Israel-Gaza live updates: Blinken back in Israel amid rising tensions across region

More than a month after a temporary cease-fire between Hamas and Israel ended, Israel continues 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.

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Latest Developments

Jan 9, 8:28 AM

UNICEF: All children under 5 in Gaza at 'high risk of severe malnutrition'

All children under the age of 5 in the Gaza Strip -- approximately 335,000 -- are at "high risk of severe malnutrition and preventable death as the risk of famine conditions continues to increase," according to the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund.

"To get children the life-saving support they desperately need, we need a humanitarian ceasefire. Now," UNICEF's Middle East and North Africa office wrote Tuesday in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

-ABC News' Zoe Magee and Morgan Winsor

Jan 9, 7:53 AM

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

Jan 8, 3:05 PM

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

Jan 8, 2:38 PM

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

Jan 8, 1:12 PM

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

Jan 8, 10:39 AM

Blinken expresses concern about a wider conflict during Middle East visit

The Israel-Hamas war "could easily metastasize" beyond the Palestinian territory as "profound tension" in the region raises the prospect of a wider conflict, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday during an ongoing trip to the Middle East.

Such fighting would "cause even more insecurity and suffering," Blinken told reporters in Doha, Qatar, alongside Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.

Blinken is roughly halfway through a nine-stop tour around the Middle East, his fourth diplomatic mission since the war began after Hamas' Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel killed 1,200.

Looking ahead to his meetings with Israeli leaders in Tel Aviv and the West Bank set for early this week, Blinken said Sunday, "I will also raise the imperative of doing more to prevent civilian casualties. Far too many Palestinians, innocent Palestinians, have already been killed."

The secretary of state, like other U.S. officials including President Joe Biden, have sought to stress their support for Israel's retaliatory operations against Hamas while calling for Israel to do as much as possible to curb civilian casualties in light of the ongoing onslaught in Gaza and high death toll.

Jan 7, 2:52 PM

International Rescue Committee withdraws from Gaza's Al Aqsa hospital

The International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestine (MAP) said Sunday they were "forced to withdraw and cease activities" at Gaza's Al Aqsa hospital "as a result of increasing Israeli military activity" around the medical facility.

The Israeli military has dropped leaflets designating areas surrounding the hospital as a "red zone," the relief organizations said in a statement.

"Given the recent history of attacks on medical staff and facilities in Gaza, the team is unable to return," the statement said. "Many local health workers have also been unable to access the hospital to care for the hundreds of patients that remain due to the conflict."

A MAP staff member is currently a patient at the hospital after she was injured and her three sisters were killed in an Israeli bombing of a house they were staying in, according to the statement.

ABC News reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment.



Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also said Sunday it was evacuating its staff and families from the neighborhoods around the Al Aqsa hospital.

-ABC News' Zoe Magee

Jan 7, 1:43 PM

IDF says it has completed the 'dismantling of Hamas' military framework'

The Israel Defense Forces claimed on Sunday that it has "completed the dismantling of Hamas' military framework" in the northern Gaza Strip, hitting hundreds of targets and taking out key leaders of the terrorist group.

In an assessment of the first three months of the war between Israel and Hamas, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesperson, said Israeli forces have met their goals through airstrikes, ground operations and intelligence gathering in the primary objective of eliminating Hamas.

He said the IDF's efforts in northern Gaza have included a relentless barrage of missile strikes, most of them targeting Jabaliya, the onetime stronghold of Hamas. In Jabaliya alone, Hagari said IDF airstrikes had hit 670 targets before ground forces entered the area and another 300 targets after ground troops moved in and helped direct precision airstrikes.

"In these strikes in the Jabaliya area, we eliminated the battalion commander, the deputy brigade commanders, and 11 company commanders leading the terrorists in the field," Hagari said during a news conference.

Among the Hamas commanders eliminated was Ahmad Randor, Hagari said, showing what he said was a photograph of Randor sitting with his command echelon in a bunker 40 meters, or about 131 feet, underground.

"We have completed the dismantling of Hamas' military framework in the northern Gaza Strip and will continue to deepen the achievement, strengthening the barrier and the defense components along the security fence," Hagari said.

Since the war started, IDF forces have located and destroyed 40,000 weapons across the Gaza Strip, some of which were found in schools, hospitals, mosques, and even under the beds of children, Hagari said. In Jabaliya, IDF troops also infiltrated about 5 miles of tunnels and more than 40 tunnel shafts leading to Hamas' northern headquarters and retrieved the bodies of five hostages, according to Hagari.

"Hamas no longer operates in an organized manner in this area. We have deprived it of its main terror capabilities in the region," Hagari said.

He noted that while there are still terrorists in the Jabaliya area, "they now operate without a framework and without commanders."

-ABC News' Jordana Miller