June 13, 2024 Israel-Hamas war

Our live coverage for the day has ended. Follow the latest Israel-Hamas war news or read through the updates below.

The fate of the 120 remaining hostages in Gaza is crucial to any deal to end the protracted and bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas.

But a senior Hamas official has told CNN that “no one has an idea” how many of them are alive, and that any deal to release them must include guarantees of a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

In an interview with CNN, Hamas spokesperson and political bureau member Osama Hamdan offered an insight into the militant group’s position on the stalled ceasefire talks, a view on whether Hamas regrets its decision to attack Israel given the mounting Palestinian death toll, and a commentary on the leak earlier this week of messages from its chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, the man believed to be the ultimate decision-maker on any peace deal.

Speaking to CNN in the Lebanese capital Beirut, Hamdan said the latest proposal – an Israeli plan that was first publicly announced by US President Joe Biden late last month – did not meet the group’s demands for an end to the war.

Hamdan told CNN that Hamas needed “a clear position from Israel to accept the ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from Gaza, and let the Palestinians to determine their future by themselves, the reconstruction, the (lifting) of the siege … and we are ready to talk about a fair deal about the prisoners exchange.”

Negotiations over the US-backed proposal have intensified recently but appeared to grind to a halt Wednesday after Hamas presented its response to the document, 12 days after first receiving it.

Read more.

The US rejected Houthi claims that allege detained local US mission staff in Yemen are part of an “American-Israeli spy network."

“Yet again the Houthis are seeking to use disinformation to shift blame to the United States and other outside actors for their own failures,” US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

In October 2021, the Houthis detained a number of Yemeni locally employed staff who worked at the US Embassy in Sana’a, many of whom remain detained nearly three years later. The US Embassy in Sana’a suspended operations in 2015. 

This past month, Yemen’s Houthi rebels detained additional United Nations personnel and others, accusing them of espionage, according to US, UN and Houthi officials. 

The Houthi-controlled Intelligence and Security Service alleges the detained US mission staff worked in Yemen for decades as part of a spy network, recruited by the CIA, "to target Yemen internally in military, economic, social, agricultural, religious, educational, and other fields,” according to a report from the Houthi-run news network Al-Masirah.

Videos of alleged confessions by these personnel were uploaded to Al-Masirah TV. CNN cannot verify these videos and if any of them spoke under duress. 

Miller condemned the videos, calling them “efforts to spread disinformation regarding the role of detained current and former US mission local staff through televised forced and fake ‘confessions.’” 

“These Houthi actions reflect a blatant disregard for the dignity of the Yemeni people and individuals who – contrary to the Houthis’ lies – have dedicated themselves to their country’s betterment. Their efforts stand in stark contrast to the actions of the Houthis who have held them without justification for more than two-and-a-half years,” he said of the long-detained locally employed staffers. “Their detention, and that of the UN staff, is an affront to diplomatic norms, and they should be released immediately. We will not rest until they are.”

At least one woman died after a strike from a "hostile war plane" in southern Lebanon targeted a house, according to a representative at the Jabal Amal hospital in Tyre and Lebanon's National News Agency (NNA).

The strike took place about 12 miles north of Lebanon’s border with Israel. The woman was part of a group of at least 10 people who were injured, but later succumbed to her injuries.

Ambulances transported the wounded civilians to hospitals in Tyre, NNA reported Thursday. There is heavy air presence of “enemy” aircraft, NNA said.

The exchanges between Israeli forces and Hezbollah have intensified since Tuesday night when Israel struck a building in Jwaya in south Lebanon that killed four Hezbollah militants, including Talib Abdalla, a senior field commander.

Wednesday and Thursday saw some of the most strikes and counterstrikes since hostilities began between Hezbollah and Lebanon on October 8, the day after the war began in Gaza.

CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment.

Iran-backed Houthi militants launched two anti-ship cruise missiles into the Gulf of Aden on Thursday and hit a cargo ship, severely injuring a mariner on board who was then medically evacuated by aircraft from a nearby US warship, according to US Central Command.  

The cargo vessel, the M/V Verbena, is a Palauan-flagged, Ukrainian-owned, Polish-operated bulk cargo carrier, according to the CENTCOM statement, and it reported damage and fires on board that the crew is continuing to fight to put out. 

The Houthis have launched dozens of missiles and drones at ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since October, including one attack in March that killed three crew members on the M/V True Confidence, a Barbados-flagged, Liberian-owned bulk carrier.

The US and UK have carried out several rounds of strikes against the Houthis in Yemen, including as recently as last week, to try to degrade their weapons supplies. But the Houthis have shown no signs of halting their attacks, which they say are in solidarity with Palestinians killed in Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war. 

“The Houthis claim to be acting on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza and yet they are targeting and threatening the lives of third country nationals who have nothing to do with the conflict in Gaza,” CENTCOM said.

President Joe Biden said that the success of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is being hindered by Hamas' refusal to sign onto the potential deal.

"The bottom line is that we've made an agreement, I've laid out an approach that has been endorsed by the UN Security Council, by the G7, by the Israelis," Biden said at a press conference alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the G7 summit in Italy.

"And the biggest hang up so far is Hamas refusing to sign on, even though they have submitted something similar. Whether or not it comes fruition remains to be seen. We're going to continue to push," he added.

The US military is considering temporarily dismantling the humanitarian pier off the coast of Gaza and moving it back to Israel on Friday amid concerns that heavy seas could once again break it just days after it resumed aid delivery operations, multiple US officials said.

It would be the second time in a matter of weeks that the fragile pier and causeway system, known as Joint Logistics over the Shore or JLOTS, has had to be moved back to the Israeli port of Ashdod. 

A final decision is not expected to be made until Friday, officials said. 

Earlier this month, the pier broke apart and sustained damage in heavy seas and had to be towed to Ashdod for repairs that took over a week. It was moved back to Gaza last week and resumed operations on Saturday, but had to pause again due to heavy seas on Monday and Tuesday. 

To date, the pier has been used to move thousands of tons of aid into Gaza, officials have said. But its ability to operate effectively is heavily dependent on favorable sea conditions and officials said on Thursday that forecasts indicate that the waters will be rough on Friday and into the weekend.

Officials have told CNN that sea conditions in the eastern Mediterranean will only worsen as fall and winter approach, raising questions about the pier’s realistic lifespan. 

Meanwhile, the World Food Programme’s aid distribution operations at the pier have been suspended for days and aid has been piling up in the staging area on the beach in Gaza, officials said this week.

Israeli soldiers on the border with Lebanon have used a catapult rarely used by military forces since the 16th century.

The trebuchet, a rotating arm with a sling attached to launch a projectile, was used to launch a fireball from Israel toward Lebanese territory.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had said the catapult was “a local initiative” and had not “come into widespread use,” Israeli public broadcaster and CNN affiliate Kan on Thursday reported.

Kan added that the trebuchet was likely used to burn shrubbery to make it easier for Israeli forces to identify militants attempting to reach the border. The IDF did not comment on these claims. CNN has independently reached out to the IDF for comment.

Footage of the catapult in action was first posted on social media Wednesday. CNN could not verify when the footage was filmed but geolocated it to the Israeli-Lebanese border.

While there have been reports of catapults being used by Ukrainian protestors in 2014 and Syrian rebels in 2013, they began to lose military relevance “after the emergence of modern gunpowder artillery in the 15th century,” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

An Israeli court has upheld an order to extend the ban on Al Jazeera broadcasts within Israel for an additional 45 days. The Israeli government requested the extension, and the Israeli High Court approved it on Thursday. 

According to the Tel Aviv District Court, the decision follows “a thorough review of both written and oral arguments presented by the involved parties.”

“…and after carefully reviewing a large amount of confidential material, it came to the conclusion that the request (warrants issued against Al-Jazeera) should be granted and that the extension of the validity of the orders as requested should be approved,” the court decision reads.

CNN has contacted the Al-Jazeera Network for comment. 

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), Israel’s oldest and largest human rights organization, said the court's decision to approve the orders against Al Jazeera “violates freedom of expression and freedom of the press,” and the group is considering an appeal to the Supreme Court.

“ACRI asserted that the reasons given for closing the channel indicate that freedom of expression is not merely compatible with state security but is an integral part of it. The government is attempting to control the narrative, dictating what we think, how we think, and who will provide information. This is a characteristic of non-democratic countries that disregard the security of their citizens,” ACRI said in a written statement sent to CNN on Thursday.

Some background: In early May, the Israeli cabinet forced the Arabic news channel to close its operations in Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the time: “Al Jazeera reporters harmed Israel’s security and incited IDF soldiers. It is time to expel the mouthpiece of Hamas from our country.”