government’s “hardline attitude”.
Mr Raisi is nonetheless “considered one of the two frontrunners to potentially take over” the Iranian regime when the current supreme leader dies, Bunkall said.
He added the president would have been “instrumental” in many of Iran’s activities in the region as he “would’ve been very involved in anything particularly what has been happening in Israel and the surrounding areas like Lebanon and Gaza and the Houthis over the last seven and a bit months”.
World
Iran president helicopter crash: The ‘butcher of Tehran’ has a fearsome reputation – and many will be fearing instability
Ebrahim Raisi has been one of Iran’s hardest of hardliners, a fanatical and absolute believer in the Iranian revolution and its mission.
If he has died on a mountainside in the north of the country, as looks increasingly likely, it will be a major moment for the country and the region.
It will remove from the Middle East one of its toughest most uncompromising players.
Follow live: Rescuers search for president after helicopter crash
A man who launched the first direct attack on Israel in his country’s history and a hardliner on whose watch hundreds of Iranians have been killed in the brutal repression of recent women-led protests, Mr Raisi has a huge amount of blood on his hands.
The president is seen as a frontrunner to replace Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (pictured). Pic: Reuters
His fearsome reputation goes back to the 1980s – a period that earned him the dubious soubriquet the Butcher of Tehran.
He sat on the so-called Death Panel of four Islamic judges who sentenced thousands of Iranian prisoners of conscience to their deaths during the purge of 1988.
Mr Raisi has personally been involved in two of the darkest periods of Iranian repression. And he was seen as one of the favourite contenders to replace the elderly and ailing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Read more:
Ebrahim Raisi: Who is Iranian president?
Iran helicopter crash: Contact made made with passenger and crew member
His accession to that role would have guaranteed years more of the same… and years more meddling abroad.
Raisi and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev on Sunday. Pic: Reuters
With Mr Raisi as president, Iran has engaged in more and more adventurous interventions beyond its borders.
With him in charge Iran has helped Houthis menace international shipping in the Red Sea; helped Hezbollah engage Israel in a seven-month duel over its northern border; aided militia in Iraq to attack, and in some cases kill, American soldiers; and helped Hamas fight its own war against the Jewish state.
After two years of unrest, economic failure and stuttering recovery from the pandemic, Iran is divided and weakened.
Its government has lost much of its credibility and support because of the atrocities it has meted out to its women.
Few outside the regime and its ranks of ardent followers will mourn a man who has overseen the death, incarceration or torture of so many.
Iranians may dare yearn for less repressive times without him. Outsiders will hope for a less troublesome Iran.
Read more:
Who is Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi?
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
But there are plenty more where he came from and the Supreme Leader is likely to find another hardliner to replace him.
The fear will be of instability in the run-up to elections. The government has been undermined by recent events, its Supreme Leader is unwell.
If Mr Raisi is dead, his government will try to secure the succession as quickly and smoothly as it can.
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