‘Rescue Gaza!’: Desperate plea as Palestinians struggle to find safety
Gaza City residents were ordered to evacuate ahead of the IDF's ground offensive and are fleeing with their belongings — many by car, others on foot and some by horse-drawn wagon.
"I don’t know where I can go now," Gaza resident Mazen Saidam said. "Egypt or Jordan or Syria or Lebanon? You can't go to any place now. [There's] no transportation.”
He called on the people of the world to help Gaza as the city is being shelled.
“Now I am waiting to dead. All the people in Gaza, waiting to dead,” Saidam said.
Michigan man arrested after allegedly threatening Palestinian Americans online
A Michigan man was arrested yesterday after police learned of a “credible threat” made on social media proposing violence against Palestinian American residents.
On Wednesday, police became aware of the threat against Palestinian Americans in Dearborn, Michigan, and then received a copy of the social media post from an anonymous tip, according to a statement yesterday from Dearborn Police Chief Issa Shahin.
Dearborn is home to a large Muslim and Arab population.
The suspect behind the alleged threat, who was not identified in Thursday’s statement, was arrested at his residence about 1 p.m. in Farmington Hills on “probable cause of using a computer or electronic device to commit a crime,” Shahin said.
Doctors Without Borders said Israel gave Gaza City hospital only two hours to evacuate
Doctors Without Borders said Israel gave Al-Awda Hospital in Gaza City just two hours to evacuate.
"We unequivocally condemn this action, the continued indiscriminate bloodshed and attacks on health care in Gaza," Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) wrote on its X account. "We are trying to protect our staff and patients."
In an update posted an hour later, the group said Israel extended the evacuation order until 6 a.m. local time.
Videos from Al-Shifa Hospital, also in Gaza City, showed an overwhelmed hospital system with bloodied patients, including children, on the floor after convoys transporting evacuees were hit by airstrikes.
In one video, an ambulance driver can be seen exiting the vehicle before falling to the ground, overwhelmed with emotion.
Israeli artists raise global awareness through 'Kidnapped From Israel' campaign
A campaign called "Kidnapped From Israel" is encouraging people to post signs in public places to raise awareness of those kidnapped by Hamas.
A total of 39 posters in six different languages on the campaign's website feature the names and ages of people abducted by Hamas, ranging from 77-year-old Ophelia Roitman to a 9-month-old Kfir.
“On October 7th, nearly 200 innocent civilians were abducted from Israel onto the Gaza strip,” the posters say. "Take a photo of this poster and share it. Please help bring them home alive."
According to the campaign's website, the initiative was started by Israel-based grafitti artist Dede Bandaid, New York-based mixed-media artist Niftan Mintz and Israel-based designer Tal Huber.
New York-based radio station 1010 WINS said the posters were found all over Manhattan, from Soho to the Upper West Side. A U.K.-based Jewish news outlet reported that the posters were seen all over London.
Dozens of students at Columbia held up posters from the campaign during a protest on the university's campus yesterday. X users also posted images of the campaign on street posts in Israel.
Netanyahu: ‘Our enemies have only started paying the price’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this evening that "this is only the beginning" of the conflict between Israel and Hamas and "our enemies have only started paying the price."
He said Israeli forces "are taking off for another attack in Gaza."
"A disaster has happened to us, we are making every effort, with a great sense of mission and mutual guarantee of a society that needs to be strong in its difficult time," Netanyahu said, addressing the nation in an unexpected statement at around 9:30 p.m. local time.
He said he had spoken today to a few families who have lost loved ones.
"Today we all understand we’re fighting for our home, and we’re fighting like lions," he said.
Netanyahu said Israel will "never forget the atrocities that have been done to us and we’ll never forgive."
"We’re hitting our enemy with unprecedented force," he said. "Our enemies have only started paying the price. This is only the beginning."
Israeli strikes on evacuee convoys in Gaza kill 70, Hamas says
The Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas, said three convoys carrying evacuees toward the southern Gaza Valley were hit by Israeli strikes.
As many as 70 people, most of them women and children, were killed in the strikes and more than 200 were injured.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza corroborated Hamas’ statement, and NBC News crews in the field met people in hospitals who lost family members from airstrikes while fleeing from the north.
Harvard president condemns Hamas but will not punish students for statement
Harvard University President Claudine Gay reiterated the school's condemnation of Hamas' attacks on Israel but said she does not plan to punish students for expressing other views.
"Our university embraces a commitment to free expression," she said in a video address last evening. "That commitment extends to views that many of us find objectionable — even outrageous."
The video was Gay's third statement this week about Harvard's stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict, following a controversial letter co-signed by a coalition of student groups. The statement said its signatories hold Israel "entirely responsible for all unfolding violence."
At least nine of the student groups that initially signed on had withdrawn their endorsement by last evening, according to the Harvard Crimson. On Wednesday and yesterday, a billboard truck drove through streets near Harvard’s campus displaying the names and faces of students allegedly affiliated with the groups that signed the statement, calling them antisemites.
In a statement issued Tuesday, Gay said the student organizations behind the letter did not speak for Harvard.
In her video statement, she said Harvard students face a choice: Fan the flames of division, or be a force for something better.
“We can inflame an already volatile situation on our campus, or we can focus our attention where it belongs: on the unfolding tragedy thousands of miles away," Gay said.
Netanyahu to give unexpected statement soon
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will give a special unexpected statement this evening.
Blinken on Gaza: ‘Our focus is on helping to create safe zones’
Blinken said that when it came to civilians in Gaza, “our focus is on helping to create safe zones” as the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues.
He said that when it came to “ensuring that they can be out of harm’s way and that they can have access to the support that they need, the humanitarian assistance, the food, and medicine, to water,” the U.S. was focused on creating such “safe zones” in Gaza.
Speaking during a news conference in Doha, Qatar, Blinken said the U.S. was engaged with Israel, as well as working with other countries on that process, adding he thought it was the best way to make sure civilians caught in the “crossfire of Hamas” can “be safe and receive the assistance they need.”
Gaza residents desperately seek safety but options are dire
The leaflets gently floated from the sky early today, but the message for Palestinians living in Gaza City couldn’t have been more forceful.
“Gaza City has turned into a battlefield,” they said in Arabic. “You have to leave your homes immediately and head south of Wadi Gaza,” they added, referring to the small river which bisects the Gaza Strip. “For your safety: Don’t return to your homes until further notice from the Israel Defense Forces.”
As fears grew about an imminent Israeli ground invasion, residents scrambled to gather what they could and leave.
“We’re just going, if you have a car just run. No one knows where we’re going, but we’re all evacuating,” Salma Shurrab, a 22-year-old dental student from Gaza City, told NBC News in a series of video diaries, shortly after the order was issued. “Just pray for us and hopefully we’ll come back home.”