Israel-Gaza updates: IDF says 3,500 'terror targets' hammered in 10 days
"Civil order is breaking down in Gaza," a UNRWA official said.
The temporary cease-fire between Hamas and Israel ended on Dec. 1, and Israel has resumed its bombardment of Gaza.
The end of the cease-fire came after Hamas freed over 100 of the more than 200 people its militants took hostage during the Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel. In exchange, Israel released more than 200 Palestinians from Israeli prisons.
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Latest headlines:
- IDF claims it has struck 3,500 targets in Gaza since end of cease-fire
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- Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place to be a child: UNICEF
- Families confirm death of hostage
- IDF confirms it failed to rescue hostages in special operation
- Society in Gaza on 'brink of full-blown collapse,' UNRWA warns
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.
Another hospital in Gaza on verge of closing: WHO
Another hospital in Gaza, Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, is on the verge of closing, with only 20 patients currently getting care, according to Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization.
"This is due to intense fighting as well as a lack of basic supplies: water, food, medicines and fuel," he wrote Wednesday on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Nineteen hospitals in Gaza are nonfunctioning, he said. Gaza now has two field hospitals, 14 partially functioning hospitals and three minimally functioning hospitals, Tedros said.
UN secretary-general invokes Article 99, calls for humanitarian cease-fire
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Wednesday that he's invoked Article 99 of the U.N. Charter for the first time in his six years as leader.
Article 99 says that the secretary-general "may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security."
"Facing a severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza, I urge the Council to help avert a humanitarian catastrophe & appeal for a humanitarian cease-fire to be declared," Guterres said in a post on X.
In a letter to the U.N. Security Council president, Guterres said, "The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region. … The international community has a responsibility to use all its influence to prevent further escalation and end this crisis."
IDF encircling Hamas leader's house: Netanyahu
Israeli forces are now "encircling" the house belonging to Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
"It's only a matter of time until we catch him," Netanyahu said.
The prime minister also said Israel is exerting pressure to allow Red Cross workers to visit the more than 100 hostages still being held by Hamas.
Biden calls reports of Hamas' sexual violence against Israeli women 'appalling'
Editor's note: This report contains graphic descriptions of sexual violence.
President Joe Biden has blamed Hamas' refusal to release civilian female hostages for the end of a temporary cease-fire and called reports of women allegedly sexually assaulted by Hamas "appalling."
"We had a report in the earliest days that Hamas used rape to terrorize women and girls during the attack on October the 7th in Israel," Biden said, according to pool reports of his remarks Tuesday at a closed-door fundraiser.
"Over the past few weeks, survivors and witnesses of the attacks have shared the horrific accounts of unimaginable cruelty," he said. "Reports of women raped -- repeatedly raped -- and their bodies being mutilated while still alive -- of women corpses being desecrated, Hamas terrorists inflicting as much pain and suffering on women and girls as possible and then murdering them. It is appalling."
It's on all of us -- government, international organizations, civil society and businesses -- to forcefully condemn the sexual violence of Hamas terrorists without equivocation -- without equivocation, without exception," Biden said.
-ABC News' Libby Cathey