US president’s visit to Jordan cancelled – as it happened

Protests in at least eight cities in Middle East

Following the blast at a Gaza hospital where hundreds of people were sheltering and patients were being treated, protests have ignited in cities across the Middle East, including in Lebanon, Iran and Turkey.

Hundreds of Palestinians have flooded the streets of major West Bank cities including Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, where protesters hurled stones at Palestinian security forces who fired back with stun grenades.

Hundreds of demonstrators scuffled with Lebanese security forces outside the US embassy in the village of Awkar on Thursday night, where protesters hurled stones, according to AFP correspondents.

Police fired several rounds of teargas to disperse protesters, with medics rushing in to treat people affected.

The US embassy is a heavily fortified and sprawling compound 20 minutes north of Beirut, in the village of Awkar.

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement on Tuesday called for a “day of rage” to condemn what it said was an Israeli strike on a hospital in Gaza city. Israel’s army blamed a rocket misfired by Islamic Jihad, another Gaza-based militant group.

Hundreds also gathered at the French embassy in Beirut, raising Hezbollah flags and also hurling stones which piled up at the embassy’s main entrance.

Protests were also staged at Israel’s embassies in Turkey and Jordan. Television footage showed protests in Yemen’s southwestern city of Taz, as well as in the Moroccan and Iraqi capitals.

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the British and French embassies in Tehran in the early hours of Wednesday.

Updated at 21.09 EDT

Key events

17h ago

Protests in Libya over Gaza hospital blast

18h ago

UN chief to arrive in Egypt on Thursday

18h ago

US raises travel alert for Lebanon to ‘do not travel’, authorises voluntary personnel departures

19h ago

UN chief ‘horrified’ by Gaza hospital strike

19h ago

Reactions to blast at Gaza City hospital

19h ago

Islamic Jihad says IDF accusation over hospital blast is ‘lies’

19h ago

31 Americans killed in Hamas attack on israel

19h ago

US ‘getting close’ to ‘framework for aid’ says White House

20h ago

Protests in at least eight cities in Middle East

20h ago

US to announce new sanctions against Hamas leaders this week – report

20h ago

Protests in Tehran

20h ago

Biden ‘outraged’ by Gaza hospital explosion

21h ago

Five Hezbollah fighters killed in clashes on Lebanon-Israel border

21h ago

Protests taking place in West Bank cities, Beirut and Amman

21h ago

Summary

22h ago

White House statement on Biden’s decision to cancel Jordan visit

22h ago

Biden cancels visit to Jordan

23h ago

Jordan cancels summit with Biden and Egyptian and Palestinian leaders

23h ago

White House weighing US military response if Hezbollah attacks Israel – report

24h ago

Archbishop of Canterbury says hospital attack is ‘appalling and devastating’

1d ago

Teargas fired at West Bank protesters over hospital strike

1d ago

Mahmoud Abbas cancels Biden meeting after Gaza hospital strike

1d ago

Summary

1d ago

Fears grow people are dehydrating to death in Gaza as clean water runs out

1d ago

UK flies more than 900 citizens back from Israel

1d ago

Hundreds of people killed in Gaza hospital blast, according to Gaza health ministry

1d ago

Hundreds of victims under rubble of Gaza hospital, says health ministry

1d ago

At least 500 casualties after Gaza hospital strike, says health ministry

1d ago

Hundreds feared dead in strike on Gaza hospital

1d ago

Rishi Sunak to visit Israel – report

1d ago

At least six people killed in strike on school in Gaza

1d ago

Scholz: Germany’s place is ‘by Israel’s side’

1d ago

Number of people killed in Gaza rises to 3,000

1d ago

Gaza’s only oncology hospital forced to close due to fuel blockade

1d ago

Summary of the day so far …

1d ago

France condemns Hamas video of French-Israeli hostage as ‘vile’

1d ago

Biden to meet leaders of Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Palestine on trip to Middle East

1d ago

Summary of the day so far …

1d ago

Turkey says it has held talks with Hamas over release of Israeli hostages

1d ago

Egypt to host summit to discuss Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Saturday

1d ago

UN human rights office: Israel evacuation order may be illegal ‘forcible transfer of civilians’

1d ago

Iran’s supreme leader: Israeli officials should be tried for actions against Palestinians in Gaza

1d ago

British teenager missing after Hamas attack has been murdered, family say

2d ago

Jordan’s King Abdullah: there must be ‘no refugees in Jordan, no refugees in Egypt’ from Palestine

2d ago

Overnight death toll from Israeli airstrikes on Gaza now stands at ‘at least 71’ people

2d ago

Gaza’s interior ministry: at least 49 Palestinians killed by overnight Israeli strikes

2d ago

Summary

2d ago

Leaders to meet as EU struggles to put on united front over Israel-Hamas war

2d ago

Gaza’s main hospital overflows with the living and the dead

2d ago

Hundreds of Israeli bodies still unidentified

2d ago

100,000 people remain in Gaza City, says IDF

2d ago

Biden to visit Tel Aviv on Wednesday

2d ago

Opening summary

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Here is a report on the protests sparked by the blast at al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital in Gaza City:

Japan’s government has been criticised over its evacuation of citizens from Israel, after just eight people joined a flight that flew only as far as Dubai, with passengers charged a fee for boarding the plane.

Social media users and opposition politicians contrasted Sunday’s evacuation on a government-chartered commercial plane with an earlier flight on a South Korean military aircraft, whose passengers included dozens of Japanese nationals.

Passengers on the Japanese flight were charged ¥30,000 each (US$200), sparking anger on X, formerly known as Twitter, with some users accusing the government of being “stingy”. The South Korean government, by contrast, did not charge 51 Japanese nationals who boarded its flight – along with 163 South Koreans and six Singaporeans – from Israel to Seoul on Saturday.

Kenta Izumi, head of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic party, was similarly critical: “A Japanese government-chartered plane arrived in Dubai with eight Japanese on board for a fee,” he wrote on X. “The South Korean government transport plane carried not only South Koreans but also 51 Japanese, and arrived in South Korea, and for free.”

The Mainichi Shimbun said the tiny number of people aboard the Japanese flight had taken foreign ministry officials by surprise. “We hurried to avoid Japan being accused of responding too slowly, but with only eight people on board, it backfired on us,” the newspaper quoted a source close to the ministry as saying.

But another official defended the evacuation, saying the quickly changing situation in the Middle East meant the government wanted to fly its citizens out of Israel as soon as possible.

“The purpose of evacuating Japanese nationals was to get them out of the country, not to get them back to Japan,” the official told the Mainichi. “We are glad we did it, even with eight people.”

About 1,200 Japanese nationals were in Israel and Palestinian territories before the conflict broke out, and 1,000 were still there as of Saturday, the Kyodo news agency reported.

Protests in Libya over Gaza hospital blast

AFP: Several hundred people protested in Tripoli and other Libyan cities late Tuesday over the deadly blast at a Gaza hospital, according to AFP journalists.

In Tripoli, hundreds of demonstrators of all ages, brandishing Palestinian flags and some covering their faces with Palestinian keffiyehs, crisscrossed the streets of the city centre before converging on Martyrs’ Square.

They chanted slogans of support for the residents of Gaza and denounced the strike by the “Zionist enemy”.

“We give our blood and our souls for Gaza,” they chanted in Tripoli and similarly in Misrata, a city 200 kilometres (120 miles) west of the capital.

The Israeli army said the explosion was a rocket misfired by the Gaza-based militant group Islamic Jihad, an ally of Hamas.

Earlier, Abdulhamid Dbeibah, the prime minister of Libya’s Tripoli-based internationally recognised government, condemned the hospital blast, calling it a “despicable crime”.

“We denounce this crime which exceeded all limits, and I call on all countries of the world and the great powers in particular, to put an end to these crimes and to open corridors to bring humanitarian aid into the besieged sector,” he said on X, formerly Twitter, late Tuesday.

“Targeting medical and civilian facilities is a war crime. This aggression must stop,” he said.

Updated at 23.00 EDT

Wednesday’s Today in Focus episode is about the growing expectations that Israel will soon launch a ground assault on Gaza and the growing fears about what a ground invasion could mean for the trapped civilians:

UN chief to arrive in Egypt on Thursday

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will arrive in Cairo on Thursday, focused on reopening the Gaza border to allow in desperately needed aid for millions of Palestinians.

UN spokespersonStephane Dujarric, who made the announcement Tuesday, said the secretary-general will engage with Egyptian leaders including President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and speak at an international conference on Saturday hosted by the president.

“This situation is becoming more than critical,” he said. “We are at a time of extreme tension, where we’re calling to move away from further escalation and any possible miscalculation.”

US raises travel alert for Lebanon to ‘do not travel’, authorises voluntary personnel departures

The US State Department has raised its travel alert for Lebanon to “do not travel,” citing the security situation related to rocket, missile, and artillery exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah, Reuters reports.

The State Department authorised the voluntary, temporary departure of family members of US government personnel and some non-emergency personnel from the US Embassy in Beirut because of the unpredictable security situation in Lebanon.

Protests took place outside the US embassy near Beirut on Tuesday night and into the early hours of Wednesday following the blast at al-Ahli al-Arabi hopsital in Gaza that killed hundreds of Palestinians.

Reuters: Ahmed Al-Mandhari, WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean, said there were patients, healthcare workers and internally displaced people in the al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital when it was struck.

“The hospital was one of 20 in the north of the Gaza Strip facing evacuation orders from the Israeli military,” he said.

“The order for evacuation has been impossible to carry out given the current insecurity, critical condition of many patients, and lack of ambulances, staff, health system bed capacity, and alternative shelter for those displaced,” he added.

Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme, said it was “inhumane” to leave Gaza’s health workers with the dilemma of caring for their patients or fleeing to save their own lives. He said doctors and nurses were choosing their patients over themselves.

“It is absolutely clear to all sides of this conflict where the health facilities are,” Ryan said.

“It is absolutely clear healthcare is not a target… That is enshrined in international humanitarian law. And we’re seeing this breached again and again and again over the last week. And it has to stop. It must stop.”

Updated at 22.13 EDT

“This attack is unprecedented in scale,” Richard Peeperkorn, WHO Representative for the West Bank and Gaza, told Reuters.

“We have seen consistent attacks on healthcare in the occupied Palestinian territory,” he said.

Peeperkorn said there so far have been 51 attacks against healthcare facilities in Gaza, with 15 health workers killed and 27 injured.

The Israeli military blamed the al-Ahli al-Arabi blast on a failed rocket launch by a Palestinian militant group.

Updated at 22.11 EDT

The deadly blast has upended US diplomatic efforts aimed at fending off the humanitarian disaster in Gaza and thrown a dark shadow over president Joe Biden’s imminent visit to the region.

It was hoped that Biden’s trip to Israel would help to rein in reprisal attacks on Hamas in Gaza, which has been under constant bombardment while running out of water, food and medical supplies. The UN says more than 3,000 Palestinians have died in the days since the Hamas attack.

Protests broke out across the West Bank after the hospital blast, and in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, demonstrators threw rocks at the Palestinian security forces who fired on the crowds with stun grenades.

The outpouring of anger against Israel also fuelled a large rally on Tuesday near the Israeli embassy in Amman, Jordan, where police used teargas to disperse several thousand protesters who chanted slogans in support of Hamas and demanded the government close the embassy and scrap a peace treaty with Israel. Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel is widely unpopular among many citizens.

Entire neighbourhoods have been razed in Gaza and survivors are left with dwindling supplies of food, water and fuel.

The health ministry in Gaza said hospitals are at breaking point, with more than 30,000 people taking shelter at the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City alone.

People are assisted at Shifa Hospital after hundreds of Palestinians were killed in a blast at Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza that Israeli and Palestinian officials blamed on each other in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, 17 October 2023. Photograph: Reuters

It said it was “extremely concerned” about disease outbreaks due to poor water supply and sanitation.

“There are corpses in the streets. Buildings are crashing down on their inhabitants,” Jamil Abdullah, a Palestinian-Swede, who was hoping to flee the blockaded enclave, told AFP.

“The smell of the dead is everywhere.”

AFP has spoken to a doctor working for Doctors Without Borders.

In chaotic scenes after the blast, those injured were taken from the al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital in ambulances to other medical centres nearby, while medics and civilians covered rows of the dead in white plastic sheets or blankets, the agency reports.

“We were operating in the hospital. There was a strong explosion and the ceiling fell on the operating room.” said Ghassan Abu Sittah, a doctor with medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

He added: “Hospitals are not a target. This bloodshed must stop. Enough is enough.”

Updated at 22.11 EDT

A reminder that there are differing figures in the death toll after the blast at al-Ahli Arabi hospital.

The Gaza health ministry, which is run by Hamas, claimed that more than 500 people had been killed in an Israeli airstrike on the hospital which, if confirmed, would make it the deadliest single bombing of all the five wars Israel and Hamas have fought over Gaza.

But an official from the Gaza civil defence said more than 300 people had been killed in the blast.

Updated at 09.12 EDT