Israel Palestine news LIVE: IDF continues to strike Gaza with air strikes as troops

Turkey’s president has accused Israel of not conducting itself ‘like a state’ as the country’s military pounded the Gaza Strip on Wednesday in response to the Hamas onslaught.

‘Israel should not forget that if it acts more like an organisation rather than a state, it’ll finish by being treated as such,’ Recep Tayyip Erdogan said today, attacking what he called ‘shameful methods’ of the Israeli army in the densely-populated enclave.

‘Bombing civilian sites, killing civilians, blocking humanitarian aid and trying to present these as achievements are the acts of an organisation and not a state,’ he said.

Erdogan usually uses the word ‘organisation’ when he refers to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is listed as a terror group by Turkey and its Western allies.

‘We think that a war should have an ethic and that both parties should respect it. Unfortunately, this principle is gravely violated in Israel and in Gaza,’ he said, denouncing the ‘murders of civilians on Israeli territory’ and ‘the blind massacre of innocents in a Gaza subjected to constant bombardment’.

At least 169 Israeli soldiers have been killed in fighting with Hamas after its militants launched a shock cross-border attack, the army has said.

‘As of this morning, we’ve informed the families of 169 fallen IDF soldiers,’ military spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters, adding that the families of 60 people abducted and taken to Gaza have also been contacted.

He said no new infiltrations by Gaza militants had been reported over the past two days, but added that ‘hundreds of bodies’ of slain gunmen had still not been cleared from the border.

Israel is reeling under the brutal assault launched by Hamas militants on Saturday in which at least 1,200 people have now been confirmed dead in the worst attack in the country’s 75-year history.

In Gaza, 1,055 people have been killed as Israel has pounded the densely populated territory with retaliatory air strikes and shelling.

Israeli aircraft struck the Islamic University of Gaza today, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said.

According to Israel, the university was being used as a Hamas training camp for military intelligence operatives, as well as for the development and production of weapons.

The IDF also says Hamas used university conferences to raise funds for terrorism, and that the university maintained close ties with the senior leadership of Hamas.

Reporting for the Daily Mail from Israel, Sam Greenhill wrote today that the full horror of ‘Israel’s 9/11’ was starting to emerge overnight. Click here to read his full report.

Seventeen British nationals are dead or missing in Israel after the attacks by Hamas, the BBC has reported, citing an official source.

Earlier, defence secretary Grant Shapps said he was unable to provide ‘exact numbers’ on the number of Brits caught up in the violence.

The previous estimate on UK nationals killed or missing was ‘more than 10’.

So far, only a few of the British victims have been identified.

Another British victim who has been identified is Bernard Cowan, a Scottish grandfather from Glasgow who later settled in Israel with his family.

Jake Marlowe, who was working as a security guard at a music festival, was also killed, while the family of Daniel Darlington say he is also among the victims, according to the BBC.

Israel’s death toll passed 1,200 overnight, according to the country’s public broadcaster Kan – an increase of 200 on the previous toll reported.

The toll makes it the deadliest attack in the country’s 75-year history.

The vast majority of the deaths were civilians, killed by Hamas terrorists who stormed across the Israel-Gaza border on Saturday before massacring people living in southern Israeli towns.

IDF soldiers are still discovering bodies of the dead, and the toll could still rise.

Meanwhile, Gaza officials reported more than 900 people killed as Israel pounded the territory with air strikes.

As many as 1,600 Hamas fighters have also been killed by Israeli forces who fought back against the insurgency and eventually regained control of the border.

As Israel continues to prepare to mount an assault on Gaza in the sourth, in the north, Israeli shelling today hit southern Lebanese towns in response to anti-tank rockets fired from Lebanon.

The attacks mean cross-border violence in the region extended into a fourth day.

The Israeli military said it was attacking Lebanon after one of its northern positions was targeted with anti-tank fire earlier this morning.

The attack took place near the Israeli town of Arab al-Aramshe, opposite the Lebanese village of Dhayra, the statement said. It did not immediately provide details on casualties or who might have been responsible.

A Lebanese security source said the powerful armed group Hezbollah fired two precision missiles into Israel, which the group considers its sworn enemy.

Hezbollah claimed the missile fire on Israel was retaliation for slain members.

Pope Francis has called for the immediate release of hostages taken in fighting between Hamas and Israel.

‘I ask that the hostages be released immediately,’ he said at the Vatican.

He added that ‘it is the right of those who are attacked to defend themselves, but I am very worried about the total siege in which the Palestinians live in Gaza, where there have also been many innocent victims.

‘Terrorism and extremism do not help reach a solution to the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, but fuel hatred, violence, revenge and only make both sides suffer,’ he said.

‘The Middle East does not need war but peace, a peace built on justice, dialogue and the courage of fraternity.’

Britain’s defence secretary has said he cannot provide exact numbers on how many British citizens have been caught up in the violence in Israel and Gaza.

‘No I don’t have precise numbers on that. We think it might be in the region of ten or so, but we don’t have exact numbers,’ Grant Shapps told Times Radio this morning.

He also said separately there was ‘no equivalence’ between the actions of Hamas and the Israeli government in a separate interview with Sky News.

‘When you have terrorists who go out and slaughter festival-goers and murder babies that is entirely different from going after Hamas terrorists,’ he said.

‘The point I’m trying to make is the objective of the Hamas terrorists was to go after innocent civilians, and that is what they have done in their hundreds, even thousands,’ he added.

‘That’s not the objective of Israel, which is specifically trying to go after the terrorists. We know in war there can be damage beyond the terrorists, but that is not their objective, which is why I say there is no equivalence between the two.’

Also speaking this morning, Labour leader sir Keir Starmer said Israel does have the right to besiege Gaza in response to Hamas’s attacks.

‘I think that Israel does have that right. It is an ongoing situation,’ he told LBC.

‘Obviously everything should be done within international law, but I don’t want to step away from the core principles that Israel has a right to defend herself and Hamas bears responsibility for the terrorist acts.’

Sir Keir’s wife Victoria is Jewish, and he said they have family in Israel who are being affected by the events. Shapps’s family is also Jewish.

A former Hamas chief has called for protests to be held across the Muslim world on Friday in support of the Palestinians, and for the peoples of neighbouring countries to join the fight against Israel.

Khaled Meshaal, who is based in Qatar and currently heads Hamas’s diaspora office, said the governments and peoples of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt have a bigger duty to support the Palestinians.

‘[We must] head to the squares and streets of the Arab and Islamic world on Friday,’ Meshaal said in a recorded message sent to Reuters news agency.

‘Tribes of Jordan, sons of Jordan, brothers and sisters of Jordan… This is a moment of truth and the borders are close to you, you all know your responsibility.’

Jordan and Lebanon are home to the largest number of Palestinian refugees.

Dozens of Israeli fighter jets struck over 200 Hamas targets in the Al-Furqan neighbourhood in Gaza – a key hub for the terrorists, Israel’s military said.

The early morning strikes mark the third set in the area in the last 24 hours, in which 450 targets were struck.

Israel’s controversial police minister has warned that tensions could grow between the country’s Arab minority and majority Jews in connection with the Gaza war.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right nationalist who has faced charges of hate speech against Arabs, also said he was stepping up the issuing of firearms to licensed citizens.

‘I instructed the chief of police to prepare for a “Guardian of the Walls 2” scenario, which I think is looming,’ the National Security Minister told reporters.

Operation Guardian of the Walls was Israel’s name for a 2021 Gaza war which set off sometimes violent pro-Palestinian protests among Arab citizens.

Gaza will become a ‘tent city’, an Israeli defense official has vowed, promising to raze every building to the ground in revenge for Hamas‘ terror attacks at the weekend.

In the early hours of Wednesday, Israeli forces conducted 250 airstrikes in just one hour, said Fox News‘s Trey Yingst.

He said the strikes were across northern and eastern parts of the Gaza strip, to pave the way for a ground invasion. Thousands of infantry troops are positioned on the border with Gaza, Yingst said.

Three Hamas terrorists were shot on Tuesday by Israeli forces, while trying to break into Israel, he added.

The IDF says the neighbourhood hit by the airstrikes, dubbed by the army al-Furqan after a mosque in the area, is a ‘nest of terror’ used by Hamas to launch attacks against Israel.

Gaza’s power authority says its sole power plant will run out of fuel within hours, leaving the territory without electricity after Israel cut off supplies.

Israel said it would cut off all electricity to the territory after Hamas’ bloody rampage over the weekend.

All of Gaza’s crossings are closed, making it impossible to bring in fuel for the power plant or the generators on which residents and hospitals have long relied.

The power authority said Wednesday that the plant would shut down in the afternoon.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday urged the West to rally around the people of Israel as they did around Ukraine after Russia’s invasion, and show them they are not ‘alone’.

‘My recommendation to the leaders to go to Israel and I think to support people, just people I’m not speaking about any institutions, just to support people who have been under terrorist attacks,’ he said on a visit to NATO headquarters.

Israel’s swift and brutal retaliation against Hamas militants in Gaza has given rise to hundreds of civilian casualties with many in the international community questioning whether the Israeli Defence Forces are committing war crimes.

‘What we will do to our enemies in the coming days will reverberate with them for generations,’ he said, and in remarks to U.S. President Joe Biden condemned Hamas for what he said was ‘savagery not seen since the Holocaust.’

Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a total siege of Gaza, cutting off water, food and electricity to force its residents into starvation as they are pounded by constant airstrikes.

Speaking to soldiers near the Gaza fence yesterday, Gallant doubled down and said: ‘Hamas wanted a change and it will get one. What was in Gaza will no longer be,’ with even a former Israeli ambassador to Britain declaring that the IDF’s goal is ‘to come out of this with a different reality in Gaza.’

But now, the U.N.’s top diplomat Josep Borrell has cautioned Israel against meting out disproportionate and indiscriminate punishment against Palestinian civilians.

‘Israel has the right to defend (itself) but it has to be done accordingly with international law, humanitarian law, and some decisions are contrary to international law.

‘Some of the actions – (such) as cutting water, cutting electricity, cutting food to a mass of civilian people is against international law,’ Borrell said on Tuesday.

Israeli troops have massed ‘infantry, armoured soldiers, artillery corps’ as well as 300,000 near the border with Gaza, all of whom ‘are ready to execute the mission we have been given’, the military said.

Hundreds of thousands of troops are ‘close to the Gaza Strip getting ready to execute the mission that we have been given by the Israeli government – and that is to make sure that Hamas at the end of this war won’t have any military capabilities by which they can threaten or kill Israeli civilians’, the military added.