Israeli-Hamas LIVE: IDF secures ‘Hamas military stronghold’ and opens evacuation corridor as Netanyahu says Israel will have ‘security responsibility’ for Gaza

An Israeli air strike on the Gaza Strip killed a Palestinian journalist and wounded another, the official Palestinian news agency has reported.

If confirmed, Mohammad Abu Hasira would be the latest among dozens of journalists killed in the month-long conflict.

He ‘was killed in an Israeli bombing that targeted his house located near the fishermen’s port west of Gaza City,’ WAFA news agency said.

WAFA reported that Abu Hasira ‘and 42 members of his family, including his sons and brothers’ were killed in the strike.

The Hamas-run news press service in the Gaza Strip said the bombardment that killed Abu Hasira took place overnight between Sunday and Monday, but that his body was only found in the rubble on Tuesday.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says 37 journalists and media workers have been killed in Israel and Gaza since the conflict began on October 7.

The UN Humanitarian office has said 569 aid trucks have entered Gaza to date, none of which have contained fuel.

Aid groups say an absolute minimum of 100 trucks per day are needed to sustain the population of 2.3 million people living in the coastal strip.

Today is the 32nd day of the conflict which broke out on October 7 when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel, meaning an average of 17 trucks have entered per day since the war broke out – far fewer than is needed.

In response to the Hamas attack, the IDF blockaded the territory, meaning it has been even more challenging to get vital supplies to the people of Gaza.

While trucks have delivered food, water and other supplies, the UN said none have contained fuel. Electricity into the territory is cut, meaning fuel is required for generators to power hospitals and other vital infrastructure.

Many hospitals have stopped functioning, while others are at their limit.

Space has become the new theater of war after Israel shot down a rocket soaring ‘outside of Earth’s atmosphere.’

The Israel Defense (IDF) revealed last week that its Arrow missile defense system took down an ‘aerial threat’ allegedly fired by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

While details are sparse, the accepted boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space is 62 miles above the surface, known as the Kármán line.

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Israel’s military says it has secured a Hamas military stronghold in Gaza.

In a statement, it said the stronghold belonged to ‘the Hamas terrorist organisation in the northern Gaza Strip’ where it is carrying out a ground offensive.

IDF troops found anti-tank missiles and rocket launchers among other weapons, as well as ‘various intelligence materials’, the army reported.

It said a fighter jet also struck a Hamas cell, killing 10 fighters.

‘Furthermore, IDF troops located a number of Hamas terrorists who barricaded themselves in a building adjacent to the al Quds Hospital, and planned to carry out an attack on the forces from there,’ the statement said.

Israel has long accused Hamas of hiding in or near important civilian infrastructure, such as hospitals, a charge that Hamas denies.

A World Health Organization spokesperson said on Tuesday that over 16 health care workers had died on duty in Gaza.

They also called for a lifting of restrictions on medical aid, saying some doctors were performing operations, including amputations, without anaesthetic.

‘Over 16 of the healthcare workers have died on duty while taking care of those injured and diseased,’ Christian Lindmeier told a press briefing, without citing the source of information.

‘These are the people keeping the health system going through the dedication they have somehow found a way to keep some level of service going.’

(This has been corrected after an earlier report said the figure was 160. The report was corrected by Reuters news agency.)

Israel has reported its forces again fired into Lebanon, responding to an attack.

‘A short time ago, an IDF tank attacked a terrorist squad in Lebanese territory that tried to launch an anti-tank missile towards Israeli territory near the Shatula area,’ IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari wrote.

‘Also, earlier today IDF forces attacked a position of the terrorist organization Hezbollah, in order to remove a threat.’

Thousands of people are reported to be passing down the evacuation corridor opened by the IDF to allow Israeli citizens in the north of Gaza to flee south.

A video released by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), a unit in the Israeli army that coordinates on civilian issues, shows a large crowd of people walking down what appears to be Gaza’s main road.

According to the Embassy of Israel in the US, three of Hamas’s most senior leaders – Mousa Abu Marzouk, Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniyeh – have net worths of more than $3billion each.

The embassy also claims that Hamas’s annual turnover is $1billion and suggests the group is second only to ISIS as the world’s richest terror group.

While other estimates of Hamas’s wealth are more conservative, there is no question the group leaders have amassed huge fortunes, and in May 2022, the US Treasury Department sanctioned a Hamas finance official as well as other financial facilitators.

But how has Hamas accumulated its wealth?

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The Kremlin called on Tuesday for ‘humanitarian pauses’ during Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip.

It described the humanitarian situation there as ‘catastrophic’.

Russia will continue contacts with Israel, Egypt and the Palestinians to help ensure that humanitarian supplies can be delivered into Gaza, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a regular briefing.

He made no mention of Russian atrocities against civilians in Ukraine, where tens of thousands of civilians have been killed by Moscow’s armies.

The IDF has said it has opened an evacuation corridor to allow civilians in northern Gaza to move south.

Israel has for weeks been urging civilians still in the north of the coastal strip to flee to the south before its forces move into Gaza City.

However, aid groups have warned that thousands of people, particularly the elderly and people who are injured or sick, are unable to make the journey.

What’s more, there have been reports of Israeli attacks on civilian vehicles along the main road that links the north and south of the Gaza Strip, including one incident in which an IDF tank opened fire on a car.

Israel has again air-dropped leaflets and sent text messages ordering Palestinian civilians still in northern Gaza to head south.

Home to 1.1 million before the war, many people have heeded Israel’s warning. But a US official said Saturday at least 350,000 civilians remained in the worst-hit areas.

Military analysts have warned of weeks of gruelling house-to-house fighting ahead in Gaza, from which Israel withdrew in 2005.

‘Hamas has had 15 years to prepare a dense ‘defence in depth’ that integrates subterranean, ground-level and above-ground fortifications,’ said Michael Knights of the Washington Institute think tank.

The group’s defences also include ‘potential minefields, improvised explosive devices, explosively formed penetrator anti-armour mines, and buildings rigged as explosive booby traps,’ he said.

The operation is hugely complicated for Israel because of the hostages, including very young children and frail elderly people, who are believed to be held inside a tunnel network spanning hundreds of miles.

Turkey’s Anadolu Agency has released the below map showing details of Israel’s on-going ground incursion into the Gaza Strip.

It demonstrates how the IDF has cut off North Gaza and Gaza City from the southern part of the territory, and is now surrounding the city. The map also shows what areas of the coastal strip have been damaged by IDF airstrikes.

Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed Israel will take control of the ‘overall security’ of the Gaza Strip after his country’s war with Hamas.

Resisting calls for a ceasefire, Netanyahu said there would be no letup in the war to destroy the terror group, whose attack one month ago today left 1,400 dead in Israel.

‘Israel will, for an indefinite period, have the overall security responsibility,’ he said. ‘When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine.’

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The United Nations Security Council failed again last night to agree on a resolution on the Israel-Hamas war.

Despite more than two hours of closed-door discussions, differences remained.

The US is calling for ‘humanitarian pauses’ while many council members are demanding a ‘humanitarian cease-fire’ to deliver desperately needed aid and prevent more civilian deaths in Gaza.

‘We talked about humanitarian pauses and we’re interested in pursuing language on that score,’ U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told reporters after the meeting. ‘But there are disagreements within the council about whether that’s acceptable.’

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres earlier Monday told reporters he wanted an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza and a halt to the ‘spiral of escalation’ already taking place from the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria to Iraq and Yemen.

Guterres said international humanitarian law, which demands protection of civilians and infrastructure essential for their lives, is clearly being violated and stressed that ‘no party to an armed conflict is above’ these laws.

He called for the immediate unconditional release of the hostages Hamas took from Israel to Gaza in its Oct. 7 attack.

China, which holds the Security Council presidency this month, and the United Arab Emirates, the Arab representative on the council, called Monday’s meeting because of the ‘crisis of humanity’ in Gaza.

Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas leader, has refused to acknowledge that his terror group killed civilians in Israel in the October 7 attack.

He told the BBC that ‘women, children and civilians were exempt’ from the attacks, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Videos filmed by Hamas fighters themselves have shown them shooting unarmed men, women and children, and the bodies of civilians have been recovered from several communities in southern Israel since the attack.

Israel says more than 1,400 people in Israel were killed, mostly civilians killed, in the October 7 incursion by Hamas that started the war.

Israel has vowed to remove Hamas from power and crush its military capabilities.

Good morning and welcome to MailOnline’s live blog covering the on-going war between Israel and Hamas.

Here’s what you need to know, one month to the day since Hamas’s carried out its deadly October 7 terror attack:

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will have ‘overall security responsibility’ in Gaza ‘for an indefinite period’ after its war.
• His comments, in an interview that aired late Monday on ABC News, offered the clearest indication yet that Israel plans to maintain control over the territory that is home to some 2.3 million Palestinians.
• Netanyahu ruled out any general cease-fire without the release of the more than 240 captives seized by Hamas in its Oct. 7 raid into Israel.
• The Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war surpassed 10,000, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.
• Roughly 1,100 people have left the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing since Wednesday under an apparent agreement among the United States, Egypt, Israel and Qatar, which mediates with Hamas.
• Meanwhile, the Israeli military says it has surrounded Gaza City and is preparing for expected ground battles. Troops could enter in the coming 24 hours.
• South Africa has recalled its diplomatic mission to Israel and accused it of carrying out genocide in the besieged territory.
• The Majority of Israelis are confident in justice of Gaza war, even as world sentiment sours, Associated Press reports.
• US secretary of state ended Mideast tour with tepid support for pauses in fighting.
• A UN official says the average Palestinian in Gaza is living on two pieces of bread a day, as vital supplies run dangerously low for Gaza’s 2.3 million people.