Israel-Hamas war: Gaza doctor says he has dozens more patients who need to cross into Egypt
The rows of ambulances in Gaza started moving towards the border crossing into Egypt from Wednesday morning.
Inside were some of the most critically wounded from the recent Israeli onslaught on the territory and this was the first chance for anyone to escape the hell of what is happening in the Palestinian enclave.
In the emergency convoy, there were 76 people – among them women, the elderly and children.
The breakthrough comes after frantic discussions mediated by Qatar and the United States – and agreed by Egypt, Israel and Hamas.
We managed to get through to one doctor in Khan Younis in the south of Gaza, who’d had the difficult job of selecting 18 of his most seriously ill patients to make the crossing.
Israel airstrike on refugee camp ‘may be war crime’ – live updates
Alex Crawford spoke on the phone to Dr Youssuf Al Akkad, from the Gaza European Hospital
Dr Youssuf Al Akkad, from the Gaza European Hospital, told us that his group was made up of 60% men and 40% women and included some children.
Most of the patients were suffering from brain injuries, spinal cord wounds and eye complications, and need specialist treatment that his hospital cannot provide.
“We are in a desperate state,” he said. “This is really a war on children, with most of the dead and injured made up mostly of women and children.”
He told us that his own hospital was in danger of running out of fuel supplies in a matter of days and he had at least a further 30 people who needed to be immediately taken across the border for medical help.
“We hope this will happen in the coming days,” he said.
Palestinian ambulances carrying injured people arrive at the border crossing with Egypt. Pic: AP
A convoy of Egyptian ambulances to take people out of Gaza at the Rafah crossing
The evacuation operation is being carried out under heightened security. We saw rows of tanks and military hardware on the Egyptian side on the route to the Rafah crossing when we were in the area.
The casualties are being taken to nearby hospitals in the north Sinai area, including Al Arish Hospital, and Egyptian state TV showed pictures of some of the wounded, including a young boy, being stretchered inside by medics.
The Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing was besieged by people, mostly foreign nationals, trying to escape the Israeli bombardment.
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Ambulances carry injured Gazans into Egypt
Strikes on refugee camp continue
The evacuations were carried out amid continued Israeli airstrikes – including on the Jabalia refugee camp, the largest in Gaza – for the second day in a row.
Sky News verified the geolocation of pictures put out by Hamas which indicated the second day’s strike was inside the camp but in a different location to Tuesday’s attack.
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Jabalia refugee camp strike analysis
The images showed bloodied women and children as well as many men clambering over rubble, being pulled out of debris and carried into hospitals.
Israel says the refugee camp is a stronghold of Hamas fighters and commanders and announced it had lost 16 of its soldiers in combat over the past few days since its ground offensive into Gaza began.
Social media showed multiple pictures of Knesset members crying as they emerged from a meeting.
But amid the bombardment, a Hamas official said the hostages being held by them were under the same threat of death and injury that Palestinians are facing, and claimed an unspecified number of captives they were holding had already died in Israeli attacks.
Foreign nationals also starting to get out
At the Gaza-Egypt border, about 500 dual nationals have been put on a list approved by the five different governments involved for evacuation, as well as the wounded we saw earlier.
About 44 different nationalities – including some Britons – have been trapped inside Gaza since the 7 October atrocities mounted inside Israel by Hamas which saw more than 1,400 people killed and about 240 taken hostage.
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The UK Foreign Office confirmed British nationals were able to cross into Egypt but they declined to say how many.
The announcement that the crossing would be opened prompted crowds to surge towards the border point – now the only exit route possible since Israel imposed a siege on the territory, cutting off electricity and water and limiting aid trucks into the area.
For the second time in more than three weeks of bombardment, Palestinians also reported internet and mobile phone networks were interrupted as the border was opening.
Being desperate to get out is understandable.
But those who were not on the list were not allowed over.
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24 hours at the Rafah border crossing
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Dr Emilee Rauschenberger on trying to leave Gaza
They included a mother from Manchester called Emilee Rauschenberger who has been stranded inside Gaza with her five children after travelling there to visit relatives.
She said her children were aged between 14 and four years old.
“We had no electricity… the food we had to go and find each day, water stopped so there’s no sanitary water,” she told the Sky News crew in Gaza. “We had to go find the drinking water… it’s very difficult.”
The Egyptian authorities say the crossing will be opened for limited periods to allow those on the approved list to move into Egypt.
New pictures show the moment of impact as an Israeli missile hit a Beirut apartment block and exploded.
The block was one of five buildings destroyed by airstrikes on Friday alone.
Israel launched airstrikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut in a fourth consecutive day of intense attacks.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
An Associated Press photographer captured a sequence of images showing an Israeli bomb approaching and hitting a multi-storey apartment building in Beirut’s Tayouneh area.
Richard Weir, a senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch, reviewed the close-up photos to determine what type of weapon was used.
“The bomb and components visible in the photographs, including the strake, wire harness cover, and tail fin section, are consistent with a Mk-84 series 2,000-pound class general purpose bomb equipped with Boeing’s joint directed attack munition tail kit,” he told AP.
Pics: AP
Smoke covers a building that collapses following the strike. Pic: AP
Deadly strikes as bombardment stepped up
Israel stepped up its bombardment this week – an escalation that has coincided with signs of movement in US-led diplomacy towards a ceasefire.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets attacked munitions warehouses, a headquarters and other Hezbollah infrastructure. It issued a warning on social media identifying buildings ahead of the strikes.
Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike killed five members of the same family in a home in Ain Qana in the southern province of Nabatiyeh, Lebanon’s state media said.
The report said a mother, father and their three children were killed but didn’t provide their ages.
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Three other Israeli strikes killed six people and wounded 32 in different parts of Tyre province on Friday, also in south Lebanon, the report said.
Video footage also showed a building being struck and turning into a cloud of rubble and debris that billowed into Horsh Beirut, the city’s main park.
Residents check the site of the airstrike in Tayouneh, Beirut. Pic: AP
More than 3,200 people have been killed in Lebanon during 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah – most of them since mid-September.
About 27% of those killed were women and children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Israel dramatically escalated its bombardment of Lebanon from September, vowing to cripple Hezbollah and end its barrages in Israel.
Friday’s strikes come as Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister has asked Iran to help secure a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
The prime minister appeared to urge Ali Larijani, a top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to convince the militant group to agree to a deal that could require it to pull back from the Israel-Lebanon border.
Iran is a main backer of Hezbollah and for decades has been funding and arming the Lebanese militant group.
On Thursday, Eli Cohen, Israel’s energy minister and a member of its security cabinet, said that prospects for a ceasefire with Lebanon were the most promising since the conflict began.
The Washington Post reported Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was rushing to advance a Lebanon ceasefire to deliver an early foreign policy win to his ally, US President-elect Donald Trump.
“Super high-IQ revolutionaries” who are willing to work 80+ hours a week are being urged to join Elon Musk’s new cost-cutting department in Donald Trump’s incoming US government.
The X and Tesla owner will co-lead the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
And in a post on X, the official DOGE account put out a call to arms for people to sign up and help “dismantle government bureaucracy”.
The post said: “We are very grateful to the thousands of Americans who have expressed interest in helping us at DOGE.
“We don’t need more part-time idea generators.
“We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting.
“If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”
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Elon Musk speaking at an event held at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Pic: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
In a reply to an interested party, Mr Musk suggested the lucky applicants would be working for free.
“Indeed, this will be tedious work, make lost of enemies & compensation is zero,” the world’s richest man wrote.
“What a great deal!”
When announcing the new department, President-elect Donald Trump said Mr Musk and Mr Ramaswamy “will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”.
Mr Musk has previously made clear his desire to see cuts to “government waste” and in a post on his X platform suggested he could axe as many as three-quarters of the more than 400 federal departments in the US, writing: “99 is enough.”
At least 10 people have been killed after a fire broke out at a retirement home in northern Spain in the early hours of this morning, officials have said.
A further two people were seriously injured in the blaze at the residence in the town of Villafranca de Ebro in Zaragoza, according to the Spanish news website Diario Sur.
Two people remain in a critical condition following the blaze. Pic: AP
They remain in a critical condition, while several others received treatment for smoke inhalation.
Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at the residence – the Jardines de Villafranca – at 5am (4am UK time) on Friday.
Several residents were treated for smoke inhalation. Pic: AP
Those who were killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, Spanish newspaper Heraldo reported.
The residence is home to 82 elderly residents.
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The blaze started in one of the rooms, Fernando Beltran, the national government’s top official in the region, told reporters.
All of the victims were elderly residents, he added.
Relatives wait for news outside the care home. Pic: AP
Fire crews, paramedics and police officers remain on site, said a spokesperson for the regional government of Aragon who confirmed the fatalities.
It took firefighters several hours to extinguish the blaze, they said.
The cause of the fire is unknown and is being investigated.
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