Israel-Palestine live: Thousands in state of panic as Israel continues to strike hospitals

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday that Palestinian civilians have continued to bear the brunt of the conflict in recent days. 

Blinken was speaking to reporters before leaving Washington for a visit to Israel and the wider region. 

"We will be talking about concrete steps that can and should be taken to minimise harm to men, women children in Gaza," he said. "This is something the United States is committed to."

"When I see a Palestinian child, a boy, a girl pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building that hits me in the gut ... So this is something that we have an obligation to respond to, and we will."

He said he would be working to prevent escalation on various fronts, including in South Lebanon and the occupied West Bank.

"We will be talking about how we can set conditions for a durable sustainable peace, durable sustainable security for Israelis and Palestinians alike," Blinken added.

The US has managed to evacuate 74 dual US citizens out of Gaza, US President Joe Biden said, speaking at the White House on Thursday.

The US says it has around 400 American citizens, along with their families, totalling around 1,000 people stuck in Gaza.

It is estimated that around 100 US citizens live in the besieged enclave, and the majority of the 400 were visiting the Strip when the war broke out after the 7 October attack on Israel took place.

Evacuees started crossing into Egypt on Wednesday.

The Israeli military said it was carrying out wide scale air strikes on Hezbollah targets in south Lebanon in response to rocket attacks on northern Israel earlier on Thursday. 

Military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the targets included "miltary headquarters, infrastructures for directing terrorism, rocket launching positions, munitions warehouses and military complexes". 

He posted a video on X which claimed to show the air strikes on Lebanese targets. 

Over 1,800 academics from around the world who specialise in the research of children and childhood have signed a letter calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. 

“For many of us, entering this field of study was motivated by a desire to improve the material, social, and political conditions of life for children globally," the letter states.

"We cannot, therefore, sit by as the situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate because of Israeli bombardment with arms provided by Western powers; the forced evacuation of over a million people by the [Israeli military]; and the denial of food, water, and fuel by the Israeli state."

“The intolerable consequences of the genocide in Gaza are not just affecting children, but their parents, grandparents, relatives, and adult neighbours," it adds.

"To protect and support children also means protecting and supporting the adults in their lives... But the lives of Palestinian adults do not only matter because they care for children. We say: all Palestinian lives are precious.”

You can see the full letter and list of signatories here. 

Hamas rockets launched from Lebanon have wounded at least two people and caused damage in the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona.

Footage shared on Israel's Channel 13 showed cars and shops on fire as a result of the rocket. 

Hamas said in a statement on Thursday that its armed wing in Lebanon had launched 12 rockets into the city. 

The Magen David Adom ambulance service said its medics were treating two people wounded by the attack.

UN experts have called for a truce in Gaza, stating that the Palestinian people were at "grave risk of genocide". 

"We remain convinced that the Palestinian people are at grave risk of genocide," the experts, who include several UN special rapporteurs, said in a statement on Thursday.

"We demand a humanitarian ceasefire to ensure that aid reaches those who need it the most."

Heavy clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters are ongoing around Gaza City, the most densely populated area in the besieged strip housing its biggest hospital and other key facilities. 

Herzi Halevi, chief of the general staff of the Israeli military, said Israeli troops were "surrounding" Gaza City, operating in it and "deepening" the ground offensive.

“The forces are fighting in a dense and complex urban area, that requires professional combat, and courage,” he said. 

Meanwhile, Hamas's armed wing the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said in several updates throughout Thursday that its fighters were battling Israeli forces in several areas on the outskirts of Gaza City.  

It said members of the group attacked Israeli forces in south and northwest Gaza City using mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades, as well as clashing with infantry forces from point-blank range. 

Recurring Israeli air strikes hit the Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood south of Gaza City on Thursday. 

The shelling comes as gun battles escalate between Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters on the southern and northwestern outskirts of Gaza City. 

Hezbollah said two drones attacked an Israeli military position in the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms on Thursday in an apparent escalation in the ongoing skirmishes between the Lebanese group and Israeli forces.

In a brief communique, the group said the two drones used "a large amount of explosives" and hit their targets with "high accuracy".

Earlier on Thursday, sirens warning of incoming rockets sounded in northern Israel. There were no reports of rocket impact.  

The Israeli army did not immediately comment on the reported Hezbollah drone attack. Earlier in the day, it said it attacked three anti-tank guided missile positions in southern Lebanon.

Israeli forces stormed al-Makassed hospital in occupied East Jerusalem on Thursday, arresting at least 11 Palestinians.

A source told MEE those arrested were Palestinians from Gaza who came to Jerusalem on Israeli-issued permits to accompany patients from the besieged enclave.

Siraj Abu Arafa, a lawyer at the Jerusalem-based Wadi Hilweh Information Center, said 12 people were arrested, including "women, young men and a boy".

Local media said those arrested had their permits revoked after the war erupted on 7 October.

Translation: Scenes from the [Israeli] occupation forces storming al-Makassed hospital in the town of Al-Tur in occupied East Jerusalem this afternoon

Israeli police said in a statement 11 people were arrested from the hospital. It added they were "hiding" in the hospital illegally with no residence visas.

The deputy director of the hospital was also summoned for questioning, police said.

Israeli air strikes flattened yet another residential block in the Gaza Strip on Thursday.

The bombing destroyed homes in the crowded Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. Dozens are feared dead and wounded. 

The civil defence spokesman in Gaza told Al Jazeera they have recorded the bodies of 15 people, with many more still trapped under the rubble.

Translation: Massive destruction after an [Israeli] occupation aircraft wiped out an entire residential block (Block 4) in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

A settler rampage in the occupied West Bank village of Deir Sharaf is leaving wounded Palestinians without help and residents in a state of fear.

Shadi Abu Halawa, the head of the village council, told Middle East Eye the attack began in the afternoon when settlers entered Deir Sharaf from the western side, where Israeli soldiers are permanently present.

According to Abu Halawa, dozens of settlers joined the rampage under the watch of Israeli troops. He said they attacked 20 homes, threw stones at them, and set fire to more than four vehicles. 

"We could not reach the area because it was surrounded by soldiers and settlers," Abu Halawa told Middle East Eye's Ramallah-based contributor, Fayha Shalash. 

"But we see columns of smoke rising after the burning of vehicles and we hear the screams of the people, especially the children," he added, 

Deir Sharaf, located northwest of Nablus, is regularly exposed to settler attacks, which vary from cutting trees, burning agricultural crops, throwing stones, and beating residents. 

The Israeli army has placed an iron gate at the western entrance of the village, restricting the movement of Palestinians, as has been the case in many other villages in the West Bank.

Ahmed Jibril, director of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) in Nablus, told MEE that ambulance crews tried to reach Deir Sharaf to treat a number of wounded people in the settler rampage, but the Israeli army attacked them.

He said their staff received a report that a group of children were trapped inside a warehouse belonging to a bakery and suffered from suffocation as a result of the soldiers firing gas bombs and teargas.

"There are 20 cases of suffocation that we were able to deal with, but there are other cases we were unable to reach," Jibril told MEE. "Until this moment, there are children still stuck there,” he added.

Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in the aftermath of 7 October has left thousands of people dead, the vast majority of whom are civilians.

For much of the world, their experience of these Palestinian casualties has been in the form of death tolls that creep higher and images of mourning relatives, sometimes carrying the bodies of their loved ones.

Each death represents its own story and even as the killings continue, details about those who have died are coming out.

One such case is that of Inas al-Saqa, a Palestinian playwright and actor, who was killed in late October, with three of her children, Leen, Sara and Ibrahim.

Khaled Juma, a prominent poet based in Ramallah, expressed his grief on Facebook over the death of Inas and her children.

"Today, my friend, the curtain has fallen…and the theatre’s stage has darkened," Jumaa wrote.

Saja Elyan, a friend of Saqa’s daughter Ritta, shared her disbelief on social media, writing: "It's truly heartwrenching. Ritta is in intensive care. Please keep her in your prayers, and may God grant her the strength to endure this immense loss. 

“I'm writing, but I can't comprehend this. How long, oh God?"

Read more: Friends remember Inas al-Saqa, one of Gaza’s celebrated actors and playwrights

The Israeli military is set to recruit settlers who have not previously served in the army as "defence militiamen" to protect ultra-Orthodox settlements in the occupied West Bank, Haaretz reported on Thursday. 

Applicants will undergo an accelerated three-week weapons training course before being deployed across settlements, and receive a regular salary from the army.

Settlers with criminal records could be among those recruited, depending on the “nature” of the crime, which the army could “overlook” if the applicants were serious, according to Haaretz.

Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, Israeli authorities have handed out more than 8,000 weapons to so-called settlement defence squads and regional defence battalions in the West Bank.

Settler rampages across the West Bank have risen sharply over the past year and have accelerated since 7 October. 

Several Palestinians have been killed by settlers in the past three weeks, while their communities have been terrorised, livestock stolen and their businesses and homes attacked.

Bahrain has cut economic relations with Israel and recalled its ambassador in Tel Aviv, according to media reports. 

The Bahraini parliament also confirmed the Israeli ambassador in Manama had left the country, citing the "escalating aggression" against Gaza as the reason behind the decision.