Protesters are arrested and led away by law enforcement at Grand Central Terminal during a rally calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on October 27, 2023, in New York.
| Photo Credit: AP

Hundreds of protesters filled the main concourse of New York city’s famed Grand Central Terminal during the evening rush hour on October 27, chanting slogans and unfurling banners demanding a cease-fire as Israel intensified its bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Wearing black T-shirts and saying “Jews say cease-fire now” and “Not in our name,” at least 200 of the demonstrators were detained by New York Police Department (NYPD) officers and led out of the train station, their hands zip-tied behind their backs. The NYPD said the protesters were taken briefly into custody, issued summons and released, and that a more exact number of detentions would be available on October 28.

Some protesters hoisted banners as they scaled the stone ledges in front of leader boards listing departure times. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority asked commuters to use Penn Station as an alternative. After the sit-in was broken up by police, the remaining protesters spilled into the streets outside.

“Hundreds of Jews and friends are taking over Grand Central Station in a historic sit-in calling for a ceasefire,” advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace said on social media.

The scene echoed last week’s sit-in on Capitol Hill in Washington, where Jewish advocacy groups, including Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now, poured into a congressional office building. More than 300 people were arrested for illegally demonstrating.

Israel stepped up airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Friday, knocking out internet and largely cutting off communication with the 2.3 million people inside the besieged Palestinian enclave. Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry says more than 7,300 people have been killed, more than 60% of them minors and women.

The Israeli military’s announcement it was “expanding” ground operations in the territory signalled it was moving closer to an all-out invasion of Gaza, where it has vowed to crush the ruling Hamas militant group after its bloody incursion in southern Israel three weeks ago. More than 1,400 people were slain in Israel during the attack, according to the Israeli government, and at least 229 hostages were taken into Gaza.

The U.N. General Assembly approved a nonbinding resolution calling for a “humanitarian truce” in Gaza leading to a cessation of hostilities. It was the first U.N. response to Hamas’ surprise October 7 attacks and Israel’s ongoing military response.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees warned on October 25 that without immediate deliveries of fuel it will soon have to sharply cut back relief operations across the Gaza Strip, which has been blockaded and hit by devastating Israeli airstrikes since Hamas militants launched an attack on Israel more than two weeks ago.

The warning came as hospitals in Gaza struggled to treat masses of wounded with dwindling resources, and health officials in the Hamas-ruled territory said the death toll was soaring as Israeli jets continued striking the territory overnight into Wednesday.

The Israeli military said its strikes had killed militants and destroyed tunnels, command centres, weapons storehouses and other military targets, which it has accused Hamas of hiding among Gaza’s civilian population. Gaza-based militants have been launching unrelenting rocket barrages into Israel since the conflict started.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said the airstrikes killed at least 704 people between Monday and Tuesday, mostly women and children. The Associated Press could not independently verify the death tolls cited by Hamas, which says it tallies figures from hospital directors.

The death toll was unprecedented in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even greater loss of life could come when Israel launches an expected ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas militants.

In Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters the U.S. could not verify the one-day death toll. “The Ministry of Health is run by Hamas, and I think that all needs to be factored into anything that they put out publicly.”

Israel said on Tuesday it had launched 400 airstrikes over the past day, an increase from the 320 strikes the day before. The U.N. says about 1.4 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are now internally displaced, with almost 6,00,000 crowded into U.N. shelters.

Gaza’s residents have been running out of food, water and medicine since Israel sealed off the territory following the attack on southern Israel by Hamas, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction.

In recent days, Israel allowed a small number of trucks filled with aid to come over the border with Egypt but barred deliveries of fuel — needed to power hospital generators — to keep it out of Hamas’ hands.

The U.N. said it had managed to deliver some of the aid in recent days to hospitals treating the wounded. But the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, the largest provider of humanitarian services in Gaza, said it was running out of fuel.

Officials said they were forced to reduce their operations as they rationed what little fuel they had.

“Without fuel our trucks cannot go around to further places in the strip for distribution,” said Lily Esposito, a spokesperson for the agency. “We will have to make decisions on what activities we keep or not with little fuel.”

Meanwhile, more than half of Gaza’s primary healthcare facilities, and roughly a third of its hospitals, have stopped functioning, the World Health Organization said.

Overwhelmed hospital staff struggled to triage cases as constant waves of wounded were brought in. The Health Ministry said many wounded are laid on the ground without even simple medical aid and others wait for days for surgeries because there are so many critical cases.

The Health Ministry says more than 5,700 Palestinians have been killed in the war, including some 2,300 minors. The figure includes the disputed toll from an explosion at a hospital last week.

The fighting has killed more than 1,400 people in Israel — mostly civilians slain during the initial Hamas attack, according to the Israeli government. Hamas is also holding some 222 people that it captured and brought back to Gaza.

The conflict threatened to spread across the region, as Israeli airstrikes hit Syrian military sites in the south on Wednesday, killing eight soldiers and wounding seven, according to Syria’s state-run SANA news agency.

The Israeli military said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, its jets had struck Syrian military infrastructure and mortar systems in response to rocket launches from Syria.

Israel has launched several strikes on Syria in recent days, including strikes that put the Damascus and Aleppo airports out of service, in an apparent attempt to prevent arms shipments from Iran to militant groups, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Israel has been fighting the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah across the Lebanese border in recent weeks.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah met on Wednesday with top Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad officials in their first reported meeting since the war started. Such a meeting could signal coordination between the groups, as Hezbollah officials warned Israel against launching a ground offensive in Gaza.

Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Iran was helping Hamas, with intelligence and by “whipping up incitement against Israel across the world.” He said Iranian proxies were also operating against Israel from Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. Fighting also erupted in the West Bank, which has seen a major spike in violence.

Islamic Jihad militants said they fought with Israeli forces in Jenin overnight. The Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank said Israel killed four Palestinians in Jenin, including a 15-year-old, and two others in other towns. That brought the total number of those killed in the occupied West Bank since October 7 to 102.

Across central and south Gaza, where Israel told civilians to take shelter, there were multiple scenes of rescuers pulling the dead and wounded out of large piles of rubble from collapsed buildings. Graphic photos and video shot by the AP showed rescuers unearthing bodies of children from multiple ruins.

A father knelt on the floor of the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah next to the bodies of three lifeless children cocooned in bloodied sheets. Later, at the nearby morgue, workers prayed over 24 dead wrapped in body bags, several of them the size of small children.

“Buildings that collapsed on residents killed dozens at a time in several cases, witnesses said. Two families lost 47 members in a levelled home in Rafah,” the Health Ministry said.

In Gaza City, at least 19 people were killed when an airstrike hit the house of the Bahloul family, according to survivors, who said dozens more remained buried. The legs of a dead woman and another person, both still half buried, dangled out of the wreckage where workers dug through the dirt, concrete and rebar.

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that the proportionate response to the October 7 attack is “a total destruction” of the militants. “It is not only Israel’s right to destroy Hamas. It’s our duty,” he said.

On Wednesday, Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Gilad Erdan, said his country will stop issuing visas to U.N. personnel after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that Hamas’ attack “did not happen in a vacuum.” It was unclear what the action, if followed through with, would mean for U.N. aid personnel working in Gaza and the West Bank.

“It’s time to teach them a lesson,” Erdan told Army Radio, accusing the U.N. chief of justifying a slaughter.

The U.N. chief told the Security Council on Tuesday that “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.” Mr. Guterres also said “the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

New York:

At Columbia University on Thursday, two groups of hundreds of students tensely faced each other in dueling pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrations, while university officials blocked public access to the New York City campus as a safety measure.

Supporters of Palestinians, many of whom wore face masks to hide their identities, held signs in a grassy area near a library that read “Free Palestine” and “To Exist is to Resist.” About 100 feet (30 meters) away, students backing Israel silently held up posters with the faces of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas.

After the Palestinian militant group Hamas’ weekend attack on Israel, Israel has bombarded and laid siege to the Gaza Strip, controlled by Hamas, and plans a ground invasion. The Israeli death toll had risen to more than 1,300, according to public broadcaster Kan. Gaza authorities said more than 1,500 Palestinians had been killed.

Amid the growing conflict, tensions between students on opposite sides of the issue have boiled over on some U.S. college campuses.

Statements by student groups supporting Palestinians have prompted outrage and fear among Jews and, in some cases, wider rebuke from public officials and corporations. There have been reports of harassment and assaults of both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students, deepening grief and putting students of all political stripes on high alert.

“Jewish students are afraid,” said David Hidary, a 20-year-old physics major, who attended the Columbia protest with an Israeli flag draped over his shoulders.

In a sign of the tensions, some counter-protesters at Columbia shouted angrily at the pro-Palestinian group. During a moment of silence for Palestinian victims, an opposing protester yelled out that they should be honoring children murdered by Hamas.

Several masked speakers at the pro-Palestine rally declined to reveal their full names, with one saying they did not feel safe enough on campus to disclose their identity. Many faulted the university for not expressing more support for Palestinian students and the people of Gaza.

The campus climate may only become more tense in coming days. Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas in retribution for the deadliest attack by Palestinian militants in Israeli history.

Meanwhile, college administrators are grappling with how to keep campuses secure and denounce the violence in the Middle East without wading too deeply into a supercharged political and historical dispute that affects Jewish and Palestinian students personally.

‘DAY OF RESISTANCE’ CALLED

A controversy at Harvard University on Monday was one of the first to make headlines. Prominent alumni lambasted a joint student group statement calling Israel “entirely responsible” for the war. The university president later clarified that the groups did not represent the school’s position.

On Tuesday, the names and personal information of students allegedly involved were posted online and on Wednesday a billboard truck displaying that information was driven around campus, the Harvard Crimson newspaper reported. Some critics of the pro-Palestinian letter responded by denouncing the intimidation of students, the newspaper said.

Tensions sparked anew at campuses on Thursday as the national group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) declared a “day of resistance,” with demonstrations by its 200 chapters at colleges across North America.

The national group, which advocates for an independent Palestine and says on its website that it promotes “an agenda grounded in freedom, solidarity, equality, safety and historical justice,” called the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance.”

The Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit organization fighting antisemitism, wrote a letter to college presidents warning that Students for Justice in Palestine was “condoning terrorism by Hamas by repackaging it as justified acts of ‘resistance'” with its planned day of action.

The University of Arizona, Tucson chapter of SJP canceled a protest on Thursday, citing safety concerns after the school’s president called the gathering “antithetical to our university’s values.”

Dozens of students from the University of California Los Angeles chapter of SJP held a march for Palestine on Thursday, despite the group’s report that its student members had been harassed and assaulted over the last several days, including while counter-protesting a pro-Israel rally.

At Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., the SJP chapter chose to host a vigil on Thursday night but declined to allow media access “due to increased harassment and threats of violence against Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and anti-Zionist students across the country.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The British royal family is expressing solidarity with Israel following the unexpected attacks by Hamas operatives that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,000 civilians over the past weekend. While the King and other senior members of the royal family have denounced the attacks, Prince William and Kate Middleton issued a joint statement on Wednesday evening strongly condemning Hamas’ brutal act of violence.

The BBC reported, quoting Palace sources, that the King was “appalled”, and condemned the “barbaric acts of terrorism in Israel”. The Prince and Princess of Wales are “profoundly distressed” by the events since strikes began on Saturday, according to their spokesman. He said the couple believes all Israelis and Palestinians will be “stalked by grief, fear, and anger”.

“A spokesperson for The Prince and Princess of Wales said, ‘The Prince and Princess of Wales are profoundly distressed by the devastating events that have unfolded in the past few days. The horrors inflicted by Hamas’s terrorist attack upon Israel are appalling; they utterly condemn them,” the statement shared on microblogging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, read.

pic.twitter.com/lh3f5lusNx

— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) October 11, 2023

“As Israel exercises its right to self-defense, all Israelis and Palestinians will continue to be stalked by grief, fear, and anger in the time to come. They hold all the victims, their families, and their friends in their hearts and minds. Those the Prince of Wales met in 2018 overwhelmingly shared a common hope-that of a better future.”

“In the midst of such terrible suffering, the Prince and Princess continue to share that hope without reservation.”

Meanwhile, Israeli forces reported that approximately 1,200 people, the majority of whom were civilians, had lost their lives in the Hamas attack, marking it as the most devastating in the nation’s history.

As Israel pounded Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, a densely populated enclave of 2.3 million people, in response, the number of deaths there has also reached 1,200 people, including a high number of civilians, according to Palestinian authorities.

More than 338,000 people in the enclave have been displaced, according to the United Nations.

(With inputs from agencies)

New Delhi:

Hamas has threatened to execute one hostage every time Israel drops a bomb, without warning, on a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip, Reuters said Tuesday, as the increasingly bloody war between the two sides rolls into a fourth day with no end in sight. The group has 150 hostages – including children and a Holocaust survivor – grabbed from border towns and kibbutzim in attacks that began early Saturday.

Hamas spokesperson Abu Ubaida said, “Every targeting of our people without warning will be met with the execution of one civilian hostage”. AFP reported that four hostages have already died (it is unclear if they were Israelis or other nationals) but also that they were killed during Israeli air strikes.

The hostages present a significant problem for an Israeli government that has vowed to respond to Hamas’ attacks with a “massive” assault and “unprecedented force”; Palestinians are bracing for a vicious response after Tel Aviv called up over three lakh soldiers, including reservists, ahead of a ground assault.

READ | NDTV Explains Why Gaza Is An ‘Open-Air Prison’ With No Escape

Public opinion has, so far been firmly with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He has the full support of the opposition too; ex-PM and current Leader of the Opposition, Yair Lapid, told NDTV Monday, “Nobody cares about politics right now… it doesn’t matter.”

READ | “Nobody Cares About Politics Right Now”: Israel Opposition Leader To NDTV

However, some experts feel Israelis will not “forgive” their leader if ensuring hostages’ safety, and rescuing them, is not a priority. “The citizens’ attitude would be ‘you have failed to ensure our security, bring us the hostages back’,” Sylvaine Bulle, a French sociologist studying Israel, told AFP. 

Ms Bulle also predicted tension between politicians and the military if hostages were killed.

Will the Israel government risk public sentiment in its bid for revenge for Hamas’ attacks? 

According to Kobi Micheal, a researcher from the Tel-Aviv based Institute for National Security Studies, “Hostages cannot be first priority. With all the sorrow… Israel will (address the) hostage issue only (when it has) the upper hand and when Hamas (is) defeated… not a second before.”

Reuters has also said Qatari mediators are negotiating the hostages’ release in exchange for 36 Palestinian women and children being held in Israeli prisons. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry confirmed to Reuters it is involved and sources told the news agency talks are “moving positively”.

There are contradictory reports, though; Hamas sources in Qatar told AFP there is “currently no chance for negotiation on the issue of prisoners or anything else”.

LIVE COVERAGE | Bodies Of 1,500 Hamas Operatives Found Near Border: Israel

On Monday Mr Netanyahu declared war on Hamas and said, “Hamas terrorists bound, burned and executed children. They are savages. Hamas is ISIS…” Israel Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, on Monday ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza; “No electricity, no food, no water, no gas…”

The Gaza Strip – 365 sq km large and home to 2.3 million people – is already one of the world’s most locked-down places. It is also the third most densely populated space in the world.

READ |Hamas Outmaneuvered Israel’s Surveillance Prowess By Going Dark

Over 1,600 people have died, more than 6,000 have been injured since the war began on Saturday. Fifteen deaths have also been reported from the West Bank, where Palestinians clashed with Israeli forces. The United Nations has said over 1.3 lakh have been displaced so far.

With input from agencies

South Korea’s Defence Minister said, on October 10, he would push to suspend a 2018 inter-Korean military agreement in order to resume frontline surveillance on rival North Korea, as the surprise attack on Israel by Hamas militants raised concerns in South Korea about similar assaults by the North.

Also Read | What did Hamas achieve from the attack on Israel?

The agreement, reached during a brief period of diplomacy between South Korea’s former liberal President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, created buffer zones along land and sea boundaries and no-fly zones above the border to prevent clashes.

Talking with reporters in Seoul, South Korean Defence Minister Shin Won-sik cited the violence in Israel and Gaza to stress the need to strengthen monitoring on the North. Shin was appointed by President Yoon Suk Yeol on Saturday.

Shin was particularly critical of the inter-Korean agreement’s no-fly zones, which he said prevents South Korea from fully utilising its air surveillance assets at a time when North Korean nuclear threats are growing.

Relations between the Koreas have decayed following the collapse of larger talks between Washington and Pyongyang in 2019 over the North’s nuclear weapons programme. North Korea has threatened to abandon the 2018 agreement while dialling up missile tests to a record pace, prompting the conservative Yoon to take a harder line on Pyongyang than his dovish predecessor.

Also Read | What is Hamas, the Palestinian militant group?

“While it would take a complicated legal process for South Korea to fully abandon the agreement, pausing the agreement would only require a decision from a Cabinet meeting,” Shin said.

“Hamas has attacked Israel, and the Republic of Korea is under a much stronger threat,” Shin said, invoking South Korea’s formal name.

“To counter (that threat), we need to be observing (North Korean military movements) with our surveillance assets, to gain prior knowledge of whether they are preparing provocations or not. If Israel had flown aircraft and drones to maintain continuous monitoring, I think they might have not been hit like that,” he said.

Shin’s comments are likely to draw fierce criticism from South Korea’s liberal opposition, which has described the agreement as a safety valve between the Koreas as relations continue to worsen.

There haven’t been major skirmishes between the Koreas since the agreement was reached in September 2018. But South Korea last November accused the North of violating the agreement’s tensions-reducing requirements when it fired a missile near a populated South Korean island near their sea border, triggering air raid sirens and forcing residents to evacuate.

In June 2020, North Korea blew up an empty inter-Korean liaison office in the North Korean border town of Kaesong to demonstrate anger over South Korea’s unwillingness to prevent its civilian activists from flying anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border. North Korean troops also shot and killed a South Korean government official who was found drifting near their sea boundary in September that year.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are at their highest point in years as the pace of both North Korea’s weapons demonstrations and the United States’ combined military exercises with South Korea and Japan have both intensified in tit-for-tat.

South Korea’s Defence Ministry said the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its strike group will arrive in the South Korean mainland port of Busan on Thursday in the allies’ latest show of force against North Korea.

The Ministry said the Reagan’s Carrier Strike Group 5 conducted joint training with South Korean and Japanese naval assets on Monday and Tuesday in waters near the southern South Korean island of Jeju.

Kim, in turn, has been boosting the visibility of his partnerships with Moscow and Beijing as he attempts to break out of diplomatic isolation and insert Pyongyang into a united front against Washington.

Recent commercial satellite photos show a sharp increase in rail traffic along the North Korea-Russia border, indicating the North is supplying munitions to Russia to fuel President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine,Beyond Parallel, a website run by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a report last week.

Speculation about a possible North Korean plan to refill Russia’s munition stores drained in its protracted war with Ukraine flared last month, when Kim travelled to Russia to meet Mr. Putin and visit key military sites. Foreign officials suspect Kim is seeking advanced Russian weapons technologies in return for to boost his nuclear programme.

North Korea is expected to make its third attempt to launch a military spy satellite this month following consecutive failures in recent months, as Kim stresses the importance of acquiring space-based reconnaissance capacities to monitor U.S. and South Korean military movements and enhance the threat of his nuclear-capable missiles.

In an editorial published on Monday, South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper called for South Korea to take lessons from Israel’s failures to prevent the attack by the Hamas militants while strengthening its readiness against potential North Korean aggression.

“Israel, surrounded by enemies and terrorist forces, is reminiscent of (South) Korea’s current security situation. Even the Mossad failed to detect signs of the attack and Israel’s all-weather air defence system Iron Dome exposed a hole,” the newspaper said. “The government must be thoroughly prepared for North Korea’s possible military provocations when the United States and other allies focus their attention on the Middle East.”

The inter-Korean military agreement is one of the few tangible remnants from Moon’s ambitious diplomacy with Kim. Moon’s efforts helped set up Kim’s first summit with former U.S. President Donald Trump in June 2018.

See all 39 stories

Fire and smoke rise following an Israeli airstrike, in Gaza City, on October 8, 2023. The militant Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip carried out an unprecedented, multi-front attack on Israel at daybreak Saturday, firing thousands of rockets as dozens of Hamas fighters infiltrated the heavily fortified border in several locations, killing hundreds and taking captives.
| Photo Credit: AP

Ten Nepali students have been killed and four others injured in Israel after the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a wave of rocket attacks in the country’s southern region, Nepal’s Foreign Ministry said on October 9.

Hamas carried out a barrage of air strikes in Southern Israel on Saturday, killing more than 600 people, including soldiers, and wounding more than 1,900.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in response launched multiple attacks targeting Hamas’ key infrastructure. About 1,000 people have been killed in Israel and Gaza in the biggest escalation in decades between the two sides.

In a press statement, the Foreign Ministry here said 10 Nepali nationals lost their lives in the recent attack by Hamas in Israel.

“Out of the 17 Nepali nationals working on a farm at Kibbutz Alumim, an area near the Gaza Strip, two safely escaped, four were injured and one is still missing,” it said.

“We have received the information of the sad demise of ten Nepali nationals from the site, where the Hamas had launched an attack,” Nepal’s embassy in Jerusalem said in a statement.

All 10 people killed in the Hamas attack were students of agriculture from Sudur Paschim University in Western Nepal, according to Ministry sources.

There are currently 4,500 Nepali nationals working as caregivers in Israel. A total of 265 Nepali students are studying in Israel under the ‘Learn and Earn’ programme of the Israeli government. Of them, 119 are from Agriculture and Forestry University, 97 from Tribhuvan University and 49 from Sudur Paschim University. All of them are bachelor-level students of agriculture.

“We are trying to identify those killed in the incident. Efforts are being made to search for one missing student. The bodies will be brought back to Nepal soon after the identification is completed,” the embassy said.

The Nepal government has also requested the Israeli government that necessary arrangements be provided to the injured people, who are undergoing treatment. The Ministry said it was collaborating with the Israeli government and the embassy in Tel Aviv to bring back those nationals who want to return home.

“Nepal government is committed to evacuate its nationals from the war-torn region at the earliest,” said the statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“A meeting of the coordination mechanism formed under the leadership of Foreign Minister N. P. Saud is under way at the Ministry to take stock of the situation in Israel, to identify Nepalese nationals and to make efforts for rescue Nepalese nationals if necessary,” read the statement issued by secretariat of Foreign Minster Saud.

Nepal’s main Opposition CPN-UML has also asked Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal to talk to his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu to rescue the Nepalis, the Kathmandu Post newspaper reported.

“Issuing statements and informing the House is not enough. The government must play the role of guardian of its citizens at this time of crisis,” said Padam Giri, the UML chief whip, in Parliament.

“The death toll in Israel is expected to rise as a large number of people have been critically wounded,” according to the Israeli military.

Palestinian health officials have said that more than 400 people have been killed, with more than 2,000 injured.

Hamas is a Palestinian Islamist militant group which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007. The Gaza Strip is home to about 2.3 million people. It is a 41km-long and 10km-wide territory surrounded by Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.

New Delhi:

As gun battles raged between Israeli security forces and hundreds of Hamas group fighters in at least 22 locations, Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant today issued a threat to “change the face of reality” in Gaza. 

Over 200 Israelis and 232 Palestinians were killed on Saturday in the deadliest escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades, after the Hamas group launched a massive rocket barrage and ground, air, and sea offensive, prompting Israel to respond with intense airstrikes.

“Today, we have seen the face of evil. Hamas launched a criminal attack, without distinguishing between women, children and the elderly. It will realise very quickly that it made a grave mistake. We will change the face of reality in the Gaza Strip,” Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said in a video statement.

היום, ראינו את פני הרוע.

החמאס פתח בהתקפה נפשעת, ללא הבחנה בין נשים, ילדים וקשישים. הוא יבין מהר מאוד שעשה טעות חמורה.

אנחנו נשנה את פני המציאות ברצועת עזה עשרות שנים קדימה.

אזרחי ישראל, במיוחד בשעות קשות אלו, התאזרו בסבלנות וגבו את כוחות הביטחון. pic.twitter.com/psu4BOJg3w

— יואב גלנט – Yoav Gallant (@yoavgallant) October 7, 2023

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to demolish Hamas strongholds in Gaza, reducing them to rubble, as the conflict continued to escalate.

READ |Explained: Israel-Palestine And A History Of Conflict

Rockets pounded Israel from Gaza from 6:30 am on Saturday, following months of growing violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with the highest death count in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict, in years.

“Israel is now at war,” Prime Minister Netanyahu declared to the shocked nation Saturday morning, in what was the 50th anniversary of the start of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.

“I’m telling the people of Gaza: get out of there now, because we’re about to act everywhere with all our force,” he added. “We’ll strike them to the bitter end and avenge with force this black day they brought on Israel and its people.”

US President Joe Biden reaffirmed his “unwavering” support for the US ally, Israel, as the UN Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting for Sunday. He also warned against any adversaries of Israel exploiting the situation.

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