Israel-Hamas LIVE: Israel confirms death of female IDF soldier seen in Hamas hostage video as Shifa hospital says it has buried 179 people in mass grave

Human Rights Watch has said an Israeli strike that killed a Lebanese reporter’s sister and her three young granddaughters should be investigated as an ‘apparent war crime’.

On November 5, an Israeli strike on a car in south Lebanon killed the sister of radio correspondent Samir Ayoub and her three granddaughters, aged 10, 12 and 14, Lebanese state media said.

‘This attack by Israeli military forces that struck a car carrying a family fleeing violence shows a reckless disregard for civilian life,’ said Ramzi Kaiss, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch, in a statement.

‘Their killing is a violation of the laws of war, and Israel’s allies, like the United States, should respond to this apparent war crime by demanding accountability for this unlawful strike,’ Kaiss said.

Human Rights Watch said it found no evidence of a military target in the vicinity of the strike. ‘But if there were one, targeting a car carrying civilians… makes the strike unlawful,’ Kaiss said.

• The border area between the two countries has seen daily exchanges of fire, in particular between Iran-backed group Hezbollah and Israel, since the start of the Israel-Hamas war last month.

Turkey’s foreign minister told his Australian counterpart in a call today that Israel’s targeting of hospitals and schools in Gaza amounted to an ‘open violation of international law’, a Turkish diplomatic source said.

Hakan Fidan also emphasised the urgency of achieving a full ceasefire as soon as possible and the need for unhindered access of humanitarian aid into the enclave, the source said.

People trapped inside Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital plan to start burying bodies within the hospital compound today without Israeli approval because the situation has become untenable, two sources at the hospital told Retuers.

Dr. Ahmed Al Mokhallalati, a surgeon, and Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra said in separate telephone interviews from within the compound that more than 100 bodies had accumulated there, creating an acute sanitary crisis.

‘We are planning to bury them today in a mass grave inside the Al Shifa medical complex. It is going to be very dangerous as we don’t have any cover or protection from the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross), but we have no other options, the corpses of the martyrs began to decompose,’ said Qidra.

‘The men are digging right now as we speak.’

Britain’s Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) has removed a member of its council from his position after he said Adolf Hitler would have been proud of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, PA reports.

Wasim Haq, who was appointed to the LTA Council in March 21 to help promote diversity and inclusion within the sport, has been axed after claiming in a social media post – since deleted – over the weekend that ‘Adolf Hitler would be proud of Benjamin Netanyahu’ amid Israel’s ongoing military action in Gaza.

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Another victim of the October 7 massacre perpetrated by Hamas terrorists has been named as Vivian Silver.

The US Embassy in Jerusalem said in a post on social media that Silver partnered with them ‘on various initiatives bringing Jews & Arabs together and tirelessly advocated for the improvement in quality of life for Palestinians.’

It is understood she was killed at her home in kibbutz Be’eri. On social media, people saying they knew her described her as a peace activist.

Even five weeks on, victims of the attack are still being identified.

Late on Friday, Israel revised the death toll of the terror attack to ‘around 1,200’ – down from an initial figure of 1,400.

Off-duty members of the IDF have been pictured joining Jewish worshippers at Jerusalem’s Western Wall.

In one photo from the holy site, a young child is seen grabbing hold of a military-grade rifle slung over the back of one of the soldiers.

The pictures were taken on Monday after Israel’s Chief Rabbinate Council called for a special day of prayer and mourning, to be held on Monday evening – the first day of the Jewish month of Kislev.

More than 1,500 anti-Semitic acts and comments have been recorded in France since the outbreak of the war, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin has said.

There have been growing tensions in France, home to large Jewish and Muslim communities, as the war rages in the Gaza Strip.

‘There have been 1,518 anti-Semitic acts or remarks’, Darmanin told broadcaster Europe 1 in an interview.

This was a more than three-fold increase compared to the whole of 2022, when 436 anti-Semitic acts or remarks were recorded.

‘These are mainly tags and insults, but there are also assaults and injuries’, Darmanin added.

Those acts resulted in 571 arrests, the ministry told AFP news agency.

The Israeli military has claimed its forces have uncovered a Hamas terror base in and beneath a children’s hospital with guns, rockets and grenades found along with babies’ bottles and nappies.

The military released footage of what it said was a Hamas weapons cache, including explosive vests and rocket-propelled grenades, inside Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital.

Israel’s chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari showed rooms in the hospital’s basement where the IDF believe Hamas terrorists were holding some of the around 240 hostages they abducted during their initial attack on October 7.

‘Hamas uses hospitals as an instrument of war,’ said Hagari in a room decorated with a colourful children’s drawing of a tree on the wall. On the floor lay explosive vests, bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles.

‘Underneath the hospital, in the basement, we found a Hamas command and control centre, suicide-bomb vests, grenades, AK-47 assault rifles, explosive devices, RPGs, and other weapons, computers, money, etc,’ Hagari said.

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The Israeli army has confirmed the death of Noa Marciano, a woman soldier held captive in Gaza by Palestinian militant group Hamas.

A statement from the army called Marciano ‘a fallen IDF soldier abducted by a terror organisation,’ a day after the army confirmed her identity following the release by Hamas of a video showing the young woman in captivity.

On Monday, Hamas’s military wing issued a video of Marciano identifying herself and calling on Israel to stop its bombing campaign.

This was juxtaposed with a picture of her apparently dead.

Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas’s military wing, said Marciano was killed in an Israeli strike. The Israeli army did not say how she was killed.

France’s Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu is being dispatched as of Tuesday to the Middle East to discuss the Gaza situation and regional security issues at the request of French President Emmanuel Macron, Lecornu said on X.

‘This trip will start in Egypt and will continue in the Gulf region. It will end Friday in Israel, the first time a French Defence minister visits the country since 2000,’ he said.

Eight Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said today.

Seven Palestinians were killed during an Israeli military raid on the northern city of Tulkarem, the health ministry and a local hospital said.

Witnesses reported clashes in the area and a large deployment of Israeli soldiers seeking to make arrests.

The Israeli army said its forces conducted ‘counterterrorism activities’ in the city, during which ‘engineering vehicles uncovered explosive devices planted on routes to attack the forces’.

In a separate incident near the southern West Bank city Hebron, a 20-year-old Palestinian was killed by ‘occupation bullets’, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the Hebron incident.

Brazil’s president sparked a row on Monday by accusing Israel of ‘killing innocent people without any criteria’ in the Gaza Strip, deeming its actions there ‘as grave’ as the October 7 attacks by the Hamas terror group.

‘After the act of terrorism provoked by Hamas, the consequences, the solution of the state of Israel, is as grave as that of Hamas,’ said Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at a ceremony in Brasilia welcoming Brazilians who had been evacuated from Gaza.

‘They are killing innocent people without any criteria,’ said Lula. He also accused Israel of ‘dropping bombs where there are children, hospitals, on the pretext that a terrorist is there.’

‘They are not killing soldiers, they are killing children,’ he told journalists at the Brasilia Air Base, claiming the number of women and children killed or missing was unheard of.

Lula, 78, who hugged and kissed the returnees on the tarmac, said he had ‘never’ seen ‘such brutal and inhuman violence against innocent people’.

‘This is inexplicable. First you have to save the women and children, then you fight with whomever you want,’ Lula said.

But representatives of Brazil’s Jewish community denounced his remarks as ‘erroneous’, ‘unfair’ and ‘dangerous’.

They said the comments ‘put Israel and Hamas on the same level’, and defended the ‘visible and proven’ efforts of the Israeli authorities ‘to save Palestinian civilians’.

‘Our community expects balance from our authorities,’ added the Israeli Confederation of Brazil, which claims to represent some 120,000 Brazilian Jews, the second largest community in the region, in a statement.

The director of Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital has said 179 people, including babies and patients who died in the medical centre’s intensive care unit, have been buried in a ‘mass grave’ at the complex.

‘We were forced to bury them in a mass grave,’ said director Mohammad Abu Salmiyah, adding that seven babies and 29 intensive care patients were among those buried after hospital fuel supplies ran out.

‘There are bodies littered in the hospital complex and there is no longer electricity at the morgues,’ he said, as no fuel has entered the Gaza Strip since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7.

On Tuesday, a man and a woman died in the ICU bringing the number of people who had died in the unit to 29, Salmiyah said.

A journalist inside the hospital who is collaborating with AFP news agency said the stench of decomposing bodies was everywhere in the facility.

Time is running out for 36 newborn babies at Gaza’s biggest hospital.

Israeli tanks have taken up positions outside Al Shifa Hospital, which Israel says sits atop tunnels housing a headquarters for Hamas who are using patients as shields.

US President Joe Biden said hospitals in the Gaza Strip must be protected and he hoped for ‘less intrusive’ action by Israel as tanks advanced on the main gates, while Britain’s Rishi Sunak said ‘too many civilians’ are dying in the coastal strip.

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Last night, Rishi Sunak said ‘too many civilians’ are dying in Gaza and that there needs to be ‘unhindered humanitarian access and urgent and substantive humanitarian pauses’.

The PM told the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London: ‘There are things that Israel must do as part of this response.

‘We’ve been clear that they must act within international law, they must take all measures to protect innocent civilians, including at hospitals, stop extremist violence in the West Bank and allow more aid into Gaza… too many civilians are losing their lives.

‘That’s why I’ve doubled our aid to Gaza and why we continue to press both at the United Nations and directly with Israel for unhindered humanitarian access and urgent and substantive humanitarian pauses.

‘We want aid coming in by air, land and sea, and we’re ready to use our bases in Cyprus as a staging post.’

Israeli tanks were massed near the gates of Gaza’s main hospital where Palestinians were trapped in dire conditions on Tuesday as US President Joe Biden pressed Israel to protect the complex.

After days of heavy air strikes around Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, witnesses said tanks and armoured vehicles were metres from the besieged facility, which has become a focal point of the five-week-old war.

Israel accuses Hamas fighters of using tunnels under the hospital as a command ‘node’, effectively engaging the sick and injured as human shields. It is a charge that Hamas denies.

Biden called on Israel to use ‘less intrusive action relative to the hospital’, some of his most pointed comments on Israeli operations to date. ‘The hospital must be protected,’ he told reporters.

Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner insisted Al-Shifa was ‘central in Hamas’s command and control capabilities’, but said troops were currently ‘stand-offish’.

‘The idea is to try to evacuate the people, evacuate as many as possible,’ he said.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said Gaza’s largest hospital is turning into a ‘cemetery’ where dead bodies are lying on the ground.

After days of heavy air strikes around Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, witnesses said tanks and armoured vehicles were metres (yards) from the besieged facility, which has become a focal point of the five-week-old war.

‘Around the hospital there are dead bodies which cannot be taken care of or not even be buried or taken away to any sort of morgue,’ WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said.

‘The hospital is not working at all any more as it should. It’s nearly a cemetery,’ Lindemeier added.