Gaza death toll over 8,000 as hospital asked to evacuate – latest on Israel-Hamas war

Vice president Kamala Harris said the US has “absolutely no intention” of sending American troops to support Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

“We have absolutely no intention nor do we have any plans to send combat troops into Israel or Gaza, period,” Ms Harris said in a “60 Minutes” interview.

She argued that Israel had a right to defend itself after Hamas slaughtered hundreds of young people at a concert.

“By most estimates, at least 1,400 Israelis are dead,” she said, adding: “That being said, it is very important that there be no conflation between Hamas and the Palestinians.”

Ms Harris continued: “The Palestinians deserve equal measures of safety and security, self-determination and dignity”.

“And we have been very clear that the rules of war must be adhered to, and that there be humanitarian aid that flows.”

More children have been killed in Gaza in three weeks of war so far than the combined total killed in conflicts around the world in any year since 2019, Save the Children said.

Since the 7 October Hamas attack, more than 3,257 children are reported to have been killed, including at least 3,195 in Gaza, 33 in the occupied West Bank, and 29 in Israel, Save the Children said, citing various health authorities.

Children made up over 40 per cent of the 8,000 people killed in Gaza, and more than a third of all fatalities across the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel. Another 6,360 children in Gaza have also been injured, as well as at least 180 children in the West Bank, and at least 74 children in Israel.

With a further 1,000 children reported missing in Gaza and assumed buried under the rubble, the death toll is likely much higher, the organisation said.

The UN in 2019 said that 4,019 children were killed in conflicts around the world that year.

“The numbers are harrowing and with violence not only continuing but expanding in Gaza right now, many more children remain at grave risk,” said Jason Lee, Save the Children’s country director in occupied Palestinian territory.

More than 8,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have died in Gaza in Israel’s three-week-long bombardment since the Hamas attack on 7 October, according to the Strip’s health ministry

.Over 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during the initial attack.

Communications were restored to most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people on Sunday after an Israeli bombardment described by residents as the most intense of the war knocked out phone and internet services late on Friday.

On Sunday, 33 trucks carrying water, food and medicine entered the only border crossing from Egypt, a spokesperson at the Rafah crossing, Wael Abo Omar, told The Associated Press.

Hundreds of protesters have stormed an airport in Russia reportedly in search of a flight arriving from Israel.

A large crowd poured out into the landing field and runway of Makhachkala airport on Sunday evening as videos on social media showed young men among the protesters carrying Palestinian flags.

Footage also showed some in the crowd trying to overturn a police car. Antisemitic slogans can be heard being shouted and some in the crowd examined the passports of arriving passengers.

The Israeli military struck targets in Lebanon and Syria on Sunday after projectiles were fired into Israel from the north.

Clashes have taken place across Israel’s tense border with Lebanon since the onset of the Hamas-Israel war.

Israel’s military provided video of multiple strikes inside Lebanon, showing explosions erupting among trees and missiles hitting a building on a hillside. The military said it shot down a drone and killed a militant who tried to approach the border fence.

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, also said it downed an Israeli drone over southern Lebanon with a surface-to-air missile.

It said one missile that was fired across the border had hit an Israeli infantry unit near the town of Birket Risha and caused “confirmed injuries”.

The military said rockets were also fired from Syria, falling into open Israeli territory. The IDF said it fired back at the site from which the rockets were launched.

Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf says he has spoken to his in-laws trapped in Gaza amid the ongoing conflict.

He said earlier that he and his wife, Nadia El-Nakla, had not been able to contact her parents since the previous day after communications were knocked out and they did not know if they were dead or alive.

Ms El-Nakla’s parents, Elizabeth and Maged, travelled to Gaza from Scotland prior to the conflict to visit family.

Mr Yousaf on Sunday said on X, formerly Twitter, that he has now heard from them.

Airstrikes could be heard from as far as an Egyptian town in the Sinai as the attacks on the 42km-long strip throughout Friday night.

Just one day after Hamas launched an attack on Israel, 56-year-old Abdel Naser Shamalakh and his entire family were killed after rockets hit their home in Gaza.

“The whole family was buried under the rubble. They only found two whole bodies. The others were in parts or unrecognisable,” his British-Palestinian niece, 37-year-old Waf’a Shamalakh, told The Independent.

Trade unions, officials and humanitarian organisations have raised concerns for their safety after reports Palestinians with permission to work in Israel were rounded up, arrested and blindfolded before being taken to military camps.

The Minister of Labour for the Palestinian Authorities, Dr Nasri Abu Jaish, told The Independent around 4,500 workers were still unaccounted for but are believed to have been detained by Israeli forces. Dr Jaish said he had met workers after some of them were released, sharing stories of alleged mistreatment.

On 13 October, one million people were ordered by Israel to evacuate northern Gaza. The move garnered international criticism with the World Health Organization calling it a “death sentence for the sick and injured” and the UN warning it was impossible to execute and would lead to a “calamitous situation”.

The call to evacuate was repeated on 21 October with leaflets dropped in the north of the strip telling residents to leave “immediately”. It prompted Amnesty International to release a statement suggesting that the order could amount to a war crime under international humanitarian law.