Gaza incursion will 'continue and intensify,' IDF says

JERUSALEM — The air felt thick with tension in Jerusalem’s Old City just past the Damascus Gate tonight as Israeli officers patrolled the area while the typically busy streets remained largely empty.

Damascus Gate is a busy plaza that serves as an entrance to Jerusalem's Old City and to the area’s Muslim quarter.

Palestinian Israeli shopkeepers said officers had been patrolling the area in large numbers in the midst of the current conflict.

 Chantal Da Silva

Many Palestinian Israelis in the area said they felt too afraid to speak about the war. Person after person expressed similar concerns — that if they spoke out, they feared they might be arrested by the police.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon continues to provide weapons shipments almost on a daily basis to Israel, Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters Monday.

Despite the rising number of civilian casualties, “we are not putting any limits on how Israel uses weapons,” Singh said. “That is really up to the Israeli Defense Force to use and how they are going to conduct their operations.”

Singh did not answer a question on whether there were concerns inside the Pentagon about the way the weapons were being used, but said that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has regularly emphasized the need for Israel to follow the laws of armed conflict and avoid civilian casualties as much as possible.

The executive director of the United Nations aid organization UNICEF told the U.N. Security Council today that clean water is rapidly running out in Gaza.

“Only one desalination plant is operating at just 5% capacity, while all six of Gaza’s water-waste treatment plants are now nonoperational due to a lack of fuel or power,” Executive Director Catherine Russell said.

“The lack of clean water and safe sanitation is on the verge of becoming a catastrophe,” she said. “Unless access to clean water is urgently restored, more civilians, including children, will fall ill or die from dehydration or waterborne diseases.”

More than 2 million people are estimated to be in Gaza, and the U.N. and other organizations have warned of dire conditions as Israel conducts what it says is a war to crush the terrorist group Hamas.

Many of the hostages being held by Hamas have life-threatening conditions that require consistent access to medication, according to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a volunteer group advocating for the hostages’ release.

The group gathered information about the hostages’ medical histories from family members, then sent a summary report to the Red Cross on Oct. 15. 

The report mentions three boys — ages 5, 13 and 16 — with autism that require special assistance, as well as a 27-year-old woman with Crohn’s disease, a 60-year-old man with multiple sclerosis and an 85-year-old woman with heart failure, kidney disease and asthma.

Several hostages have breast cancer, according to Dr. Hagai Levine, the group's head of medicine. Other conditions reported by the families include Parkinson’s disease, dementia, diabetes and high blood pressure.

“They are in a life-threatening condition,” Levine said. “Any moment, they could die from complications.”

Even before the war, access to certain medications, such as breast cancer drugs, was limited in Gaza, Levine said. Short of releasing the hostages, he added, Hamas should show that they're alive and allow the Red Cross to examine and treat them if needed.

Get an inside look at the world's largest underground hospital in Israel

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NBC News got a look as doctors, nurses and patients are being prepared to be moved to an underground hospital in Haifa, Israel, which is the world’s largest such structure.

Its three stories span the equivalent of more than three football fields, with 2,000 hospital beds and 24 operating rooms.

It’s built for the worst-case scenario of a military confrontation with missiles falling in the area every four minutes. Haifa is a little more than 20 miles south of the Israel-Lebanon border.

Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, said today that the administration does not support a cease-fire in the Israel’s war against Hamas at this time.

"We do not believe that a cease-fire is the right answer right now. We believe that a cease-fire right now benefits Hamas,” Kirby said at a briefing.

“What we have said should be considered and explored are temporary, localized humanitarian pauses to allow aid to get to specific populations and maybe even to help with the evacuation of people who want to get out,” he said.

Kirby also said today that “Hamas is still the holdup” in getting Americans out of Gaza through the Rafah crossing into Egypt.

“They’ve been making a series of demands that we’re not able to accede to,” Kirby said.

“Israel is willing to let those Americans out; Egypt is willing to let them come out,” Kirby said. “The holdup is Hamas.”

WASHINGTON — House Republicans have unveiled a proposal to provide $14.3 billion in emergency funding for Israel while also cutting funding for the IRS by the same amount.

If the bill passes the GOP-controlled House, the IRS provisions are all but guaranteed to be rejected by the Democratic-led Senate and White House, setting up a clash over how to approve Israel aid.

The IRS funding was approved as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, a major climate, health care and tax law Biden signed last year. Democrats have argued the legislation provides a mechanism to target sophisticated tax evaders.

Read the full story here.

Natalie Raanan, who along with her mother was taken hostage by Hamas in its Oct. 7 attack and later released, returned to Chicago today, Israel’s embassy said.

“Her family members have been anxiously waiting for her return, and today I am sharing their happiness,” Yinam Cohen, Israel’s consul general to the Midwest, said in a statement.

Raanan and her mother, Judith Raanan, were released Oct. 20, but the family believes seven more members are still missing, and another was confirmed to have been killed by Hamas.

“While we’re celebrating Natalie’s return, we remember the 239 hostages, among them babies, children, women, and the elderly, who are still held by Hamas in Gaza,” Cohen said.

TEL AVIV — Humanitarian aid with food and medicine will be halted if it becomes clear that the resources have been taken by Hamas, the Israel prime minister's office said in a statement. "The shipments are designed for the civilian population," it said.

The aid, food and medicine, is physically checked and inspected by Israeli security and delivered via Egypt.

On Oct. 21, the first aid shipment of 20 trucks arrived in Gaza. Since then, 144 trucks of aid have been sent through the Rafah border crossing into the Gaza strip, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society.

Following those deliveries, thousands of people broke into an aid warehouse in Gaza, taking wheat flour, hygiene materials and other basic items, according to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency.

JERUSALEM — Israel has warned its citizens to leave the northern Caucasus after a mob stormed an airport in Russia’s Dagestan region when a flight from Israel landed there.

Hundreds of men, some carrying banners with antisemitic slogans, rushed onto the tarmac of the airport in Makhachkala, the capital of the predominantly Muslim region, last night, looking for Israeli passengers on the flight from Tel Aviv, according to Russian news reports.

The attack seemed to be fueled partly by anger at Israel’s actions in Gaza, where it has been at war with Hamas after a deadly incursion by the militant group this month. Several people in the mob were waving Palestinian flags.

More than 20 people were wounded, with two in critical condition, and police made 60 arrests.

Israel raised its travel warning level to 4, the highest level, calling for citizens to avoid all travel to Dagestan and neighboring regions and for those who are there to leave as soon as possible.

A multi-rocket attack against the U.S. and coalition forces at al-Asad airbase in Iraq occurred earlier this morning but did not result in any casualties or infrastructure damage, a defense official said.

The Iran-backed Islamic Resistance said in a statement today that it had "targeted the American occupation base, 'Al-Asad' in western Iraq, with missiles."

Since Oct. 17, there have been at least 24 attacks on bases with U.S. forces: 15 in Iraq and nine in Syria, the official said.

Iran-backed militias have been using rockets and one-way drones to carry out the attacks on U.S. forces, a senior defense official told NBC News.

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 today that he was in Israel — less than a week after Israel’s U.N. ambassador said it had “refused” to grant Griffiths a visa.

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.

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

An Israeli doctor expressed concern for the health of the three female hostages who appeared in a video released earlier today by Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades.

"You can see that they are living, they are conscious, they don’t have a clear sign of injuries," said Dr. Hagai Levine, the head of medicine for the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a volunteer group that’s supporting the families of people held captive by Hamas.

"We do see that they lost weight compared to their regular status," Levine said. He noted that one of the women normally wears glasses but appears in the video without any.

Netanyahu identified the three hostages as Rimon Buchshtab Kirsht, Danielle Aloni and Yelena Trupanob.

Levine said their mental and physical conditions could deteriorate if they don’t receive independent medical care.

"Clearly they are under extreme stress, and even just filming them is a kind of torture," he said. "The entire situation is unhuman and very, extremely hazardous to health."

The head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency, or UNRWA, warned the Security Council that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were being subjected to forced displacement and collective punishment.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini also said a communication blackout over the weekend had accelerated the breakdown of civil order and warned that if the breakdown worsens it “will make it extremely difficult, if not impossible,” for the U.N. to continue operating in Gaza.

Israel has renewed warnings for civilians to move from the north of Gaza to the south as it began an advance late Friday to pursue Hamas militants it says are hiding in a labyrinth of tunnels under Gaza City. 

Brokering peace: The two-state solution explained

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As the Israel-Hamas war rages on, President Biden has again suggested what is known as the two-state solution. NBC News’ Noah Pransky explains the concept and its current plausibility.

NICOSIA, Cyprus — This island nation is doubling the capacity of its main migrant reception camp as it prepares for a potentially large influx of people if the crisis in neighboring Israel and Gaza escalates, authorities said.

The capacity of the Pournara reception camp on the outskirts of the capital, Nicosia, is 1,153 people. It will also get increased staffing to provide care for the new arrivals and expedite asylum application processing, Cypriot Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou said in a statement.

Nearly 200 migrants arrived in Cyprus aboard four separate boats Saturday, most likely setting sail from Lebanon, which is 108 miles from the country’s eastern coastline, according to the state broadcaster CyBC.

Regular clashes between Israeli forces and armed groups in Lebanon have flared up since the war erupted after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack.

A total of 26 trucks containing food supplies and medical equipment have passed through the Rafah border crossing into the Gaza Strip, the Palestine Red Crescent said today.

All told, 144 trucks have delivered supplies to the Palestine Red Crescent since the start of the war.

Telegram, the messaging service, shut down "several dozens of channels that contained direct calls to violence against Palestinians and Jews in English, Arabic and Hebrew," a spokesperson said.

"Telegram condemns racial and religious hatred and calls to violence on its platform," spokesperson Remi Vaughn said.

Telegram also took down a Russian-language channel that encouraged violence against Jews arriving in Dagestan, Russia, Vaughn said.

Vaughn said "Utro Dagestan" was among the channels blocked today.

"Such content violates Apple and Google guidelines and the Telegram Terms of Service," Vaughn said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected calls for a cease-fire in a news conference today and said that Israel's main goal is to take down Hamas. He called the release of a hostage today a turning point in the war, saying that "Israel did not start this war. Israel did not want this war. But Israel will win this war."

He added that "Israel will fight until this battle is won." He urged other countries to support Israel, saying, "Every civilized nation should stand with Israel."

He also called for the immediate release of hostages held by Hamas.

"We cannot give immunity to these terrorists. We cannot give up the fight because this will have disastrous consequences not only for the future of my country [but for the world]," Netanyahu said. "This is a battle of civilization against barbarians. The future of our civilization is at stake."

Netanyahu rejects calls for a cease-fire after Israeli hostage is freed

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TEL AVIV — Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu praised the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security forces for rescuing a hostage and welcomed her home.

"I congratulate the Shin Bet and the IDF for this important and exciting achievement, an achievement that expresses our commitment to the release of all the abductees. The entire nation of Israel salutes the Shin Bet and salutes the IDF," Netanyahu said.

TEL AVIV — The Al-Sadaqa Turkish-Palestinian Hospital was targeted for the second time, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza.

"The Al-Sadaqa Turkish-Palestinian Hospital, the only center for cancer patients in the Gaza Strip, was targeted for the second time, causing severe damage to it, disrupting some electromechanical work systems, and putting the lives of patients and crews at risk," said Sobhi Skaik, director general of the hospital.

Ashraf Al Qudra, spokesperson for the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, confirmed the bombing live on Al Jazeera.

“The Al-Sadaqa Turkish Hospital was bombed a few minutes ago for the second time by Israeli forces. The hospital was badly damaged, and the lives of the patients and medical staff is at risk," he said.

Al Qudra said the medical team and patients can't evacuate the hospital because it's the only cancer treatment center in the enclave, and asked for international protection "since Israel is still threatening to bomb hospitals in Gaza."

Dandees reported from Tel Aviv and Alsharif from New York.

Israel said it freed a hostage during the ground operation in Gaza today, per a joint statement from the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security service.

The hostage was identified as Private Ori Megidish.

She was medically examined and found to be in good condition. She was reunited with her family.

Israeli hostage freed during ground operation

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Ten staffers with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East have been killed in the last 72 hours in Gaza, according to a report published today. This brings the total number of UNRWA staffers killed in Gaza to 63 since Oct. 7.

"Nearly 672,000 Internally Displaced People (IDPs) are sheltering in 149 UNRWA installations across the Gaza Strip, facing increasingly desperate conditions," UNRWA said in the report. "The ability to provide lifesaving assistance has been further hindered by the 36-hour disruption in communications that affected the whole Gaza Strip, including humanitarian organizations, between 27 and the early hours of 29 October."

UNRWA also reported mounting tensions among displaced communities due to the desperate situation, resulting in break-ins into UNRWA warehouses and distribution centers.

In a statement, Hamas said a visit by International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan to the Rafah crossing is "a positive step" but "insufficient to protect civilians."

Hamas, recognized by the United States as a terrorist organization, said it hoped Khan would enter Gaza to see the Israeli military's crimes in the enclave and open an investigation into them. Hamas said the crimes include "genocide, transfer, starvation, and attacks on civilians, hospitals, and places of worship."

Hamas warned against the ICC delaying a potential investigation into the Israeli military, adding that the ICC issued a ruling on Feb. 5, 2021, recognizing Palestine as a state.

Palestinians evacuate a survivor from the rubble of a destroyed building in Rafah on Monday. Hatem Ali / AP

"The Hamas movement affirms the resistance’s commitment to international humanitarian law, cooperation with the Office of the Prosecutor, and the right of the Palestinian people to freedom, self-determination, and the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital," the statement read.

JERUSALEM — May Jalal and her 8-year-old son, Ali Jnaina, are used to being trapped in the Gaza Strip. But now they are stuck at a hospital in East Jerusalem after Ali was diagnosed with leukemia just last month and traveled here for treatment right before the conflict started.

Not only are they unable to return to Gaza, where Jalal's husband and other three children are under Israeli bombardment, they also say that, because their Palestinian travel permits have expired, they cannot even leave Jerusalem's Augusta Victoria Hospital to cross the street to grab something from a convenience store.

May Jalal and her son, Ali Jnaina, sit in their room at the Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem, where they have been trapped since the conflict started in Gaza. Alexander Smith / NBC News

"I feel breathless about the disease of my son, and the war on the other side with my husband and kids there," Jalal, 30, told NBC News at the hospital, where she is forced to sleep on the couch next to her son's bed. "My heart is cut into pieces thinking about it."

With the war raging and without any permits, which Palestinians need to obtain to travel around Israel, the mother and son don't know when they will be able to return home. They can call their family in Gaza, but even this has been difficult with sporadic communications blackouts and no power grid there.

JERUSALEM — Hamas' military wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, has released a video that purports to show three female hostages captured during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Three women are seen sitting next to one another on plastic chairs before the woman in the center delivers a message critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government.

The woman appears to become more agitated during the video in which she calls for their release.

The identities of the women were not released and it was unclear whether she was speaking of her own volition or reading from a script.

A civilian car was struck by an Israeli tank near Gaza City, an eyewitness told NBC News today.

Photographer Bashar Talib said he was in a nearby car on the Salah Al Deen road when the vehicle was struck. “The driver saw it at the last minute,” he said. “He was close to the tank and the bulldozer. He stopped his car to go back, but he was targeted before driving.”

Video shot by Al-Saifi and verified by NBC News shows a white car moving northwest on the road. It tries to turn around after the driver spots a tank that immediately fires at it. It is unclear whether anyone survived.

NBC News has approached the Israel Defense Forces for comment.

Video shows civilian car fired upon by tank inside the Gaza Strip

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Donkey-drawn carts loaded with water for sale in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Monday.

JERUSALEM — With a sling round her arm and a neck support, 14-year-old Miral Najem told an NBC News crew that gas tanks in the area exploded turning the sky red when the strike hit the city of Khan Younis in Southern Gaza last week.

The teenager was buried in rubble after Thursday's blast, before rescuers pulled her to safety and took her to a hospital where she was treated on the floor. She said Sunday that she later learned that four of her family members were killed.

“They told us to go to the south valley,” she said. “We went to my aunt’s house in Khan Younis where they bombed us there while we were baking bread and were about to eat.”

“I wish we can live safely like all children of the world,” she said.

The storming of an airport in Russia's Dagestan region by an anti-Israeli mob was the result of a “provocation” orchestrated from outside Russia, with Ukraine playing a “direct and key role,” a spokesperson for the country's foreign ministry said today.

Maria Zakharova said the speed of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s statements about the attack were “direct evidence that the information sabotage undertaken by the Kyiv intelligence services is coordinated.” 

NBC News could not independently verify this claim and has reached out to Ukrainian officials for comment.

Video shows displaced civilians sheltering in Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City

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Inside the crammed corridors of Gaza City's Al-Quds hospital, residents cover their faces as they attempt to keep the dust out. Through a broken window, more dust billows into the air in the video provided by the Palestinian Red Crescent, which said blasts had been heard near the facility.

As the child death toll rose to more 3,100 in Gaza, it surpassed the annual number of children killed across the world’s conflict zones since 2019, according to the Save the Children charity.

“The numbers are harrowing and with violence not only continuing but expanding in Gaza right now, many more children remain at grave risk.” Save the Children Country Director in the occupied Palestinian territory Jason Lee, said in a statement yesterday.

A total of 2,985 children were killed last year, 2,515 in 2021, and 2,674 in 2020, according to the U.N. Secretary-General's annual reports.

ASHDOD, Israel — An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson has declined to comment on reports about blasts near Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City where thousands of people are taking shelter.

“We can say that we’ve been asking everyone in the north to evacuate south now for three weeks," the IDF spokesperson told NBC News when asked about the reports.

“We can’t really comment about future attacks with what will happen in the area,” they added

Earlier today a spokesperson for the Palestine Red Crescent Society told NBC News by telephone that explosions had been heard less than 200 feet from the hospital.

JERUSALEM — Israeli border police shot a man dead in East Jerusalem after he stabbed a security guard and tried to grab his gun, a spokesman for the force said in a statement.

The stabbing happened at 11 a.m. local time (5 a.m. ET) at a gas station near the Old City.

Law enforcement officers stand near the body of an alleged attacker after a stabbing in Jerusalem on Monday.  Alexi J. Rosenfeld / Getty Images

The suspect, who lived in East Jerusalem, grabbed the guard’s gun but didn’t manage to fire any shots, the police statement said, adding that he was chased and killed by officers. They later found the knife, the statement said, adding that investigators were at the scene.

Tensions regularly flare in this divided holy city, but violence has erupted since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 and Israel’s retaliatory bombardment of Gaza.

Smoke rises from inside the Gaza Strip on Monday, as seen from Sderot, in southern Israel.

A woman who was taken hostage by Hamas militants at a music festival has been found dead, her family confirmed today.

“With our deepest sadness we’re informing the death of my sister,” Adi Louk wrote on Instagram about her sibling Shani Louk, 23,

Ricarda Louk displays a photograph of her daughter Shani Louk, 22, in Berlin on Oct. 19.  Sean Gallup / Getty Images

Israel’s foreign ministry also said on X that Louk’s “body was found and identified.”

The German Israeli national, who was kidnapped at the Supernova music festival on Oct. 7, was “tortured and paraded around Gaza by Hamas terrorists, experienced unfathomable horrors,” the ministry wrote.

Israel’s president: 23-year-old Israeli hostage Shani Louk was beheaded by Hamas

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EILAT, Israel — At a sprawling hotel in the Israeli resort city of Eilat, residents evacuated from Kibbutz Nir Oz face another day of anxiously waiting for news about more than 70 relatives, friends and neighbors taken hostage by Hamas.

Huddling in lobby corners and sitting at outdoor tables, they can do nothing more than watch as the Israeli offensive continues to press into Gaza.

“I’m worried about my friends daughter and son, and my neighbours son, and my neighbour and his wife. I don’t know what will bring them home,” Irit Lahav said, adding that just over 100 people, or a quarter of the Nir Oz community was killed or kidnapped when Hamas attacked on Oct. 7.

Lahav, 57, said she survived by hiding in her safe room for more than 11 hours with her daughter. Militants tried to break in but failed, she said. “I don’t know if the invasion is better or negotiation is better,” she said about the hostages. “I’m lost. I don’t know. I just want them back here.”

Israel's military will "continue and intensify" its ground operation in Gaza where its forces are making "gradual progress," a spokesperson told a news conference today.

Adm. Daniel Hagari said that “additional forces entered the Gaza Strip,” over the last day and some of them had fought with “terrorists who barricaded themselves in buildings.”

He added that an Israeli fighter jet had “attacked launchers from which rockets were fired at Israel,” from Syria.

In the West Bank, he added that an aircraft “eliminated several terrorists in the Jenin refugee camp,” who he said were “positioned against our forces.”

ASHDOD, Israel — Loud booms rang out just now in the southern city Ashdod as Israel's Iron Dome appeared to make an interception overhead.

Booms rang out as the Iron Dome appeared to make an interception over Ashdod today. Chantal Da Silva / NBC News

In a shelter below, one woman raced in still wearing a beauty sheet face mask that appeared to be decorated in the likeness of Mickey Mouse. She laughed about the fact that she was still wearing it, but turned quiet as the booms rang out.

The smoke from the apparent interception could still be seen hanging in the air after the alert cleared.

Palestinians grieve as they wait to collect the bodies of relatives from the Najjar Hospital, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday.

Israel's military said on X today that it killed "multiple terrorists barricaded within civilian buildings and terrorist tunnels who attempted to attack” its forces in Gaza.

It did not say where the buildings and tunnels were in the enclave and NBC News could not independently veirfy the claim.

The post added that its “soldiers spotted armed terrorists and an anti-tank missile launching post near the Al-Azhar University and guided an IAF fighter jet to strike them.”

Russian law enforcement agencies have taken control of an airport in a predominantly Muslim Dagestan region, arresting 60 people after hundreds swarmed the airport on Sunday when a plane from Israel arrived.

Protestors at an airport in Makhachkala, Russia on Sunday.  AFP - Getty Images

"More than 150 active participants in the riots were identified," the ministry of internal affairs for the northern region said, adding that nine police officers had been injured.

Videos verified by NBC News showed protestors at the Makhachkala airport waving Palestinian flags and shouting "Allahu Akbar," or "God is Great," as they broke glass doors and ran throughout the airport and the tarmac. One video showed the mob questioning an airport employee outside the plane, who said the passengers had left. Another group attempted to topple a police car.

Israel on Sunday urged Russian authorities to protect all Israeli citizens and Jews.

DOHA, Qatar — Talks to free some of the hostages held by militant group Hamas stalled over Israel’s unwillingness to send fuel to Gaza, its base, and Hamas’ objection to guaranteeing it would release a large number of foreign captives, according to a former U.S. official with knowledge of the ongoing negotiations over the release of some of the estimated 230 hostages.

“Hamas has been insistent on receiving fuel,” said the former U.S. official, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to talk publicly. “The Israel and U.S. side, plus other countries, want a large batch of their citizens released.”

Read the full story here.

Threats to Cornell University’s Jewish community were reported to the FBI as a possible hate crime, the university’s president said Sunday in a letter to the Cornell community.

“Earlier today, a series of horrendous, antisemitic messages threatening violence to our Jewish community” was posted on a site not connected to Cornell, university President Martha E. Pollack wrote.

The threats specifically mentioned the campus address of the Center for Jewish Living, the letter said, and Cornell Police notified the FBI of a potential hate crime.

University police were present at the living center and will continue to be on site to offer protection, Pollack said.

• Hostage negotiations stall over Hamas demand for fuel deliveries to Gaza
• Iran and its proxy forces loom over Israel-Hamas war, sparking fears of wider regional conflict
• Ron DeSantis defends banning pro-Palestinian groups from Florida colleges: ‘Not cancel culture’
• ‘This is my home’: Israel’s kibbutz communities look to rebuild after devastation of Hamas attack
• After begging him to return to Thailand, one worker’s family fears he is among Hamas’ hostages
• A group of Jews and Arabs in Israel has a ‘radical’ idea — protecting one another as fear reigns
• Told to leave northern Gaza, this Palestinian family is staying put
• Death and trauma stalk Palestinian children