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(NEW YORK) — Thousands of people have died and thousands more have been injured since the militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel retaliated with a bombing campaign and total siege of the neighboring Gaza Strip, leaving the region on the verge of all-out war.

Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:

Nov 14, 7:53 AM EST
IDF says it’s offered to transfer incubators to Gaza

The Israel Defense Forces announced Tuesday morning that it “is in the process of coordinating the transfer of incubators from a hospital in Israel to Gaza.”

“We are doing everything we can to minimize harm to civilians, assist in evacuation, and facilitate the transfer of medical supplies and food,” the IDF wrote in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “Our war is not with the people of Gaza.”

It was unknown whether the process to transfer incubators was underway and there was no confirmation of Israel’s offer from health officials or medical staff in the Gaza Strip. It was also unclear how the incubators would be powered at Gaza’s hospitals with little to no electricity and fuel.

The announcement came amid worldwide calls to save dozens of premature newborn babies at Gaza’s second-largest hospital.

Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City had been struggling to run with limited fuel for days as doctors warn of its imminent collapse. On Friday, fighting in the area intensified and a strike hit the courtyard outside the hospital.

Three of the 39 babies that were being cared for in Al-Shifa’s neonatal unit have died since their incubators stopped working on Saturday, according to the hospital’s head of plastic surgery, Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalati. The hospital staff has been trying their best to look after them, swaddling them and using what power is left to heat the room they are in.

In recent days, several hospitals across Gaza said they have been under attack as heavy fighting occurs between Israeli troops and the militant group that rules the enclave, Hamas. The IDF alleges that Hamas has placed its command centers in tunnels under hospitals in Gaza and is deliberately sheltering behind Palestinian civilians — claims which the group denies.

Nov 14, 5:11 AM EST
IDF announces two evacuation corridors open in Gaza on Tuesday

The Israel Defense Forces announced Tuesday the temporary opening of evacuation corridors in the war-torn Gaza Strip to allow more people in the north of the Hamas-run enclave to move south.

A “safe passage” will be open “for humanitarian purposes” via the Salah al-Din highway toward the area south of Wadi Gaza on Tuesday between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. local time, according to the IDF.

The IDF said it will also temporarily suspend military activities “for humanitarian purposes” in the neighborhoods of Al-Daraj and Al-Tuffah on Tuesday between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. local time.

“Please, for your safety, join the hundreds of thousands of residents who have moved south in recent days,” the IDF said in a statement. “We encourage you to seize the time and move south!”

The IDF also urged Gaza residents to “not surrender to Hamas,” alleging that the militant group “has lost control over the northern Gaza Strip area and is trying to do everything it can to prevent you from moving south and protect yourselves.”

Nov 13, 8:36 PM EST
Israel claims to have evidence of Hamas headquarters at hospital

Israeli military officials brought several journalists, including ABC’s Matt Gutman, into the Al-Rantisi Hospital inside Gaza, which had been hit with artillery.

The hospital, Gaza’s sole children’s hospital, was allegedly a Hamas command center, Israel’s chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari, who led the tour, claimed.

The hospital was surrounded by Israeli tanks from Thursday into Friday, the director of Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital said on Friday.

Inside the basement of the hospital, which officials said has been evacuated, were abandoned AK-47s, grenades and what Hagari said were suicide vests. In another room of the basement was a chair where Hagari claims a hostage was kept.

The spokesperson said the Israeli military was set to detonate the grenades and vests they claim they found inside and a forensic team was going to probe the hospital for more evidence.

The tour came after the hospital’s resources deteriorated due to nearby attacks, according to UNICEF.

The hospital’s operations almost ceased between Thursday and Friday, according to UNICEF.

By Friday, Al-Rantisi Hospital had only a small generator powering the intensive care and neonatal intensive care units, UNICEF said.

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(NEW YORK) — Some hospitals in Gaza are in a “dire and perilous” situation, the World Health Organization says, and two — the Al-Shifa and Al-Quds hospitals — have been forced to stop operations amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the WHO, said his colleagues managed to get in touch with health care workers at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which has been without electricity or water since Saturday. A missile had struck nearby and shut down the medical facility’s backup generator, according to a doctor working at the hospital.

“The constant gunfire and bombings in the area have exacerbated the already critical circumstances,” Tedros wrote in the post on X. “Tragically, the number of patient fatalities has increased significantly. Regrettably, the hospital is not functioning as a hospital anymore.”

Al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, had to move babies from the neonatal intensive care unit after incubators stopped working on Saturday when fuel ran out, doctors told ABC News. Staff said they have been trying to keep the babies warm like they would be in incubators, wrapped up in sheets and having them sleep close together.

Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalti, the chief plastic surgeon at the hospital, told ABC News that three premature babies died when the power to their incubators was cut off Friday night into Saturday morning. Mokhallalti said all of the hospital’s ventilators were back up and running Sunday, but he expressed fear that more people would die at the hospital due to the relentless bombing. Hospital officials said two patients in the hospital’s intensive care unit also died on Sunday due to complications caused by the shelling.

The Israeli military has said it will help transport the remaining infants to safety, but has not specified when or how yet.

Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant has said the Israeli military is doing everything possible to prevent civilian loss of life. Israeli officials have accused Hamas, which the U.S. has designated a terrorist group, of using some hospitals as major centers of operations and the people inside hospitals as a human shield against the Israeli offensive.

In a Monday interview with Al Jazeera, Ashraf Al-Qidra, a spokesman for the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, said at least 20 people — including babies — have died at the hospital over the last three days and described the situation inside the hospital as “disastrous.”

Meanwhile, Al-Quds Hospital, the second largest hospital in Gaza, located in Gaza City, has been blockaded by Israeli forces and is no longer able to care for those inside, Dr. Khaled Elshawwa, a surgeon at the hospital who joined the mass hospital evacuation to the south, told ABC News Sunday evening.

“Patients, families, refugees and [the] medical team all left on their feet,” he wrote in a text message. “About 43 patients, left by foot, along with 5,500 [internally displaced persons] and 65 medical staff. Only bedridden patient requiring ventilation will be transferred by ambulance.”

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society, a humanitarian organization, said it would try to evacuate the most seriously ill patients from Al-Quds on Monday but said it has been unable to do so due to the heavy bombardment and explosions occurring around the area.

The organization later said heavy bombardment and explosions around Al-Quds Hospital are hindering the evacuation of patients and medical staff trapped inside. A convoy of vehicles accompanied by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) that had set off from southern Gaza toward central Gaza to secure the evacuation was forced to turn around on Monday, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

In a statement Sunday, the ICRC called for the protection of civilians whether they were trying to evacuate or stay where they are. Targeting civilians is a violation of international humanitarian law, but Israel has accused Hamas of hiding among civilian infrastructures.

Humanitarian groups, as well as international organizations such as the WHO and the United Nations, are calling for an immediate cease-fire to allow aid such as food, medicine and fuel supplies to enter Gaza. Humanitarian agencies have repeatedly warned of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza amid Israel’s total siege and the air and ground campaigns, and the international humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders has made repeated calls for the shelling of hospitals in Gaza to cease.

In the hospitals that are still operating, health care workers described grim conditions.

Staff members at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza, said there is an increasing rate of people being admitted to hospitals — and infections are increasing, as well.

“There is [an] increasing rate of admission because many people came from northern Gaza to southern Gaza,” Dr. Hatem Daher, head of the neonatal unit at Nasser Hospital, told ABC News. “So, there is an increasing rate of admission, and we noticed that there is [an] increasing rate of sepsis, neonatal sepsis and meningitis due to crowdedness […] of the people. The situation is bad.”

In the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack, Israel began warning more than one million Palestinians to move to a safer part of the territory, in southern Gaza, as Israeli soldiers prepared what was expected to be a massive ground campaign against Hamas fighters, many of whom are believed to be hiding in a miles-long network of tunnels under residential neighborhoods.

Daher said it’s been difficult to get clean drinking and washing water, as well as fuel for the generators.

He said the situation at Al-Shifa is even worse. Several doctors from Al-Shifa are now working in Daher’s hospital, he said.

“Our colleagues in Shifa Hospital describe a disaster there,” Daher told ABC News. “No electricity, no oxygen, no drugs.”

At Indonesia Hospital in northern Gaza, video verified by ABC News shows medical staff stitching a patient’s head wound by torchlight after they run out of electricity.

Since Oct. 7, more than 1,200 have been killed in Israel, according to the Israeli prime minister’s office. The death toll continues to climb in Gaza, with 11,240 people killed as of Monday and over 29,000 injured, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

In recent days, several hospitals in Gaza said they have been under attack as heavy fighting occurs between Israeli troops and Hamas terrorists.

The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was responsible for a strike that hit the outpatient clinic at Al-Shifa Hospital. The IDF has denied carrying out the strike.

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(NEW YORK) — A Texas man who is currently on trial in Russia over child abuse allegations plans to take the stand in his own defense.

David Barnes, who has been detained in Moscow for nearly two years, is expected to testify in front of the judge who will decide his fate at the conclusion of the bench trial. He is slated to be called to the stand after his defense team wraps up their presentation of evidence, though an exact date has not yet been determined since the trial is not occurring on consecutive days.

Barnes appeared in Savelovsky District Court on Monday, telling an ABC News reporter as he left the courtroom in handcuffs that he wanted to “thank America for all their prayers and support.”

He has pleaded not guilty to allegations by Russian prosecutors that he abused his two sons several years ago in Montgomery County, Texas.

Law enforcement officials in Texas previously investigated these claims when they were raised by Svetlana Koptyaeva, Barnes’ Russian ex-wife, but found no basis to charge him.

The only charges filed in the United States in connection with the case were against Koptyaeva, not Barnes. Montgomery County prosecutors accused Koptyaeva of felony interference with child custody for allegedly taking the children out of the United States during a custody dispute.

Koptyaeva has maintained that the children were abused, telling ABC News by email that they “spoke the truth” due to the “suffering and pain” that she says they experienced.

Barnes is being held in the same Moscow jail where Trevor Reed was once detained, but is still considered the primary guardian of the children in Texas.

He says he traveled to Moscow at the end of 2021 to try to gain custody or visitation rights in a Russian court due to Koptyaeva allegedly taking the children out of the country illegally in 2019. He has said he was unable to see them despite his court-authorized rights in the U.S.

The trial began in November 2022 and has been taking place occasionally. The Texas law enforcement agencies that did not find cause to charge Barnes have no involvement in the trial, despite the case pertaining to allegations from their state.

The prosecution’s arguments took 10 months to complete due to the nonconsecutive scheduling. Gleb Glinka, Barnes’ attorney, began his defense last month and presented documents in court on Monday. All court proceedings associated with the case are closed to members of the public, U.S. Embassy officials and the media.

The vast majority of defendants in Russian criminal trials are convicted. Barnes faces an extensive sentence in a penal colony if the judge finds him guilty.

Other Americans like Reed and Brittney Griner were sent to remote prison complexes in Mordovia after their convictions before being brought back to the U.S. through prisoner exchanges, while American Paul Whelan remains detained in Mordovia.

Barnes’ trial is scheduled to continue in Moscow on Nov. 20.

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(LONDON, TEL AVIV, Israel and BELGRADE, Serbia) — Doctors are pleading for help after Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa in Gaza City, collapsed and ceased functioning as a hospital over the weekend when its power failed and an explosion happened in its courtyard, where thousands of people had been sheltering amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Staff members inside described desperate scenes as they fight to keep their most vulnerable patients alive.

“We don’t have electricity. There’s no water in the hospital. There’s no food. People will die in a few hours without functioning ventilators,” a doctor with the international humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said in a statement published Monday.

“In front of the main gates, there are many bodies. There are also injured bodies, we can’t bring them inside,” the statement continued, adding that attempts to retrieve patients had ended in their being attacked.

Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalati, Al-Shifa’s head of plastic surgery, told ABC News in a phone interview Monday that the stench of the bodies outside was so bad that they had to keep the hospital’s windows closed.

But he, alongside the doctors who have remained at Shifa, are unwilling to leave their patients, he said.

“The medical team agreed to leave the hospital only if patients are evacuated first: We don’t want to leave our patients,” the MSF statement said.

Among the most vulnerable of those patients are newborn babies.

“The neonates … they are the ones we are afraid will be dying one by one as we were pushed to move them outside of the incubator area,” Mokhallalati told ABC News.

Three of the 39 babies that were being cared for in Al-Shifa’s neonatal unit have died since their incubators stopped working on Saturday, Mokhallalati said. The hospital staff has been trying their best to look after them, swaddling them and using what power is left to heat the room they are in.

“They are on usual beds with the heaters,” Mokhallalati explained, and he sent ABC News photographs of the babies all lined up together wrapped in sheets.

Dr. Shireen Noman Abed, a neonatologist and, until recently, the head of Al-Shifa’s neonatal unit, explained the life-threatening situation these babies are in, telling ABC News: “They don’t have electricity to provide them with warmth. They don’t have staff to care for them.”

“Most of them are pre-term babies who need incubators, who need electricity, who need special food, who need care,” she said.

A particular concern for Noman Abed is the lack of safe water to mix with the babies’ formula.

“We expect all to die because they don’t have water to prepare [formula] for them,” she told ABC News.

Al-Shifa Hospital had been struggling to run with limited fuel for days, with doctors warning of its imminent collapse. On Friday, the fighting around the hospital intensified and a strike hit the courtyard outside the hospital.

Humanitarian groups, as well as international organizations such as the World Health Organization and the United Nations, are calling for an immediate cease-fire to allow aid such as food, medicine and fuel supplies to enter Gaza. Humanitarian agencies have repeatedly warned of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza amid Israel’s total siege and the air and ground campaigns, and MSF has made repeated calls for the shelling of hospitals in Gaza to cease.

Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant has said the Israeli military is doing everything possible to prevent civilian loss of life.

While the White House is emphasizing the need to protect civilians in and around Gaza’s hospitals, two administration officials said the U.S. has intelligence supporting Israel’s assessment that Hamas is using Al-Shifa to shelter a command center under the medical complex — further complicating the situation on the ground.

Since Oct. 7, when Hamas launched its terrorist attack on Israel, more than 1,200 people have been killed, according to the Israeli prime minister’s office as of Monday. The death toll is reported to climb in Gaza, with 11,240 people killed as of Monday and over 29,000 injured, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

In recent days, several hospitals in Gaza said they have been under attack as heavy fighting occurs between Israeli troops and Hamas terrorists.

“Effectively after the missile attacks on the outpatients, Shifa started to collapse. A lot of the staff, a lot of the internally displaced, a lot of the waking wounded have left,” Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, a plastic surgeon who works at both the al-Ahli and Al-Shifa hospitals, told ABC News.

The Israel Defense Forces said the missile that hit the Al-Shifa compound was “a misfired projectile launched by terrorist organizations inside the Gaza Strip,” adding: “The misfired projectile was aimed at IDF troops operating in the vicinity.”

The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health claimed the Israelis deliberately targeted the hospital, which the IDF denied.

Mokhallalati told ABC News the IDF troops are at the gates of the hospital, saying, “The tanks are in front of the hospital, effectively 100 meters from the hospital,” and that there was constant bombardment last night.

The Israeli military has said it will help transport the remaining infants to safety, but has not specified when or how.

Amid the growing concern for Al-Shifa’s youngest patients, Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesman, said they were prepared to evacuate the babies but were blocked from doing so by Hamas.

“Hamas leadership, alongside the Hamas Ministry of Health, is preventing this and placing pressure on the Shifa hospital not to accept our help. If the hospital requests, we will assist them with fuel and with evacuating the premature babies,” Hagari told journalists on Sunday. “The fuel is for essential systems only and the evacuation of the babies will be to another hospital. Our communication with the Shifa Hospital will continue.”

The Israeli military also said it had opened an evacuation route out of the eastern side of the hospital.

“There is no siege, I repeat, no siege, on Shifa hospital,” Hagari said. “The east side of the hospital is open for the safe passage of Gazans who wish to leave the hospital.”

But hospital staff say many felt it unsafe to take that passage after doctors reported on Saturday that some who had tried to flee the hospital had come under fire.

“We saw some people trying to leave Al-Shifa, they killed them, they bombed them, the sniper killed them,” an MSF doctor inside the hospital said in a statement.

“We’re speaking directly and regularly with the hospital staff. The staff of Shifa Hospital has requested that tomorrow [Monday], we will help the babies in the pediatric department to get to a safer hospital. We will provide the assistance needed,” Hagari continued.

But Mokhallalati told ABC News on Monday that they had not received a serious offer from the Israelis, saying: “We were not offered proper evacuation for the kids and no proper petrol.”

By evening time in Gaza, there had still been no evacuation.

The IDF said over the weekend it had provided 300 liters of fuel for Al-Shifa Hospital but, according to Mokhallalati, the staff calculated it was not worth the risk of retrieving this fuel, which he said the Israelis had left 1 kilometer away from the gates. The Israelis said the fuel was 300 meters from the hospital and available for collection.

“We feel it would be unsafe to get these 300 liters,” Mokhallalati said, adding: “They are nothing, because Shifa consumes 10,000 liters of fuel a day, so this is a stupid number … it won’t be enough for more than an hour.”

The Israelis blame Hamas, saying pressure from the terrorist group is stopping staff from collecting the fuel. Hamas has denied this and, alongside Dr. Nidal Abuhadrous, the director of Al-Shifa’s surgical hospital, is calling for the International Committee of the Red Cross to give hospital staff and patients safe passage out of the Al-Shifa complex.

“We want the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] to be responsible for and to be present physically at the hospital, for the evacuation and the help coming to Al-Shifa, if it was fuel or food,” a Hamas spokesman told ABC News.

In a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter, Sunday night, the ICRC said, “We stand ready to fulfill our role as a neutral intermediary and support evacuations of medical facilities in Gaza, but this requires an agreement by the parties.”

“Gaza today is the scene of intense fighting and evacuating a hospital there (moving hospital beds, patients, medicine, and critical life-support systems) is extremely complex and laden with risks,” it added.

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