Major events during war in Gaza
2024.05.01 10:37
(Reuters) -Israel and Hamas have been at war in Gaza since gunmen from the Palestinian militant group that runs the enclave attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages,by Israeli tallies.
Israel responded with a military campaign in which more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to medical officials in the enclave, with thousands more feared buried under the rubble.
Here is a timeline of the war:
Oct. 7, 2023: Hamas gunmen storm into southern Israel from Gaza and rampage through communities in the deadliest day of violence in Israel’s history. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is at war. Retaliatory airstrikes on Gaza begin, along with a total siege.
Oct. 13: Israel tells residents of Gaza City, where more than 1 million people live, to move south. Over the course of the next weeks, Israel will evacuate most of northern Gaza, beginning a process that will uproot nearly the entire population of the Gaza Strip.
Oct. 19: A U.S. Navy warship intercepts missiles and drones launched from Yemen towards Israel. Yemen’s Houthi movement, like Hamas an Iranian ally, will continue sporadic long-range attacks on Israel and against Red Sea shipping in what it calls solidarity with Gaza.
Oct. 21: Aid trucks are allowed through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt into Gaza, where food, water, medicines and fuel are running out, after days of diplomatic wrangling. It is a fraction of what is required. Over coming months, the humanitarian crisis worsens as Israel maintains its blockade.
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Oct. 27: Israel launches its ground offensive in Gaza.
Nov. 1: Evacuations begin through the Rafah crossing for an estimated 7,000 foreign passport-holders and people needing urgent medical treatment. The vast majority of Gazans cannot leave.
Nov. 15: Israeli troops enter Gaza’s biggest hospital, Al Shifa, after a siege of several days. Israel says the hospital has been used to conceal an underground headquarters for Hamas fighters, which staff deny. Within a few weeks, all hospitals serving northern Gaza will cease to function.
Nov. 21: Israel and Hamas announce a truce, which will last seven days, to exchange hostages held in Gaza for Palestinians detained by Israel, and let in more aid.
Around half the hostages – among them women, children and foreigners – are released in return for 240 Palestinian women and teenage detainees, before war resumes on Dec. 1.
Talks on a new ceasefire take place over the following months, but have yet to bear fruit. Israel says it wants only a temporary pause to free more hostages; Hamas says it will free them only as part of a permanent deal to end the war.
Around Dec. 4: Israeli forces launch their first big ground assault in southern Gaza, towards the main southern city, Khan Younis.
International organisations say the extension of the war to the entire length of the enclave, including areas already sheltering hundreds of thousands of displaced people, drastically worsens the humanitarian crisis.
Dec. 12: U.S. President Joe Biden says Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” is costing it international support, a shift in rhetoric from Israel’s closest ally. During coming months, Washington will urge Israel increasingly insistently to do more to protect civilians, but will continue to provide arms.
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Dec. 15: Israeli forces mistakenly kill three Israeli hostages in Gaza. The incident prompts some of the strongest criticism within Israel of the conduct of the war.
Around Dec. 26: Israeli forces launch a ground assault on areas in the central Gaza Strip, again putting hundreds of thousands to flight, most of them already displaced.
From Jan. 1, 2024: Israel signals it will start withdrawing from northern parts of Gaza, while intense fighting continues in the south.
Jan. 11: U.S. and British warplanes, ships and submarines launch strikes across Yemen in retaliation for Houthi forces attacking Red Sea shipping.
Late January: Israeli forces intensify their effort to encircle Khan Younis. Following this campaign, more than half Gaza’s population will end up sheltering in Rafah.
Jan. 23: Israel reports 24 soldiers killed in Gaza, its worst single-day loss of the war.
Jan 26: The International Court of Justice in The Hague, also known as the World Court, orders Israel to prevent genocide but stops short of ordering a halt to fighting.
It says some of Israel’s actions could plausibly be violations of the Genocide Convention enacted after the Holocaust.
Feb 29: More than 100 Gazans are killed queuing for aid in the presence of Israeli troops who opened fire, in one of the deadliest incidents of the war. Palestinian authorities say most were killed with heavy machine guns in a “massacre”. Israel says most died in a stampede, and its troops fired only at “looters”.
March 10: Despite international pressure on the eve of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month begins with no truce.
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March 12: A ship carrying 200 tons of aid for Gaza leaves Cyprus in a pilot project to open a sea corridor. Aid agencies say sea deliveries and air drops cannot replace supplies over land through checkpoints still restricted by Israel.
March 18: The IPC global hunger monitor says famine is now projected by May in Gaza, where food shortages are the most pervasive it has seen. More than half of Gaza’s population – far more than the 20% associated with famine – is already experiencing the worst level of food shortage, category 5 or “catastrophe”.
Israel says the methodology is flawed and denies there are food shortages.
March 18: Israel launches a new assault on Al Shifa Hospital. Over the next two weeks, Israel will claim to have killed hundreds of fighters in combat there and arrested hundreds of others. Medical staff and Hamas deny fighters are present and say many civilians were killed.
March 25: U.N. Security Council adopts a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The United States abstains from the vote rather than veto it, a rare break from Israel.
April 1: Israeli air strikes on a convoy kill seven aid workers for the World Central Kitchen charity, drawing a global outcry and increasing pressure to allow in more aid. Israel apologises and later punishes some military commanders.
Also on April 1: Iran’s embassy compound in Damascus is hit by a suspected Israeli airstrike that kills several military officers including a top general.
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April 13 – Tehran responds to the embassy strike by firing hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, Iran’s first ever direct attack on Israel. Most are intercepted with the help of the United States and other allies, and no one is killed. Six days later, drones explode in the central Iranian city of Isfahan in what is widely presumed to be Israel’s retaliation.
April 30 – After weeks of pro-Palestinian student protests spreading on U.S. university campuses, police arrest demonstrators who seized a building at Columbia University in New York. The following morning police in Los Angeles intervene to stop violence between protesters and counter-protesters at UCLA.
May 1 – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, visiting Israel, pushes for greater humanitarian aid for Gaza.
