Israel-Gaza updates: IDF says 2 hostages rescued from Gaza

More than 1 million people displaced by the war have sought refuge in Rafah.

ByABC NEWS
Last Updated: February 11, 2024, 3:20 PM EST

More than four months since Hamas terrorists invaded Israel on Oct. 7, the Israeli military continues its bombardment of the neighboring Gaza Strip.

The conflict, now the deadliest between the warring sides since Israel's founding in 1948, shows no signs of letting up soon and the brief cease-fire that allowed for over 100 hostages to be freed from Gaza remains a distant memory.

Click here for updates from previous days.

Latest headlines:

Here's how the news is developing. All times Eastern.
Mar 1, 6:03 am

What we know about the conflict

The latest outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that governs the Gaza Strip, has passed the four-month mark.

In the Gaza Strip, at least 30,228 people have been killed and 71,377 others have been wounded by Israeli forces since Oct. 7, according to Gaza's Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health.

In Israel, at least 1,200 people have been killed and 6,900 others have been injured by Hamas and other Palestinian militants since Oct. 7, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

There has also been a surge in violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israeli forces have killed at least 395 people in the territory since Oct. 7, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The ongoing war began after Hamas-led militants launched an unprecedented incursion into southern Israel from neighboring Gaza via land, sea and air. Scores of people were killed while more than 200 others were taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities. The Israeli military subsequently launched retaliatory airstrikes followed by a ground invasion of Gaza, a 140-square-mile territory where more than 2 million Palestinians have lived under a blockade imposed by Israel and supported by Egypt since Hamas came to power in 2007. Gaza, unlike Israel, has no air raid sirens or bomb shelters.

Feb 10, 2024, 4:49 PM EST

IDF says it killed 120 Hamas terrorists, claims tunnels found in northern Gaza

The Israeli Defense Forces said it killed approximately 120 Hamas terrorists and destroyed 20 Hamas infrastructure sites in Shati and Tel al-Hawa in northern Gaza.

The IDF said it found a tunnel shaft near an UNRWA school which led to an underground tunnel which passes under the UNRWA's headquarters in the Gaza Strip. The tunnel was over 2,296 feet long, according to the IDF. The IDF alleged that Hamas militants used the space under the UNRWA's headquarters as an electrical supply room.

The UNWRA said it had no knowledge of the facility's underground, but the "recent media reports" merit an "independent inquiry," which the agency is unable to perform due to the ongoing war.

-ABC News' Edward Szekeres

Feb 10, 2024, 6:34 AM EST

More deaths in Rafah as 'disastrous' invasion looms

Israeli airstrikes killed at least 28 Palestinians in Rafah early Saturday, just hours after Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he asked the military to plan for the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people from the southern Gaza city ahead of a ground invasion.

Netanyahu did not provide details or a timeline but the announcement set off widespread panic as more than than half of Gaza's 2.3 million people are packed into Rafah, many after being uprooted repeatedly by Israeli evacuation orders that now cover two-thirds of Gaza's territory.

It's not clear where much of that population could turn to next as word of the potential invasion plans capped a week of increasingly public friction between Netanyahu and the Biden administration.

U.S. officials have said an invasion of Rafah without a plan for the civilian population would lead to disaster.

Feb 09, 2024, 2:58 PM EST

Hostage may have been killed from IDF attack in Gaza, Israeli forces say

The Israel Defense Forces presented information to the family of hostage Yossi Sharabi, who died in Gaza, telling the family that Sharabi may have been killed when a building adjacent to an IDF target in Gaza collapsed, ABC News has learned. It’s also possible Sharabi may have been killed by Hamas, the IDF said.

Sharabi was confirmed dead in mid-January, but this is the first time the IDF has presented their findings on how Sharabi may have died to his family.

The IDF has determined that the buildings its forces hit was a "legitimate target," but also found "lessons" that were "learned regarding target approval processes and the required dialogue between all relevant military authorities for the approval of a target," when reviewing how Sharabi died, ABC News has learned.

Feb 09, 2024, 10:16 AM EST

Israel says it will come up with plan to evacuate civilians in Rafah

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the Israel Defense Forces to come up with a "dual plan" to evacuate the civilian population in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip before "disbanding" Hamas battalions allegedly located there, according to his office.

"It is impossible to achieve the war objective of eliminating Hamas and leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah," Netanyahu's office said in a statement Friday. "On the other hand, it is clear that a massive operation in Rafah requires the evacuation of the civilian population from the combat zones."

People mourn next to the bodies of Palestinians amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, at Abu Yousef al-Najjar hospital in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 7, 2024.
Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters

"That is why the Prime Minister directed the IDF and the defense establishment to bring to the cabinet a dual plan for both the evacuation of the population and the disbanding of the battalions," the office added.

Rafah is the southernmost governorate of Gaza, where more than half of the 2.3 million population has sought refuge after being displaced from their homes amid Israel's military offensive in the Hamas-ruled enclave, according to the United Nations. The U.N. and other aid organizations have expressed concern over where civilians would go if Rafah, which the IDF previously designated a safe zone, becomes the next target in Israel's war against Hamas.

-ABC News' Jordana Miller and Morgan Winsor

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