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US believes Hamas, Israel can break Gaza ceasefire impasse; Israeli forces cut Rafah aid route

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The U.S. said negotiations on a Gaza ceasefire should be able to close the gaps between Israel and Hamas while Israeli forces seized the main border crossing in Rafah on Tuesday, closing a vital route for aid, Reuters reported.

Hamas official Osama Hamdan, speaking to reporters in Beirut, warned that if Israel's military aggression continued in Rafah, there would be no truce agreement.

The Palestinian militant group accused Israel of undermining ceasefire efforts in the seven-month-long war that has laid waste to Gaza and left hundreds of thousands of its people homeless and hungry.

The truce comments came as Israel invaded Rafah, a southern Gazan city where more than one million displaced Palestinian civilians have sought shelter from Israel's offensive throughout the tiny territory.

White House spokesperson John Kirby said Hamas offered amendments on Monday to an Israeli proposal aimed at ending the impasse. The deal text, as amended, suggests the remaining gaps can "absolutely be closed," he said. He declined to specify what those were.

Israel on Monday said a three-phase proposal that Hamas approved was unacceptable.

Kirby said mediators from Qatar and Egypt along with U.S. and Israeli officials were gathering in Cairo. Hamas separately said its delegation was in Cairo as well.

OFFENSIVE

Israel's seizure of the Rafah crossing came despite weeks of calls that the U.S., other nations and international bodies hoped would deter a big offensive in the Rafah area - which Israel says is Hamas fighters' last stronghold, read the report.

Israeli army footage showed tanks rolling through the Rafah crossing complex between Gaza and Egypt, and the Israeli flag raised on the Gaza side.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said seizing the crossing was a "very significant step" toward Israel's stated aim of destroying Hamas's military capabilities.

Residents reported heavy tank shelling on Tuesday evening in some areas of eastern Rafah. A Rafah municipal building caught fire after Israeli shelling, residents and Hamas media said. Medics said one Palestinian was killed and several wounded in the building while an Israeli strike also killed two Palestinians on a motorcycle.

Health officials said Abu Yousef Al-Najar, the main hospital in Rafah, closed on Tuesday after heavy bombardment nearby led medical staff and around 200 patients to flee, Reuters reported.

"They have gone crazy. Tanks are firing shells and smoke bombs cover the skies," said Emad Joudat, 55, a Gaza City resident displaced in Rafah.

"I am now seriously thinking of heading north, maybe to the central Gaza area. If they move further into Rafah, it will be the mother of massacres," he told Reuters via a chat app.

Many of those in Rafah were previously displaced from other parts of Gaza following Israel's orders to evacuate from there.

Families have been crammed into tented camps and makeshift shelters, suffering from shortages of food, water, medicine and other essentials.

The U.N. and other international aid agencies said the closing of the two crossings into southern Gaza - Rafah and Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom - had virtually cut the enclave off from outside aid and very few stores were available inside.

Red Crescent sources in Egypt said shipments had completely halted. "These crossings are a lifeline... They need to be reopened without any delay," Philippe Lazzarini, head of U.N. aid agency UNRWA, said on X.

Separately, Jordan said Israeli settlers attacked a humanitarian convoy on its way to a crossing in northern Gaza.

The White House said it had been told the Kerem Shalom crossing would re-open on Wednesday and fuel deliveries through Rafah would resume then too.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to Israel and Hamas to spare no effort to get a truce deal. "Make no mistake – a full-scale assault on Rafah would be a human catastrophe," Guterres said.

'PANIC AND DESPAIR'

Israel's military said it was conducting a limited operation in Rafah to kill fighters and dismantle infrastructure used by Hamas, which runs Gaza. It told civilians to go to what it calls an "expanded humanitarian zone" some 20 km (12 miles) away.

In Geneva, U.N. humanitarian office spokesperson Jens Laerke said "panic and despair" were gripping the people in Rafah.

Civilians did not have enough time to prepare for evacuation and no safe route to travel, he said. The roads are "littered with unexploded ordnance, massive bombs lying in the street. It's not safe," he said.

Critics of the Gaza war have urged U.S. President Joe Biden to pressure Israel to change course. The U.S., Israeli's closest ally and main weapons supplier, has delayed some arms shipments to Israel for two weeks, according to four sources on Tuesday.

The White House and Pentagon declined comment, but this would be the first such delay since the Biden administration offered its full support to Israel after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack, read the report.

Israel's offensive has killed 34,789 Palestinians, most of them civilians, in the conflict, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

The war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and abducting about 250 others, of whom 133 are believed to remain in captivity in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Any truce would be the first pause in fighting since a week-long ceasefire in November during which Hamas freed around half of the hostages and Israel released 240 Palestinians it was holding in its jails.

Since then, all efforts to reach a new truce have foundered over Hamas' refusal to free more hostages without a promise of a permanent end to the conflict, and Israel's insistence that it would discuss only a temporary pause.

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US states worried about election unrest take security precautions

Many of the most visible moves can be seen in the battleground states that will decide the presidential election, states like Nevada where protests by Trump supporters broke out after the 2020 election

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As a tense America votes on Tuesday for either Republican Donald Trump or Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for president, concerns about potential political violence have prompted officials to take a variety of measures to bolster security during and after Election Day.

Many of the most visible moves can be seen in the battleground states that will decide the presidential election, states like Nevada where protests by Trump supporters broke out after the 2020 election.

This year, a security fence rings the scene of some of those protests - the Las Vegas tabulation center.

A defense official said on Monday that Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Iowa, Illinois, North Carolina, New Mexico, Oregon, Wisconsin and Washington state have current National Guard missions while Washington DC, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia have troops on standby.

In Arizona, a similar metal fence has been erected at Maricopa County vote tabulation center in downtown Phoenix, a flashpoint in 2020 for rigged election conspiracy theories and threats against election officials.

County Sheriff Russ Skinner said his department will be on "high alert" for threats and violence and he has instructed staff to be available for duty.

"We will have a lot of resources out there, a lot of staff, a lot of equipment," he added, noting deputies will use drones to monitor activity around polling places and snipers and other reinforcements will be on standby for deployment if violence appears likely.

He said "polarization" becomes more intense in the days after the election so law enforcement will remain on heightened alert and "there will be zero tolerance on anything related to criminal activity".

Concerned about the potential for protests or even violence, several Arizona schools and churches that served as voting centers in the past will not serve as polling stations this year, a local election official told Reuters.

Precautions stretch beyond the battleground states. Oregon and Washington state authorities have said they have activated the National Guard. Some storefront windows in Washington, DC and elsewhere have been covered by plywood.

Back in Las Vegas, Faviola Garibay surveyed the security fence around the linen-colored building where Clark County officials tabulate the votes and where voters such as her can drop election ballots.

"The fencing, the presence of police here, it seems secure," she said. "I feel safe voting."

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Israeli airstrikes kill at least 31 people in Gaza, medics say

Hamas has repeatedly denied using civilian facilities such as hospitals, schools, and mosques, for military purposes.

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Israeli airstrikes killed at least 31 people in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, Palestinian medics said, with nearly half of the deaths in northern areas where the army has waged a month-long campaign it says is aimed at preventing Hamas from regrouping, Reuters reported.

Palestinians said the new aerial and ground offensives and forced evacuations were "ethnic cleansing" aimed at emptying two northern Gaza towns and a refugee camp of their population in order to create buffer zones. Israel denies this, saying it is fighting Hamas militants who launch attacks from there.

Medics said at least 13 Palestinians were killed in separate attacks on houses in Beit Lahiya town and Jabalia, the largest of the enclave's eight historic camps and the focus of the army's new offensive.

The rest were killed in separate Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City and in southern areas, including one in Khan Younis, which health officials said had killed eight people, including four children.

Later on Sunday, health officials at the Kamal Adwan Hospital near Beit Lahiya said the facility came under Israeli tank fire and that one child hospitalized at the hospital was critically wounded.

Hussam Abu Safiya, the hospital's director said the incident took place after a delegation from the World Health Organization visited the facility and evacuated some patients.

He said while evacuating the wounded was important, it was more important to dispatch specialized medical teams to north Gaza hospitals that have become overwhelmed by the number of casualties.

Abu Safiya said the tank fire hit the water supplies, the courtyard, and the neonatal intensive care unit.

COGAT, the Israeli army's Palestinian civilian affairs agency, said the explosion resulted from an explosive device planted by Palestinian militants and not an Israeli attack.

"The terrorist organizations continue to exploit civilian infrastructure, medical facilities, and international aid organizations for their terror activities," a COGAT statement said late on Sunday.

Hamas has repeatedly denied using civilian facilities such as hospitals, schools, and mosques, for military purposes.

On Saturday, the Israeli military sent a new army division to Jabalia to join two other operating battalions, a statement said. It said hundreds of Palestinian militants have been killed in the "battles" since the raid began on Oct. 5, read the report.

Meanwhile, COGAT said it facilitated the launch of the second round of a polio vaccination campaign in northern Gaza on Saturday and that 58,604 children have received a dose.

The Gaza health ministry said Israel's military offensive in northern Gaza was stopping them from vaccinating thousands of children in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoun.

It said one clinic had come under Israeli fire while parents brought their children for the anti-polio dose on Saturday and that four children had been injured.

The head of the World Health Organization said in a statement the clinic incident took place despite a humanitarian pause agreed upon by the two warring parties, Israel and Hamas, to allow the vaccination campaign.

"A @WHO team was at the site just before. This attack, during a humanitarian pause, jeopardises the sanctity of health protection for children and may deter parents from bringing their children for vaccination," Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X on Saturday.

"These vital humanitarian-area-specific pauses must be absolutely respected. Ceasefire!" he said.

The Israeli military, which had no immediate comment on Tedros' remarks, said it was checking the report about the clinic.

A larger ceasefire that would end the war and see the release of Israeli and foreign hostages held captive in Gaza as well as Palestinians jailed by Israel remains remote due to disagreements between Hamas and Israel.

Hamas wants an agreement to end the war permanently, refusing recent offers for temporary truces, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says war can only end when Hamas is eradicated, Reuters reported.

The war erupted after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's retaliatory offensives have killed more than 43,300 Palestinians and reduced most of Gaza to rubble.

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Russia targets Kyiv in hours-long drone attack

Ukraine’s military reported on Saturday that air defences had destroyed 39 out of 71 Russian drones that had been launched, and that another 21 had been “locationally lost”.

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Russia unleashed its latest overnight drone strike on Ukraine, targeting the capital Kyiv in an attack that lasted into midday and wounded at least one person, city officials said on Saturday.

Debris from downed drones struck six city districts, wounding a police officer, damaging residential buildings and starting fires, according to city military administrator Serhiy Popko, Reuters reported.

"Another night. Another air-raid alert. Another drone attack. The armed forces of the Russian Federation attacked Kyiv again according to their old and familiar tactics," Popko wrote on social media.

All the drones aimed at Kyiv had been shot down, he said.

Ukrainian energy provider DTEK said a high-voltage line powering the capital and two distribution networks in the Kyiv region had been damaged.

DTEK said in a statement that electricity had mostly been restored and that repairs were underway.

Reuters correspondents reported hearing explosions in and around the city during an air-raid alert that lasted more than five hours. One drone was seen flying low over the city amid the din of automatic-weapons fire.

Ukraine's military reported on Saturday that air defences had destroyed 39 out of 71 Russian drones that had been launched, and that another 21 had been "locationally lost".

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said strikes were also reported in the central Poltava and northeastern Sumy and Kharkiv regions, read the report.

"This year, we have faced the threat of 'Shahed' drones almost every night — sometimes in the morning, and even during the day," he wrote on social media, referring to the Iranian-made attack drones used by Russia.

Russian forces have carried out regular airstrikes on Ukrainian towns and cities behind the front lines of the war which began when Russia invaded its neighbour in February 2022.

Kyiv's military said on Friday that Moscow's forces had launched more than 2,000 drones at civilian and military targets across Ukraine in October alone.

Russia has denied aiming at civilians and said power facilities are legitimate targets when they are part of Ukrainian military infrastructure.

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