Thousands flee northern Gaza as strikes hit the south

Gov. DeSantis says U.S. shouldn’t accept refugees from Gaza

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Saturday that the U.S. should not accept refugees from Gaza.

“If you look at how they behave, not all of them are Hamas, but they are all anti-Semitic. None of them believe in Israel’s right to exist,” he said during opening remarks at a meet-and-greet event in Creston, Iowa.

The governor said “Arab states” should be taking them in instead.

“You don’t fly people and import them into the United States of America, so we’re going to be very strong on that,” he continued. “And I think about our country, you see these demonstrations supporting Hamas in the United States of America. … My view is very simple, if you don’t like this country, if you hate America, you should not come to this country.”

Hezbollah TV reports exchange of fire with Israeli troops

Hezbollah’s TV station has reported an intense exchange of fire along Lebanon’s border with Israeli positions in a disputed area along the border with Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Al-Manar TV reported that Hezbollah fighters pounded Israeli positions in the Chebaa Farms and Kfar Chouba hills area on Saturday.

It was the latest exchange of shelling between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters since last Saturday following Hamas’ attack on southern Israel.

Israel’s military said that it was striking Lebanon after coming under fire from Hezbollah. Chebaa Farms was captured by Israel from Syria during the 1967 Mideast war, but Lebanon considers it and the nearby Kfar Chouba hills as Lebanese territories.

The Golan Heights were annexed by Israel in 1981.

Rescuers look for survivors among the rubble of a collapsed building following an Israeli strike in the southern Gaza Strip

Blinken encourages the Chinese Foreign Minister to help prevent the conflict in Israel and Gaza from spreading

Abigail Williams

Secretary of State Antony Blinken had a “productive” discussion with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi Saturday, according to State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, who said he initiated the call before his meeting with the Saudi Foreign Minister this morning. 

The call lasted about an hour with consecutive translation. 

The Secretary called Wang Yi to tell him the purpose of his trip is to prevent the conflict from widening, and Blinken knows China has relations with countries in the region and thinks it could be important if it could use its influence to achieve that same goal, according to Miller.

Blinken told Wang Yi that it is in their shared interests to keep the conflict from spreading, according to Miller, who stressed that the U.S. has been concerned about others entering the conflict from day one. 

Reporting from Israel, near the border of Gaza, NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel says many in Gaza there are reluctant to leave, while those who do still face danger from the continuing bombing.

Congregants at a synagogue in Tel Aviv talk about life on hold

TEL AVIV — About 10 to 12 congregants attended Shabbat morning service at the Beit Daniel Synagogue on Saturday. They sang, chanted and read from the Torah.

Rabbi Meir Azari said that he was supposed to be officiating four bar mitzvahs on Saturday, three weddings this week and four next week — but all of them have been canceled given that so many young people have been mobilized to join the war.

“People have had to stop everything in their life,” said Azari, who has led the congregation for 33 years. “We saw grief and an anger through the years, but this is something very different. That reminded me of my youth as a young teenager, during Yom Kippur War.”

Lauren Freedman, 62, has lived in Israel for 31 years and said that both Israeli and Palestinians just want to live normal lives.

“I think about the store where I buy fruits and vegetables — most of the workers there are Palestinians,” she said. “So when I went in this week, all of the Palestinians were gone. And it was just the Israeli Jews. And I think about these people who are coming to work every day simply to earn a living. And there’s good partnership and cooperation between them and the Israeli employees. And [what’s happening] is just so sad.”

Louvre Museum closes doors for security reasons

Home to the Mona Lisa and a world-renowned tourist destination, Paris’ Louvre Museum of art remained shuttered today, citing security concerns.

“For security reasons, the Musée du Louvre is closing its doors today, Saturday, October 14. Those who have booked a visit during the day will be reimbursed,” the gallery posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The closure comes after Macron called for the mobilization of 7,000 soldiers for increased security patrols after a teacher was fatally stabbed and two more people injured in an Islamist attack on a school in Arras, northern France.

France, which has the largest Muslim and Jewish communities in Europe, banned pro-Palestinian protests earlier this week over concerns that they would generate “disturbances to the public order,” according to Reuters.

U.S. government working to secure safe exit for U.S. citizens trying to leave Gaza

The U.S. is working to secure a safe border exit for U.S. citizens trying to leave Gaza, a Department of State spokesperson said.

“We have informed U.S. citizens in Gaza with whom we are in contact that if they assess it to be safe, they may wish to move closer to the Rafah border crossing,” the spokesperson said, adding that “there may be very little notice if the crossing opens and it may only open for a limited time.”

State department authorizes evacuation of non-emergency embassy personnel

Abigail Williams

The State Department has updated its travel advisory for Israel to authorize the departure of non-emergency U.S. government personnel working at the embassy in Jerusalem and U.S. branch office in Tel Aviv, along with their family members.

The departure authorization was given on the grounds of the “unpredictable security situation” across Israel, the update said.

The department has advised Americans not to travel to Gaza, due to the threats of armed conflict, civil unrest and terrorism, and has also advised citizens to “reconsider travel” to Israel and the West Bank.

Thousands of people turn out at pro-Palestinian rally in London

Thousands of people have turned out to a protest in central London over the Israeli siege of Gaza.

The mood as crowds gathered outside the BBC’s Broadcasting House was sombre and determined, attendees said. Many carried homemade signs with slogans such as “Stop the war” and “Free Palestine, shame on the U.K” as they walked through London’s crowded shopping district of Oxford Circus.

“I don’t normally come to protests, but I was moved by the horror unfolding in Gaza,” said Ben Stoll, 26, a doctoral student at London’s Royal Holloway University, who has family living in Israel.

“The declaration of a total siege on Gaza is a war crime, and needs to be called out as such by our political leaders,” Stoll added.

Ahead of protests, the facade of the BBC’s building was splattered with red paint overnight. London’s police force warned on X last night that deviation from the planned route, towards the Israeli embassy in Kensington, West London, could result in arrest. Thousands of officers have been stationed across the capital to oversee the event, they added in a separate post.

Hamas’ military arm says it killed nine hostages

The military arm of Hamas, the Al-Qassam Brigades, said in a post on Telegram that it killed nine hostages, including four foreigners, in retaliation for the continued bombing of Gaza.

NBC News could not independently verify the claim.

Border crossing with Egypt appears to still be closed

Egyptians and Israelis reached a tentative agreement to allow U.S. citizens to leave Gaza via the Rafah border crossing in northern Egypt.

The State Department told Americans that the crossing might only be open for a short period of time and with very little notice.

“We have informed U.S. citizens in Gaza with whom we are in contact that if they assess it to be safe, they may wish to move closer to the Rafah border crossing — there may be very little notice if the crossing opens and it may only open for a limited time,” a State Department spokesperson told NBC News.

But Haneen Okal, a Palestinian-American from New Jersey, said that the crossing is still closed and that about 600 people were waiting near the border where Egyptian authorities erected “temporary” blast walls on its side of the crossing, according to The Associated Press.

It has previous been reported that there are 500 to 600 Americans in Gaza.

‘The truth is not coming out as it should be here,’ says student in Gaza

Gabe Joselow

Israel says its offering Palestinians safe passage from northern Gaza to the South for the next several hours — but it’s hardly safe as airstrikes continue.

“There’s no shelters. They cut off the water. All the bathrooms are closed,” said Salma Shurrah, a 22-year-old dental student. “They cut off the Internet. They bombed all the Internet places in Gaza. So the Internet connection is very poor and it’s very bad. That means the truth is not coming out as it should be here.”

He continued: “We’re living times that have never existed and any humanity possible. This aggression needs to be over. Palestinian live matter, Gaza, life matter. We’re not numbers.”

A veteran war photographer documents his own crisis in Gaza

Max Butterworth

Ali Hassan Jadallah, a Palestinian photojournalist who has covered years of war and tragedy in his native Gaza City, told his own story of loss this week. On Tuesday, he was pictured salvaging superhero costumes from the rubble of his home after it was hit by an Israeli air strike. His wife and young children survived the attack. 

“The fact that God saved me and my family from the blast is enough for me” he shared in an emotional post on Instagram. Yet the following day, his parent’s residence was hit by a missile in the Sheikh Radwan district of Gaza City. Ali later posted a video of himself while driving his father’s lifeless body in the back of a car to bury him, alone.

Jadallah confirmed to NBC News on Saturday that his twin brothers Khaled and Salah, sister Dua, father Hassan and numerous other family members all died in the strike.

“Everyone was killed, only my mother survived,” he said via WhatsApp. Images from the scene show him kissing her hand as she was pulled from the wreckage alive. 

Graphic video shows children and women who died in airstrike

Sirens and shouting can be heard in a very graphic video posted online showing a group of people who died while fleeing northern Gaza on Friday. Among the dead in the convoy were children and women, lying in pools of blood near vehicles.

The body of a small child was shown beside a woman and nearby a young boy lay dead in the street.

Seventy were killed after Israeli airstrikes hit convoys of Palestinian evacuees heading south in Gaza. Airstrikes continued on Saturday, hitting areas that included the south, where the Israeli military has told people to evacuate to from the north.

Hamas leader is ‘a dead man walking,’ IDF says

TEL AVIV — The Israeli military is vowing to hunt down the man it says was responsible for the attack: Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar. “He’s a dead man walking. We will get to that to man,” Lt Col Richard Hecht, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said Saturday. 

Long before Hamas terrorists burst through the Gaza border fence on Saturday, Sinwar, a Hebrew speaker, was seen by Israeli security officials as one of their most ruthless enemies.  

Born in a Gaza refugee camp in the early 1960s to parents displaced from their homes in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, he rose through the ranks of Hamas as an internal enforcer with a reputation for brutality.

Although he was captured by Israel in 1989 and sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in killing Israeli troops and Palestinian collaborators, he was freed in 2011 along with hundreds of Palestinian prisoners to secure the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas five years earlier.

Hundreds waiting at Rafah crossing as it remains closed, says woman trapped in Gaza

After getting a call from U.S. officials late Saturday to be at the Rafah crossing the next day at 12 p.m., Haneen Okal, a Palestinian-American from New Jersey debated with family for 12 hours over whether they would make the treacherous journey from north Gaza to the southern tip, where the strip borders Egypt.

“Lots of people are waiting here, outside the Palestinian gate. They are all waiting to get out of here, but the Palestinians are not here to open the gate, and the Egyptians are not there on their side too. Nobody has any information, any update,” she said.

Around 600 people were waiting outside the crossing, she added, though many had turned around, unsure if the news that they would be allowed to leave was real or not.

“Some family refused to leave our home. It was 12 hours of negotiating, going out from north to south, the streets were full of families, they were rushing and backing into cars with their bags,” Okal said. People without cars walked along roadsides to reach the south, she added, following Israeli evacuation orders for more than 1 million residents to leave the northern part of the strip.

Okal, a mother of three who returned to Gaza for the first time in nine years to visit family, said that she was scared that officials would not let her newborn son, Elias, pass into Egypt as he does not yet have a passport. She delivered him unexpectedly early in Gaza due to a medical emergency and was in the process of booking passport appointments in Tel Aviv when the war broke out, she said.

A normal Saturday in Jerusalem

JERUSALEM — Life appeared to continue as normal in Jerusalem, on the border of the West Bank, even as Gaza remained under siege further west.

Children injured after airstrikes hit southern Gaza

Injured children were rushed to the hospital in Khan Younis after airstrikes hit the city in southern Gaza. The area outside a hospital appeared to be chaotic as ambulances arrived and medics carried crying kids inside.

Egypt, Israel and the U.S. agree to allow foreign nationals leave Gaza

Egyptian officials said Egypt, Israel and the United States have agreed to allow foreigners in Gaza to pass through the Rafah crossing point later Saturday. One official said both Israel and Palestinian militant groups had agreed to facilitate their exit, and that talks were still underway about bringing in aid.

The officials were not authorized to brief journalists and so spoke on condition of anonymity.

Water shortage in Gaza ‘a matter of life and death’, U.N. agency says

Water has begun to run out in the Gaza strip, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine has said in a statement, putting 2 million people at risk of dehydration and contracting water-borne diseases from consuming contaminated fluids.

Gaza’s treatment plant and public water networks have stopped working due to the lack of fuel after Israel placed the coastal enclave under a “total siege” on Oct. 9, the statement said. Drinking water has also begun to run out at the U.N. base in the south of the strip, where people have been told to evacuate.

“It has become a matter of life and death. It is a must; fuel needs to be delivered now into Gaza to make water available for 2 million people,” said Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner-General.

“We need to truck fuel into Gaza now. Fuel is the only way for people to have safe drinking water. If not, people will start dying of severe dehydration, among them young children, the elderly and women. Water is now the last remaining lifeline,” he added.

Empty streets and rocket strikes in Israel, near northern Gaza

SDEROT, Israel — In the small Israeli city of Sderot, on the border with northern Gaza, the steady booms of outgoing Israeli artillery can be heard. Small arms are firing in the distance. And with drones and jets overhead, Israel is continuing to strike northern Gaza as many civilians there stream south.

The streets of Sderot are empty apart from police and military, as many of the city’s some 30,000 residents have left. Located inside the IDF’s declared military zone, Sderot remains in Hamas’ crosshairs.

Despite Israel’s heavy bombardment of Gaza, Hamas is still managing to launch rockets into Israeli territory — evidenced this morning, with a warning siren sounding in Sderot followed 15 seconds later by a barrage of rockets striking the city.

Biden ‘very emotional’ as he spoke with hostage families

TEL AVIV — President Joe Biden “was very emotional” in a Zoom call with American families of people taken hostage in Israel on Friday, one of the people who attended told NBC News.

Abbey Onn said it had been confirmed to her by Israeli officials that her cousins Carmela Dan, 80, and Noya Dan, 13, were being held hostage in Gaza. Three more of her cousins were missing, she added.

Biden assured her that “they consider the hostages missing as U.S. citizens, as their own, and that they will do everything they can — but that this is unchartered territory,” she said.

Onn, who lives in the Israeli city of Herzliya, said that the president stayed on the call for and hour and spoke of “ his own loss of his wife and daughter, and later on his son.” He said that he could “deeply identify” with their sense of loss and grief, Onn added.

Missiles strike southern Gaza early on Saturday

There were reports of bombings overnight near Khan Younis in southern Gaza — the area where people were told to flee for safety. On Saturday, intense airstrikes also continued east of Gaza City.

The Israeli military has continued to warn those in the north to evacuate south. Hospital administrators at Al Awda Hospital in northern Gaza, have however insisted that it would be impossible to evacuate hundreds of sick and injured people there.

‘Temporary’ blast walls in place at border crossing

Egyptian authorities have erected “temporary” blast walls on Egypt’s side of the Rafah crossing point with Gaza, two Egyptian officials say.

The crossing point has been closed since earlier this week after Israeli airstrikes hit close to its Palestinian side.

The officials said the blast walls were erected as part of “precautionary measures” Egypt has taken in recent days over growing concerns about a mass exodus of Palestinians.

One of the officials said the walls will be removed once a deal is reached with Israel to spare the crossing from its airstrikes.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief journalists.

Palestinians were fleeing in a mass exodus after Israel’s military told people to evacuate to the southern part of the besieged territory ahead of an expected ground invasion.

How Arabs living in Israel’s Negev desert are sitting ducks for Hamas

The shirtless man drops to one knee and begs for his life in Arabic, but he receives no mercy. A Hamas terrorist lifts his boot and lands two blows to the man’s bare torso. Then a second gunman kicks him in the side, followed by a third, propelling him to the ground. 

The grim scene unfolded at the kibbutz Re’im on the morning of Oct. 7 and was recorded by a dashboard camera.

The victim was Osama Abu Asa, a security guard who watched over stores in the Jewish community 5 miles from the Gaza border. He was pleading in Arabic to the terrorists, for he was an Arab himself — one of thousands of minority tribespeople living in shantytowns in Israel’s Negev desert, essentially trapped between two worlds.

Abu Asa’s body was later found with bullet wounds to the head and chest, his brother said.

“Osama was a good man,” the brother, Jawad Abu Asa, said in an interview, crying as he spoke. “He cared for his family, prayed on time and helped everyone, even the people of Gaza.”

Hamas’ surprise assault killed more than 1,300 people in Israel. The vast majority were Israeli Jews, but the dead also included Abu Asa and at least 14 other Bedouins, some of whom were killed in rocket attacks on their villages.

Read the full story here.

IDF conducting small raids into Gaza near the fence

Israeli troops are continuing to conduct small contained raids near the fence in Gaza, according to spokesperson Richard Hecht. Hecht also told journalists that he wasn’t aware of reports that bodies of hostages had been recovered from Gaza.

He reiterated that Israeli military was offering safe passage to the south of Gaza via a second route and blamed Hamas for preventing people from leaving the northern area.

Hecht added that he was “aware of talk of a humanitarian exit” for Americans in Gaza and said there would be more details to come.

WHO medical supplies arrive in Egypt

A plane carrying WHO medical supplies has landed near the Rafah crossing in Egypt, according to the organization’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

“We’re ready to deploy the supplies as soon as humanitarian access through the crossing is established,” Ghebreyesus said on X.

“We continue our plea to Israel to reconsider the decision to evacuate 1.1 million people. It will be a human tragedy,” he added.

The Rafah crossing is the border between Gaza and Egypt. It has been closed since last week, after sustaining multiple air strikes on the Palestinian side by the Israeli military. Though Egypt has said it is willing to assist in the distribution of humanitarian supplies into the strip along the corridor, it has long restricted the outward flow of Palestinian refugees.

France mobilizes 7,000 troops after teacher stabbed in Islamist attack

French President Emmanuel Macron has ordered 7,000 soldiers to be mobilized for increased security patrols, his office said on Saturday, a day after a teacher was stabbed to death in an Islamist attack.

France was put on its highest security alert on Friday after a 20-year-old man fatally stabbed a teacher and gravely wounded two other people in an attack at a school in the city of Arras in northern France.

Macron’s office said that the soldiers would be mobilized by Monday evening until further notice as part of an ongoing operation that regularly conducts patrols in major city centers and tourist sites.

The security alert comes as France hosts the Rugby World Cup and prepares to face South Africa on Saturday evening in their quarter-final.

‘A lot of people criticize us,’ Israeli special police officer says

ASHDOD, Israel — “I’ve got a feeling we are all alone,” an Israeli officer who identifies himself as a “fighter in a special police unit,” said late Friday night. “A lot of people criticize us.”

Noting criticism of Israel’s order for the entire population of northern Gaza to evacuate south, as well as scrutiny of some of the country’s response to Hamas’ unprecedented attack one week ago, the officer said: “Seeing the people hating us, they’re just … using their strength for nothing.”

The officer, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, said he did not want to see “Palestinian people killed” but felt Israel had to “strike back” at Hamas — even if it results in the death of civilians.

“We will never erase Gaza from the map. We will never kill 2.8 million people because that’s not us. We won’t do that,” he said.

IDF says it struck dozens of ‘terror targets’ and killed the head of Hamas’ aerial system

The IDF said fighter jets conducted “wide-scale strikes throughout the Gaza Strip” last night, including against dozens of Hamas terror targets and “Nukhba” operatives, referring to a special forces unit within Hamas that it said helped lead last week’s unprecedented attack.

It said fighter jets also struck an operational headquarters from which Hamas managed its aerial activity.

“During the strike, IDF fighter jets killed Merad Abu Merad who was the head of the Hamas Aerial System in Gaza City, and was largely responsible for directing terrorists during the massacre on Saturday,” the IDF said. NBC News was not immediately able to independently verify the developments.

Bombing continued overnight in Gaza

Explosions intermittently flashed in the darkness overnight in Gaza, with the booming sounds of shelling interrupting the silence. Hours earlier, a window of safety for residents to evacuate, as announced by the IDF, had expired.

IDF says it will allow movement on 2 Gaza streets for civilians to go south

The IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said the Israeli military would allow movement on two streets in Gaza “without any harm between the hours of 10:00-16:00″ local time.

“For your safety, take advantage of the short time to move south — from Beit Hanoun to Khan Yunis,” he said. “If you care about yourselves and your loved ones, go south according to our instructions.”

“Residents of the beach, sand, and west of Olive will also be allowed to move on Daldul and Al-Sana Streets towards Salah Al-Din and Al-Bahr Streets,” he said.

The left faces a reckoning as Israel divides Democrats

Joel Simonds, a Los Angeles-based rabbi involved in progressive causes, has always known that many of his ideological allies did not agree with him on Israel.  

But after this weekend’s terror attack, the worst killing of Jews since the Holocaust, Simonds said many liberal Jews feel abandoned by people they thought were friends, some of whom have expressed little sympathy for the Israelis killed while focusing instead on the plight of Palestinians.

American Jews, who are overwhelmingly liberal, have often supported social justice movements. Simonds said while most progressive leaders have offered support, he feels betrayed by others on the left who have not.

Israel has been so fraught in some progressive circles that many preferred not to talk about it, enforcing a sort of strategic silence to avoid dividing the movement and distracting it from common ground issues.

That long-stifled debate is now spilling into public view in heated and sometimes ugly ways, dividing Democrats and exposing what some say is antisemitism that has been allowed to fester on the left for years. 

Read the full story here.