IDF confirms airstrike on Gaza ambulance. It says the vehicle was being used by Hamas The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it carried out an airstrike on an ambulance in the northern Gaza Strip, “that was identified by forces as being used by a Hamas terrorist cell”. An IDF spokesperson said “a number” of Hamas fighters were killed in the strike, and that “more detailed information” was shared with allies. They said: We have information which demonstrates that Hamas’s method of operation is to transfer terror operatives and weapons in ambulances. It gave no evidence to support its assertion that the ambulance was linked to Hamas but said in a statement it intended to release additional information. The IDF added: We emphasise that this area is a battle zone. Civilians in the area are repeatedly called upon to evacuate southwards for their own safety. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said Israel has the right and obligation to defend itself after he visited the country earlier today. Blinken held meetings with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and other senior officials, as well as opposition leader Yair Lapid. Blinken arrived in Jordan on Friday after departing Tel Aviv earlier in the day. Jordan’s foreign ministry said the US secretary of state will hear demands for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza when he meets Middle East foreign ministers on Saturday. Saudi, Qatari, Emirati, Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers as well as Palestinian representatives will stress the “Arab stance calling for an immediate ceasefire, delivering humanitarian aid and ways of ending the dangerous deterioration that threatens the security of the region”, the ministry said in a statement, Reuters reported. The Arab ministers will hold a meeting ahead of their discussions with Blinken, the statement said. UN agency for Palestinian refugees is "practically out of business", says UN humanitarian chief The UN’s humanitarian chief, Martin Griffiths, said what we’ve seen unfold over the last 26 days of conflict in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories “is nothing short of … a blight on our collective conscience”. In a briefing to UN member states in New York on Friday, Griffiths recalled that 1,400 Israelis and nearly 9,000 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October. The true number will only be known after the rubble is cleared from Gaza, he said. He said the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which provides humanitarian resources in the Gaza Strip, is “practically out of business”. UNRWA – the bulwark, the safety net, the buffer of so many people of Gaza for so many years – is practically out of business. He paid tribute to the at least 72 UNRWA staff who have been killed in the Gaza Strip since 7 October UNRWA says it "cannot provide safety" to 600,000 people in Gaza "sheltering under a UN flag" The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has warned the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians sheltering in UN facilities in Gaza that they cannot provide them safety. More than 50 UN facilities have been “impacted” by the conflict, including “five direct hits”, Thomas White, director of UNRWA affairs, said from its Rafah logistics base. More than 1.5 million people are now displaced in Gaza and nearly 600,000 are crowded in shelters run by the UN agency. Although people are sheltering under the UN flag seeking protection under international humanitarian law, “the reality is we cannot even provide them safety under a UN flag”, White said. He said 38 people had died in UN shelters, and that he feared that “that number is going to grow significantly”. He added: Let’s be very clear, there is no place that is safe in Gaza right now. At least 72 UNRWA staff have been killed in the Gaza Strip since 7 October, according to the agency. It is the highest number of UN aid workers killed in a conflict in such a short space of time, it said. Leftwing Democrats in Congress have invoked a landmark law barring assistance to security forces of governments deemed guilty of human rights abuses to challenge the Biden administration’s emergency military aid program for Israel. Members of the Democratic party’s progressive wing say the $14.3bn package pledged by the White House after the 7 October attack by Hamas that killed more than 1,400 Israelis breaches the Leahy Act because Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza has overwhelmingly harmed civilians. An estimated 9,000 people have been killed in Gaza so far, among them 3,700 children, according to the Gaza health ministry, run by Hamas. The act, sponsored by the former Democratic senator Patrick Leahy and passed in 1997, prohibits the US defence and state departments from rendering security assistance to foreign governments facing credible accusations of rights abuses. The law was originally designed only to refer to narcotics assistance, but was later expanded, with amendments covering assistance from both state department and Pentagon budgets. Proponents of applying the act to Israel point to the rising death toll in Gaza from military strikes on the territory, the displacement of more than 1 million people from their homes and a surging humanitarian crisis after Israeli authorities cut water, food, fuel and electricity supplies. “I am very concerned that our taxpayer dollars may be used for violations of human rights,” said the congressman Andre Carson of Indiana in an email to the Guardian, in which he accused Israel of “war crimes”, citing this week’s deadly bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp and the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) alleged use of white phosphorus. A British university is investigating allegations that a football match between its Jewish and Arab societies was postponed after some players in the Arab team felt uncomfortable playing during the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Leeds University’s student union said it was communicating with the societies involved and that the investigation would follow its complaints procedure. The league match between the institution’s Jewish society, Hapoel Hyde Park, and the Arab Society teams was scheduled to take place on Wednesday. According to Hapoel Hyde Park, the captain of the Arab society’s team informed them of their decision the night before the match was scheduled to take place. Leeds University Union said on Friday evening: We are investigating a matter raised about a postponed society league match, and are communicating with the societies involved. This investigation will follow our complaints procedure. While it is important to carry out a full investigation, it is also important to stress that antisemitism or Islamophobia have no place on our campus. Speaking to the Jewish Chronicle, Hapoel Hyde Park’s manager, Jasper van Veen, said he was “devastated” by what had happened and that the club was encouraging other Jewish sports teams to “support each other and stand up for ourselves”. Leeds Jewish society’s president, Joel Herman, told the paper: We all feel totally disrespected and let down by the league for accommodating this … Unfortunately, this is not the first act which has taken place, but this is the most blatant form. Herman added that the war in Gaza should have no impact on the Jewish society and that Jewish students in Leeds felt “threatened and unsafe”. Israeli citizens urged to reconsider foreign travel The Israeli government has warned its citizens to reconsider foreign travel and to exercise extra caution while abroad, citing an increase in antisemitic incidents and violence in recent weeks. A joint statement from the prime minister’s office and the foreign ministry said life threatening assaults, antisemitism and incitement have been significantly rising in many countries, Reuters reported. Here are some of the latest images we have received over the newswires from Gaza City and the occupied West Bank. Thirty-four French citizens were evacuated from the Gaza Strip on Friday, according to the French foreign ministry. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, speaking to reporters during a visit to Brittany, reiterated his calls for a humanitarian truce, Reuters reported. Two people have been arrested during a pro-Palestinian sit-in at King’s Cross station in London after the demonstration was banned. The transport secretary, Mark Harper, said he had given an order to allow police to stop the demonstration on Friday evening under section 14a of the Public Order Act 1986. However social media still showed scores of protesters at the station. One video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, appears to show a man draped in a Palestinian flag shouting “Free, free Palestine” while being carried away from the station by three officers. Others appear to show theslogan “From the river to the sea” being shouted with demonstrators replying “Palestine will be free.” In videos, protesters can be seen sitting on the station concourse chanting “ceasefire now”, “Free, free Palestine” and “In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians.” A banner accusing Israel of genocide can also be seen in some clips. Summary of the day so far Its just past 10.30pm in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Here’s where things stand: Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed at least 9,227 Palestinians, including 3,826 children, since 7 October, the Hamas-run health ministry said on Friday. The Israeli offensive on Gaza followed terrorist attacks launched by Hamas into Israel on 7 October which killed 1,400 people. The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) has said he is “utterly shocked” by reports of attacks on ambulances evacuating patients close to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. The Hamas government in Gaza said Israeli forces targeted “a convoy of ambulances which was transporting the wounded” from Gaza City towards Rafah in the south. Gaza’s health ministry said “several citizens were killed and dozens wounded”. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it carried out an airstrike on an ambulance which it said was being used by Hamas, adding that “a number of Hamas terrorist operatives” were killed in the strike. It gave no evidence to support its assertion. Israeli forces have surrounded Gaza City and are attacking Hamas infrastructure and destroying tunnels used by militants to launch attacks, the Israeli military said. Airstrikes continued alongside the intensifying ground offensive in what Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, described as the second stage of the war. Israel will continue its offensive in Gaza “with full force” and will refuse any temporary ceasefire that does not include the release of more than 240 hostages held by Hamas, Benjamin Netanyahu has said, rejecting US calls for a pause in the fighting. “I made clear that we are continuing full force and that Israel refuses a temporary ceasefire which does not include the release of our hostages,” the Israeli prime minister said on Friday. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, flew into Israel on Friday to urge the Israeli prime minister to temporarily stop its military offensive to allow aid into the territory. The US’s top diplomat applied the greatest pressure yet on the Israeli government to rethink its strategy in Gaza, calling for localised humanitarian pauses and insisting Israel cannot achieve long-term security solely through military means. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has called for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, saying “crimes against humanity” are being committed in Gaza. “There is no concept that could explain or excuse the brutality that we have witnessed since 7 October,” Erdogan said during a summit of Turkic states in the Kazakh capital, Astana. France has reacted with “astonishment” and “incomprehension” after it said that an Israeli airstrike had hit the Institut Français in Gaza, and that the Gaza office of Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency was also hit. AFP said its Gaza City office was significantly damaged by a strike on the building on Thursday. No injuries have been reported. The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah has said his powerful militia is engaged in cross-border fighting with Israel and has threatened further “realistic escalation”. Hassan Nasrallah stopped short of announcing that Hezbollah had fully joined the Israel-Hamas war but warned that fighting on the Lebanon-Israel border would not be limited to the scale seen so far. Hezbollah should not try to take advantage of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the White House said. Israeli forces on Friday killed six Palestinians in raids across the West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said, as violence surged in the occupied territory in tandem with the Gaza war. The Israeli army said its forces were “operating against Hamas” across the West Bank, with operations in Jenin and the northern city of Nablus. The first people in a group of about 100 Britons due to leave Gaza on Friday have made the crossing into Egypt, amid concerns about whether individuals in the north of the Palestinian territory will be able to make it to the southern Rafah crossing. By Friday, there were 127 people on the UK list to be evacuated into Egypt since the crossing opened on Wednesday. The parents-in-law of Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, were among the Britons able to leave Gaza. It is understood hundreds of British nationals remain trapped in Gaza. The White House has said 100 American citizens and family members left Gaza on Thursday. Another large group of Americans are expected to leave Gaza on Friday, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters. Doctors and aid workers in Gaza say they have been abandoned by the international community to a “humanitarian tragedy” as they “fight to survive” after almost four weeks of war between Israel and Hamas. Thousands of Palestinian workers from Gaza who were stranded in Israel when war broke out last month have been deported back to the war-torn strip after being expelled by the Israeli government. The UN Human Rights Office said it was “deeply concerned” about the expulsions. Rishi Sunak has described pro-Palestinian protests planned for London on Armistice Day as “provocative and disrespectful”. The UK prime minister’s intervention on Friday came as two women pictured at a pro-Palestinian march in London carrying photos of paragliders have been charged with terrorism offences. Jewish people in Britain have experienced the worst wave of hate incidents in modern times with more than 1,000 recorded after the Hamas massacres in Israel, experts in countering antisemitism have said. Hezbollah’s chief warned that the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas could become a regional conflict. In a televised speech on Friday, Hassan Nasrallah said, “America is entirely responsible for the ongoing war on Gaza and its people, and Israel is simply a tool of execution.” He added, “Whoever wants to prevent a regional war – and this is addressed to the Americans – must quickly stop the aggression on Gaza … You Americans know well that if there is war in the region, your fleet will be of no use, nor will air combat help. Your interests and your soldiers and your fleet will be the first to pay the price.” Nasrallah’s address on Friday is his first public remarks since the war broke out on 7 October between Israel and Hamas. Agence France-Presse reports that thousands of supporters gathered to hear Nasrallah’s speech in the Hezbollah stronghold of Beirut’s southern suburbs. Others gathered elsewhere in Lebanon and the region, including Tehran and Baghdad, Agence France-Presse added. Reuters has verified a video showing bodies on a road south of Gaza City which is currently under a deadly siege by Israel. Reuters’ report, which is below, follows Israel’s warning to civilians in north Gaza to evacuate to the southern part of the strip. Despite Israel’s evacuation orders, which the Human Rights Watch has called “alarming”, 70 people – mostly women and children – were killed last month on supposed “safe routes” designated by Israel. Following the bombing of “safe routes”, Palestinians have said they are afraid to leave their homes. Reuters reports: A video in Gaza being shared on social media and verified by Reuters on Friday showed the bodies of at least seven people lying apparently dead on a road running south of Gaza City, which is currently under siege by Israeli forces. Reuters located the video as being made on the al-Rashid coast road between Gaza City and Wadi Gaza. Reuters could not immediately verify the date it was filmed but verified that it had not been circulating on social media before Friday. Reuters could not verify the identity of the person who recorded the video, nor the identity of the people shown. Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the video. The video showed some debris and many personal possessions scattered around the people, who included at least one child. Blood stains marked the road. It was taken by a man or boy cycling along the road and past the scene, speaking as he passed by and starting to cry. At one point another person cycling behind him was visible. “God, a child. God, women. God, the girl. Please God protect our people. Please look,” the cyclist is heard saying in Arabic. Israel said late on Thursday its forces had encircled Gaza City after earlier this week cutting off the northern Gaza Strip from the south of the enclave near to Gaza Wadi. France has reacted with “astonishment” and “incomprehension” following Israel’s strike on the French Cultural Institute in Gaza. “We made public today that the French Cultural Institute in Gaza was hit a few days ago in a way that caused astonishment, incomprehension and which led France to call for explanations from the Israeli authorities,” France’s foreign minister Catherine Colonna said on Friday, Agence France-Presse reports. “[We seek] to understand how a French cultural institute can be the target of an Israeli strike. We are therefore in dialogue with our Israeli partners at different levels,” she added. She went on to say that Israel has a right to defend itself but must also adhere to international humanitarian law. “That is, protect civilian populations and take concrete measures to protect civilian populations,” she said, adding that UN and media workers must also be protected. The World Health Organization, UN Relief and Works Agency for the Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the UN Populations Fund and Unicef have put out a joint statement on the plight women and newborns in Gaza are facing amid Israel’s deadly siege. The organizations said: As of 3 November, according to Ministry of Health data, 2,326 women and 3,760 children have been killed in the Gaza strip, representing 67% of all casualties, while thousands more have been injured. This means that 420 children are killed or injured every day, some of them only a few months old … There are an estimated 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza, with more than 180 giving birth every day. Fifteen percent of them are likely to experience pregnancy or birth-related complications and need additional medical care … With 14 hospitals and 45 primary health care centres closed, some women are having to give birth in shelters, in their homes, in the streets amid rubble, or in overwhelmed healthcare facilities, where sanitation is worsening, and the risk of infection and medical complications is on the rise … The lives of newborns also hang by a thread. If hospitals run out of fuel, the lives of an estimated 130 premature babies who rely on neonatal and intensive care services will be threatened, as incubators and other medical equipment will no longer function. Two women pictured at a pro-Palestinian march in London carrying photos of paragliders have been charged with terrorism offences. The incident happened on 14 October in Whitehall during a march after the 7 October attack on Israel, when Hamas militants used paragliders to cross the border between Gaza and Israel. The Crown Prosecution Service said Heba Alhayey, 29, and Pauline Ankunda, 26, had been charged “with single counts of carrying or displaying an article, namely an image displaying a paraglider, to arouse reasonable suspicion that they are supporters of a proscribed organisation, namely Hamas, on Saturday 14 October 2023”. Both women are from south London. Counter-terrorism detectives renewed an appeal to track down a third woman police said was with them, who is also alleged to have held up a photo of a paraglider. Following the release of their photos last week, the two women handed themselves in at a London police station. The maximum sentence for the offence if proven is six months’ imprisonment. Both women have been bailed to appear on 10 November at Westminster magistrates court. Here’s more on the strike on an ambulance in the northern Gaza Strip, which the Israeli military has claimed responsibility for. A statement from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reads: A Hamas terrorist cell was identified using an ambulance. In response, an IDF aircraft struck and neutralized the Hamas terrorists, who were operating within the ambulance. We emphasize that this area in Gaza is a war zone. Civilians are repeatedly called upon to evacuate southward for their own safety. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) had earlier claimed Israeli forces launched an airstrike on a group of ambulance vehicles, one of which belonged to the PRCS. A PRCS spokesperson, Mohamed Abu Musbah, told Al Jazeera that the entrance of al-Shifa hospital is “extremely crowded”. The front yard near the entrance of the hospital is “filled with civilians”, he said. He told the news outlet that the ambulance driver and a PRCS staff member who was escorting the wounded have both “survived”, but that one of them suffered from shrapnel wounds in his leg. With them inside the vehicle was a female patient who is now in “serious condition and has been taken back inside al-Shifa hospital”, he added. On Thursday, Israel’s security cabinet said in a statement that the country was “severing all contact with Gaza”. It said: There will be no more Palestinian workers from Gaza. Before this month, 18,500 married men over the age of 25 had permission from the Israeli authorities to enter the country, mostly to work in agriculture and construction, as part of an Israeli policy designed to alleviate Gaza’s crushing poverty and create an economic lifeline that it was believed Hamas would be loth to jeopardise. An unknown number of these workers were swept up in raids across Israel in the days after 7 October and imprisoned under the principle of administrative detention, which allows the arrest of suspects without charge or access to the evidence against them on the grounds that they may break the law in future. Many have alleged they were tortured or otherwise mistreated in military prison facilities over the last few weeks. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was repeatedly denied access to the arrested workers, who were held as “enemy non-combatants”. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) did not immediately reply to the Guardian’s request for comment on the arrests or ill-treatment allegations. Thousands of Palestinian workers from Gaza who were stranded in Israel when war broke out last month have been deported back to the war-torn strip after being expelled by the Israeli government. A Guardian reporter in Rafah, on the southern edge of the strip, saw a steady stream of men of all ages with no phones, money or identity cards enter the territory on Friday morning via the Kerem Shalom crossing for commercial goods, having walked about 2km from the Israeli side of the border. Mada Masr, an independent Egyptian news outlet, said about 3,200 people had been sent back through the checkpoint, which is controlled by Israel and Egypt. The UN Human Rights Office said it was “deeply concerned” about the expulsions. “They are being sent back, we don’t know exactly to where, [and whether they] even have a home to go to,” its spokesperson Elizabeth Throssell told a news conference in Geneva. She said it was an incredibly dangerous situation. The Israeli government has been contacted for comment on the transfer.