Israel-Gaza live updates: UN secretary-general invokes Article 99
The temporary cease-fire between Hamas and Israel ended early Friday, 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.
Click here for updates from previous days.
Latest Developments
Dec 6, 9:44 PM
Over 80% of people in Gaza have inadequate food consumption, WFP report says
Around 83% of households in southern Gaza suffering from inadequate food consumption, according to a new report from the World Food Programme.
The organization also reported Wednesday that 97% of households in northern Gaza have inadequate food consumption.
As a result, 95% of households are adopting extreme food consumption strategies to cope with food shortages in northern Gaza, the report said, with 82% of households doing the same in southern Gaza.
-ABC News’ Ellie Kaufman
Dec 6, 5:25 PM
US, G7 partners call for opening of Gaza crossings into Israel
The United States and its Group of Seven allies called for crossings from Gaza into Israel to be opened for the transfer of humanitarian aid in a statement released Wednesday evening following a virtual meeting.
“The population is increasingly vulnerable, and with winter approaching, we must continue to increase the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza to meet fully the needs on the ground, including by opening additional crossings,” the G7 leaders said in the statement.
Only the Rafah crossing into Egypt is open, while all of the other crossings into Gaza border Israel and have been closed. The White House provided its readout of the meeting but did not mention this joint call for the opening of additional crossings.
The White House said the leaders “expressed deep regret that Hamas refused to release all of its women hostages and military operations resume.”
“Hamas offers nothing but suffering to the Palestinian people, and it is an obstacle to a better future for them and for the region. We will continue to coordinate our efforts to isolate Hamas and ensure it cannot threaten Israel,” the G7 leaders said in its statement.
-ABC News’ Fritz Farrow
Dec 6, 2:26 PM
Kids in Gaza share their experiences through art
Children in Gaza are sharing their traumatic experiences from the war through drawings.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said it organized the event to help children process their complicated feelings.
The art was displayed in the rubble of a bombed house.
The children’s art included portraits of families and drawings of homes. One showed an injured person in a hospital bed, and another depicted a journalist’s camera and bulletproof vest.
Dec 6, 2:15 PM
Israeli soldiers fighting in southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis
Israeli soldiers are fighting for the first time in the heart of Khan Yunis, a city in southern Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces said.
Palestinians injured in an Israeli airstrike arrive at Nasser Medical Hospital on Dec. 6, 2023 in Khan Yunis, Gaza.
“The city of Khan Yunis is a terrorist stronghold,” the IDF said. “The entire leadership of the Hamas terrorist organization — both military and political — proliferated in the area of Khan Yunis.”
Israeli troops have eliminated terrorists and their infrastructure in the area, the IDF said. One strike was on a mosque that the IDF said was being used to store weapons.
This picture taken from Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on December 5, 2023, shows an explosion in Khan Yunis as battles between Israel and Hamas militants continue.
Dec 6, 1:37 PM
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.
People mourn as they collect the bodies of Palestinians killed in an airstrike, Dec. 6, 2023, in Khan Yunis, Gaza.
“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.
Smoke billows during an Israeli bombardment in Gaza, Dec. 6, 2023.
Dec 6, 1:22 PM
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.
A Palestinian child injured in an Israeli airstrike receives treatment at Nasser Medical Hospital on Dec. 6, 2023, in Khan Yunis, Gaza.
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.
Palestinians mourn the death of loved ones following Israeli bombardment in the southern Gaza Strip, Dec. 5, 2023, outside a hospital in Khan Yunis.
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.”
Dec 6, 12:41 PM
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.
Video: UN says there is no safe zones in Gaza as Israeli strike continues
Dec 6, 11:24 AM
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.
Pictures of the festivalgoers, who were killed or kidnapped during the October 7 attack by Hamas gunmen from Gaza, are displayed at the site of the Nova festival during a tribute, in Re’im, southern Israel, Nov. 28, 2023.
“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
Dec 6, 9:02 AM
IDF says it struck 250 targets in Gaza over last day amid ‘intensive battles’
The Israel Defense Forces said Wednesday morning that its aircraft had bombed “approximately 250 terror targets in the Gaza Strip” over the last day amid what it described as “intensive battles.”
“During these strikes, terrorists from the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations were eliminated, and a number of terrorist infrastructure were destroyed,” the IDF said in a statement.
Israeli soldiers also located “one of the largest weapons depots” in Gaza “near a clinic and a school” in the northern part of the Hamas-controlled territory, according to the IDF.
“The depot contained hundreds of RPG missiles and launchers of various types, dozens of anti-tank missiles, dozens of explosive devices, long-range missiles aimed at central Israel, dozens of grenades and UAVs,” the IDF added. “All of the terrorist infrastructure was found close to civilian buildings in the heart of a civilian population. This is additional proof of Hamas’ cynical use of the residents of the Gaza Strip as human shields.”
Hamas has denied Israel’s claims that it deliberately shelters behind civilians in Gaza.
-ABC News’ Morgan Winsor
Dec 6, 7:40 AM
US believes 8 American hostages remain in Gaza, Kirby says
The United States believes eight Americans are still being held hostage by militants in the war-torn Gaza Strip, according to White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby.
“We think there’s about eight hostages that are Americans. We know of at least one woman in that group,” Kirby told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in an interview Wednesday on “Good Morning America.”
“We’re doing everything we can to try to get them released,” he continued. “We’re constantly engaged with our partners in the region to try to get this humanitarian pause back in place, so that the flow of hostages can renew.”
Although a temporary cease-fire between Israel and Gaza’s militant rulers, Hamas, ended last week, the U.S. is “still flowing in humanitarian assistance” to civilians in Gaza, according to Kirby.
“And we’re trying to get it up to the level that it was during the pause,” he noted.
When asked about what Israel’s “endgame” might be in its war against Hamas as Israeli troops expand their offensive across all of Gaza, Kirby said: “That’s really something for the Israeli’s to speak to.”
“We obviously want to see Hamas eliminated as a threat to the Israeli people,” he added. “That hasn’t been achieved yet. They’re going after the leadership as best they can. They believe they need to operate in the south. We’ve told them you know we’ll continue to support their military operations but we want to make sure that as they do that they’re factoring in those innocent civilian lives as much as possible.”
-ABC News’ Morgan Winsor
Click here to read the rest of the blog.