Israel-Hamas live: 15 killed in airstrike on Gaza ambulance as Netanyahu wants hostages back to stop war

The death toll of French citizens killed as a result of Hamas’s terror attacks in Israel has risen to 39, with nine other French nationals still missing, the country’s foreign ministry said on Saturday.

Some of those missing have been confirmed as being held hostage by Hamas, the ministry said in a statement.

“We send our condolences to their loved ones and we are in contact with the families to provide them with our full support in this ordeal as well as with the Israeli authorities,” it said.

“As the president of the republic recalled, we are doing everything we can to obtain their release.

“We remain in constant contact with all the families of our nationals who have disappeared or been held hostage.”

No foreigners will be allowed to leave Gaza until the wounded can be evacuated from the north to the south of the strip, Bel Trew reports.

It comes after an Israeli strike on an ambulance that killed 15 people. Israel says the ambulance was being used by Hamas.

A Palestinian border official has said no foreign passport holders will be allowed to escape to Egypt until the wounded are coordinated and exited from Gaza hospitals and from the north towards the Rafah crossing.

Around 100 British citizens were expected to be able to leave Gaza for Egypt on Friday, with the in-laws of Scotland’s first minister Humza Yousaf among those permitted to leave the territory through the Rafah crossing.

Mr Cleverly welcomed the “positive news” of getting a “number” of British nationals through the crossing, telling broadcasters: “We will continue to work to keep that crossing open, to liaise directly with Israel, with Egypt to ensure that as many British nationals can leave Gaza as possible.”

Around 200 Britons in Gaza have so far registered with the authorities, and along with their dependents the total number the UK is trying to secure passage for is thought to be in the low hundreds.

Aid agencies are battling a humanitarian crisis in Gaza with limited resources, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushing back against growing US pressure for a “humanitarian pause” in the war to protect civilians and allow more aid into the area.

More than 9,000 people are reported to have been killed in the Gaza Strip since October 7, when Israel launched its military response to the atrocities committed by Hamas.

Britain’s Chief Rabbi has criticised pro-Palestinian marchers who standing “alongside” extremists after Rishi Sunak backed a crackdown on said marches planned for Armistice Day, Kate Devlin reports.

In an article for The Times, Sir Ephraim Mirvis said it was “a stain on our common humanity that so many seem to have lost sight of the moral distance between Hamas and Israel”.

A fourth weekend of protests are due in London, with extra police officers on duty.

In his article, the Chief Rabbi said Hamas killings on October 7 mean many of the chants heard during pro-Palestine protests, including calls for “jihad” and an “intifada” against Israel, should be interpreted as supporting Hamas.

He added that protesters had to recognise the “moral chasm” between Hamas and Israel as he warns that the line between expressing support for Palestinians and backing “brutal terrorists” has become “badly blurred”.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has accused Israel of a war crime over a strike on an ambulance outside the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City that killed 15 people.

Israel has admitted responsibility for the strike, saying it targeted the ambulance because it was being used by Hamas.

PRCS said the target was among a convoy of five ambulances, four of which it owned, with the other belonging to the Gaza health ministry.

“PRCS emphasises that the deliberate targeting of medical teams constitutes a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions, a war crime, and that the parties to the four Geneva conventions are legally bound to ensure the protection of medical teams and civilians under all circumstances,” it said in a statement.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken has arrived in Jordan ahead of talks with Arab leaders of the Hamas-Israel war.

He is scheduled to hold talks with Jordanian King Abdullah II and the prime minister of Qatar.

As we’ve been reporting, he has already met with Lebanese caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati.

Later today, Blinken will also have meetings with UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) commissioner general Phillipe Lazzarini and a video call with his Gaza-based staff.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati met with US secretary of state Antony Blinken in Amman on Saturday and emphasized the importance of working towards a ceasefire in Gaza and stopping Israeli aggression in southern Lebanon, Lebanon state news agency said.

Mikati also stressed Lebanon’s commitment to international legitimacy and the implementation of UN Resolution 1701, calling on the international community to pressure Israel to cease its violations.

Blinken, in turn, emphasized his efforts to halt military operations for humanitarian reasons and to address the issue of prisoners.

The US has been flying unarmed surveillance drones over Gaza, it confirmed in a first statement after drones were spotted hovering over the war-torn region.

These drones were operating in “support of hostage recovery efforts”, Pentagon spokesman Brig Gen Pat Ryder said, adding that these UAV flights began after the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel”.

“The US is conducting unarmed UAV flights over Gaza, as well as providing advice and assistance to support our Israeli partner as they work on their hostage recovery efforts,” the Pentagon’s statement said.

The US’s rare acknowledgment comes after reporters spotted unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) MQ-9 Reapers, usually operated by American special forces, over Gaza’s airspace on Flightradar24, a publicly available flight-tracking website.

Hours after Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on 7 October, the country’s new fortified, subterranean blood bank kicked into action. Staffers moved equipment into the underground bunker and started saving lives.

The Marcus National Blood Services Centre in Ramla, near Tel Aviv, had been scheduled to open within days, but with more than 1,400 people in Israel killed since the Hamas raids — most killed during the initial attack — the timeline changed.

“It became very clear we needed to move with the war plans because this was exactly the moment, the event it was built for,” said Dr. Eilat Shinar, director of the national blood services division of Magen David Adom — Israel‘s medical emergency, disaster, ambulance and blood service.

Nestled some 15 meters (50 feet) underground at its lowest level, the $135m, 6-story, state-of-the-art facility is protected from rockets, missiles, chemical attacks and earthquakes, ensuring blood processing can continue when it’s needed most.

Shiner said the centre provided tens of thousands of units of blood in the days that followed the Hamas attacks.

“We worked very hard to supply everything they needed,” she said. “We had many injured and we had to treat them.”

The former blood bank, which was built in the 1980s, was not able to handle the country’s needs in times of war, and had been exposed — but not damaged — during earlier conflicts, the centre said. After Israel’s third war against Hamas in 2014, when rockets reached Tel Aviv and other major cities, discussions began about the need to create a more protected facility.

The new centre has the capacity to store almost twice the amount of blood of its predecessor — half a million units a year compared with 270,000 — and has processed more blood than has ever been held in Israel‘s reserves.“There was a clear understanding that because rockets were flying close to the centre — any other place in the centre can be targeted,” said Moshe Noyovich, the project engineer and representative in Israel for the American Friends of Magen David Adom, which primarily funded the new centre.

In the past, each time rockets were fired into Israel, the team had to move the equipment into a bunker to continue working. Now they can operate uninterrupted, he said.

Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed back against growing pressure from the US for a humanitarian pause in its war on Hamas to protect civilians and get more aid into Gaza, saying there will be no temporary ceasefire until all hostages are released.

Flying into Tel Aviv on Friday, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, sought to urge the Israeli prime minister to let-up the military offensive, at least for a time. However, Mr Netanyahu said that Israel will continue “with full force” unless Hamas releases more than 240 hostages.

It comes as an ambulance was struck outside Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa, in Gaza City. The health ministry in the Hamas-run strip said that it was part of a convoy that was seeking to evacuate the wounded from northern Gaza to the south and that “several citizens were killed and dozens wounded”.