latest news on Gaza conflict

Shani Louk, a 23-year-old German-Israeli woman kidnapped by Hamas from the Nova music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7, has been found dead, and her has been body identified, Israel’s foreign ministry reported.

“We are devastated to share that the body of 23 year old German-Israeli Shani (Louk) was found and identified,” the ministry posted on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Louk was identified in video footage as the young woman whose body had been stripped and driven around Gaza in the back of a pick-up truck by Hamas militants on Oct. 7. The terror attack killed more than 1,300 people, with at least 239 taken hostage in Gaza, the IDF said.

Israeli rescue workers said that more than 260 bodies were recovered from the Nova festival site itself.

Louk was “tortured and paraded around Gaza by Hamas terrorists,” the foreign ministry statement said, adding that she “experienced unfathomable horrors.”

“May her memory be a blessing,” it said.

Louk’s mother, Ricarda Louk, confirmed to German news outlet RTL that the family has been informed that the young woman is no longer alive, according to a Google translation.

— Natasha Turak

The Israeli Defense Forces updated the number of hostages held captive by Hamas in Gaza to 239.

“So far we have notified the families of 311 (deceased) IDF soldiers., and 239 people held hostage. I want to explain this number. It’s an incomprehensible number: 239 hostages,” Israeli Military Spokesperson Daniel Hagari told the press.

The IDF previously said they revise the publicly disclosed number of hostages as they alert the families of captives.

“Among the hostages are foreign workers, not a small number of them, for whom the process of identification and reaching families is complicated for us. It is taking us time to build up this picture. Hence the number I have cited: 239.”

Four of the hostages have been returned since the Hamas terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, with the help of Qatar-led negotiations, the Biden administration said at the time of the releases.

— Natasha Turak

Blasts have rung out less than 200ft from the Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City which is sheltering thousands of people, a spokesperson for the Palestine Red Crescent Society told NBC News by telephone this morning. 

Many women and children are among at least 14,000 people packed into the facility and a large number need medical care, said Nebal Farsakh. She added that others simply believed it would be the safest place to shelter from Israeli strikes in northern Gaza.

Farsakh said the hospital received at least two warnings calls ordering officials to evacuate the facility. “They ask people to evacuate themselves with no transportation, with no fuel, no cars. How are they going to make it?” she said, adding that the area surrounding the hospital has come under intense bombardment, she said.

The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to requests for comment from NBC News on whether warning calls were made or whether the area surrounding the hospital was being targeted.

— NBC News

Antisemitic threats to the Jewish community of Cornell University in New York have been reported to the FBI as a potential hate crime, according to a letter from the university’s president to the student community.

“Earlier today, a series of horrendous, antisemitic messages threatening violence to our Jewish community” were posted to a website that was not connected to Cornell, the university’s president, Martha E. Pollack, wrote. She added that the threats named the address of the campus Center for Jewish Living, saying that university police reported the incident to the FBI as a possible hate crime.

Cornell police have been assigned to the living center and will offer protection on site, Pollack wrote.

— Natasha Turak

The death toll in Gaza since Israel began its bombing campaign of the country on Oct. 7 has surpassed 8,000, according the Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank, which drew the number from sources in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

“The toll of the Israeli aggression reached 8,005 martyrs, including 3,324 children, 2,062 women, and 460 elderly people, in addition to 20,242 citizens sustaining various injuries since October 7,” the ministry’s statement said on Telegram, according to a Google translation. The proportion of women, children and the elderly among those killed amounted to 73% of the total, according to the ministry’s numbers.

U.S. President Joe Biden has cast doubt on the figures coming from Gaza’s health ministry as it is run by Hamas. In response, the ministry published a list more than 200 pages long detailed the names of all those it says it had confirmed as dead. No independent body has been able to enter Gaza to verify casualty numbers as its borders are sealed.

— Natasha Turak

UK Foreign Minister James Cleverly said he is working with Israel and Arab allies to reach a pause in the fighting to allow more aid to reach civilians in Gaza.

“We’re working extensively with the Egyptians, with the Israelis and others to try and have a humanitarian pause, a temporary pause so that we can get that humanitarian aid to the people that need it,” Cleverly was quoted as telling Reuters from Abu Dhabi.

“It’s trickling through but we need a significant increase in the volume,” he said.

A handful of aid trucks have been allowed into Gaza via its Rafah border crossing with Egypt, but aid workers say what has come in so far is a “drop in the ocean” compared to the vast need of some 2.2 million people who have been cut off from water, food and electricity following Israel’s siege on the territory.

Israel says the siege is necessary to pressure Hamas to release hostages and stop firing rockets into Israel.

— Natasha Turak

The Israeli Defense Forces said it expanded its ground incursion into Gaza overnight, as the country enters a second phase of its war against Hamas.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the IDF said one of its aircraft struck a Hamas post while forces “eliminated multiple terrorists barricaded within civilian buildings and terrorist tunnels who attempted to attack the forces.”

CNBC has not independently verified the reports.

— Matt Clinch

Global growth will be impacted if the ongoing Israel-Hamas war spills into the broader Middle East region, the World Trade Organization’s director-general has warned.

“If it spreads beyond where it is now, to the rest of the Middle East, there will be an impact,” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told CNBC’s Martin Soong.

That’s because the Middle East is “the source” of a lot of the world’s natural gas and oil, the WTO chief said.

Escalating conflict could further weigh on trade growth which is already “quite grim,” she added.

Read more of the story here.

– Sheila Chiang

Lebanon’s Hezbollah said on Sunday it shot down an Israeli drone over southern Lebanon with a surface-to-air missile, the first time it has announced such an incident, as clashes on the Lebanese border escalate.

The drone was hit near Khiam, about 5 km (3 miles) from the border with Israel, and was seen falling in Israeli territory, Hezbollah added. Two security sources in Lebanon said it was the first time Hezbollah had announced downing an Israeli drone.

The Israeli Defence Ministry did not provide comment. Israel’s military, which claimed more strikes on what it described as Hezbollah targets on Sunday, also did not comment.

Mohanad Hage Ali, of the Carnegie Middle East Center, said Hezbollah has “insinuated they have this capability but it is the first time they declare they have this kind of capability to shoot down a drone.”
— Reuters

Before and after satellite images from Maxar Technologies show destruction of neighborhoods in Northern Gaza from continued Israeli airstrikes.

Before: Atatra neighborhood

After: Atatra neighborhood

Before: Al Karameh neigborhood

After: Al Karameh neigborhood

Before: Izbat Beit Hanoun neighborhood

After: Izbat Beit Hanoun neighborhood

Before: Beit Hanoun neighborhood

After: Beit Hanoun neighborhood

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

Clashes have been taking place across Israel’s tense border with Lebanon since the onset of the Hamas-Israel war, mostly contained to several border towns.

But on Sunday, rockets were fired from Syria as well, falling into open Israeli territory, the military said. It fired back at the site where the rockets were launched.

Israel’s military also 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.

On Sunday evening, Hamas said its forces in Lebanon had fired 16 missiles at the northern Israeli town of Nahariya. The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, also announced it had fired missiles at several sites across the border Sunday afternoon, including one that it said had hit an Israeli infantry unit near the town of Birket Risha and caused “confirmed injuries.”

— Associated Press