What we know
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late yesterday that he is open to negotiations, even as the IDF advanced its military operations into Sunday.
- The killing by the IDF of three Israeli hostages in Gaza is leading to increasing pressure for another round of negotiations between Israel and Hamas to release the remaining hostages over continuing the full-scale offensive in Gaza. The killings have fueled rising Israeli anger at the government and Netanyahu over the war in Gaza.
- The IDF said it found a sign written on what appeared to be a white sheet with leftover food that said, "Help! 3 hostages." The sign was found in a building near where three hostages were killed after being mistaken for combatants.
- In a statement, Hamas said that it would not conduct negotiations until Israel stopped its assault on Palestinians "once and for all." It has conveyed this position to Qatar, which mediated the hostage-for-prisoner swap and cease-fire late last month.
- Telecommunications services in parts of Gaza are slowly being restored amid a communications blackout that isolated the enclave from the outside world and hampered aid and rescue efforts.
- Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin embarked on a tour of the Middle East this weekend, with stops scheduled in Israel, Qatar and Bahrain. He plans to discuss the “eventual cessation of high-intensity ground operations and airstrikes” with Israel, reiterating a U.S. push to the end ground hostilities.
- More than 18,700 Palestinians have been killed, with 70% of them women and children, according to the territory's health officials. The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.2 million people are displaced, and an estimated half face starvation amid an unfolding humanitarian crisis.
- Israeli military officials say 116 soldiers have been killed during the country's ground invasion in Gaza, which came after 1,200 people were killed and about 240 hostages were seized by Hamas on Oct. 7.
- NBC News’ Richard Engel, Raf Sanchez, Hala Gorani, Hallie Jackson, Ali Arouzi and Chantal Da Silva are reporting from the region.
This live blog is now closed. For the latest updates please click here.
Bomb threat made to New Jersey school, law enforcement official says
Educational facilities operated by New Jersey’s Barnert Temple were the subject of a threat today, a law enforcement official said.
"I can confirm that there was a hoax bomb threat there, but I don’t have any additional information to provide," Elizabeth Rebein, spokesperson for the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, said by email.
It was one of several Jewish institutions targeted by email threats this weekend, authorities said. So far, none of threats, which mostly involved claims of bomb placement, have been considered credible.
Leaders of the Franklin Lakes temple, established in 1847 and now dedicated to Reform Judaism, say its congregation is the oldest in the state. It has a preschool, hosts classes for students in grades K-12, and produces online courses for adults.
Israeli hostage says she found the strength to survive in her 2 daughters
TEL AVIV — Tantrums, tears, temperature, toilet accidents. These travails of childhood are familiar to any parent. But for Doron Katz Asher, the daily whims of children took on a new, frightening dimension while in Hamas captivity with her two young daughters.
If the girls cried, militants would bang on the door of the room where she was being held. When they were hungry, she didn’t always have anything to feed them. She slept with one eye open, always keeping watch over her daughters.
“(I felt) Fear. Fear that maybe because my daughters are crying and are making some noise they’ll get some directive from above to take them, to do something to them,” Katz Asher told Israel Channel 12 TV in a lengthy interview broadcast Saturday night. “Constant fear.”
Her account builds on a growing number of freed captives who are sharing their harrowing stories of weeks in captivity even as roughly 129 hostages remain.
Katz Asher, 34, and her daughters Raz, 4, and Aviv, 2, were visiting family in Kibbutz Nir Oz when Hamas attacked the sleepy farming community on Oct. 7. Katz Asher, her daughters and her mother were put on a tractor and driven to Gaza. An exchange of fire erupted between the militants who snatched them and Israeli forces, killing her mother and leaving her and Aviv lightly wounded, she said in the interview.
After they made it to Gaza, Katz Asher said she and her daughters were taken to a family’s apartment, where her wounds were stitched up without anesthetics on a couch as her girls looked on. She did not say if Aviv was treated.
The father of the house spoke Hebrew, which he said he had learned years earlier working in Israel. A Palestinian mother and two daughters served as their guards for the 16 days they were held in the home. They were told to keep quiet, but were given coloring pencils and paper and passed the time drawing. Katz Asher said she started teaching her 4-year-old how to write in Hebrew. The first word she taught was “aba,” or “dad.”
As the sounds of the Israeli military’s fierce bombing campaign rang out around them, her captors fed her false hope, telling her a deal was imminent for their release. She and her daughters would eventually be freed in a temporary cease-fire deal in late November.
With food running low at the family home, one night she was dressed in Muslim attire that concealed her identity and she and her daughters were forced to walk for 15 minutes to a hospital that was not named in the interview, where they were sealed in a room with other Israeli captives who she recognized. Ten people were locked together in a 130-square-foot room with a sink but no mattresses. The window was sealed shut, food was inconsistent and using a toilet hinged on the permission of the captors.
“They could open after five minutes or after an hour and a half,” she said, echoing similar testimony from other freed captives. But, she added, “small girls can’t hold it.”
Katz Asher said one of her daughters had a fever of 104 degrees Fahrenheit for three days straight. To bring it down, she ran cold water over her forehead.
They made a deck of cards and drew the foods they badly missed to pass the time. Katz Asher saved her own small portions of food — pita with spreadable cheese and spiced rice with meat — so that her daughters wouldn’t go hungry.
Her daughters had an incessant list of questions about their ordeal, the innocence of a child’s curiosity colliding with an inexplicable calamity. “When will we return to dad at home? And when will they return to day care? And why is the door locked? Why can’t we just go home? And how will we even know the way home?”
All the while, with dread engulfing her, Katz Asher said she projected calm to her daughters, promising them, and perhaps herself, they would go home soon.
“What helped me survive there was that my daughters were with me,” she said. “I had something to fight for.”
IDF denies attacking civilians, says it found Hamas operations in Kamal Adwan hospital
TEL AVIV — Following reports of a raid at Kamal Adwan hospital, the IDF released a statement confirming that it was operating in the complex but denied allegations that it was attacking civilians.
"Before the IDF entered the compound, a dialogue with medical teams was carried out," the statement said. "IDF forces allowed a humanitarian transition to evacuate the civilians and injured."
The statement added that a component of the hospital’s area was destroyed as part of efforts to uncover a shaft but there were no children involved and no civilians buried. The IDF noted that there were dead bodies that had been buried in the area before their arrival, but did not address accusations that bulldozers damaged the cadavers.
According to the IDF, soldiers found weapons, classified documents and tactical means of communication hidden inside incubators meant for babies belonging to Hamas. NBC News has not independently verified the IDF's claims about Hamas operations.
Threats emailed to synagogues, Jewish organizations in 8 states and Washington
Hoax threats were sent to more than a dozen synagogues and other Jewish institutions in at least eight states and Washington, D.C., this weekend, officials said.
In each instance, the threats — most of which have been about bombs — appear to have been emailed, according to statements from synagogues, Jewish organizations and law enforcement.
Synagogues and Jewish organizations in Maine, Michigan, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Colorado, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., received the threats. It wasn’t immediately clear if they were all related.
In some areas, more than one location was targeted. Police in Boulder, Colorado, said an emailed bomb threat sent to Congregation Har HaShem was also sent to multiple other synagogues in the area. The Roswell Police Department said two synagogues in the Georgia city north of Atlanta, and others in the metro area received “identical threats.” The Jewish Federation of Central Alabama said six of the seven Jewish entities in central Alabama were threatened.
The Metropolitan Police Department said multiple Washington synagogues got threats, noting, “there are no known credible threats, nor any intelligence indicating intent by any groups to attack or disrupt any religious or social institutions in the District of Columbia.”
In Tennessee, the Jewish Federation of Greater Nashville said emailed threats were sent to it and “numerous other Jewish communal organizations.”
“These threats are part of a national trend to harass and intimidate American Jews,” the federation said in a statement. “We will not be afraid, and will continue to live proud and joyful Jewish lives in our amazing Nashville community.”
The FBI said it was aware of the numerous threats.
“While we have no information to indicate a specific and credible threat, we will continue to work with our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners to gather, share, and act upon threat information as it comes to our attention,” the FBI said in a statement. “We urge the public to remain vigilant, and report any and all suspicious activity and/or individuals to law enforcement immediately.”
Defense Secretary Austin arrives in Bahrain for Middle East visit
WHO 'extremely concerned' over reports of Kamal Adwan Hospital raid
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the organization is “extremely concerned” following reports of a raid at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza.
The raid left the hospital nonfunctional and resulted in the death of at least eight patients, according to the WHO. The organization is also seeking information on staff members who were detained.
“We learned that many patients had to self-evacuate at great risk to their health and safety, with ambulances unable to reach the facility,” Tedros said in a post on X. “Of the deceased patients, several died due to lack of adequate health care, including a 9-year-old child.”
Al Jazeera employee uses Emmy speech to honor colleagues in Gaza
AJ+ show host Yara Elmjouie used his speech after winning an Emmy Award yesterday to honor his Al Jazeera colleagues, while executive producer Shadi Rahimi held a sign that read, "killing journalists is a war crime."
"I cannot in good conscience stand here before you today and not talk about the tragedy unfolding in Gaza and my Al Jazeera colleagues who are covering it," he said. "Yesterday, our cameraman Samer was killed in an Israeli airstrike. Another colleague, Wael, was wounded after losing his wife and children in another Israeli airstrike earlier. ... And don't stop sharing the stories of those who do not have access in the corridors of power."
Samer AbuDaqa and Wael al-Dahdouh were reporting in Khan Younis when an Israeli drone launched a missile in the area they were in, according to Al Jazeera. The outlet accused Israel of deliberately targeting journalists in the war zone and said in a statement that it was asking its lawyers to "urgently refer" AbuDaqa's death to the International Criminal Court.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has confirmed 64 journalists have been killed since the start of the war, 57 of whom were Palestinian.
We can’t find solutions if we can’t agree on basic historical facts
A 2020 survey found U.S. millennials and Gen Zers don’t know basic facts about the Holocaust. Ali Velshi walks through the astonishing statistics surrounding the lack of understanding of the Holocaust and its consequences.
IDF alleges it found a large Hamas tunnel underneath Erez border crossing
The IDF said in an X post today that it has discovered a "massive tunnel system" underneath the Erez border crossing, which was utilized by Gazans to enter Israel for work prior to Hamas' Oct. 7 attack.
The system spans more than two miles and an entrance was found roughly 1,300 feet from the crossing, according to the IDF. The IDF alleged that the tunnels were a project overseen by the brother of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and released a video of him allegedly in a car passenger seat being driven through the tunnels.
A different video that the IDF purports to be Hamas footage recovered by Israeli intelligence shows men walking around what appears to be a large underground shaft with a track laid down. In one clip, men hold a tool to a dirt wall.
NBC News has not independently verified the video or the claims made by the Israeli military.
IDF accused of running over dead bodies with bulldozer outside of Gaza hospital
The Israeli military is accused of crushing cadavers with a bulldozer outside of the Kamal Adwan Hospital during a raid in Gaza, according to both the Ministry of Health and a journalist.
Al Jazeera's Anas Al-Sharif posted a video to social media walking around the hospital complex following an IDF raid, describing a terrible stench and body parts strewn in the debris. He said that witnesses said displaced people and injured patients were among the dead.
"This is the body of one of the injured (patients) who were inside the hospital. … The bulldozers drove over them and left," Al-Sharif said, according to an NBC News translation.
Gaza's Ministry of Health alleged that the IDF dug a hole and dumped the bodies in it using a bulldozer. The ministry demanded an international investigation into the scene at the hospital.
The IDF has not yet responded to a request for comment on the allegations. NBC News is not able to verify the claims but was able to verify Al-Sharif's location in the video he posted online, and Reuters had similar footage of the scene outside Kamal Adwan.
A witness interviewed by Reuters, who was not named, told the outlet on camera that "people were buried here under the rubble." A man, also unnamed, told Reuters that his 25-year-old son was a patient and he had left to get him his medicine.
He showed the camera a box of what he said was medication, and added that he believed his son was underneath the rubble.