live blog
According to the US government, Hamas is said to have intercepted large quantities of aid for Gaza – the goods have now been released again. A hostage has been declared dead, according to the Israeli government. All developments in the live blog.
The US government accuses the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas of intercepting aid supplies for the Gaza Strip on a large scale for the first time. US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in Washington that it was a shipment that had been brought into the coastal area from Jordan through the newly opened Erez border crossing. “It was then picked up by a humanitarian organization for distribution in the Gaza Strip, and that aid was intercepted and redirected by Hamas on the ground in the Gaza Strip,” Miller said.
According to his understanding, the goods have now been released and handed back to the humanitarian organization. “But that doesn’t change the fact that this is an unacceptable act.” Miller said this was the first major case of aid diversion by Hamas. He warned the group that such actions would generally jeopardize aid deliveries to the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza and called for this not to be repeated.
The people of the Gaza Strip are in urgent need of supplies of food and medicine. Following international pressure, especially from the USA, Israel opened the Erez border crossing in northern Gaza on Wednesday. The north of the coastal area is particularly affected by food shortages.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin currently sees no signs of an attack by Hamas on US troops in Gaza. “I don’t talk about intelligence at the podium. But I don’t see any indication at this point that there is an active intent to do so,” Austin said during a news conference.
An Iraqi militia group allied with Iran has carried out several attacks on Israel with cruise missiles, according to an insider. The attacks targeted the Israeli city of Tel Aviv for the first time. Israel has not yet issued a statement on the incident. The Islamic Resistance Movement in Iraq has claimed dozens of rocket and drone attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, as well as targets in Israel, in the past six months since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out.
The UN cultural organization UNESCO has awarded this year’s Press Freedom Prize to all Palestinian journalists who report on the war between Israel and the radical Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The prize recognizes “the courage of journalists who face difficult and dangerous circumstances,” said UNESCO Secretary-General Audrey Azoulay. The chairman of the international jury made up of media professionals, Mauricio Weibel, said: “In these times of darkness and hopelessness, we would like to send a strong message of solidarity and recognition to the Palestinian journalists who are reporting on this crisis in such dramatic circumstances.”
In front of the Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv in the evening, dozens of demonstrators demanded an agreement on the release of the hostages still in the Gaza Strip. Relatives of those abducted held up pictures of the hostages and counted out loud to 209 – that’s how many days the hostages have already been in the power of the radical Islamist Hamas and other extremists.
Hamas announced on Thursday that it would send a delegation to Cairo to hold talks on a ceasefire. It was a new sign of progress in the effort by international mediators to broker an agreement to end the fighting and release the hostages. According to Israeli information, 100 of the former 250 hostages are still held by Hamas, as well as the remains of more than 30 others.
An Israeli held hostage in the Gaza Strip since October 7 has been declared dead, according to the Israeli government. The Israeli government announced on the online service X, formerly Twitter, that it had been confirmed that Dror Or had been murdered. Kibbutz Be’eri, where the man lived, said the 49-year-old had been killed. Be’eri is one of the kibbutz hit hardest by the unprecedented major attack on Israel by the radical Islamist Palestinian organization Hamas on October 7th.
The Turkish government has confirmed that it has suspended all exports and imports to and from Israel. Hamas says it is sending a delegation to Egypt for further negotiations. You can read the developments in the live blog.