We failed to protect Israel from Hamas attack, army chief admits — as it happened (2024)

Israel’s army conceded on Thursday that it had failed to protect its citizens when Hamas militants carried out an unprecedented multi-front attack on Saturday, killing 1,200 Israelis.

“We failed to maintain security around Gaza on Shabbat,” the army’s chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, said after reports emerged that the government had received intelligence from Egypt that warned an attack was in the offing.

His comments came as anger at the government’s intelligence failure began to spill over, with at least three Israeli cabinet members having to retreat from confrontations with members of the public after trying to demonstrate solidarity.

• Israel-Gaza war latest: live updateshttps://www.thetimes.com/article/israel-war-gaza-evacuation-palestinian-hamas-latest-news-lw8twprcc

The development came as at least 100 people are believed to have travelled from the UK to Israel to serve in the Israeli military as the country prepares to launch a ground invasion of Gaza, six days after it suffered the deadliest assault on its territory in more than half a century.

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) has drafted a record 360,000 reservists from across Israel and the world, many of whom are moving toward the border with Gaza.

During a visit to Tel Aviv on Thursday, Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, condemned Hamas’s “reign of terror” and invoked the horrors of the Holocaust following a meeting with Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.

Britain will send RFA Argus and RFA Lyme Bay, carrying a company of Royal Marines and three Merlin helicopters, to the eastern Mediterranean and begin surveillance flights off the coast of Israel in a show of military support for Israel before an expected ground invasion of Gaza.

Israel has threatened to continue its total blockade of Gaza until all the hostages taken by Hamas are released, despite a UN warning that “hospitals will become morgues” without power.

In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, residents are facing ever-growing uncertainty after the territory’s only power plant ran out of fuel on Wednesday. Without power, communication is limited and information is scarce.

There are 17 Britons feared dead or missing after Hamas militants stormed villages near the Gaza border on October 7. More than 1,000 Israeli citizens were murdered in the attacks and Hamas is now holding about 130 hostages in Gaza.

About 150 Israelis, foreigners and dual nationals were abducted to the Gaza Strip by Hamas as part of an attack on Saturday that killed more than 1,200 people in Israeli towns and communities.

Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have killed 447 children and 248 women, the health ministry has said. The total number of dead in Gaza after nearly a week of airstrikes is now 1,417, it said. The number of wounded is put at 6,238 since Saturday.

French police used tear gas and water cannons against demonstrators in Paris who flouted a ban on pro-Palestinian protests last night (Adam Sage writes).

Hours after Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, had announced the ban, hundreds of protesters gathered in the Place de la République in the centre of the capital chanting pro-Palestinian slogans and holding up banners that said “End the siege of Gaza”.

Demonstrators chanted “Israel murderer” and “Macron accomplice” as they moved through the streets.

The organisers, Co-ordination of Calls for a Just Peace in the Middle East-Europalestine, a pro-Palestinian association, had failed in an attempt to win an injunction overturning the ban. When police moved in to disperse the crowd, violence erupted. Protesters hurled stones at police officers, who retaliated with tear gas.

President Macron has previously condemned the Hamas attack last weekend and voiced solidarity with Israel.

Darmanin had earlier said he intended to prohibit all pro-Palestinian demonstrations because they “are likely to generate disturbances to public order”. He said in a note to police chiefs that organisers could face arrest if they ignored the ban.

The move came amid concern that the terror attacks in Israel could widen religious divisions in France, which is home to western Europe’s biggest Muslim and Jewish communities. Darmanin said police had recorded more than 100 “antisemitic acts” since Saturday, with 24 people arrested.

He said the acts were “essentially graffiti, swastikas, death to Jews [and] calls for an intifada”.

Foreign students, academics and other migrants who praise Hamas or commit antisemitic acts following the attacks on Israel face being expelled from the UK under plans being drawn up by the Home Office (Matt Dathan writes).

Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, has ordered officials to draft proposals on how visas could be revoked. Visas would be withdrawn on the grounds of national security where there is evidence of discrimination or support for the terror group.

France has brought in rules that will expel foreign nationals from the country if they commit antisemitic offences or support Hamas. The change has already led to three people being expelled from France.

Prisons across England and Wales will be on alert for potential trouble after the former leader of Hamas called for Muslims to protest against Israel on a day of jihad. A Prison Service source said that counterterrorism teams that monitor known extremists in jails had stepped up their work due to the “heightened tensions” following Saturday’s terror attack in southern Israel.

Former Israeli generals are sceptical of the promises of Binyamin Netanyahu’s government to “destroy Hamas”. While supporting a major ground offensive in Gaza in response to the group’s terror attack on Israel, many believe that more “realistic” objectives should be set (Anshel Pfeffer writes).

“Hamas is Isis [Islamic State], and we will crush and eliminate it just as the world crushed and eliminated Isis,” Netanyahu said.

“There isn’t just one monolith of Hamas,” said one former Israeli general who is still involved in operational planning and therefore could not be identified. “There is the military and political wings. There’s Hamas in Gaza, and Hamas in the West Bank and in other parts of the region. It’s an ideology. Saying you’re going to destroy all of them isn’t rational. I hope it’s just political grandstanding and not policy.”

The general believed that Israeli armoured columns would be needed to “seriously degarded Hamas’s military capabilities because not all their targets can be hit from the air,” but he added that Israel would still need to deal with a “weakened” Hamas after the war.

Another former general said: “Israel can take over most of the Gaza Strip within a few weeks of a ground offensive but that doesn’t mean you will wipe out Hamas. You can’t wipe out something that people believe in and Israel needs to set an objective of seriously weakening Hamas as a military entity so that the Palestinian Authority [which was ousted from Gaza in a coup in 2007] can return and take control.”

Russia has accused Israel of violating international law by attacking Syria with airstrikes, after Israeli missiles reportedly struck airports in Damascus and Aleppo (David Rose writes).

The strikes were said to have damaged runways and forced the airports to suspend operations.

Despite being responsible for the war in Ukraine, the Russian foreign ministry made the following comment: “In the context of the sharp escalation of the situation in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict zone, such forceful actions may lead to extremely dangerous consequences, as they could provoke an armed escalation throughout the region.

“That must never be allowed to happen.”

Russia is a key ally of Syria’s President Assad and has propped up his regime with weapons and air power of its own.

Analysts have suggested that Israel’s latest strikes may have been targeting Iranian weapons bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon, which would have added to the threat on Israel’s border. Similar strikes have happened at regular intervals over the last few years, but are typically not officially acknowledged by Israel.

President Biden condemned Donald Trump for describing Hezbollah as “very smart” even as the Lebanese militant group exchanges fire with Israel following the Hamas attack from Gaza.

During a campaign speech in Florida, Trump also falsely accused the Biden administration of bankrolling the Hamas assault as a result of a prisoner exchange deal with Iran, which has historically funded Hamas and Hezbollah.

Trump had made his remarks to supporters in West Palm Beach as he was criticising the White House. “You know, Hezbollah is very smart. They’re all very smart,’” Trump said.

In a post on Twitter/X, Biden said: “Our nation’s support for Israel is resolute and unwavering. And the right time to praise the terrorists who seek to destroy them is never.”

The White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said Trump’s remarks were “dangerous and unhinged.”

Israel’s communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, said in a TV interview that Trump could “obviously” not be trusted.

“It is shameful that such a person, a former president of the United States, aids propaganda and spreads comments that harm the spirit of IDF [army] fighters and the spirit of Israeli residents,” Karhi said. “We don’t need to deal with him or with the nonsense he says.”

Rishi Sunak has urged police chiefs to bring the “full force of the law” against protesters who commit hate crimes and support Hamas in advance of a pro-Palestinian march in London this weekend (Fiona Hamilton and Charlier Parker write).

Police are being asked to use public order powers to block protests outside Jewish monuments and buildings such as the Israeli embassy, and to crack down on the use of face coverings to “purposefully conceal identity” at protests.

The prime minister announced an extra £3 million for increased security at Jewish schools, synagogues and community buildings after a 400 per cent spike in antisemitic incidents since Hamas carried out its terrorist attack on Israel.

Sunak said: “We must do everything in our power to protect Jewish people everywhere in our country. If anything is standing in the way of keeping the Jewish community safe, we will fix it. You have our complete backing.”

• Police told to use ‘full force of law’ against pro-Palestine rally

The United States and Qatar have agreed to prevent Iran from using a $6 billion humanitarian assistance fund following the surprise Hamas attack on Israel, according to reports.

The money had been unfrozen in a US-Iran prisoner swap deal announced last month in which five US detainees were released by Iran after the funds were transferred to accounts in Qatar.

But The Washington Post reported on Thursday that a decision was made to halt access to the funds, while President Biden faces rising pressure on the matter given concerns over Iran’s connections to Hamas.

Tehran, which financially and militarily backs Hamas, has come under intense scrutiny since fighters of the Islamist group stormed across Israel’s southern border at the weekend.

“We have strict oversight of the funds and we retain the right to freeze them,” the US secretary of state Antony Blinken told a press conference in Tel Aviv on Thursday.

US officials said earlier that they had not seen any intelligence to show Iran was involved in planning or preparing the Hamas attacks.

But deputy Treasury secretary Wally Adeyemo told Democrats in the House of Representatives that the Iran funds were not “going anywhere anytime soon,” according to The Washington Post.

The Biden administration maintains that the money is restricted to humanitarian use, and previously said it had yet to be dispensed.

When the dust settles, Binyamin Netanyahu is likely to be facing a possibly insurmountable battle to remain in power after the country’s most deadly attack (Abbie Cheeseman writes).

“The public anger is already there but being somewhat held in abeyance due to the circ*mstances,” said Daniel Levy, president of the US/Middle East Project and a former Israeli negotiator.

“It is likely to break out, the polarisation will re-emerge, perhaps with even more ferocity. You will have reservists returning from this conflict, many of whom would have been part of the earlier protests against Netanyahu — a potentially poisonous brew for the prime minister.”

Before Hamas’s assault, Israel had been gripped by a major political crisis dividing the country. For months hundreds of thousands of people had been taking to the streets to denounce Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition and its plans for judicial overhaul. Democracy, they said, was in crisis.

Another confrontation broke out on Thursday as security tried to stop civilians from rushing the car of Miri Regev, the transport minister. Men wearing hi-vis jackets pushed the civilians away from the car before one launched a drink at the window.

The incident happened as Regev, a close ally of Netanyahu who has previously likened those protesting against his government to terrorists, was being forced out of a hospital.

Netanyahu has political interest in prolonging the conflict, Levy said, adding that it is likely to drag on. “There may well be tension between what is a national security interest and what is a narrow political interest,” he said.

Claims by Donald Trump that the Iran-aligned terror group Hezbollah is “very smart”, and his description of Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, as a “jerk” have prompted a backlash.

“He has been hurt very badly because of what’s happened here,” Trump said of Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu in an interview on Wednesday night. “He was not prepared. He was not prepared and Israel was not prepared.” Trump later added: “You know, Hezbollah is very smart. They’re all very smart.”

The White House hit back at the former president, who is on the campaign trail for the Republican nomination for next year’s presidential election. “Statements like this are dangerous and unhinged,” the White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said.

“It’s completely lost on us why any American would ever praise an Iran-backed terrorist organisation as smart.” Bates added: “This is a time for all of us to stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel against unadulterated evil. That’s what [US President Biden] is doing as commander-in-chief.”

The UK is considering increasing aid to the Palestinian territories in light of the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the region, the UK’s development minister has said (Mehreen Khan writes).

Andrew Mitchell said that unlike some other European countries who were immediately suspending aid to the West Bank and Gaza after the weekend’s terrorist attack by Hamas, the UK government was confident that none of its £17 million aid allocation was in the hands of militants.

“We keep the sharpest eye on the programme and would never tolerate any question of British taxpayers’ money being corruptly taken or being used by a terrorist organisation. We never have any dealings with Hamas and we also stopped doing anything with the Palestinian Authority two years ago.”

Denmark, Sweden and Austria have said they will immediately halt aid to Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, and the West Bank. The European Union, which is the largest single donor to the Palestinian territories, has said it is putting its aid package under review, but will not freeze payments in the meantime.

Mitchell, who was speaking at the sidelines of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Marrakesh, Morocco, said the government was making preparations to move forward humanitarian aid that is distributed through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

“We are certainly preparing with care for any possible eventuality. We will do whatever is necessary to play our part. Britain has a fine reputation always of going to the help those in distress and humanitarian peril,” Mitchell said.

• UK sends Royal Navy ships and spy planes

Fans will be banned from taking Israeli or Palestinian flags into England’s match against Australia at Wembley on Friday (Martyn Ziegler writes).

England’s players will wear black armbands for the game and there will be a period of silence before the kick-off to pay tribute to all the victims of the violence in Israel and Gaza. The FA has resisted calls to light up the Wembley arch in the blue and white of Israel’s flag. It has been wary of taking action that could be seen as divisive and instead wants to honour “innocent victims” of the violence.

Fans will also not be allowed to wear any replica shirts other than those of England or Australia, and the same rules will apply to the Euro 2024 qualifier against Italy at Wembley next Tuesday.

The FA will also promote the British Red Cross emergency appeal to support the people affected by the humanitarian crisis in the region.

• Israeli and Palestinian flags banned from Wembley for England games

Israel has cut electricity and tap water to more than 1,400 Palestinian prisoners, officials and rights groups have warned.

Cuts to the supplies began at 2pm on Wednesday at Naqab-Ktziot prison in the Negev desert, according to Sahar Francis, director of the Palestinian organisation Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. Detainees had passed the news to their lawyers via video-link before court sessions, she said.

“These practices of course fall under ‘collective punishment’, which is illegal under international humanitarian law and international human rights law,” Francis said. “They are locked in their cells 24 hours a day.” Before Saturday’s attack each prisoner had three to four hours a day outside their cells.

The Palestinian foreign ministry confirmed that Negev prison had been affected and has called for the International Red Cross to quickly intervene to protect prisoners’ rights.

More than 5,300 Palestinian detainees are held in Israeli prisons, according to Palestinian figures. The number does not include Hamas militants arrested following the attack on southern Israeli settlements surrounding the Gaza strip.

The Israeli Prison Service denied the reports of electricity and water cuts to the prison, but conceded that electricity had been cut to the sockets inside cells.

Israel’s army conceded on Thursday that it had failed to protect its citizens when Hamas militants carried out an unprecedented multi-front attack on Saturday, killing 1,200 Israelis (Abbie Cheeseman writes).

“We failed to maintain security around Gaza on Shabbat,” the army’s chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, said after reports emerged that the government had received intelligence from Egypt that warned an attack was in the offing.

His comments came as anger at the government’s intelligence failure began to spill over, with at least three Israeli cabinet members having to retreat from confrontations with members of the public after trying to demonstrate solidarity.

Five Palestinian journalists have been killed since the Israel-Hamas war began, Reporters Without Borders said on Thursday (Ed Halford writes).

The organisation said that three journalists were killed on Tuesday, Mohammed Soboh, a photojournalist with the Palestinian news agency Khabar, Said al-Tawil, the editor of the independent Palestinian news channel Al Khamissa, and Hisham al Nawajha, an Al Khamissa photojournalist. The three were near the Hajji Tour in western Gaza to cover an Israeli strike on a building regularly used to accommodate media outlets when they were killed by another strike.

Their deaths follow those of Palestinian photojournalists Mohammed al-Salihi and Ibrahim Lafi, who were shot dead while covering clashes between Israeli forces and Hamas on October 7 in Bureij.

On Wednesday, the UN announced that at least 11 United Nations employees had been killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza since the weekend.

Antony Blinken has told the Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu that the US will “always” back the Jewish state, but stressed that Palestinians also have “legitimate aspirations” (Alistair Dawber writes).

The US secretary of state was speaking in Jerusalem after arriving in Israel this morning.

“You may be strong enough on your own to defend yourself,” Blinken said at a joint press conference with Netanyahu. “But as long as America exists, you will never, ever have to. We will always be there by your side.”

President Biden has vowed unwavering support for Israel but has stressed that the laws of conflict must be respected as Israel strikes targets in Gaza. Blinken suggested that there would eventually be a need for a negotiated settlement.

“Anyone who wants peace and justice must condemn Hamas’s reign of terror,” Blinken said.

“We know Hamas doesn’t represent the Palestinian people, or their legitimate aspirations to live with equal measures of security, freedom, justice, opportunity and dignity.”

Netanyahu said that Israel appreciates US support, including military aid. He said Hamas should be treated like the Islamic State group.

“Just as Isis was crushed, so too will Hamas be crushed. And Hamas should be treated exactly the way Isis was treated,” Netanyahu said.

Blinken said “I come before you not only as the United States secretary of state but also as a Jew” and “a husband and father of young children”.

“It’s impossible for me to look at the photos of families killed, such as the mother, father and three small children murdered as they sheltered in their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, and not think of my own children,” he said.

Hamas is laying a trap for Israel and will be “well pleased” if it commits to an open-ended full-scale ground invasion, a former head of MI6 has warned (Fiona Hamilton writes).

Sir Alex Younger, who led the Secret Intelligence Service between 2014 and 2020, said the intensity of conflict and loss of innocent lives would inevitably follow and lead to more radicalisation.

He endorsed Israel’s right to defend itself and said that strikes in Gaza were necessary, but added: “There is not fundamentally at the end of this, a military solution to this problem. You cannot kill all the terrorists without creating more terrorists and military operations of this kind very very rarely succeed without some kind of political strategy. These are hard things to say … this is said with the intention to support [Israel].”

Younger echoed other experts who have warned that it would be a strategic error for Israel to bombard Gaza and collectively punish its citizens.

He told the BBC’s Today podcast that the aim of the terrorism by Hamas was not the initial action, “appalling and visceral and stomach churning though it is”, but about the reaction it caused.

Younger said Israel’s failure to pre-empt Hamas’s attack was not so much a failure of intelligence but a “failure of imagination”. He expected there would be information that, using hindsight, could be interpreted differently but that Israel had viewed the threat from Hamas as quiescent. He said there was also an over-reliance on technology systems such as the Iron Dome that had given a false sense of security, while the military focus had been on the West Bank not Gaza.

The government has organised flights for British citizens to leave Israel, the Foreign Office has said.

The first flight is set to leave Tel Aviv later today. Vulnerable British citizens will be prioritised.

Those eligible to leave will be contacted directly and the government has said British nationals should not travel to airports unless told to do so.

Commercial flights are understood to cost £300 per ticket.

Several airlines have suspended flights between Israel and the UK, including British Airways, Wizz Air and Virgin Atlantic.

The Foreign Office’s travel advice currently advises against all but essential travel to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The department announced earlier that families of British diplomats are leaving Israel as a “precautionary measure”.

About 50,000 to 60,000 British nationals are believed to be in Israel or Gaza, according to government estimates reported by Sky News.

Israel has carried out simultaneous air strikes on both of Syria’s international airports, Damascus state media has reported (Abbie Cheeseman writes).

Hundreds of both declared and undeclared strikes by Israel have been carried out in Syria over the last ten years as part of a campaign to stop Iran and its allies from entrenching its power in neighbouring Syria.

Both airports have been put out of service by Israeli strikes in recent years. The extent of the damage from today’s strikes is not immediately clear.

The strikes, which Israeli authorities usually refuse to comment on, are likely an attempt to stop Iran-linked militants opening a new front to the war across Syria’s border with the Golan Heights.

Diplomatic sources say that the Israeli air strikes are usually used to disrupt aerial supply lines of weapons to Iran’s proxy forces.

The local media channel Sham FM reported that air defences were launched in response. The Iranian foreign minister is expected to visit Damascus tomorrow.

Germany will provide Israel with armed drones and says it is open to any further requests for military aid (Oliver Moody writes).

Berlin said it would hand back two of the five IAI Eitan drones it leases from Israel, which were previously being used to train German drone pilots.

The drones, also known as the Heron TP, can circle for more than 30 hours at a stretch and reach an altitude of up to 46,000ft, above conventional civilian air traffic.

The Israeli Defence Force is believed to have at least a dozen of the machines, which can be armed with missiles for airstrikes, although Israel has been tight-lipped about the exact nature of the armaments and their operational use.

Israel is also reported to have asked Germany for naval ammunition, blood banks and ballistic vests. Boris Pistorius, the German defence minister, said it would discuss these requests in due course but added: “We stand by the side of the Israelis.”

Israel has threatened to continue its total blockade of Gaza until all the hostages taken by Gaza are released, despite a UN warning that “hospitals will become morgues” without power.

“Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home,” Israel Katz, Israel’s energy minister, posted on X/Twitter.

“Humanitarian for humanitarian. And no one will preach us morals,” he added.

About 150 Israelis, foreigners and dual nationals were abducted to the Gaza Strip by Hamas as part of an attack on Saturday that killed more than 1,200 people in Israeli towns and communities. In retaliation for Saturday’s attack, Israel has announced a “complete siege” on Gaza, cutting off water, fuel and electricity supplies.

• Times letters: Israeli hostages and the two-state solution

The Israeli authorities have also cut power and water to the Naqab-Ktziot prison in the Negev desert, where over 1,400 Palestinian detainees are now confined to their cells 24 hours a day.

Hospitals in Gaza will become morgues if energy is not restored, the International Committee of the Red Cross has warned. Gaza’s sole power plant shut down on Wednesday and the strip has been deprived of electricity. The Red Cross said Gaza’s hospitals are just hours away from running out of fuel.

“Our understanding is that there is still fuel — but probably only for a few hours — to allow generators to work, including in hospitals,” said Fabrizio Carboni, the committee’s regional director for the Near and Middle East.

“With the supplies we have inside Gaza, we will not be able to support the civilian population for very long. This is why we need to be able to get the supplies we need to Gaza.”

Israeli prison services have cut off water and electricity to more than 1,400 Palestinian detainees, several sources have told The Times.

“In Naqab-Ktziot prison [in the Negev desert] since yesterday at 2pm the authorities cut the water and electricity,” said Sahar Francis, director of the Palestinian Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.

Francis added that Israeli authorities were holding all Palestinian prisoners in their cells and have banned them from receiving visits from their lawyers of family members as part of a sweeping crackdown.

“They are locked in their cells 24 hours a day,” she added. Before Saturday’s attack each prisoner had three to four hours a day outside of their cells. The Palestinian foreign ministry confirmed that the infamous Negev prison had been affected and has called for the International Red Cross to quickly intervene.

More than 5,300 Palestinian detainees are held in Israeli prisons. The number does not include Hamas militants arrested in the aftermath of their infiltration of southern Israeli settlements surrounding the Gaza Strip. Israel’s Prison Service did not reply to a request for comment.

Rishi Sunak has offered the UK’s support to keep the border crossing between Egypt and Gaza open for humanitarian and consular reasons, including for British nationals.

Speaking to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Egyptian president, the prime minister expressed his condolences for the Egyptians who have lost their lives since the Hamas attacks on Saturday and agreed on the importance of preventing the conflict from spreading further.

Sunak acknowledged the “challenging security situation” at the Rafah border crossing and offered UK support to manage the situation.

Egypt has asked Israel to avoid targeting the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing after strikes prevented normal operations, Egypt’s foreign ministry said.

A No 10 spokesman said: “The prime minister said that terrorism is an evil which must be confronted, wherever we find it. It was also important that the conflict did not spread further. He noted the importance of Egypt’s historic role in the region, including in seeking de-escalation.”

President Sisi also stressed the need for humanitarian relief to be provided to Palestinians inside Gaza during the call, his office said.

Israel has said there will be no humanitarian break until all hostages are freed.

More than 2,000 US marines have been put on alert as fears grow for the safety of American hostages taken by Hamas from Israel to Gaza (Michael Evans writes).

The US 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is trained for special operations, has been withdrawn from an exercise in Kuwait and ordered to return to their ships only 48 hours after disembarking.

The 2,400 marines are now on board the USS Bataan, a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship, and USS Carter Hall, a dock landing vessel.

Their sudden departure from Kuwait was linked to “emerging events” in Israel and Gaza, although there was no official confirmation the two ships would be joining the US aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford that is already positioned in the eastern Mediterranean.

An unknown number of Americans are among the 150 hostages seized by Hamas, although at least 17 people with dual Israeli-American citizenship are still missing. President Biden has announced that he is committed to rescuing the hostages.

The 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, whose troops were among the first to deploy to Kabul to help in the evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies in August 2021, is a crisis response force.

If the marines were to be used in a hostage-rescue operation in Gaza they would face an almost insurmountable challenge unless there was specific intelligence of where the hostages are being held. It’s likely they are being detained in multiple locations spread throughout Gaza.

“This isn’t just like any other hostage situation, this is an active war zone, and so getting granular information that you can act on is going to be that much harder,” John Kirby, the spokesman for the White House National Security Council, told CNN.

Pentagon and FBI specialists are already in Israel, assisting with hostage-rescue contingency plans.

Emmanuel Macron will call for unity in an address to the nation amid a rise in antisemitic acts in France.

The French president will meet political party leaders on Thursday ahead of the television address.

“Since Saturday and the terrorist massacres in Israel, there has been over a hundred antisemitic acts, mainly tags and swastikas,” Gerald Darmanin, the interior minister, told France Inter radio.

He said people were “arrested with a knife at the entrance of a school or synagogue”.

Twenty four people have been arrested over antisemitic acts since Saturday in France, which has Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish populations. The government has assigned 10,000 police to protect some 500 sites.

The bodies of civilians killed by Hamas in Israel show “signs of torture” and are “unlike anything” investigators have ever seen before, Israel’s president has said.

Isaac Herzog told a media briefing that one family of five — a mother, father and children — was found bound together, all hugging, shot and burned.

“I was wondering what they prayed before they were all shot together,” he said. Herzog said his country faces “one of the most cruel enemies on earth”.

The Israeli military has said it has identified 97 people who are being held hostage in Gaza, although it is still working to determine the full number of people killed and captured during the weekend’s assault by Hamas militants.

Hamas has said the hostages are hidden in “safe places and tunnels”. The militant group has threatened to kill the captives if civilians are bombed without warning.

Israel says Hamas has taken about 150 hostages in total, including Americans, Germans, Mexicans and Thais.

At least 1,354 people have been killed in Gaza since Saturday, according to the health ministry, and 6,049 have been wounded.

Israeli settlers shot dead a Palestinian father and son in the West Bank on Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry has said (Abbie Cheeseman writes).

The pair were reported to have been killed while attending a funeral for four other Palestinians who were killed by armed settlers and soldiers near Nablus yesterday.

Eleven other Palestinians were wounded by live rounds during the assault, according to the Red Crescent.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said that since the war began on Saturday, armed settlers “have been attacking Palestinian residents in many locations” across the West Bank.

The Palestinian foreign ministry condemned the “occupation forces” for firing live ammunition at the funeral procession.

Settler violence and military raids in the West Bank have played a large part in escalating tensions between Palestinians and Israelis this year. Almost 190 of the 227 Palestinian deaths that occured this year before the violence broke out last week were in the West Bank.

Israel has refocused its attention on Hamas’s elite commando unit, the Nukhba brigade, hitting its command centres in the Gaza Strip with heavy air strikes (Abbie Cheeseman writes).

In a briefing with reporters this morning, Richard Hecht, the Israeli Defence Forces (DIF) spokesman, said that the Nukhba forces had spearheaded Saturday’s attack and were the military’s primary target.

The command centres targeted were used by “operatives who infiltrated the communities surrounding the Gaza Strip last Saturday,” he said.

Hecht claimed that captured Nukhba forces are providing intelligence to the IDF during interrogation, which is helping them to focus their strikes in Gaza.

The Nukhba unit, Hamas’s most elite unit of commandos, is “personally handpicked by the Hamas leadership to do the most violent work — raids, stakeouts, infiltration and abduction,” Hecht said. “You can’t disconnect them from the leadership.”

• What will Netanyahu do next? Invasion options explained

The IDF also claimed to have found Isis flags inside one of the southern Israeli settlements rampaged by Hamas. Israeli authorities have reiterated comparisons between the Palestinian militant group and the extremist terror organisation. Critics of the Israeli government suggest the comparisons are being used to justify the air strikes on Gaza.

In 2017 Israeli media claimed that the Nukhba forces were losing numbers as their commandos joined Isis in Egypt’s Sinai.

The families of British diplomats are leaving Israel as a “precautionary measure”, the Foreign Office has said. The UK government advises against all non-essential travel to Israel, and the Foreign Office said the decision was “in line” with that advice. The embassy would remain open and provide consular services to those who need help, it added.

On Wednesday British Airways suspended all flights to Israel after ordering a plane heading to Tel Aviv to turn back due to security concerns. Norwegian Air cancelled an evacuation flight from Tel Aviv to Oslo on Thursday because of a lack of insurance coverage, the carrier said.

The Australian government confirmed on Wednesday that it had asked Qantas and Virgin to repatriate the roughly 12,000 Australians in Israel.

There are about 4,500 Germans in Israel and the government has chartered Lufthansa to evacuate its citizens on Thursday and Friday.

Hungary evacuated 215 people on two planes on Sunday, Mexico said on Monday that it was evacuating about 300 of its citizens, and 192 South Koreans left Tel Aviv for Incheon Airport on Wednesday .

The US’s top diplomat Antony Blinken travelled to Israel on a mission to prevent a wider war.

The US secretary of state is due to meet senior Israeli officials in a show of solidarity, including Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, to discuss further military support.

“I’m going with a very simple and clear message ... that the United States has Israel’s back,” Blinken told reporters before boarding a plane bound for Israel.

Washington has urged its closest Middle Eastern ally to show restraint in its response to Hamas’s surprise attack — the worst in the country’s 75-year history — which Israeli forces said killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

On Friday Blinken will meet Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, a Palestinian official said.

James Cleverly, the UK foreign secretary, also visited Israel this week. Video posted on social media showed him running for shelter after an alarm indicating a potential Hamas rocket attack was raised.

Afterwards, Cleverly wrote online: “Today I’ve seen a glimpse of what millions experience every day. The threat of Hamas rockets lingers over every Israeli man, woman and child. This is why we are standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel.”

Hospitals in Gaza will become morgues if Israel’s power blockade on the strip does not end, the International Committee of the Red Cross has said.

Gaza has been deprived of electricity and its main hospital has four days of fuel left for its backup generators. When “hospitals lose power, putting newborns in incubators and elderly patients on oxygen at risk. Kidney dialysis stops, and X-rays can’t be taken,” said Fabrizio Carboni, regional director of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Israel cut off power supplies to Gaza in retaliation for Saturday’s attack and the Palestinian territory’s sole power plant shut down on Wednesday.

“The human misery caused by this escalation is abhorrent, and I implore the sides to reduce the suffering of civilians,” Carboni said.

Israel’s energy minister said there would be no end to his country’s siege of Gaza while Hamas militants hold Israeli hostages.

“Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. Humanitarian for humanitarian. And no one will preach us morals,” Israel Katz posted on X/Twitter.

About 150 Israelis, foreigners and dual nationals were abducted to the Gaza Strip by Hamas as part of the attacks on Saturday that killed more than 1,200 people in Israeli towns and communities.

In recent days, Israel announced a “complete siege” on Gaza, cutting off water, fuel and electricity supplies.

Iran announced that its foreign minister would travel to Lebanon to discuss “crimes committed against Gaza” as Blinken arrived in Israel.

The semi-official Tasnim news agency said that Hossein Amir-Abdollahian will start a regional tour today to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, involving trips to Iraq and Lebanon.

“In light of the current Palestinian events, the crimes committed against Gaza and their dangerous ramifications, the foreign minister’s regional trip will start today”, Tasnim cited Iran’s ambassador in Lebanon as saying.

The risk of violence increased on Wednesday after the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah fired anti-tank missiles at an Israeli military position and claimed to have killed and wounded troops.

The Israeli army shelled the area in southern Lebanon, where the attack was launched. Iran has long backed Hezbollah and has been accused of involvement in Saturday’s massacre of Israeli civilians.

Polls of Palestinians taken shortly before Hamas attacked Israel on Saturday showed that Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, had been the firm favourite to take over from the ageing Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, with the terror group consolidating control of public support (Melanie Swan writes).

The Palestine Centre For Policy And Research survey last month showed that if new elections had been held before the attacks, Haniyeh would have taken 58 percent of the vote and Abbas just 37 percent. However, in a vote against Marwan Barghouti, the Fatah activist credited with masterminding both the first and second intifadas who is serving five life sentences and another 40 years for terror offences, Haniyeh would take just 37 per cent to Barghouti’s 60 per cent. The figures indicate how radicalisation had been growing in Gaza, where successive Israeli bombing campaigns and blockades had already rendered living conditions dire for Palestinians.

Across both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip opinion is unified, with 78 percent of people in the West Bank and 79 percent in the Gaza Strip demanding the resignation of Abbas, 87, who has not stood for election since 2005 and has ruled by decree for well over a decade. The latest elections, due in 2021, were cancelled.

The polls also indicate that Palestinians are under no illusion that corruption is rife in both Abbas’s Palestinian Authority and Hamas, with 87 per cent expressing a belief that corruption exists and 72 per cent believing it exists in the institutions controlled by Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip.

Haniyeh became the Hamas chief in 2017 and controls the terror group’s political activities in Gaza, the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the diaspora from exile in Turkey and Qatar.

Turkey is negotiating with Hamas for the release of Israeli civilians held hostage in Gaza, officials in Ankara have said (Hannah Lucinda Smith writes).

Speaking to the Turkish news channel Haberturk, the officials, who requested anonymity, said the move was ordered by President Erdogan, who is a staunch supporter of the Palestinians and has so far refrained from directly criticising Hamas for its attacks.

• What is Hamas and why is it attacking Israel? The war explained

Turkey was once one of the few Muslim-majority countries to maintain strong ties with Israel, and Erdogan has repeated offers to mediate in talks to de-escalate the violence. He has held phone calls with several Arab leaders, including in Qatar and the Palestinian Authority, as well as with Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel, Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, and Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary general.

However, relations between Turkey and Israel have been strained for more than a decade, and the two countries have only recently reappointed ambassadors following a diplomatic split in 2018. Erdogan has hosted Hamas leaders, some of whom are believed to have been based in Istanbul, and regularly criticised Israel for its attacks on Gaza.

Yesterday he ramped up his rhetoric, accusing Israel of committing a “massacre” in Gaza. He has also said that Turkey is looking at ways of sending humanitarian aid to the territory.

Turkey is also pursuing a mediating role in several other conflicts, including Ukraine, where it argues that its refusal to join in western sanctions on Russia allows it unique access to both sides. That enabled it to host talks that brokered the first Black Sea grain deal in July 2022. However, Ankara has since come under increasing pressure from Washington to crack down on Russian investments in Turkey that may undermine embargoes.

Israel conducted a “large-scale” strike on targets belonging to Hamas in Gaza in the early hours of this morning.

Hamas media said 15 Palestinians had been killed and several wounded in the shelling.

Hamas militants have fired a new barrage of rockets at Tel Aviv in response to Israeli air strikes targeting “civilians” in two refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, the group said.

“Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades fired rockets at Tel Aviv in response to (Israeli strikes) targeting civilians in Al-Shati and Jabalia camps,” Hamas said, referring to its armed wing, in a text message sent to journalists.

So far officials have reported that more than 1,200 people have been killed and 5,339 injured in Israel’s uninterrupted campaign of air and artillery strikes on Gaza, while the UN said more than 338,000 people have been displaced.

The White House sought to distance itself from Joe Biden claims that he had seen “confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children” (Joshua Thurston writes).

Biden had based the comments on media reports and claims from the Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s spokesperson, an administration official told The Washington Post.

The White House spokesperson clarified that neither Biden nor other US officials have seen or independently confirmed that Hamas beheaded Israeli children.

Speaking from the Indian Treaty Room at the White House yesterday, Biden told Jewish leaders: “It matters that Americans see what’s happening — I mean, I have been doing this a long time, I never really thought that I would see, have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children.”

A spokesperson for Netanyahu said on Wednesday that infants and toddlers were found “decapitated” in Kfar Aza, Tal Heinrich.

Hamas has denied the “false” media reports about attacking children during its attacks on Israel.

However, the Israeli Defence Forces spokesman Jonathan Conricus later said that Hamas militants did behead babies over the weekend, claiming a coroner had confirmed it.

“I admit it took us some time to really understand and to verify that report, and it was hard to believe that even Hamas could perform such a barbaric act,” he says. “I think we can now say, with relative confidence, that this is what Hamas did... there were bodies scattered everywhere, mutilated.”