Israeli ground forces are attacking Hamas militants and infrastructure in northern Gaza as warplanes strike across the sealed-off territory. Buoyed by the first successful rescue of a captive held by Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected calls for a cease-fire and again vowed to crush the militant group’s ability to govern Gaza or threaten Israel.

More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians have fled their homes, with hundreds of thousands sheltering in packed U.N.-run schools-turned-shelters or in hospitals alongside thousands of wounded patients.

The Palestinian death toll in the Israel-Hamas war has reached 8,525, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. In the occupied West Bank, more than 122 Palestinians have been killed in violence and Israeli raids.

More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, most of them civilians slain in the initial Hamas rampage that started the fighting Oct. 7. In addition, 240 hostages were taken from Israel into Gaza by the militant group. One of the captives, a female Israeli soldier, was rescued in a special forces operation.

Currently:

    1. A UN envoy says the Israel-Hamas war is spilling into Syria, adding to instability there

    2. UN agency in Gaza says urgent cease-fire is a matter of life and death for Palestinians

    3. An Israeli ministry proposes transferring Gaza civilians to Egypt’s Sinai

    4. This war might hit Israel’s economy harder than past wars with Hamas

    5. Biden’s Cabinet secretaries will push Congress to send aid to Israel and Ukraine

    6. Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Here’s what is happening in the latest Israel-Hamas war:

HOUTHI REBELS SAY THEY FIRED BALLISTIC MISSILES AND DRONES AT ISRAEL

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen issued a video statement on Tuesday claiming to have fired ballistic missiles and drones at Israel, saying it was the third such operation. They threatened to carry out more strikes “until the Israeli aggression stops.”

The claims by the Houthis draw Iran closer into the ongoing Israel-Hamas war as Tehran remains a main sponsor.

Earlier this month, a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Red Sea intercepted three cruise missiles and several drones launched toward Israel by the Houthis, who control much of northern Yemen, including its capital, Sanaa. Mysterious projectiles have also struck inside Egypt, near the Israeli border.

Iran has long denied arming the Houthis even as it has been transferring rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, missiles and other weaponry to the Yemeni militia using sea routes. Independent experts, Western nations and United Nations experts have traced components seized aboard other detained vessels back to Iran.

A U.N. arms embargo has prohibited weapons transfers to the Houthis since 2014, when Yemen’s civil war erupted.

There also has been at least one attack that the Houthis claimed where suspicion later fell fully on Iran. In 2019, cruise missiles and drones successfully penetrated Saudi Arabia and struck the heart of its oil industry in Abqaiq. That attack temporarily halved the kingdom’s production and spiked global energy prices by the biggest percentage since the 1991 Gulf War.

While the Houthis claimed the Abqaiq attack, the U.S., Saudi Arabia and analysts blamed Iran. U.N. experts similarly said it was “unlikely” the Houthis carried out the assault, though Tehran denied being involved.

WHO SAYS SERVICES AT HOSPITAL SEVERELY REDUCED DUE TO LACK OF POWER, SUPPLIES

CAIRO — The World Health Organization said services have been “severely reduced” at the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, the main facility treating cancer patients in Gaza, due to a lack of power and dwindling supplies.

Writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, the agency said reports of airstrikes in the hospital’s vicinity over the past two days were “extremely concerning.”

“Services have been severely reduced because of cut-off of electricity and restricted entry of medicines, other medical supplies, fuel and water,” the agency said.

HEZBOLLAH SAYS IT FIRED ANTI-TANK MISSILES AT ISRAELI FORCES

BEIRUT -- Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group says its fighters have fired anti-tank missiles toward an Israeli force along the border of the two countries.

Hezbollah said its fighters scored direct hits Tuesday on the Israeli force that was laying an ambush along the border.

Hezbollah and Israeli forces have been exchanging fire along the border following the Oct. 7 attack by the militant Hamas group on southern Israel.

GAZA HEALTH MINISTRY SAYS 219 PEOPLE DIED IN THE PAST DAY, BRINGING TOTAL TO 8,525

CAIRO — The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said Tuesday it registered the deaths of at least 219 people in the past day, bringing the death toll to 8,525 since the war began.

Spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said in a televised news conference that the fatalities include 3,542 children and 2,187 women.

He said the main power generator in the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia, north of Gaza, has stopped working due to a lack of fuel.

He warned that more hospitals could go out of service in the coming days if fuel isn’t allowed into the besieged territory.

UN HUMANITARIAN CHIEF SAYS HE FELT HELPLESS WHILE TALKING TO TRAPPED PALESTINIANS

CAIRO -- The United Nations humanitarian chief said he felt helpless as he spoke by phone Tuesday with Palestinian families trapped in the war between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza.

“We don’t want to die,” Martin Griffiths quoted families telling him, adding that, “What they’ve endured since October 7 is beyond devastating,”

“And when an 8-year-old tells you that she doesn’t want to die, it’s hard not to feel helpless,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

On Monday, the head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees told a U.N. emergency meeting that “an immediate humanitarian cease-fire has become a matter of life and death for millions” in Gaza.

ISRAELI AIRLINE EL AL CHANGES FLIGHT PATH TO THAILAND

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Israeli airline El Al on Tuesday began flying an hours-longer route between Tel Aviv and Bangkok, Thailand, as Israel's war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip rages on.

El Al flight ELY 85 did not take the airline’s new route over Oman on Tuesday. Instead, it reverted to a longer route in which it first flew south over Saudi Arabia and the Red Sea before turning east over the Horn of Africa and heading into the Indian Ocean.

The route will keep El Al’s aircraft farther from Iran, which has backed Hamas.

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL HEAD DERIDES AMBASSADOR FOR WEARING YELLOW STAR OF DAVID

JERUSALEM -- The chairman of Israel’s Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, derided Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations for putting on a yellow Star of David patch during his address to the Security Council on Monday, saying it “belittles both the victims of the Holocaust and the State of Israel.”

“The yellow patch symbolizes the helplessness of the Jewish people when it was at the mercy of others,” Dayan posted on X, formerly called Twitter. “Today we have an independent state and a strong army. We are masters of our fate. Today we put on our lapels the blue and white flag (of Israel), not a yellow patch.”

Nazis forced Jews to wear yellow six-pointed Star of David patches during the Holocaust.

Ambassador Gilad Erdan donned the patch during a council meeting on the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, where more than 8,300 people have been killed, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, hundreds of thousands have been displaced, and food and basic supplies have dwindled sharply since Israel went to war against the Palestinian territory’s Hamas rulers.

Erdan told the Security Council that he would wear the patch, inscribed with the words “Never Again,” until the council condemns Hamas’s bloody Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel, which touched off the war. More than 1,400 people were killed and about 240 taken hostage during the attack.

BIDEN ADMINISTRATION URGES IMMEDIATE AID FOR ISRAEL AND UKRAINE

WASHINGTON — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken will make the case Tuesday that the United States should immediately send aid to Israel and Ukraine, testifying at a Senate hearing as the administration’s massive $105 billion emergency aid request for conflicts in those countries and others has already hit roadblocks in the divided Congress.

President Joe Biden’s Cabinet secretaries will be advocating for the foreign aid to a mostly friendly audience in the Senate, where majority Democrats and many Republicans support tying aid for the two countries together. But it faces much deeper problems in the Republican-led House, where new Speaker Mike Johnson has proposed cutting out the Ukraine aid and focusing on Israel alone, and cutting money for the Internal Revenue Service to pay for it.

The drastically narrowed House proposal, which would cost more than $14 billion, faced immediate resistance among Senate Democrats -- and put pressure on Senate Republicans who support the Ukraine aid but are conscious of growing concerns about it within their party. The differing approaches signal problems ahead for the aid as both countries engage in long-simmering, defining conflicts that Biden and many U.S. lawmakers say could have fundamental ramifications for the rest of the world.

CANADA SAYS HUMANITARIAN ACCORD URGENTLY NEEDED

TORONTO — Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly said Monday that a humanitarian agreement is urgently needed to help people in the Gaza Strip.

Speaking to the Economic Club of Canada, Joly called for a temporary pause in hostilities in the Israel-Hamas war to allow more aid to get into Gaza.

"The humanitarian situation facing the Palestinian people, facing Palestinian women and children, is dire,” she said.

Joly reiterated Canada’s unequivocal condemnation of Hamas for its attacks on Israelis and said Israel has a right to defend itself against terrorism ``in accordance with international law.″ She also criticized attacks by extremist Israelis on Palestinians in the West Bank.

UNWRA HEAD SAYS CIVIL ORDER BREAKDOWN ENDANGERS AGENCY'S OPERATIONS

UNITED NATIONS — The head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees is warning that “an immediate humanitarian cease-fire has become a matter of life and death for millions,” stressing that “the present and future of Palestinians and Israelis depend on it.”

Philippe Lazzarini warned during an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Monday that a further breakdown of civil order, following the recent break-ins at the agency's warehouses by panicked Palestinians searching for food and other aid, will make it extremely difficult for the largest U.N. agency in Gaza to continue operating.

He said in a virtual briefing that he is worried about a spillover of the conflict and urged all 193 U.N. member nations “to change the trajectory of this crisis."

The commissioner-general of the agency known as UNRWA, also said 64 of its staff have been killed in just over three weeks — the latest only two hours prior when UNRWA’s head of security in mid-Gaza was killed with his wife and eight children.

Lazzarini said most Palestinians in Gaza “feel trapped in a war they have nothing to do with” and “they feel the world is equating all of them to Hamas.” He stressed that the Oct. 7 Hamas atrocities in Israel don’t absolve Israel from its obligations under international humanitarian law, starting with the protection of civilians.

ISRAEL BACKTRACKS ON REFUSING TO GRANT ENTRY VISAS TO UN OFFICIALS

GENEVA — Israeli officials are going back on their promised refusal to grant entry visas to U.N. officials.

Martin Griffiths, the head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, tweeted Monday that he was in Israel — less than a week after Israel’s U.N. ambassador said it had “refused” to grant Griffiths a visa.

Israeli officials had expressed outrage over comments last Wednesday by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that the deadly Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants “did not happen in a vacuum.”

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s U.N. ambassador, accused Guterres on Israel’s Army Radio of justifying a slaughter, called for his resignation and said Israel would “refuse to grant visas to U.N. representatives.”

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Guterres stood by his remarks.

On Monday, Israel’s ambassador in Geneva, Meirav Eilon Shahar, said, “We haven’t said categorically that we’re not giving visas. We are … We understand their need to be there.”

Eilon Shahar confirmed that Griffiths was in Israel, as well as other officials, including Han Kluge, the regional head of the World Health Organization.

But she continued to voice Israel’s frustration that U.N. institution chiefs didn’t speak out more forcefully against Hamas militants for “butchering civilians and women in such a vicious way.”

“The United Nations has let down the people of Israel,” Eilon Shahar added. “When I say the United Nations, I’m talking about the multilateral organizations have let down the people of Israel.”

Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. , source Associated Press News