Israel-Gaza updates: US ambassador to Israel demands return of hostages
The war is the deadliest conflict between the two sides in recent history.
More than a month after a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas ended, the Israeli military continues its bombardment of the neighboring Gaza Strip.
The end of the cease-fire came after Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that governs Gaza, freed over 100 of the more than 200 people its militants took hostage during the Oct. 7 surprise attack on southern Israel. In exchange, Israel released more than 200 Palestinians from Israeli prisons.
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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.
Blinken meets with Herzog, Netanyahu in Israel
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with top officials in Israel on Tuesday during his fourth visit to the Middle East since the Oct. 7 terror attack.
Blinken met first with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and then with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv. He was also expected to sit in on an Israeli war cabinet meeting.
Speaking to reporters alongside the Israeli president on Tuesday morning, Blinken said he valued Herzog's leadership during these "incredibly challenging times" for Israel and other nations in the Middle East. The U.S. secretary said he would be sharing with Israeli officials what he had heard from leaders in regional countries.
Blinken's latest weeklong trip is aimed at calming tensions across the Middle East amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the neighboring Gaza Strip. The current conflict was sparked by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7.
-ABC News' Lauren Minore, Joe Simonetti and Morgan Winsor
Blinken says he will press Israel on protecting civilians in Gaza
Just before he departed Saudi Arabia for Israel, Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined what he hoped to accomplish during his time in the country.
Blinken said that while he was on the ground, he would have an opportunity to relate what he had heard in meetings during his several previous stops in the Arab world, as well as "talk to them about the future direction of their military campaign in Gaza."
"I will press on the absolute imperative to do more to protect civilians and to do more to make sure that humanitarian assistance is getting into the hands of those who need it," he said.
Summarizing his trip so far, he said that he found a united front among leaders in Turkey, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
"Everywhere I went, I found leaders who are determined to prevent the conflict that we're facing now from spreading, doing everything possible to deter escalation -- to prevent a widening of the conflict," he said, adding they also agreed on the importance of Israel's security, and that the West Bank and Gaza should be united as one state led by Palestinian governance.
-ABC News' Shannon K. Crawford
Hezbollah responds to Netanyahu visit to Lebanon border
A Hezbollah leader issued a threat to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after his visit to the Lebanon border on Monday.
"If you want a large-scale war in which you attack our country, we will go to the end and we are not afraid of your threats, your bombing, or your aggression, and we have prepared for you what you never imagined," Muhammad Raad, head of the Hezbollah bloc of Lebanese parliament, said.
Israel said it hit military targets in southern Lebanon on Monday amid skirmishes that have been ongoing since October.
Netanyahu visited Kiryat Shmona, a city in northern Israel near the Lebanon border, on Monday, where he said Hezbollah got Israelis wrong in 2006 -- a reference to the 34-day war between the two countries. He also added that he hopes to return Israeli evacuees to the region.
"We will do everything to restore security to the north and allow your families, because many of you are local, to return home safely and know that we cannot be messed with," Netanyahu said. "We will do whatever it takes. Of course, we prefer that this be done without a wide campaign, but that will not stop us."
-ABC News' Jordana Miller and Nasser Atta
Biden says he’s working with Israel ‘to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza’
President Joe Biden's speech at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina on Monday was interrupted by a handful of protesters who shouted, "Cease-fire now!"
Biden responded to the interruption by saying, “I understand their passion. And I've been quietly working … with [the] Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza, using all I can to do.”
-ABC News’ Gabriella Abdul-Hakim, Libby Cathey and Fritz Farrow
Deal reached to get medicine to hostages, Israel says
A deal has been reached to get medicine to the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza over the next few days, according to the Israeli Prime Minister's office.
The families of the hostages are insisting that the Israeli war cabinet “demand visual proof that the medications did indeed reach the abductees, as a condition for any return from Israel.”
"After 98 days in the Hamas tunnels, all the abductees are in immediate danger and need life-saving medication,” the families said in a statement.