October 27, 2023 Israel-Hamas war news

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reiterated “the importance of protecting civilians during the Israel Defense Forces’ operations” in a call Friday with the Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, according to a Pentagon readout. 

Austin also emphasized the urgent need for “humanitarian aid delivery for civilians in Gaza” and for Hamas to release all hostages, the Pentagon said.

A United Nations resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict is important "to ensure that humanitarian assistance can enter Gaza," Norway’s Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said in a statement.

Eide said that the country is “happy to have voted” for the resolution because it was “important" for aid to get through.

“The world community agrees on many of the key issues, including the importance of protecting civilians and addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” Eide said of the resolution, which passed Friday with an overwhelming majority.

While Norway recognized “the resolution does not contain all the elements that we should ideally have included,” it was still “a compromise between different positions,” and that “requires that we too show a willingness to compromise,” Eide added.  

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told international news organizations that they cannot guarantee the safety of journalists reporting from Gaza, according to a Reuters report published Friday. 

International news agencies Reuters and Agence France Presse (AFP) contacted the Israeli military this week for assurance their journalists on the ground in Gaza would not be targeted by Israeli airstrikes. 

The IDF responded in a letter to both agencies saying they are "targeting all Hamas military activity throughout Gaza" and "[u]nder these circumstances, [they] cannot guarantee [their] employees' safety, and strongly urge [them] to take all necessary measures for their safety."

The letter also said Hamas deliberately put military operations "in the vicinity of journalists and civilians," Reuters wrote. Hamas did not immediately respond when asked if these allegations put forth by the IDF were true, Reuters said. 

Reuters and AFP have both expressed concern over the safety of journalists in Gaza, Reuters stated. 

“The situation on the ground is dire, and the IDF’s unwillingness to give assurances about the safety of our staff threatens their ability to deliver the news about this conflict without fear of being injured or killed," Reuters explained in a statement in response to the IDF's letter.
"We are in an incredibly precarious position and it's important that the world understands that there is a large team of journalists working in extremely dangerous conditions," AFP Global News Director Phil Chetwynd said.

CNN is a client of Reuters and AFP, regularly using live and recorded video feeds from the news agencies. 

Independent internet monitoring groups told CNN it was the worst internet blackout in Gaza since the latest war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, raising fears that Palestinian civilians will be unable to communicate with the outside world as the war escalates.  

“We regret to announce a complete disruption of all communication and internet services with the Gaza Strip in light of the ongoing aggression,” the Palestine Telecommunications Company, known as Paltel, said in a Facebook post on Friday evening local time. Paltel provides internet and cell service in Gaza and the West Bank.

“The heavy bombardment of the past hour has resulted in the destruction of all remaining international paths connecting Gaza to the outside world,” Paltel said on Facebook. “This destruction is in addition to the paths that were previously destroyed during the ongoing aggression, which has led to the interruption of all communication services from our beloved Gaza Strip.”

It could take days, if not longer, for Gazans to restore internet connectivity on a broad scale given the ongoing bombardment and humanitarian crisis in Gaza, said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik, a California firm that monitors online connectivity globally.

Madory said the current outages are "probably the worst that Gaza has ever experienced.”

“The Gaza War in 2014 experienced [internet] outages but it was nothing like this,” Madory told CNN.

NetBlocks, an internet monitoring firm based in London, told CNN that the outage on Friday marked a “turning point” in Gazans’ ability to “keep the outside world informed on the situation on the ground.”

“Today’s incident is the largest single disruption to internet connectivity in Gaza observed since the beginning of the conflict,” NetBlocks claimed.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, expressed on Friday profound concern about the situation in Gaza. 

The organization said it has "lost contact with some of our Palestinian colleagues on the ground,” and expressed particular worry for patients, medical staff and families seeking refuge at Al Shifa hospital and other healthcare facilities. 

The past three weeks of the Israel-Hamas war has been the deadliest period for journalists covering conflicts in decades, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Of the journalists killed, at least 24 were Palestinian, four were Israeli, and one was Lebanese, CPJ said.

"As news bureaus lose contact with their crews and reporters in Gaza, who are independently bearing witness to provide information about developments and the human toll of this war, the world is losing a window into the reality of all sides engaged in this conflict," CPJ said.

Communications in Gaza have been severely disrupted in the past several hours as a result of Israeli airstrikes, according to the local telecoms provider Jawwal. 

The last standing major internet operator in the region, Paltel, experienced damage to its international routes, according to NetBlocks, an internet outage monitoring firm based in London.

The number of United Nations staff killed in Gaza has increased to 53, after 14 lost their lives in the past 24 hours, according to a statement from the UN Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) on Friday.

Nearly 640,000 out of 1.4 million internally displaced people in Gaza are sheltering in 150 UNRWA facilities across the strip, the statement said, adding that some of them have been killed at school sites operated by the relief agency.

Since the devastating October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, which sparked its retaliatory offensive in Gaza, 18 displaced people sheltering at schools have been killed and 282 have been wounded, the UNRWA said.

The resolution that passed Friday called for an immediate humanitarian truce and unimpeded humanitarian assistance, while rejecting any attempts at the forced transfer of Palestinians.

“This vote signals the commitment of a moral majority of the international community to uphold its obligations and the rejection of double standards and politicization of international humanitarian law,” the West Bank-based ministry said in a statement.

It said the "international community has spoken in a clear and united voice against Israel’s ongoing crimes and deliberate violations of international law," adding that UN countries have "stood their ground in defense of international law as the universal rule that applies to all without exception."

Israel, however, has rejected the resolution, with the country's foreign minister calling it "despicable" in a post on social media.

• 120 countries voted in favor of the resolution
• 14 countries, including the US and Israel, voted against it
• 45 countries abstained from the vote