IDF expands ground offensive into southern Gaza

JERUSALEM — Even as it tries to recover hostages through indirect talks with Hamas and army operations in the Gaza Strip, Israel has been declaring some of the missing as dead in captivity, a measure designed to grant anxious relatives some closure.

A three-person medical committee has been poring over videos from the Oct. 7 rampage by Hamas-led Palestinian gunmen in southern Israel for signs of lethal injuries among those abducted and cross-referencing with the testimony of hostages freed during a weeklong Gaza truce that ended Friday.

That can suffice to determine that a hostage has died, even if no doctor has formally pronounced it over his or her body, said Hagar Mizrahi, a Health Ministry official who heads the panel created in response to a crisis now in its third month.

“Designation of death is never an easy matter, and certainly not in the situation embroiling us,” she told Israel’s Kan radio. Her committee, she said, addresses “the desire of the families of loved ones abducted to Gaza to know as much as possible.”

The head of the United Nations’ humanitarian office today called for an end to the fighting in Gaza, describing the situation as “apocalyptic” with nowhere safe for civilians.

“Every time we think things cannot get any more apocalyptic in Gaza, they do,” Martin Griffiths, the U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, said in a statement.

“Nowhere is safe in Gaza,” he wrote. “Not hospitals, not shelters, not refugee camps.”

Griffiths said the fighting must stop. He made the statement on the day Israel’s military announced an expansion of its ground assault against Hamas to all of the Gaza Strip, including the south.

Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, also said that he was extremely alarmed about the resumption of hostilities and that “there is nowhere safe to go and very little to survive on.”

A group of Palestinian journalists were recorded singing the Arabic song “We Will Stay Here” as they waited inside Nasser hospital during a night of heavy shelling in Khan Younis. Israel has pushed its military operations against Hamas into southern Gaza.

A branch of the Israeli Defense Ministry dismissed today's statement from World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that accused the Israeli military of ordering the WHO to remove medical supplies from its warehouse in southern Gaza.

Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, or COGAT, said in a post on social media, "The truth is that we didn’t ask you to evacuate the warehouses," adding, "From a #UN official we would expect, at least, to be more accurate."

Now safe in Israel and out of the hands of Hamas, Danielle Aloni’s 6-year-old daughter and her sister Sharon Aloni Cunio’s 3-year-old twins are waking up crying.

“They aren’t able to sleep most nights,” the women’s brother, Moran Aloni, said Monday. Danielle Aloni's daughter, Emelia, won’t let her mother go anywhere without her.

The two women and their children — Emelia and Emma and Yuli Aloni Cunio — along with Sharon’s husband, David — were abducted by Hamas from the Nir Oz kibbutz and held hostage in Gaza before they were freed last month, Moran Aloni said.

There were “terrible conditions,” with more than 10 people in a very small room, and they were moved and "forced to be quiet," Moran Aloni said. “They didn’t know the voices of the people they were with — only in whispers,” he said.

David is still missing. “We’re not sure what’s his condition at the moment,” Moran Aloni said in a video call arranged by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

The family and the children were in a safe room as their house had been set on fire by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack on civilians in Israel, Moran Aloni said. Rather than die slowly suffocating with their children, the women opened the window and were told to come out. They were then kidnapped and taken to Gaza, he said.

Adding to the trauma, even though they are now back in Israel, are the rocket attack sirens that have resumed after the weeklong truce ended. Emelia Aloni heard a siren, too, right before she was abducted.

“That’s the last time she heard the alarm, moments before she was kidnapped. And so you can only imagine the stress and fear she had once she heard it,” Moran Aloni said.

Tahseen Ali Ahmad, one of the three Palestinian American students shot in Burlington, Vermont, last month has been released from the hospital.

The University of Vermont Medical Center confirmed Ahmad was discharged and said Hisham Awartani, the final student in the hospital, is in fair condition.

Ahmad was being treated for a gunshot wound to the chest. Awartani suffered a spinal cord injury and is paralyzed from the chest down, his mother said. The third victim, Kinnan Abdalhamid, was released from the hospital two days after the Nov. 25 shooting.

Service providers Jawwal and Paltel, along with the Palestine Red Crescent Society, have declared Gaza to be in another internet blackout. In statements posted on X, Jawwal and Paltel both attributed the blackout to the "cut of of main fiber routes."

Internet connectivity tracker NetBlocks shows Gaza experiencing a "near total blackout," the first since Nov. 16.

The Red Crescent is warning that this blackout threatens their central operation room and hinders ambulances. "We feel extreme concern about the possibility of our teams continuing to provide emergency services."

As the fighting ramps up again in Gaza after the end of an extended pause, Gaza residents find themselves with no safe place to go after warnings of an imminent attack from the IDF.

Alon Pinkas, former adviser to Israeli prime ministers and former Israeli consul general in New York, joins Andrea Mitchell to discuss if it is possible for Palestinians in Gaza to heed the warnings from the IDF.

“The short answer is no, Andrea. It’s impossible. Given the density and the size of Gaza,” Pinkas said.

“Even if Israel is telling 100% truth, and even if the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces, mean what they say when they say ‘we’ve urged, we’ve warned, we’ve alerted,’ there’s no place for them to go, which inevitably means that the collateral damage, the civilian casualty rate, is going to go up.”

The U.S. State Department says its seen reports that Hamas has committed sexual violence against hostages and has "no reason at all to doubt" them, according to spokesperson Matthew Miller.

Miller also said "it seems one of the reasons they don’t want to turn women over that they’ve been holding hostage, and the reason that the pause fell apart, is that they don’t want those women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in captivity.”

The State Department, however, hasn't made an independent assessment, Miller added. NBC News did not independently verify reports that Israeli hostages were raped or sexually assaulted.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said today that the Israeli military told his organization to remove medical supplies from their warehouses in southern Gaza.

"Today, @WHO received notification from the Israel Defense Forces that we should remove our supplies from our two medical warehouses in southern Gaza within 24 hours, as ground operations will put them beyond use," he wrote on X.

"We appeal to #Israel to withdraw the order, and take every possible measure to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and humanitarian facilitie," he said.

The office of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres today expressed increasing concern for civilian lives in Gaza, stating "there is nowhere safe to go and very little to survive on" as Israeli ground operations push into southern Gaza.

"The Secretary-General is extremely alarmed by the resumption of hostilities between Israel and Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups in Gaza, on 1 December, including rocket fire towards Israel from Gaza and the renewal of ground operations and intensified airstrikes by the Israel Defence Forces, increasingly in southern Gaza," the office said in a statement.  

Guterres also remains gravely concerned about the escalation of violence in the occupied West Bank, the statement said, including intensified Israeli security operations, high numbers of fatalities and arrests, spiking settler violence and attacks on Israelis by Palestinians.  

Guterres continues to call for a a sustained humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza and the unconditional and immediate release of all remaining hostages. 

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East said Israel's military expansion into southern Gaza "is repeating horrors from past weeks."

Israel's evacuation order to move people from Khan Younis into the Rafah border crossing "created panic, fear and anxiety," forcing an additional 60,000 people to move to "already overcrowded UNRWA shelters." UNRWA added that claims the U.N. has plans to open new refugee camps in Rafah are not true.

“The latest developments are further strangling the humanitarian operation, with limited supplies going in and complex logistical and coordination arrangements that slow down and at times obstruct the flow. The Israeli Authorities continue to restrict the flow of humanitarian supplies, including fuel, forcing the UN to only use the ill-equipped crossing point with Egypt," the organization said.

UNRWA is calling on Israel to reopen Kerem Shalom, the crossing on the Gaza, Israel and Egypt border, and other crossings in order to facilitate the movement of humanitarian aid.

Residents in Gaza have nowhere safe to go as Israel resumes its attacks, which includes bombing Southern Gaza, previously declared a safe zone for Palestinians. Richard Engel joins Andrea Mitchell to discuss how Israel’s military campaign is affecting its global popularity.

“Many will argue, certainly many Palestinians and increasingly you’re hearing it from U.S. officials, that this approach, by bombing the Gaza Strip, first telling people to go down to the South and then bombing the South, is not making Hamas less popular, is not weakening the group, but is increasing Hamas’ popularity,” Engel tells Andrea.

He says the campaign “is not achieving the strategic victory that Israel wants to do, but is potentially causing massive problems for Israel’s reputation around the world."

The World Health Organization's branch in the Occupied Palestinian Territories says conditions are worsening at the Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza.

Over the weekend, a WHO team visited the medical complex, where they say 1,000 patients and hundreds of others are seeking shelter. The organization says the hospital "is operating at times beyond its capacity."

The organization shared a video from the complex, showing a patient receiving treatment on the floor and a shortage in supplies.

"The emergency ward is overflowing with patients. Patients are being treated on the floor. Tragically, many have taken their last breath on the floor. Painful screams fill the corridors," the organization said in a post on their X account.

The staff at the complex are exhausted and medical supplies are running "dangerously low," according to WHO, which reiterated calls for a cease-fire.

"WHO is deeply concerned about the intensified hostilities, which increase the risk for hospitals in southern Gaza. Ceasefire NOW."

The Netherlands faces a legal challenge on Monday over accusations that its role in the export of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel makes it complicit in alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Three human rights organizations, including the Dutch arm of Oxfam, have brought the case at the district court in The Hague, stating the export of the fighter plane parts enables Israel to bomb the Gaza strip.

“Israel disregards the fundamental principles of the laws of war, such as distinguishing between civilian and military targets and the principle of proportionality,” in the bombing of the Gaza strip, the organizations said in their court filings.

Israel denies having carried out war crimes, saying its forces abide by international law while fighting Palestinian militants who operate in densely populated civilian areas.

A total of 218 Americans and U.S. dual nationals crossed from Gaza to Egypt today, according to the North Sinai branch of the Egyptian Red Crescent.

In all, 600 foreign or dual nationals left Gaza for Egypt through the Rafah border crossing today, said Khaled Ziad, the head of the North Sinai branch of the Egyptian Red Crescent. Twenty-seven injured people also crossed into Egypt today.

Fifty aid trucks and two fuel trucks made their way into Gaza from the border crossing today as well, according to Ziad.

More than 50 homes have been destroyed in an Israeli attack, the Palestinian Authority's Foreign Affairs Ministry says.

In a X post, the ministry shared a 26-second clip that showed a neighborhood in ruins. Hundreds of people were killed, “with some still trapped under the rubble,” it said.  

NBC News has not independently verified these claims.

Cellphone video showed Israeli soldiers in a street fight in Qalqilya, in the occupied West Bank, during what Israel called “counterterrorist activity” today.

The White House called a protest outside the Israeli falafel shop Goldie in Philadelphia "completely unjustifiable."

“It is Antisemitic and completely unjustifiable to target restaurants that serve Israeli food over disagreements with Israeli policy, as Governor Shapiro has underlined," spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement. "This behavior reveals the kind of cruel and senseless double standard that is a calling card of Antisemitism."

In a post on his X account, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro called the protest "a blatant act of antisemitism."

Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, arrived in Gaza today, she said in a post on X. She described the suffering in the war torn region as "intolerable.”

"I repeat our urgent call for civilians to be protected in line with the laws of war and for aid to enter unimpeded," she said, also calling for the release of the hostages.

As Israel expands its campaign in Gaza, piercing through to the southern part of the strip, UNRWA chief Thomas White said, "Even in Rafah where people are being forced to flee, the sound of airstrikes punctuates the day."

"People are pleading for advice on where to find safety," he wrote on X today.

"We have nothing to tell them."

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro strongly criticized a group of protesters who massed and chanted in front of an Israeli-style falafel shop in Philadelphia yesterday.

"Tonight in Philly, we saw a blatant act of antisemitism — not a peaceful protest," Shapiro said in a post Sunday on X.

Shapiro was responding directly to video of a group of pro-Palestinian protesters outside Goldie in Center City, which is part of a restaurant group co-owned by an Israel-born chef. In the video, the protesters shout: "Goldie, Goldie, you can't hide, we charge you with genocide."

In the post on X, Shapiro said the restaurant was "targeted and mobbed because its owner is Jewish and Israeli. This hate and bigotry is reminiscent of a dark time in history."

The head of Israel’s domestic security agency, Shin Bet, says his organization is prepared to destroy Hamas “in every place,” including in other Middle Eastern countries.

The remarks by Ronen Bar, aired late yesterday by Israel’s public broadcaster Kan, echoed similar comments by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense minister last month.

“In every place, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Qatar, everywhere,” Bar said in an audio recording. “It’ll take a few years but we will be there to do it.”

Bar compared the mission to Israel’s operation to assassinate militants behind the 1972 killings of members of its Olympic team in Munich.

Kan did not say when Bar made the remarks.

Two people were killed and a house destroyed by a blast early this morning in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, after the Israeli military had ordered residents to flee from half a dozen areas in and around the city.

A menorah lighting ceremony in the United States and an installation in Canada have been canceled because of heightened sensitivities caused by the war between Israel and Gaza.

The 2nd Sundays Art and Music Festival festival in Williamsburg, Virginia, attracted strong criticism from local Jewish community leaders for canceling a planned lighting on Dec. 10.

The festival’s founder, Shirley Vermillion, told the Virginia Gazette that the menorah lighting “seemed very inappropriate” given the ongoing war, adding that other religious groups had previously had similar requests denied.

The Jewish Community of the Virginia Peninsula said in a statement that it was told the organizers didn’t want to be seen to be taking sides. “To be clear, the menorah lighting, which was to be led by a local community rabbi, had nothing to do with Israel or the conflict,” the group said.

Meanwhile, the menorah will not be displayed at City Hall in the east Canadian town of Moncton this Hannukah for the first time in 20 years, religious leaders have said.

U.S. Navy destroyer USS Carney shot down drones being used to attack ships in the Red Sea, drawing the United States deeper into the crisis in the region.

 

All phone and internet service in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip are down as Israel bombs southern Gaza, according to Gaza’s largest telecom service.

The company, Paltel, said that on Facebook that service was out “due to the disconnection of main elements of our network in light of the ongoing aggression” and that workers were trying to repair the damage and restore service.

Netblocks, a global company that tracks internet connectivity, said on X that its network data showed a disruption to some parts of Gaza but that it was shy of the type of full blackout the area has experienced since the war began.

The Salah Al Din road that has been used as a humanitarian corridor for those evacuating south now "constitutes a battlefield," IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in a post on X, warning people not to use it.

This is because of "fighting and military advance of the IDF in the Khan Younis area," he said, and the IDF will now allow movement "through the bypass axis located west of Khan Yunis."

Khan Younis is a city in southern Gaza, where the Israeli military is now pushing forward with an expanded ground offensive.

This image, taken from southern Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip, shows smoke billowing after an Israeli strike in the Palestinian enclave today.

Almost 1.9 million people have been displaced across the Gaza Strip, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees said today in a post on X.

The agency also said that 117 incidents have occurred across 85 of its premises, adding that 30 of its facilities were hit directly, while the rest suffered collateral damage.

Families of those still held hostage in Gaza have voiced their concern about Israel's renewed military campaign and what they say is a lack of information about efforts to free their loved ones.

"We demand to know war priorities at this stage — and insist on the return of all hostages to be top priority, " Yael Adar said at a news conference in Tel Aviv this morning. She is the mother of Tamir Adar who was kidnapped from his home in Nir Oz in the Hamas attack.

The families have been hearing testimonies from released captives about their ordeal.

"We are terrified of what we hear from them," said Haim Itzak Or, brother of Avinatan Or, who was taken hostage with his friend Noa Argmani from the Nova music festival.

Those speaking at the event said they had been trying to meet with the Israeli war Cabinet since the collapse of the truce, but that they had been rebuffed. Israeli media has since reported that they will now meet tonight at the families’ request.

DONPILA, Thailand — Cheering relatives crowded into the streets of this rural Thai village, flashing peace signs as they awaited one young local’s return to a corner of the world that has been unexpectedly drawn into the war in the Middle East.

Anucha Angkaew, a 28-year-old migrant worker, was finally home.

As Anucha sat with his 7-year-old daughter in his parents’ house the next day, a string was tied around his wrist in a Thai ritual meant to preserve good luck.

Anucha, who was held for more than seven weeks, told NBC News in an interview Friday that he had no hope he would be freed. He said little about his time in captivity but described it as “a real torture.”Read the full story here.

A senior U.S. military official tells NBC News he was taken aback by the ferocity of Israel’s renewed campaign, which has included attacks on apartment buildings.

Since the end of the cease-fire Friday, U.S. officials have called on Israel to do more to protect civilians in Gaza.

“As Israel defends itself, it matters how. ... international humanitarian law must be respected. Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating,” Vice President Kamala Harris said Saturday. “It is truly heartbreaking.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday said Israel risks a “strategic defeat” if it doesn’t take actions to protect civilians.

“The center of gravity is the civilian population, and if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat,” he said in a speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California.

The mother of Israeli Col. Asaf Hamami, commander of Gaza Division’s Southern Brigade, grieves during his funeral at the Kiryat Shaul cemetery in Tel Aviv today.

TEL AVIV — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial has resumed after a hiatus prompted by the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and the war it set off.

Netanyahu is on trial for alleged fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate cases involving powerful media moguls and wealthy associates. He denies any wrongdoing.

In today’s hearing, police investigators will be questioned over allegations that he promoted regulatory benefits for a telecom company in exchange for favorable coverage from a news outlet it owned.

Netanyahu’s lengthy trial, which began in 2020, was paused after the Hamas attack, when the country’s courts were put under emergency status and all but shut down. The last hearing took place at the end of September.

As the fighting resumed in Gaza, the already minimal aid reaching parts of the enclave has slowed even further. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said yesterday "aid distribution largely stopped due to the intensity" in Khan Younis.

"The Middle Area was largely disconnected from the south, following Israeli forces’ prevention of movement, including of humanitarian supplies," it said in a report, adding some aid distribution of flour and water took place in Rafah.

The access to north from the south has been halted since Friday, the agency said.

As International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan wrapped up his trip to the region yesterday, Hamas today denounced him for not visiting Gaza.

Khan only went to Israel and West Bank on the trip.

That "contradicts the minimum requirements of justice and judicial procedures," Hamas said in a statement on Telegram.

The ICC has been investigating war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank since 2021.

ISTANBUL — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said today that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would eventually be tried as a war criminal over Israel’s ongoing offensive in the Gaza Strip, while slamming Western countries supporting Israel.

Turkey, which supports a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict, has sharply criticized Israel over its campaign in Gaza, launched in response to militant group Hamas’ rampage Oct. 7. 

In a speech to an Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) committee meeting in Istanbul, Erdogan said the Western nations supporting Israel were giving it “unconditional support to kill babies” and were complicit in its crimes.

As both Israeli ground and aerial forces continue to operate in Gaza, the IDF said today they have struck almost 200 Hamas targets.

Two tunnel shafts, explosives and weapons were found in a school in Beit Hanoun, it said in a statement, adding IDF aircrafts also struck vehicles loaded with weaponry, thwarting what it called an imminent attack.

"Following this, a weapons storage facility from which the terrorists exited was struck as well," it said today, adding IDF naval forces have also reinforced its ground operations.

NBC News has not independently verified the claims.

A young boy covers his face in grief as people wait to collect the bodies of Palestinians killed in an airstrike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, today.

Three soldiers were injured last night in northern Israel after multiple mortal shells were fired from Lebanon, Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Avichay Adraee said today on X.

"Several mortar shells were also monitored a short while ago," he said, adding they were fired toward the town of Yiftah.

"IDF forces responded by targeting the sources of fire," he said.

CHICAGO — The father of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy fatally stabbed in what authorities allege was a hate crime has filed a wrongful death lawsuit.

Oday Al-Fayoume filed the lawsuit last month against the suburban Chicago landlord charged in the attack that left his child dead and the boy’s mother seriously wounded. The attack — which has renewed fears of anti-Islamic discrimination in the Chicago area’s large Palestinian community — has drawn condemnation from the White House.

Authorities allege Joseph Czuba, 71, targeted Wadea Al-Fayoume and his mother, Hanaan Shahin, on Oct. 14 because of their Muslim faith and as a response to the war between Israel and Hamas. Czuba pleaded not guilty in October to hate crime and murder charges.

The wrongful death lawsuit filed Nov. 21 in Will County names Czuba, his wife, Mary Czuba, both of Plainfield, and their property management company, Discerning Property Management.

Read the full story here.

The Palestine Red Crescent said today two paramedics and one person were injured after two ambulances were fired upon by Israeli forces in northern Gaza.

The ambulances were transporting an injured person, it said.

NBC News has not verified the claims.

The Israel Defense Forces has dropped leaflets in southern Gaza, warning those in certain neighborhoods of a heavy attack.

"The Israel Defense Forces will soon launch a heavy attack in your area with the aim of destroying Hamas," the IDF said, addressing the residents of Khan Younis, Ma'an, Alkatiba, Almahata and Bani Sohaila, asking them to evacuate further south to shelters in Al-Fakhari, Al-Shabura, Al Zohor and Tal Sultan.

"Stay in the currently known shelters until the fighting in the area ends," it said, adding, "These are the last hours to evacuate, don't wait until it becomes impossible."

Those in Gaza say that there is no reliably safe place to go amid the attacks.

Palestinians stand at the edge of a crater after a blast in Rafah, southern Gaza, yesterday.

TEL AVIV —  Israel announced its ground offensive into southern Gaza has begun, and its top general said the assault will be just as fierce as the one in the north. Palestinian families who came south in search of safety are now fleeing once again. 

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