Israel stepped up its offensive on the Gaza Strip on Tuesday in response to an unprecedented attack by Hamas, pounding neighborhoods with airstrikes and expanding the mobilization of reservists to 360,000.
The military said it had regained effective control over the Gaza border and areas Hamas attacked in the south of Israel.
The war, which has claimed at least 1,900 lives on both sides, is expected to escalate. The weekend attack that Hamas said was retribution for worsening conditions for Palestinians under Israeli occupation has inflamed Israel’s determination to crush the group’s hold in Gaza.
New exchanges of fire over Israel’s northern borders with militants in Lebanon and Syria on Tuesday pointed to the risk of an expanded regional conflict.
Here’s what is happening on Day 4 of the conflict:
Two Brazilian citizens were killed as the result of the Hamas attack on Israel, the foreign ministry said Tuesday.
The ministry identified the deceased as Ranani Nidejelski Glazer and Bruna Valeanu.
The ministry said in a separate statement that three people with dual Brazilian-Israeli citizenship were missing after they disappeared at a music festival outside of Kibbutz Re’im.
Shiran Galante said her best friend, Brazilian native Karla Stelzer Mendes, 42, and her long-time boyfriend, Gabi Azulay, who were both at the festival, have been missing since Saturday.
Galante said she last heard from her friend just after 8 a.m. on Saturday. Stelzer had just escaped a shelter that had become a target for Hamas militants and found refuge in a nearby wooded area, Stelzer told her. Stelzer sent a text message at 8:18 a.m. to her 20-year-old son, Galante said. That was the last anyone heard from her.
“We tried everything, authorities, everything we could and much more, but we have no answer,” Galante told The Associated Press via text messages from Israel.
MANILA, Philippines - Two Filipinos have been killed as a result of the attacks by Hamas militants on Israel, where thousands of Filipinos live and work, said Philippine Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo.
Manalo condemned the killings in a brief statement he posted Wednesday on X, formerly known as Twitter, but did not provide other details, including the circumstances of the deaths and the identities of the victims.
“The Philippines condemns the killing of two Filipino nationals and all other acts of terrorism and violence as a result of Hamas actions against Israel,” Manalo said.
He added that the Philippines is ready to work with other countries toward a long-lasting resolution to the conflict, in accordance with a U.N. Security Council resolution.
OTTAWA, Ontario - Canadian citizens will be flown out of the country from the Tel Aviv, Israel, airport in coming days in the wake of Hamas’ attack on Israel, Canada’s foreign minister said Tuesday.
The government plans to conduct the evacuation using aircraft from the Canadian Armed Forces, Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The post did not mention those Canadians who are believed to be trapped in Gaza after Israel closed off the Hamas-controlled territory.
Canada is trying to determine how many of its citizens are among the dead or missing. Friends and family have confirmed that 22-year-old Ben Mizrachi from Vancouver and former Montreal resident Alexandre Look, who recently celebrated his 33rd birthday, were two of the hundreds killed while attending a music festival in southern Israel.
A son of two Italian-Israeli citizens unaccounted for after Hamas’ incursion into Israel believes they were kidnapped by Hamas militants.
Eviatar Moshe Kipnis, 65, who has an autoimmune disease and uses a wheelchair, and his wife, Lilach Lea Havron, 60, were holed up in their safe room on Saturday morning at their home in the Kibbutz Be’eri, Nadav Kipnis told The Associated Press on Tuesday. He said that was the last time he and his brother Yotam heard from them.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani briefed parliament about the incursion on Tuesday, identifying the two Italians by name and saying they were “probably taken hostage.”
The family also has lost contact with Havron’s sister and her extended family who lived nearby. All together, 11 people from two family households at the kibbutz are unaccounted for, including children ages 3, 8 and 12, Nadav Kipnis said.
PRAGUE - Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky visited Israel on Tuesday to show his country’s support after the Hamas attack and brought more than 30 Czech nationals home from Israel on his plane, the Foreign Ministry said.
Lipavsky met his Israeli counterpart, Eli Cohen, and President Isaac Herzog, the Ministry said.
“Israel is one of us, the attacks and kidnappings unleashed by Hamas terrorists are an attack on all of us,” Lipavsky said in a statement.
Lipavsky also met the relatives of a woman kidnapped by Hamas.
CANBERRA, Australia - A 66-year-old Sydney-born woman is the first known Australian to die in the Hamas attack on Israel, Australia’s government said Wednesday.
Australian Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said Galit Carbone was killed Saturday at the Be’eri kibbutz near Gaza.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong is leading government efforts to help an estimated 10,000 Australians in Israel who want to leave.
WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden on Tuesday confirmed that U.S. citizens are among the hostages captured by Hamas as he condemned the militant group for the “sheer evil” of its shocking weekend assault on Israel.
“Our hearts may be broken but our resolve is clear,” said Biden, who compared the brutality of the Hamas militants to that of the Islamic State terrorist group.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke by phone earlier on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the situation on the ground.
Twenty or more U.S. citizens are unaccounted for, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday. He said he did not know precisely how many citizens are being held hostage, or their conditions. Biden confirmed earlier Tuesday that 14 Americans have been killed in the bloody Hamas incursion.
JERUSALEM - A Portuguese woman studying in Tel Aviv, Israel, who was identified as missing after the Hamas attack on Israel, was found dead Tuesday.
Rotem Neumann, 25, had been missing for at least three days by the time her body was found. Her death was confirmed by her cousin Tomer Neumann.
Rotem Neumann was at the Teva festival, a music festival near the Gaza border that was invaded by militants in the early hours of Saturday morning. She first called her parents from the festival when she heard rocket fire, Tomer Neumann said. That was the last time the family heard from her.
She then got into a car with friends and drove north, seeking shelter. The car soon encountered trucks filled with militants, shooting at them with machine guns. Panicked, they turned around and started going in the opposite direction. Militants with guns crowded the roads south, too.
They climbed out of the car and began running east, away from the border, piling into a concrete shelter they found at Kibbutz Re’im. Rotem Neumann sent a message to a friend there, sharing with him her location so he could take shelter. Militants soon peppered the shelter with bullets.
The Israeli military said it shelled Syria on Tuesday after rockets hit open land in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
The military did not accuse any group of the rocket attack.
The Syrian government did not comment. However, Britain-based opposition war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says a Palestinian faction conducted the rocket attack from Syrian territory.
WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence did not pick up signs of the Hamas attack on Israel, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday.
“We did not see anything that suggested an attack of this type was going to unfold any more than the Israelis did,” Sullivan told reporters.
As other White House officials have done in recent days, Sullivan also reiterated that the U.S. government has also not seen any direct linkage between Iran and the Hamas attack over the weekend.
WASHINGTON - U.S. President Joe Biden is dispatching his top diplomat to Israel on an urgent mission to show U.S. support after the unprecedented attack by Hamas militants, the State Department said Tuesday.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken will leave Wednesday and is expected to arrive Thursday to deliver a message of solidarity and support, and will “talk about what additional resources we can give them,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Tuesday.
GAZA CITY - Israeli airstrikes since Saturday have resulted in 900 deaths in Gaza, including 260 children and 230 women, with an additional 4,500 individuals wounded, the Ministry of Health in Gaza said Tuesday.
The airstrikes have caused the deaths of 150 members of 22 families, six health workers, and eight journalists, while 15 health workers and 20 journalists have been wounded, the ministry said.
Airstrikes on residential neighborhoods have displaced approximately 140,000 citizens to U.N. shelters and hospitals, the ministry said. The U.N. is reporting that at least 200,000 residents have been displaced.
WASHINGTON - U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday that a small group of U.S. special operations forces is now working with the Israelis to help with planning and intelligence in their counteroperations against Hamas.
“We also have the ability to rapidly deploy other resources into the region,” Austin said.
Austin released the information to reporters traveling with him to a Ukraine contact group meeting in Brussels.
PARIS - The number of French people killed in Israel has risen to eight - with 20 unaccounted for - the French Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. Several of those are believed to be held hostage.
The ministry previously confirmed the deaths of four other French citizens killed in the Hamas militant attacks in Israel. At the time, the ministry said another 13 French citizens were missing and that some of them have “very likely” been kidnapped, including a 12-year-old boy.
French media identified the boy by his first name, Eitan, and reported that he lived with his family in the Nir Oz kibbutz in southern Israel. Le Parisien newspaper quoted an aunt as saying that the boy was captured Saturday by Hamas militants who took him away on a motorbike.
DHAKA, Bangladesh - About 1,000 members of Islami Andolon Bangladesh, an Islamist group seeking to establish Sharia law in Bangladesh, rallied Tuesday in the South Asian nation’s capital, Dhaka, denouncing “Israeli aggression” on Gaza.
They marched through streets in front of the nation’s main Baitul Mokarram Mosque in downtown and chanted anti-Israeli slogans amid police guard.
“All the Muslim countries including Qatar have been united for the Palestinians to protect (them) and get back their land. Everything must be done to achieve this,” said Moulana Syed Mosaddek Al Madani, a leader of the group.
Bangladesh is a Muslim-majority nation of more than 160 million people.
WASHINGTON - The Ford carrier strike group has arrived in the far Eastern Mediterranean, within range to provide a host of air support or long-range strike options for Israel if requested, but also to surge U.S. military presence to prevent the now 4-day-old war with Hamas from spilling over into a more dangerous regional conflict, a U.S. official told the Associated Press.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the arrival ahead of an official announcement.
BEIRUT - A Lebanese security official said six rockets were fired from southern Lebanon into northern Israel on Tuesday evening.
The officials said it was not immediately clear who fired the rockets from the area of the Lebanese southern village of Qlaileh. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. A statement from UNIFIL, the U.N. peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, also confirmed the rocket fire and urged “everyone to exercise restraint at this critical time.”
Officials from the Hezbollah militant group did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Spokespeople with Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad said they had no information on the rockets.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt on Tuesday urged a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas, while warning of repercussions on the region’s security and stability.
El-Sissi, whose government maintains ties with Israel and Hamas, said Egypt has intensified efforts to reach a cease-fire, the state-run MENA news agency reported.
The Egyptian leader affirmed his country’s position on establishing a “just and comprehensive peace” based on the two-state solution.
JERUSALEM - An official at the International Committee of the Red Cross says his organization has been in touch with both Hamas and Israeli officials about accessing prisoners, but so far have had no access to them.
Fabrizio Carboni, the regional director for the Near and Middle East for the ICRC, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that this includes the Israelis taken hostage by Hamas during its unprecedented incursion into Israel from the Gaza Strip.
UNITED NATIONS - The already dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is worsening now that Israel has cut water, electricity and medical supplies to the region, the United Nations said Tuesday.
According to U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Gaza said Palestinians in Gaza now only have electricity for three to four hours per day, which is hindering the functioning of health facilities and treatment of the injured.
The humanitarian coordinator, Lynne Hastings, reported that access for humanitarian staff and supplies in Gaza has also been cut and the intensity of the hostilities is limiting the ability to deliver aid, the U.N. spokesman said. Hospitals in Gaza are overwhelmed with mass casualties and running low on medical supplies and ambulances are running out of fuel, Hastings said, according to Haq.
Since the Hamas attacks began on Saturday, eight health care facilities in Gaza have been damaged and at least 200,000 of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents have been displaced, Haq said.
NEW DELHI - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said he had spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the phone and thanked him for “providing an update on the ongoing situation.”
“People of India stand firmly with Israel in this difficult hour,” Modi wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, and said India strongly condemns terrorism in all forms.
During the Cold War, India didn’t have open relations with Israel and leaned heavily in favor of the Palestinians. The two countries established diplomatic relations in 1992. Ties between the two countries have grown under Modi, who became the first Indian prime minister to visit Israel in 2017.
MOSCOW - Russia’s embassy in Israel said the number of Russian citizens killed in the latest Israel-Palestinian war has risen to four.
Embassy spokesperson Marina Ryazanova told the Russian state news agency Tass that the victims had Israeli and Russian citizenships. She said six others remained missing.
Earlier Tuesday, Russian Ambassador to Israel Anatoly Viktorov said two Russian citizens had been killed and four were missing.
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