January 23, 2024 Israel-Hamas war

Gaza is facing its 10th near-total internet blackout, according to Paltel, the enclave's main telecommunications provider.

Internet monitoring site Netblocks confirmed the outage in a post on X.

"Live metrics show that the #Gaza Strip is again in the midst of a near-total telecoms blackout; the incident is likely to severely limit most residents' ability to communicate, in the tenth such incident since the start of the war," Netblocks said.

Cell phone connection across Gaza was also “difficult to access,” an employee at Palestinian telecom company Jawwal told CNN on Monday.

Israel has proposed that Hamas senior leaders could leave Gaza as part of a broader ceasefire agreement, two officials familiar with the ongoing international discussions told CNN.

The extraordinary proposal, which has not been previously reported, comes as Israel has struggled to achieve its stated goal of completely destroying Hamas. Despite its nearly 4-month war in Gaza, Israel has failed to capture or kill any of Hamas’s most senior leaders in Gaza and left around 70% of Hamas’ fighting force intact, according to Israel’s own estimates.

Though it would give safe passage out of Gaza for top Hamas leaders who orchestrated the October 7 attack, draining Gaza of its leaders could weaken Hamas’ grip on the war-torn area while also allowing Israel to continue tracking down high-value targets abroad.

Senior Hamas officials are known to live in Doha, Qatar, and the Lebanese capital Beirut, among other places outside the Palestinian territories. An Israeli airstrike earlier this month killed a top Hamas commander in Beirut.

Israel’s suggestion that Hamas leaders could leave Gaza, though unlikely to be accepted by Hamas, has been discussed as part of broader ceasefire negotiations at least twice in recent weeks — once last month in Warsaw by Israel’s intelligence chief, Mossad Director David Barnea, and then again this month in Doha with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to one official familiar with the discussions.

Read more details about the offer.

The United States and the United Kingdom carried out additional strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen on Monday, marking the eighth round of attacks by the US military on the rebels’ infrastructure in just over 10 days, according to a joint statement.

They struck eight sites, according to the statement from the US and UK, which conducted the strikes, and Canada, the Netherlands, Bahrain, and Australia, which supported the attacks.

It was a smaller number than the first joint operation on January 11 that struck over 30 Houthi targets. Monday’s strikes targeted a Houthi underground storage site and sites associates with Houthi missile and air surveillance, the statement added.

The US deployed fighter aircraft from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier as part of the strikes, a US defense official told CNN.

President Joe Biden spoke to his British counterpart UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday, the White House said earlier in the day, about a range of topics including security in the Red Sea.

Israel has offered a two-month ceasefire to Hamas as part of a prospective hostage deal, Axios reported Monday, citing two unnamed Israeli officials.

The Israeli proposal calls for the release of all remaining hostages and hostage bodies in multiple phases, in exchange for Palestinian detainees imprisoned in Israel, according to the Axios report. 

It would also see Israel move its forces out of main population centers and allow “a gradual return of Palestinian civilians to Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip.” 

The proposal comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected Hamas’ call for an end to the war in exchange for the release of hostages held in Gaza, as he faces increasing public pressure to bring the captives home.

See CNN's Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter for more details.

Medical facilities in Khan Younis in southern Gaza have been battered amid an Israeli assault in the area Monday, Palestinian health officials said, as the number of people killed in Israel’s siege on Gaza continues to rise.

Dozens of people have been killed and wounded in the latest offensive in western Khan Younis, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza. Medical facilities including the Nasser Medical Complex, Al Amal Hospital and the Palestine Red Crescent Society headquarters are located in the area.

The Nasser Medical Complex is receiving more serious injuries than it can accommodate, the health ministry said, adding that intensive care units are at capacity.

Health officials also said Israeli forces on Monday stormed the Al Khair Hospital, west of Khan Younis, and detained a number of its medical staff, amid an ongoing “siege” of the area.

The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas outposts, infrastructure, and command and control centers in Khan Younis and the action demanded "precise operations" due to the densely populated civilian areas.

Read more.

Mounds of solid waste and sewage openly flowing in the streets are exacerbating health hazards in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, with air pollution adding to the toxic environment, according to aid workers and civilians in the area.

“Everywhere in Rafah, if you walk, you will see a lot of solid waste and a lot of water sewage building up on the street,” said Salwa Tibi, 53, who works at the humanitarian agency CARE International. “You will find a lot of diseases in the shelters.”

Despite the hazards, children in desperate search of food can be seen picking scraps from rubbish piles, Tibi said.

Israel’s siege of the Palestinian enclave has collapsed waste collection and disposal services, according to the United Nations relief agency UNRWA, and the scarcity of clean drinking water and toilets has created an “explosively dangerous” environment for the spread of disease, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned on Thursday. 

Gazans also describe air pollution caused by smoke from people burning wood instead of fuel, supplies of which have been largely cut off from the territory.