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Israel-Gaza live updates: 3 premature babies die at Al-Shifa Hospital, doctor says
The hospital has been treating thousands of wounded people.
Thousands of people have died and thousands more have been injured since the militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel retaliated with a bombing campaign and total siege of the neighboring Gaza Strip, leaving the region on the verge of all-out war.
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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.
Israel 'cannot occupy' Gaza, Blinken says
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday said Israel "cannot occupy" Gaza "not now, not after the war."
The top U.S. diplomat added that a transition period may be necessary when the bombings and shooting stop in Gaza.
"I think we've been very clear from day one that when it comes to post-conflict governance in Gaza, a few things are clear and necessary," Blinken said in Tokyo, where he's attending G7 meetings. "One, Gaza cannot continue to be run by Hamas. That simply invites a repetition of Oct. 7, and Gaza used as a place from which to launch terrorist attacks. It's also clear that Israel cannot occupy Gaza."
Blinken said G7 members stood united on the globe's major crises. The group's "first focus was the crisis in the Middle East." The group's joint communique called for "humanitarian pauses," short of a cease-fire.
"We all agreed that humanitarian pauses would advance key objectives to protect Palestinian civilians, to increase the sustained flow of humanitarian assistance, to allow our citizens and foreign nationals to exit, and to facilitate the release of hostages," Blinken said
-ABC News' Christopher Boccia and Joe Simonetti
Biden said he asked 'for a pause' during Monday call with Netanyahu
President Joe Biden told ABC News' Karen Travers that he asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "for a pause" in fighting during a phone call Monday.
"I didn't get a chance to talk to him today, but I did ask him for a pause…yesterday," Biden said.
When asked for a specific timeline of the pause, the president did not answer.
-ABC News' Justin Fishel and Karen Travers
Gaza City 'encircled,' IDF forces inside: Netanyahu
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel Defense Forces have "encircled" Gaza City and are "operating inside it."
"We are increasing pressure on Hamas every hour, every day," he said in remarks translated by Reuters. "We have killed thousands of terrorists, above ground and below ground."
Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, the commander of IDF's Southern Command, said Tuesday they are fighting in "significant centers of the Gaza Strip."
"For the first time in a decade, the IDF is fighting in the heart of Gaza City," Finkelman said in a statement. "Today, at this very hour, our soldiers are eliminating terrorists, discovering tunnels, destroying weapons and continuing to advance into the center of the enemy."
Doctor in Gaza says surgery 'medieval' due to dwindling supplies
Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British-Palestinian plastic surgeon, called the conditions of working in a hospital in Gaza right now "medieval."
"There's no pain relief," he told ABC News in a phone interview on Tuesday. "I mean, we operate on patients and then we give them all paracetamol. We've run out of morphine two weeks ago."
Abu Sitta, who has been working at the Shifa and Ahli hospitals in Gaza, said they have had to perform surgery on some children without proper anesthesia.
"These kids are traumatized," he said.
He has seen children who come in with no surviving family, he said.
"It really is heart-wrenching," he said. "From the minute you see them in the emergency room with no one around them, you realize."
-ABC News' Zoe Magee
Any plans for pauses in fighting must be carried out in coordination with UN
Any plans for short-term pauses in the fighting in Gaza must be carried out in coordination with the United Nations, said Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the U.N. secretary-general.
The U.N.'s comments come after the White House said Israel agreed to daily four-hour pauses in northern Gaza to allow civilians to escape.
"How any such halt in the fighting, and how it would work for humanitarian purposes, will need to be coordinated with the United Nations, especially on the issue of timings and location," Dujarric said. "And obviously in order for this to be done safely for humanitarian purposes, it would have to be agreed with all parties to the conflict to be truly effective."