Israel-Hamas war LIVE: Israel says it has broken through Hamas’s front lines of defence – as the terror group claims IDF strike in congested district killed 195 people

Efforts are underway to secure the release of more British citizens from Gaza after two UK aid workers were among hundreds of foreign nationals able to flee through the Rafah crossing, Press Association reports

Over the last two days, dozens of seriously injured Palestinians have also been allowed to leave the strip, which is home to more than two million people, for the first time since the war with Israel began nearly a month ago.

There are hopes more UK nationals could make it out and into Egypt on Thursday, PA said, after around 200 registered in Gaza with the Foreign Office.

The department provided the Israeli and Egyptian authorities with a list of British nationals and their dependents, prioritising by medical vulnerability.

The total is thought to be in the low hundreds.

Three Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said, and an Israeli was killed in a Palestinian shooting attack, according to first responders.

Violence has surged across the West Bank for months and intensified further since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

Two Palestinians, Ayham al-Shafei, 14 and Yazan Shiha, 24, were killed and two others wounded when Israeli troops opened fire during a raid in El-Bireh, the Palestinian health ministry said.

A 19-year-old Palestinian, Qusai Quran, was killed by Israeli forces during a raid on Qalqilya in the northern West Bank, according to the ministry.

The Israeli army did not immediately comment on the incidents.

Elsewhere, an Israeli was killed after his car came under fire near the settlement of Einav, said Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency response organisation.

Israeli officials have not identified the fatality.

Israel has asked foreign countries to send hospital ships for the proposed treatment of wounded Palestinians allowed to leave the war-torn Gaza Strip to neighbouring Egypt, the Israeli ambassador to Germany has said.

Interviewed on Israel’s Kan radio, Ron Prosor said such a request had been made of Germany and other countries.

He described a scenario outlined by Kan, whereby wounded Gazans would board such ships in Egypt’s Al Arish port, as accurate.

Brigadier General Itzik Cohen, leading the IDF’s 162nd Division, says IDF forces are currently located deep in Gaza, having breached their first line of defence.

Gen. Cohen, addressing reporters near the Gaza Strip, said: ‘Hamas chose this war, we did not choose this war.’

He said, his division ‘received an important task, to go and decisively finish Hamas.’

He added that since then ‘we have destroyed much of Hamas’s abilities, attacked its strategic facilities, all of its array of explosives, its underground tunnels and other facilities we completely destroyed.’

But he warned this is a ‘long task,’ and that this is ‘a war for the existence of the State of Israel — and we will win.’

Reporting by Nick Craven, MailOnline’s reporter in Israel

While much of the focus is on people trying to flee Gaza to Egypt through the Rafah crossing, some Gazan citizens are trying to get back in.

As Hamas terrorists were attacking southern Israel on October 7, sick children from Gaza were being treated in Israeli hospitals.

However, the civilian Erez Crossing facility – found in the north of Gaza – was destroyed in the initial onslaught. The region has since been turned into a battleground, with Israeli military hardware rolling into the enclave.

Now, the Gazan children and their mothers who were in Israel for the treatment have found themselves trapped in Ashdod – on the outside of Gaza looking in as Israeli bombs fall on their home, The Times of Israel reports.

The publications says the mothers are tired and angry, want the fighting to end, and are hoping their families and homes haven’t been lost in the strikes.

As Israel’s ground troops advance toward Gaza City, diplomatic efforts are intensifying for at least a brief pause in the fighting.

• US President Joe Biden has suggested a humanitarian ‘pause’ to help get the hostages out of Gaza – and for aid to get in.
• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected back in the region on Friday.
• The White House has refused to call for a ceasefire but has signalled that the Israelis should consider humanitarian pauses to allow civilians to receive aid and for foreign nationals trapped on the strip to leave Gaza.
• Arab countries, including those allied with the US and at peace with Israel, have expressed mounting unease with the war.
• The UN and several aid groups have also caused for a ceasefire.

The total death toll in Gaza has risen to 9,061 people and 32,000 others injured, the official spokesperson for the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza has said.

The dead include 3,760 children and 2,326 women, the spokesperson said

The IDF released a video yesterday purportedly showing a captured Hamas terrorist giving details of the October 7 attack.

In the video, the man talks about entering a house in Israel through a window where they heard the sounds of young children crying in a safe room.

‘We shot at the safe room,’ he says, ‘until we didn’t hear noise anymore.’

Russia has accused Israel of being ‘anti-Russian’ after the Jewish state recommended that its citizens leave Russia’s North Caucasus region after a violent anti-Israeli protest in Dagestan on Sunday.

In a briefing with reporters, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova today that an Israeli warning against travel in the mostly Muslim regions of the North Caucasus bore ‘no relation to reality’.

Dozens were arrested after hundreds of protesters formed an angry mom and stormed Makhachkala airport in Dagestan on Sunday, looking for Jewish passengers on board a plane arriving from Tel Aviv.

Zakharova said that Russia’s traditionally strong relations with Israel were ‘resilient’.

Russia has repeatedly criticised Israel’s military actions around the Gaza Strip, restated its long-standing support for a Palestinian state, while also hosting a Hamas delegation in Moscow.

Video has been released showing Yemen’s Houthis rebels fireing ballistic missiles and long-range rockets at Israel.

The Houthi movement, which like Hamas is supported by Iran, said late on Wednesday it had launched a large batch of drones at several targets in Israel.

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The group will ‘continue carrying out military operations in support of Palestinians, until the Israeli aggression in Gaza stops,’ Houthi military spokesman has said.

A British doctor with 16 family members trapped in Gaza has expressed his disappointment over the fact that no UK citizens appear to be on the latest list of foreign passport holders that are being allowed to escape the territory.

Dr Ahmad Abou-Foul told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that his family in the enclave includes a four-month old baby.

He said they are in a ‘horrific’ situation, crammed into a one-room basement, as they wait for the opportunity to flee the under-siege territory.

‘There was another list just published a few hours ago; the majority are Americans, many South Americans and Europeans but still no British nationals included in that list, which is very surprising,’ the surgeon told the BBC.

‘I hope that they come to the British nationals at some point. But the Foreign Office is not providing us with any assurances that they already discussed with the Egyptians and the Egyptians are aware of our presence and that they will prioritise us anytime soon,’ he added.

Britain’s Foreign Office has said it has agreed a list of Britons that want to leave the territory with officials in Egypt and Israel, according to The Guardian.

The bodies of two Lebanese shepherds were found in an area near the border today, the Lebanese state National News Agency (NNA) reported.

The NNA said they had been shot at by Israeli forces.

A spokesperson for the Israeli army said it was looking into the report.

The NNA, which gave no source for its report, said they had been tending to their flock near the Wazzani river when they were shot at.

Lebanese security sources told Reuters the shepherds from the Lebanese border village of Wazzani were aged 20 and 21.

A group of dual nationals left Gaza for Egypt on Thursday through Rafah, a border official said, a day after the crossing point reopened for foreign passport holders and wounded Palestinians.

Wael Abu Mohsen, spokesman for the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, said in a statement that ‘100 travellers of foreign nationalities’ had crossed into Egypt on Thursday morning, escaping the bombarded Palestinian territory.

A total of 400 foreign passport holders as well as 60 wounded patients were due to cross by the day’s end, Abu Mohsen said.

Israel ‘s ground troops have broken through Hamas ‘s front lines of defence, the IDF has said, as the country’s forces continue their advance towards Gaza City.

An Israeli commander said the soldiers are now ‘at the gates’ of the city that before the war was home to around 1.1 million, many of whom have fled south.

Sightings of Israeli forces inside Gaza, as well as the limited information released by both the IDF and Hamas on where fighting has taken place, all point to the Jewish state’s military commanders working to surround the city.

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Germany will from Wednesday ban the activities of Hamas, already a designated terrorist organisation in the country, as well as pro-Palestinian group Samidoun, the interior minister has announced.

‘With Hamas, I have today completely banned the activities of a terrorist organisation whose aim is to destroy the state of Israel,’ Nancy Faeser said in a statement.

Samidoun’s German wing will also be disbanded, it added.

Faeser said the international network works under the guise of a solidarity group for prisoners to spread anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda.

Israeli Defence Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari said today Israeli soldiers came under fire near the Einav settlement in the West Bank.

He said Hamas terrorists fired at a vehicle, causing it to overturn.

‘IDF forces have started a pursuit of the terrorists and are blocking roads in the area,’ Hagari said.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, in a post on social media site X, said the agency had ‘serious concerns’ that Israel’s ‘disproportionate attacks… could amount to war crimes’.

Gaza’s Hamas-run media office said on Thursday that at least 195 Palestinians were killed in the two Israeli attacks on Jabalia, with 120 missing. At least 777 people were wounded, it said in a statement.

Palestinians on Wednesday sifted through rubble in a desperate hunt for trapped victims. ‘It is a massacre,’ said one witness.

The IDF claimed last night to have ‘eliminated’ Muhammad A’sar, the Head of Hamas’ Anti-Tank Missile Unit in Gaza, amid intese fighting in the territory.

The Rafah border into Egypt is set to reopen today so more foreign citizens could flee the relentless Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.

At least 320 foreign citizens on an initial list of 500, as well as dozens of severely injured Gazans, crossed into Egypt on Wednesday under a deal between Israel, Egypt and Hamas.

Passport holders from Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, the United Kingdom and the United States were evacuated.

The border crossing is set to reopen today with a diplomatic source saying some 7,500 foreign passport holders would leave Gaza over about two weeks.

Israeli forces have broken through Hamas’ front lines of defence in northern Gaza, Israel’s military spokesperson said this morning.

An Israeli commander said the soldiers are now ‘at the gates of Gaza City’.

Pressing an offensive against Hamas terrorists, Israel has bombed Gaza by land, sea and air in its campaign to wipe out the Iran-backed Islamist group after its cross-border rampage into southern Israel on October 7.