November 10, 2023 Israel-Hamas war

At least 101 employees of the main United Nations agency working in the Palestinian territories have been killed in Gaza since October 7, the agency said Friday.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said it was "devastated" by the deaths of more than 100 colleagues in a post on social media Friday.

"Mothers, fathers, teachers, nurses, doctors, guards, logisticians, support staff, all at the service of their community," UNRWA said. "We honor their memory and their service."

Earlier Friday, UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini also said he was "devastated" by the deaths of colleagues and called for a humanitarian ceasefire. 

The UN agency has more than 10,000 people working in its Gaza Field Office, according to the UNRWA website.

More background: UNRWA runs the largest humanitarian operation in the Gaza Strip and provides assistance and protection for registered Palestinian refugees.

The European Union has organized six more flights to get vital aid supplies to Gaza, the bloc announced Friday.

In a news release, the EU said that "humanitarian air bridge flights are now scheduled for the coming days."

Two of these flights are set to depart from Brindisi in southern Italy on Friday and Saturday and will carry "55 tonnes of items donated from the EU to the World Food Programme (WFP)," according to the statement.

Three further flights will depart from the Romanian capital of Bucharest next week, carrying tents and mattresses donated by Romania. The final flight will depart from Ostend in Belgium at the end of month, transporting supplies from United Nations agencies and other humanitarian partners, according to the press release.

The bloc's leadership has continuously highlighted the need for more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen telling EU ambassadors Monday that "the volumes remain too small to match the massive humanitarian needs in Gaza."

On Friday, the EU's Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič warned that the world is currently "witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip."

Despite quadrupling its humanitarian funding and amping up its engagement with partners, the bloc remains limited by the "dramatically insufficient and unsafe access of humanitarian aid," Lenarčič added.

As part of its commitment to humanitarian aid, the EU is also working on other routes to get aid into Gaza, including a maritime corridor, von der Leyen said Friday.

A British doctor who escaped Gaza with his family has been sent back to the war zone after Egyptian officials told him his name wasn’t on the list of evacuees, according to a British Member of Parliament.

Dr. Ahmed Sabra was in Gaza when Israel declared war on Hamas following the militant group’s October 7 attacks, said Geraint Davies, the local MP for Swansea West in Wales, where Sabra lives and works as a National Health Service consultant.

Davies shared video and voice notes Sabra recorded as he made the perilous trip with his wife and children to the Rafah crossing, where they had hoped to cross into Egypt and find safety before returning home.

But Davies said while Sabra’s family was allowed through, he was not on the approved list of foreign nationals.

“I’m calling for the British government to do their duty and evacuate myself and other British nationals to safety to go back home,” he added.

Davies told CNN that neither he nor Sabra knows why he was not included on the list, and the MP said he has raised the matter with the UK Foreign Office.

The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office told CNN on Thursday: “We’re working round the clock to ensure all British nationals in Gaza who want to leave are able to.”

“This involves submitting all details of British nationals and eligible dependents to the Israeli and Egyptian authorities. The authorities then review all cases and give permissions to cross.”

The statement said that the office is in contact with British Nationals in Gaza and UK teams are sent to the border to receive anyone allowed to leave.

It made no mention of Sabra’s case. CNN also contacted the British Embassy in Egypt for comment.

Roughly 12 children with cancer or blood disorders have been evacuated with their relatives from Gaza to Egypt and Jordan to continue their treatment safely, the World Health Organization said Friday. 

More children are expected to be evacuated for cancer treatment as part of this initiative, the WHO said in a statement.

Jordan’s Prime Ministry announced on Tuesday that children with cancer would arrive in Jordan soon to receive treatment at the King Hussein Cancer Center. 

The WHO and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital worked in coordination with Egyptian, Israeli, Jordanian, Palestinian and American officials to facilitate the evacuation of the children from Gaza, the United Nations agency said. 

The two specialized hospitals that offer care to cancer patients in Gaza have been “overwhelmed, undersupplied, exposed to attacks and, due to insecurity, forced to close," according to the WHO statement, adding that the conflict between Israel and Hamas has severely restricted the entry of essential medical supplies, including chemotherapy. 

CNN previously reported that Gaza’s leading cancer hospital, the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship hospital, stopped operating due to Israeli bombardment and fuel shortages, the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health said in a statement on November 1. Israel's military denied striking the hospital.

Before Israel’s war with Hamas, about 100 patients per day were referred for treatment outside of Gaza, according to the WHO. 

An increasing number of Israelis say their country should immediately begin negotiations with Hamas for the release of hostages held in Gaza – but should continue fighting while negotiating, a new survey out Friday suggests.

Nearly four out of 10 Israelis (38%) expressed the opinion in a survey by the Viterbi Family Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at the Israel Democracy Institute. 

That’s a rise from 32% saying Israel should negotiate while fighting when the survey was last conducted about two weeks earlier.

Another 22% – about one in five – said Israel should not negotiate at all to trade Hamas prisoners in Israeli jails for hostages. 

One in 10 (10%) said Israel should negotiate only when the fighting is over, while about one in five (21%) said Israel should begin negotiations immediately, even if it meant halting the fighting. 

The survey of 606 men and women was carried out online and by phone on November 5-6, 2023. Some 502 interviews were in Hebrew and 104 were in Arabic. The margin of error on the full sample is four points.

Israeli tanks have surrounded a Gaza hospital, its director told CNN, as strikes reportedly hit the area of other healthcare facilities in the Strip — heightening fears Friday that Israel’s military campaign is further endangering patients and medical staff in the besieged territory.

Mustafa al-Kahlout, who heads the Al Nasr hospital and Al Rantisi Pediatric hospital in northern Gaza, told CNN that they were surrounded and asked for the Red Cross to assist with an evacuation. “We are completely surrounded, there are tanks outside the hospital, and we cannot leave,” al-Kahlout said.

The hospital complex is close to Sheikh Radwan neighborhood and Al Shati camp, where ground fighting was reported by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hamas separately.

“We do not have electricity, no oxygen for the patients, we do not have medicine and water,” al-Kahlout said. “We do not know our fate.”

His call comes after strikes were reported near at least two other hospitals in northern Gaza.

In a Facebook statement, Al Awda hospital said that due to the “targeting (of) the vicinity of Al Awda Hospital… and the vicinity of the Indonesian Hospital” by Israeli forces, 10 of its employees were injured, infrastructure was hit and nine vehicles were impacted.

This included “two ambulances that were completely damaged,” the hospital statement said.

In a separate statement, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said one of their volunteers had been injured and two ambulances rendered unusable by a strike near Al Awda hospital. The group also shared images and a video of two ambulances with their windscreens shattered in what appears to be the hospital parking lot. It was not immediately clear if PRCS was referring to the same ambulances mentioned in the hospital’s statement.

The IDF has not commented on the incidents but has repeatedly called on civilians to move south of Wadi Gaza, a waterway bisecting the center of the Strip, as it intensifies its assault on Gaza City and the north of the territory. The IDF has said Hamas is embedding itself in civilian infrastructure and that it will strike Hamas “wherever necessary.”

Read about the reported airstrikes near hospitals in northern Gaza.

Cross-border skirmishes between the militant group Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continue Friday, Lebanon's state-run NNA news reported.

According to NNA news, Israeli artillery fire near the Lebanese towns of Ramiya and Bayt Lif and Israeli drones over the eastern sector of the Israel-Lebanon border were reported Friday morning. 

Later Friday, Hezbollah claimed it struck Israeli troops in the eastern sector — which was followed by Israeli artillery strikes in the area where that attack was launched, according to NNA. 

Hezbollah also reportedly targeted the Israeli town of Metula with a guided missile, and Israel responded with artillery, according to NNA. 

Hezbollah also said that it struck Israeli troop positions across from Mays Al-Jabal, eastern Lebanon, with guided missiles and "achieved direct hits."  

The militant group said in a statement that it launched the attacks “in support of our Palestinian people in Gaza and in support of their brave and honorable resistance." 

About an hour after the attacks, the IDF said in a statement: "A short while ago, terrorists launched a number of anti-tank missiles from Lebanon toward an IDF post in the area of Manara in northern Israel. IDF artillery is currently striking the source of the fire."

Several areas in northern Israel were under alert on Friday.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday gave one of his most direct condemnations of the civilian death toll in Gaza.

“Far too many Palestinians have been killed. Far too many have suffered these past weeks,” Blinken said at a press availability in the Indian capital of New Delhi. He added that more needs to be done to “minimize harm to Palestinian civilians.”

Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces announced a six-hour long window Friday for an evacuation corridor along Salah Eddin Street for people to flee south from northern Gaza.

These are some of the latest developments:

The head of UNICEF, responding on Thursday to a video depicting a child hostage being held in Gaza, called for the unconditional release of all hostages.

The armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group (PIJ) said Thursday it is prepared to release two Israeli hostages on humanitarian grounds. One is a 77-year-old woman, the other is a 13-year-old boy – and both were shown in a video released by PIJ, a rival Islamist militant group to Hamas in Gaza.

CNN is not naming the two hostages at this point, nor is it showing the video, following a request by the families of the two hostages for their privacy to be respected at this time.

In a text statement, Abu Hamza, a leader of Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of PIJ, said that his group is prepared to release one hostage “for medical reasons” and a second “for humanitarian reasons and for his young age.” Hamza did not elaborate on the timing or circumstances under which the hostages might be released. 

It was the first time PIJ has released video confirmation that it — and not just Hamas — is holding hostages.

CNN's Andrew Carey contributed reporting to this post.