What we know
- The United States has been widely criticized for vetoing a United Nations resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. China said the veto ''sends the wrong message,'' France and Qatar voiced their regret, while leading aid groups expressed dismay. Washington had circulated a rival draft resolution calling for a temporary pause in fighting.
- White House Middle East envoy Brett McGurk is traveling to Cairo today to continue discussions on a deal for the release of hostages held by Hamas and a temporary cease-fire. A Hamas delegation has also been in Egypt, as talks continue after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed Hamas' proposed deal as ''delusional.'' The U.S. has said it hopes for a cease-fire by next month, when Israel has vowed to begin an assault on the overcrowded city of Rafah unless a deal is reached.
- The World Food Program is pausing the delivery of food to northern Gaza until conditions are safe, saying its drivers were shot at and faced looting and beating. The agency said this decision would add to the ''unprecedented desperation'' in Gaza, after earlier warning the enclave is at risk of famine. UNICEF warned yesterday that Gaza faced an ''explosion'' in child deaths due to malnutrition and illness.
- More than 29,300 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. More than 69,300 have been injured, and thousands more are missing and presumed dead.
- Israeli military officials said at least 237 soldiers have been killed since the ground invasion of Gaza began.
'Promises of safe areas are empty,' Doctors Without Borders says after Israeli shelling of aid shelter kills 2
The "promises of safe areas are empty," and Israeli forces are not ensuring civilian safety in Gaza after two people were killed at its shelter in Khan Younis last night, the general director of Médecins Sans Frontières said.
According to the group, also known as Doctors Without Borders, an Israeli tank shell hit a known and clearly marked shelter where its aid workers and their families were housed in Al-Mawasi. The 64 people inside were not given an evacuation order and Israeli forces were "regularly informed" about the MSF team's location, the organization said.
"The amount of force being used in a densely populated urban area is staggering, and targeting a building knowing it is full of humanitarian workers and their families is unconscionable," MSF general director Meinie Nicolai, said in a statement.
A staff member's wife and daughter-in-law where killed in the hit to the building, and shelling in the area delayed ambulances for the injured for two hours, according to MSF.
“We are outraged and deeply saddened by these killings,” Nicolai said. “On the same day the United States chose to veto an immediate ceasefire, two daughters saw their mother and sister-in-law killed by an Israeli tank shell.”
The IDF declined to comment to NBC News on the matter, and the aid organization said it has contacted Israeli authorities seeking an explanation.
MSF worker who left Gaza days ago calls hit on colleagues' shelter incomprehensible
Karin Huster finished her mission in Rafah days before one of the homes sheltering Médecins Sans Frontières staffers was hit, killing two of her colleagues' family members and injuring several others.
“It’s just questioning whether we ever were safe even in our house?” Huster told NBC News in a call today.
The building that was hit was only a few minutes down the road from where Huster stayed during her five-week mission in Rafah, during which she helped coordinate the medical infrastructure for the organization. MSF said yesterday the shelter was shelled during an operation by Israeli forces, killing two people and injuring eight others.
"It's incomprehension," Huster said. "Obviously, it's anger, right, because our colleagues lost you know, a wife, daughter-in-law, five of their family members were injured. I mean... you know, it's beyond angry actually."
Huster spent five weeks in Rafah and saw many of the more than 1 million displaced Gazans either moving back to central Gaza or to the west to set up their tents of plastic sheeting on the beach.
Although Israel has not yet launched a ground assault on the border city, there were "strikes all the time." Despite the constant bombardment, which at one point Huster described as "hell on earth," she told NBC News that she was sure to return for another mission in Gaza.
"I mean, if we don't then who goes, right?"
In call for cease-fire, WHO chief calls Gaza a 'death zone'
The chief of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu, called the crisis in Gaza “inhumane” and again called for a cease-fire in the region.
“The health and humanitarian situation in Gaza is inhumane and continues to deteriorate,” Tedros said at a media briefing today.
“We need a cease-fire now. We need hostages to be released. We need the bombs to stop dropping, and we need unfettered humanitarian access. Humanity must prevail,” he said.
Ghebreyesu called the Gaza Strip a “death zone.”
“More than 29,000 people are dead; many more are missing, presumed dead; and many, many more are injured,” he said.
Harvard condemns student and faculty groups for posting antisemitic cartoon
BOSTON— Harvard University condemned what it called a “flagrantly antisemitic cartoon” that an undergraduate group posted on social media over the weekend. It also appeared on the Instagram account of Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.
Copied from a newsletter published by students in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, the image features a Black man and an Arab man with nooses around their necks, held by a hand imprinted with the Star of David that has a dollar sign in the middle of the star.
The image was removed and the student and faculty groups apologized, but the post prompted a storm of criticism that Harvard isn’t doing enough to protect its Jewish community.
“Perpetuating vile and hateful antisemitic tropes, or otherwise engaging in inflammatory rhetoric or sharing images that demean people on the basis of their identity, is precisely the opposite of what this moment demands of us,” Alan Garber, Harvard’s interim president, said in a letter yesterday to the school community.
In a statement today, the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and the African American Resistance Organization took responsibility for what they acknowledged is a “harmful antisemitic trope.”
The image was copied from a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee newsletter and included in an infographic urging Black and Arab people to unite in protest of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
“The inclusion of the offensive caricature was an unprompted, painful error — a combination of ignorance and inadequate oversight,” the student groups’ statement said. “It never should have been published to begin with. We wholeheartedly apologize for the immense harm we caused.”
New Israeli NGO report says sexual violence on Oct. 7, including at IDF bases, was 'systematic'
A new report by an Israeli nonprofit calls the sexual violence carried out during the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack “brutal” and “systematic.”
The report by the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel (ARCCI) outlines cases of rape, mutilation or abuse at the Nova music festival, in the kibbutzim and villages in southern Israel, at Israel Defense Forces bases and in captivity inside Gaza. It leans on testimonies of eyewitnesses, first responders, people who prepared bodies for burial, and returned hostages.
The report notes the ARCCI received information about sexual assault of female IDF soldiers that it cannot make public at this time because the information is classified.
“The systematic sexual violence was brutal and sadistic,” the CEO of ARCCI Orit Solitzeanu told NBC News on Wednesday. “It was a pattern of behavior planned and executed.”
Solitzeanu said in a previous interview that she was disappointed in the international human rights community when very few spoke out about the sexual violence carried out against women in Israel during the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and led to the capture of about 250 more.
Hamas has denied that its militants carried out sexual violence on Oct. 7.
NBC News has previously reported on sexual violence carried out on Oct. 7.
U.K. announces new aid to Gaza; members of Parliament walk out over cease-fire debate
U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron announced today that the country would be sending four tons of supplies to Tal Al-Hawa Hospital in northern Gaza.
Jordanian officials are assisting in getting the supplies to the hospital, a move that Cameron said would benefit thousands of patients. Supply chains for aid in Gaza have not been delivered at scale, particularly in northern Gaza, where the population is essentially cut off from the rest of the strip.
Cameron noted that the situation is "desperate."
"We are calling for an immediate humanitarian pause to allow additional aid into Gaza as quickly as possible and bring hostages home," he wrote in a post on X.
Meanwhile, the House of Commons saw some chaos as legislators debated a motion to call for a cease-fire in Gaza.
The speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, accepted amendments both by Labour and the government, which was a break in convention that angered members of the other parties. According to Sky News, members of the Scottish National Party and Conservative Party walked out in protest.
IDF says its troops uncovered another tunnel network used by Hamas
The Israel Defense Forces said today that its Yahalom unit has uncovered another network of underground tunnels it believes to be utilized by Hamas leadership.
According to the IDF, this tunnel network was discovered under Khan Younis, where soldiers engaged in "close-quarters combat" with Hamas militants. The IDF said the tunnel network was utilized as a hideout for senior members of Hamas and the group's Khan Younis Brigade.
"The tunnel was investigated and scanned for intelligence, sleeping quarters, electrical and water infrastructure," the IDF said. "The tunnel stretches over a kilometer, and millions of shekels were invested in it.
The tunnel was subsequently destroyed by the Israeli military. NBC News is not able to independently verify the IDF's statement.
Signs of potential movement on a new hostage deal, Gantz says
There are indications of movement for a new hostage deal outline after weeks of negotiations appeared to stall, said Minister Benny Gantz, a member of Israel's war cabinet.
Gantz held a press conference today in which he did not provide details but said that there are attempts "to promote a new outline." Hamas and Israel leadership previously seemed to be at a standstill over details on a cease-fire and the number of Palestinian detainees released in exchange for hostages.
The minister went on to reiterate Israel's stance on a potential military operation in Rafah, which Israel says to be the last Hamas stronghold in Gaza.
"I repeat, if there is no plan for the release of hostages, we will also operate during Ramadan," Gantz said. "Since the abductees outline, we have not stopped fighting for even one day — and we will not stop even for a minute, without our abductees being returned."
Israeli tanks besiege Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis with 10,000 people inside, says UNRWA
Israeli tanks have besieged Nasser Hospital located in Khan Younis, according to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Reportedly, there are 10,000 people in the hospital, including 300 medical staff. Seventy medical staffers are currently detained, according to a UNRWA post on X.
Patients and medical staff inside the hospital have no access to food, water, or baby formula. Reports say that eight ICU patients have died due to lack of oxygen.