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Hamas released two more hostages Monday but is still holding more than 200, officials said.
Yocheved Lifshitz and Nurit Cooper were released Monday. They were among the people taken hostage in a series of terror attacks against Israel 17 days ago that left more than 1,400 people in Israel dead.
The Biden administration is advising Israel to delay a ground invasion of Gaza, U.S. officials said, in order to allow for more time for hostage negotiations and humanitarian aid to reach there.
Israel has gathered troops and other ground forces around Gaza, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others have vowed to crush Hamas following its attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
15 Palestinians from the same family buried in mass grave in Gaza
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Fifteen members of the same family were among at least 33 Palestinians buried in a mass grave at a Gaza hospital yesterday.
A harried-looking doctor in green scrubs walked past as bodies in white sheets were loaded into the back of a pickup truck. Men discussed where to fit the shrouded corpse of a small child between two adults.
Side-by-side, the bodies were laid to rest in a shallow, sandy grave in the courtyard of al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, an ambulance parked nearby. “Bring them all,” a gravedigger called out.
Israel said Monday it struck 320 militant targets throughout the besieged Gaza Strip over the last 24 hours. The military says it does not target civilians. Over 5,000 Palestinians, including some 2,000 minors, have been killed since the war began, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed — mostly civilians slain during the initial Hamas attack.
Scenes of grief in Gaza City
A wounded Palestinian woman cries as she holds the hand of her dead relative outside her home Monday following Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City.
Family of Americans released by Hamas say they can’t celebrate until all hostages are released
TEL AVIV — The family of two American hostages released by Hamas last week described in an interview their struggle to grapple with feelings of relief for the freed mother and daughter — and fear for those still held captive by the militant group, including eight of their loved ones.
“It was everything all at once — joy, then guilt for feeling joy for just a second,” said Ayelet Sella, a cousin of Judith Raanan, who, along with her daughter, Natalie, was freed Friday in the first diplomatic breakthrough on the issue since militants swept through southern Israel in a surprise attack.
“They were just innocent, innocent civilians who were taken from their homes inside Israel’s borders,” she added.
“We don’t have the privilege to celebrate,” said Or Sella, Ayelet’s brother.
Biden spoke with Netanyahu after Hamas released 2 hostages
Biden spoke with Netanyahu today and reaffirmed efforts to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, the White House said.
Biden “reaffirmed his commitment to ongoing efforts to secure the release of all the remaining hostages taken by Hamas — including Americans — and to provide for safe passage for U.S. citizens and other civilians in Gaza,” the White House said in a statement.
The two leaders spoke on the day Hamas released two additional hostages, bringing the total freed to four. Israel’s military says Hamas is still holding more than 200 other people hostage.
Biden “also underscored the need to sustain a continuous flow of urgently needed humanitarian assistance into Gaza” and informed Netanyahu of new U.S. military deployments, the White House said.
TEL AVIV — Personnel in the war between Israel and Hamas include a front line of tech workers helping officials locate and identify missing Israelis.
"We have teams that are working on cutting-edge technology like AI, like facial recognition, like voice recognition, trying to match patterns of movements," Karine Nahon, the head of Israel’s war room for missing people, told NBC News.
Reuven Zolotarevksy, a software developer for California's Palo Alto Systems, rapidly developed an app that is helping locate people by crowdsourcing their attributes, like height, weight, hair color and tattoos.
"There's so much work to be done," he said. "It's not a time to take a breath."
KIBBUTZ BE'ERI, Israel — Just a few miles from Israel's border with Gaza, the magnitude of Hamas' Oct. 7 attack was still on display in kibbutz Be’eri more than two weeks later.
Structures were standing, but many had been torn apart, some appeared to have been burned and there were windows were shattered in every direction.
Yossi Landau, a member of a search team that's still looking for the dead, said: "I'm used to bodies. I saw bodies in my life. But never something like that."
Officials say 100 bodies, at least some of them of children, have been pulled from the community, and DNA must be used to identify them because other identifying factors are no longer an option.
Blinken will attend U.N. Security Council meeting on Israel and Gaza
Blinken will attend a U.N. Security Council meeting tomorrow about the situation in the Middle East, a spokesman for the State Department said.
Blinken will attend the Security Council ministerial meeting in New York, spokesman Matthew Miller said. While there, he will meet with counterparts and U.N. officials, he said.
Hostage’s parents plead for U.N. to help free those held by Hamas
The parents of an American believed held hostage by Hamas said that the release of two more hostages by the terrorist group raises their hopes “a little bit” but that they want all of them released from captivity.
“On the one hand, we look for hope wherever we can grasp at it,” Jonathan Polin, the father of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, told NBC News today.
“The bottom line is when all 200-plus are released — in our case, obviously, we’re most concerned about our own son, who is wounded — that’s what we’re hoping is going to happen,” he said.
Goldberg-Polin was at Israel’s Supernova music festival in Israel when Hamas gunmen attacked. His parents are asking the United Nations for help.
Netherlands PM meets with Israel’s Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority’s Abbas in visit
Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte says he met with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and argued for restraint while saying "the fight against Hamas must be waged."
“It is of existential importance for Israel to remove the Hamas threat,” Rutte said in a statement on X.
“The fight against Hamas must be waged, but civilian casualties and regional escalation must be prevented. This requires restraint from Israel when it comes to the use of force,” he added.
During his trip to the region, Rutte also met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. “Though it may seem far away, peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians is only possible if prospects for a Palestinian state, alongside a secure Israel, are renewed,” Rutte wrote on X.
Rutte said he also met with the family of Ofir Engel, a Dutch national taken hostage by Hamas.
Obama: Any Israeli strategy ‘that ignores the human costs could ultimately backfire’
Former President Barack Obama said Israel has the right to defend itself and denounced Hamas attacks on the country, but he warned that “any Israeli military strategy that ignores the human costs could ultimately backfire.”
Writing on Medium, Obama said he fully supports Biden’s call that the U.S. support Israel in going after Hamas, both to dismantle its military capabilities and to rescue hostages.
“But even as we support Israel, we should also be clear that how Israel prosecutes this fight against Hamas matters,” Obama wrote.
“The Israeli government’s decision to cut off food, water and electricity to a captive civilian population threatens not only to worsen a growing humanitarian crisis; it could further harden Palestinian attitudes for generations, erode global support for Israel, play into the hands of Israel’s enemies, and undermine long term efforts to achieve peace and stability in the region,” he wrote in another section.
Obama called for a strategy that minimizes harm to civilians, and he wrote that he was encouraged by aid trucks’ being allowed to head into Gaza from Egypt.
He also urged all actors “to engage with those Palestinian leaders and organizations that recognize Israel’s right to exist to begin articulating a viable pathway for Palestinians to achieve their legitimate aspirations for self-determination."
"That is the best and perhaps only way to achieve the lasting peace and security most Israeli and Palestinian families yearn for," Obama wrote.
