WHO says a child is killed every 10 minutes in Gaza – as it happened | Israel-Hamas war

Bethan McKernan

Women’s rights groups in Israel have warned of significant failings in preserving forensic evidence that could have shone a light on the scale of sexual violence committed against women and girls in last month’s Hamas attacks.

Several incidents of sexual assault and rape from 7 October have been documented by Hamas body camera footage, verified material uploaded to social media, and photographs and videos taken by civilians and first responders, according to several people involved in analysing the footage.

A major worry for Israeli women’s rights groups is that it appears that very little, if any, investigative work was done to document sexual violence before bodies were returned to their families for funerals, meaning that the gender-based nature of some of the violence has largely gone under the radar in Israeli and international media.

An Israeli strike on the Al-Shifa compound has killed 13 people, the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip has said, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“Thirteen martyrs and dozens wounded in an Israeli strike on al-Shifa compound today” in central Gaza City, a government statement said. While journalists have not yet been able to verify the claim, an AFP journalist reported seeing at least seven covered bodies outside the hospital.

The Israeli military did not offer an immediate comment. Israel had reported heavy fighting on Thursday near the hospital, saying it had killed dozens of militants and destroyed tunnels that are key to Hamas’s capacity to fight.

The Israeli army has repeatedly accused Hamas of using hospitals, particularly al-Shifa, to coordinate their attacks against the army and also as hideouts for its commanders.

Hamas authorities and doctors deny the accusations.

Mohammed Zaqout, director-general of Gaza hospitals, said they were facing a “catastrophic situation” without electricity, water or food.

“We are unable to provide services to the wounded and the hospitals are continuously bombed by Israel,” Zaqout said.

It’s just past 2pm in Gaza City and Tel Aviv, here are the latest developments:

• Palestinian officials said Israel launched airstrikes on or near at least three hospitals on Friday, further stressing the Palestinian territory’s precarious health system as it struggles to cope with thousands of people wounded or displaced in Israel’s war against Hamas militants. Israel has not responded to the claims.

• The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, says ‘far too many’ Palestinians have died. While Blinken said the US “appreciates” Israel’s steps to minimise civilian casualties, he said it was not enough. He said the US has proposed additional ideas to the Israelis, including longer “humanitarian pauses” and expanding the amount of assistance getting into Gaza.

• Hamas fires rockets deep into Israel, setting off sirens in Tel Aviv. Medics reported two women in Tel Aviv suffered shrapnel wounds from the salvo.

• Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel does not seek to conquer, occupy or govern Gaza after its war against Hamas, but a “credible force” would be needed to enter the Palestinian territory if necessary to prevent the emergence of militant threats.

• Earlier, the Guardian reported that Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a deal for a five-day ceasefire with Palestinian militant groups in Gaza in return for the release of some of the hostages held in the territory early in the war, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.

• Israeli officials say that a Gaza evacuation corridor opens for a sixth day. Cogat, the Israeli military civil body responsible for government policy in the occupied Palestinian territories, said the corridor will remain open for seven hours.

• Food shortages affecting every single person in Gaza, a spokesperson for the UN’s World Food Programme has said. “We can safely say that 100% are food insecure at this moment,” said Kyung-nan Park, the director of emergencies for the UN agency.

• The IDF has confirmed it struck what it said was a group in Syria that was responsible for a drone that hit a school in the southern Israeli city of Eilat on Thursday. The military did not say what organisation in Syria had launched the drone. It said: “The IDF holds the Syrian regime fully responsible for every terror activity emanating from its territory.”

• The White House announced earlier that Israel would begin to implement four-hour “humanitarian pauses” in parts of northern Gaza to allow people to leave. But there are yet to be clear signs of this taking place. The Israeli military has said it has not agreed to a ceasefire but that it will continue to allow “tactical, local pauses” to let in humanitarian aid into Gaza. Any plans for short-term pauses in the fighting in Gaza must be carried out in coordination with the UN and after agreement by all sides to be “truly effective”, a UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric has said.

• In Israel, healthcare professionals and the families of hostages and their supporters held a demonstration outside the International Committee of the Red Cros (ICRC) headquarters in Tel Aviv on 9 November. They were calling on the organisation to demand access to visit and treat the hostages still being held inside Gaza.

• A UN report paints a stark picture of the Palestinian economy after a month of war and Israel’s near-total siege of Gaza. The gross domestic product shrank 4% in the West Bank and Gaza in the war’s first month, sending more than 400,000 people into poverty – an economic impact unseen in the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, or any previous Israel-Hamas war, the UN said.

Sirens have sounded in Tel Aviv and surrounding areas as Hamas said it fired rockets deep into Israel, reports Reuters.

Medics reported two women in Tel Aviv suffered shrapnel wounds from the salvo, which followed a relative lull in rocket fire as Israeli forces press a ground offensive in Gaza in the fifth week of the war.

The military said some 9,500 missiles, rockets and drones had been fired at Israel from Gaza and other fronts since 7 October. It added that 2,000 of them had been shot down by air defences, while some 12% of Gaza rockets, which are mostly locally made, had fallen short within Palestinian territory.

“With the entry of (Israeli) forces on the ground, there has a significant drop-off in the number of launches,” it said.

The figures given by the military have not been verified by the Guardian.

Israel’s emergency medical responders, Magen David Adom, said on social media that its teams were en route to several strike sites.

The Guardian has a dispatch from the city of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, where volunteers are offering children a brief escape from the conflict by playing games and fun activities with them.

‘The kids come back really happy, they revive their playful spirit,’ says one parent.

While it won’t bring back their homes or loved ones, volunteers are hoping that making time for play in a war zone will help these children recover from the trauma of living under siege.