Israel war live updates: Hamas’ most horrific act confirmed

Hamas gunmen killed 1200 people in Israel and took about 150 hostages in their surprise onslaught launched from Gaza on Saturday. Israel has retaliated by raining air and artillery strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza for six days, claiming more than 1400 lives.

Israel has prepared for a possible ground invasion of the Palestinian territory after what has been labelled Israel’s 9/11.

Continue reading for all the latest news and updates.

7am — Gazans must ‘remain on their land’: Egypt’s Sisi

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Thursday that Gazans must “stay steadfast and remain on their land”, amid calls for Cairo to allow safe passage for civilians stuck in Gaza.

The Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza is the only passage in and out of the coastal enclave not controlled by Israel.

Egypt is committed to ensuring the delivery “of aid, both medical and humanitarian at this difficult time”, Mr Sisi said, affirming Cairo’s “firm position” of ensuring Palestinians’ “legitimate rights”.

But he stressed, in a speech at a military ceremony, that Gazans must “stay steadfast and remain on their land”.

Egypt, historically a key intermediary between Hamas and Israel, has called for donors to send humanitarian aid bound for Gaza to El Arish airport but has pushed against calls to allow fleeing Palestinians into its land.

In recent days, state-linked media has quoted high-level security sources warning against a mass exodus of Palestinians, who were being “forced to choose between death under Israeli bombing or displacement from their land”.

Egypt has pushed for a diplomatic solution and called for restraint from both sides, while Mr Sisi has asserted his country’s national security was his “primary responsibility”.

On Thursday, he said that Egypt was already hosting “nine million guests, as I call them, from many countries who came to Egypt for security and safety”.

But the case of Gazans “is different”, he said, because their displacement would mean “the elimination of the [Palestinian] cause”.

Egypt was the first Arab state to normalise relations with Israel in 1979, after a six-year war that ended in 1973 with Egypt regaining the Sinai Peninsula from Israeli control.

— AFP

6.40am — ‘Beyond anything we can comprehend’

Visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has expressed his horror after being shown distressing photos of babies killed by Hamas.

Mr Blinken described to reporters what he saw in the photographs shown to him by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“A baby — an infant — riddled with bullets,” he said.

“Soldiers beheaded, young people burnt alive in their cars. For any human being to see this, it’s really beyond almost anything that we can comprehend and digest.

“Images are worth a thousand words. These images, maybe worth a million. The world is seeing new evidence of depravity and the inhumanity of Hamas — depravity and inhumanity directed at babies, at small children, at young adults, at elderly people, at people with disabilities.

“At a basic human level, how anyone cannot be revolted and cannot reject what they’ve seen — and what the world has seen — is beyond me.”

US President Joe Biden too had expressed outrage over the images coming out of Israel.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time,” Mr Biden said at the White House late on Wednesday. “I never really thought that I would see — have confirmed — pictures of terrorists beheading babies.”

A White House spokesperson later clarified that US officials had not confirmed such reports independently. The President had based his comments on the claims from Mr Netanyahu’s spokesman, the spokesperson said.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters that Washington takes “very, very seriously the need to be as factual and certainly truthful as we can possibly be”.

Without confirming the authenticity of the images, he said “it’s obvious what Hamas has proven willing to do to innocent Israeli citizens”. “We all need to be prepared for the fact that there’s going to be additional gruesome images coming out … this is not over,” Mr Kirby said.

Earlier on Thursday, Hamas rejected claims its fighters had killed infants during the cross-border attack it launched on Saturday.

“The world will discover the fake and false Israeli narrative, which disseminates misinformation about alleged atrocities committed by the Palestinian resistance,” Hamas political bureau member Ezzat al-Rishaq said in a statement issued in English.

“Such allegations have never been proven; no evidence has been submitted to support such false claims.”

— AFP

6am — Most horrific act of Israel war confirmed

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shared distressing photos of babies killed during the slaughter by Hamas terrorists — including a pair completely charred after seemingly being burned while in an embrace.

“Here are some of the photos Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken,” his office said alongside the distressing images.

The gruesome photos showed tiny, mangled bodies and a blurred-out infant in a bloody onesie.

“Warning: These are horrifying photos of babies murdered and burned by the Hamas monsters,” the leader’s office tweeted.

“Hamas is inhuman,” it said. “Hamas is ISIS.”

The disturbing photos came just one day after Netanyahu tweeted out a picture of a child’s bloody bed.

Hamas terrorists slaughtered at least 40 babies and young children — decapitating some of them — at a kibbutz near the Gaza border, Israeli military officials confirmed.

“It’s so macabre that no one wanted to reveal it until they had 100 per cent confirmation,” French journalist Margot Haddat wrote in a translated tweet.

“It is a horror, a massacre. For those asking for the source. They are multiple: Israeli army, internal intelligence service and atrocious images which reached me and which I was able to crosscheck,” she said.

“But the best source remains this: courageous journalists from the foreign press who were able to see / agreed to see with their own eyes the bodies in Kfar Aza.”

— NY Post

5.40am — US tells Israel: ‘Always by your side’

Secretary of State Antony Blinken vowed unwavering US support for Israel in its war on Hamas during a visit Thursday but said the Palestinians also have “legitimate aspirations” not represented by the Islamists.

Hamas gunmen killed 1200 people in Israel and took about 150 hostages in their surprise onslaught launched from Gaza on Saturday. Israel has retaliated by raining air and artillery strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza for six days, claiming more than 1400 lives.

Israel has prepared for a possible ground invasion of the Palestinian territory after what has been labelled Israel’s 9/11.

“You may be strong enough on your own to defend yourself,” Mr Blinken said at a joint press conference in Tel Aviv with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“But as long as America exists, you will never, ever have to. We will always be there by your side.”

Israeli fighter jets and drones flew above Gaza in the relentless bombardment that has levelled entire blocks and destroyed thousands of buildings, while Hamas had now fired more than 5000 rockets at Israel from Gaza, the army said.

— AFP