November 2, 2023 Israel-Hamas war news

Our live coverage of the conflict in Israel and Gaza has moved here.

Al-Shifa hospital, the Gaza Strip's largest medical facility, will become a "mass grave" as electricity runs out, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah said Thursday.

Hospitals and aid agencies have been warning that medical facilities across the besieged enclave will grind to a halt unless fuel is delivered to keep power lines running, while medics struggle to treat patients with severe injuries from Israeli bombardment.

“Unless there's electricity, this hospital will turn into a mass grave. It's as simple as that. if we cannot keep the ventilators running. If we can't take our critically wounded patients back to the operating room, then there's nothing for this place other than to come and die," Abu-Sittah told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.

The hospital in Gaza City is currently running on just one generator after the fuel shortage led to one being switched off, and some patients could not safely go into surgery due to the lack of electricity, he added.

Despite the Israeli military's announcement that it has encircled Gaza City, the doctor said he has no intentions of leaving the hospital.

“I have no plans to leave the hospital or to leave my patients. My day involves operating from 8 o'clock in the morning till very late at night. These surgeries are done out of necessity, not out of some kind of luxury. And so if I'm not there, literally there's nobody else there to do it,” he said. 

The number of journalists killed covering the Israel-Gaza conflict has risen to 36, according to a statement Thursday by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

The toll includes 31 Palestinians, four Israelis, and one Lebanese, CPJ added.

Another eight journalists were injured and nine others were reported missing or detained, it added.

The journalism advocacy group says the Israel-Gaza conflict since October 7 has been the deadliest period for journalists since it began tracking in 1992.

Israeli airstrikes on Thursday killed at least 23 people sheltering in four United Nations facilities in the Gaza Strip, according to an update by the UN humanitarian office.

Nearly 20,000 displaced people were sheltering in those facilities run by the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) when the deadly strikes hit, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

"As of 2 November, nearly 1.5 million people in Gaza were internally displaced, with over 690,400 sheltering in 149 UNRWA facilities," it said in a statement.

The escalation of bombardment has killed 72 UNRWA staff and damaged 50 of the agency's facilities since October 7, the statement added.

Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of UNRWA, earlier described that the agency has received “extraordinary, difficult news” about schools in the refugee camps of Jabalya and Al Shati.

Three schools run by UNRWA have been hit, killing at least 20 people, he said in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

Russia will send a shipment of 28 tonnes (around 31 US tons) containing humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, according to the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry.

“Two aircraft of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations will deliver 28 tonnes of humanitarian cargo for the population of the Gaza Strip,” the ministry announced on Telegram on Thursday.

The aid consists of medicine, hemostatic agents as well as dressing materials, and “will be handed over to representatives of the Egyptian Red Crescent Society for further shipment to the Gaza Strip,” the ministry said.

The assistance was organized at the direction of President Vladimir Putin, the ministry said.

Russia already delivered 27 tonnes (around 30 US tons) of food to the besieged enclave in October, it added.

Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi is set to tell US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the "Israeli war on Gaza" must stop, according to a statement released by the Ministry of Foreign and Expats Affairs' X account on Thursday.

Safadi is scheduled to meet with Blinken in the Jordanian capital of Amman on Saturday.

"[They] will discuss the catastrophic conditions in Gaza and will stress on the necessity of immediate action to stop the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip," Ambassador Dr. Sufyan Al-Qudah, the official spokesperson for the ministry, said in the statement.

The meeting will also stress the urgency for allowing humanitarian aid into the enclave, "the protection of civilians, and the need for Israel to adhere to international law and international humanitarian law and stop its continued violations," the statement added.

The ministry also warned that if the conflict does not end it will lead to a regional war that will threaten world peace.

An 81-year-old Palestinian-American woman received clearance to exit the Gaza Strip – but is unable to do so without support for her medical needs, her attorney Ghassan Shamieh told CNN on Thursday.

Her grandson, Said Bsieso, says his grandmother is running out of time.

“She's probably lost like 30 pounds at least," he said at a news conference in San Francisco Thursday. "She's running out of medication and… I don't know if she can handle a trip back here by herself.”  

Shamieh said the woman’s son traveled from Gaza to California to escort her for the visit to Gaza in August, but since he is not a US citizen and his US visa is now expired, he is unable to escort her out. 

The attorney declined to detail the woman's ailments but said her age, combined with a lack of food, water and medication has challenged her mobility.

He is calling on the US State Department to provide the woman with the medical supervision she needs to exit Gaza safely.

“We think that the US has an obligation to evacuate its citizens safely,” he said. 

Some background: Between 20 and 25 US citizens arrived Thursday on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing from Gaza, an Egyptian border official told CNN.

Overall, 341 foreign nationals crossed on Thursday, the official said. 

The exodus of the foreign nationals was the result of a deal announced Wednesday brokered by Qatar between Israel, Hamas and Egypt, in coordination with the US, that allows for the departure of those individuals, alongside critically injured civilians from Gaza, according to sources familiar with the talks.

Two Palestinians were killed after Israeli forces carried out a military incursion into the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank on Thursday evening, according to a statement by the Palestinian Ministry of Health

The men were identified as 31-year-old Suleiman Steti and 26-year-old Mustafa Na’aniya. Several others were injured in the clashes, including one Palestinian suffering from a “serious abdominal injury” who was transferred to the Ibn Sina Specialized Hospital, the statement said. 

Videos obtained by CNN show several Israeli military tanks entering the sprawling camp on Thursday evening, with sounds of gunshots being fired and piles of rubble strewn around the ground. 

One video from Palestine TV shows a dramatic moment when a man was shot, and two others tried to carry him to the hospital, only to come under fire from an Israeli military vehicle nearby. 

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

Israel’s security cabinet announced Thursday that it would send workers from Gaza who are currently in Israeli territory back to the enclave and also cut funding to the Palestinian Authority that is designated for Gaza.

“Israel is severing all contact with Gaza. There will be no more Palestinian workers from Gaza. Those workers from Gaza who were in Israel on the day of the outbreak of the war will be returned to Gaza,” the government press office said, referring to the Gazan workers who have been stuck in Israel since the October 7 Hamas attack.

The statement did not detail how or when the workers would return to Gaza.

Prior to the Hamas attacks, thousands of Gazans had permits to cross into Israel and work, where they could earn significantly more money than they would in Gaza.

The cabinet also decided to "deduct all funds designated for the Gaza Strip – in addition to the deduction, required by law, of funds paid to terrorists and their families – from Palestinian Authority funds," according to the government statement.

The Palestinian Authority is a separate government body with limited self-rule in the West Bank. It was established as part of a peace pact between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993.