Israel Death Toll Rises to 1,300 as Military Refuses Aid to Besieged, Bombarded Gaza Until 150 Hamas Hostages are Freed

Israel said its siege of Gaza would continue until Hamas freed all the Israelis and foreigners it had abducted during last weekend’s devastating attack, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv to show American solidarity. 

Hamas gunmen killed at least 1,300 people, mostly civilians, during an audacious, brutal raid, massacring people in their homes and on the streets, and carried an estimated 150 captives back to Gaza.

Blinken said Thursday that 25 Americans were now confirmed among the dead.

Israel has responded to the Hamas outrage with the most punishing bombing campaign in its 75-year history, leveling entire Gaza neighborhoods and killing more than 1,350 people, Palestinian officials said. The Hamas-ruled territory of 2.3 million people is without food, drinking water, electricity, and fuel. 

"The human misery caused by this escalation is abhorrent, and I implore the sides to reduce the suffering of civilians," Fabrizio Carboni, regional director of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said Thursday in a statement.

"As Gaza loses power, hospitals lose power, putting newborns in incubators and elderly patients on oxygen at risk. Kidney dialysis stops, and X-rays can’t be taken. Without electricity, hospitals risk turning into morgues," Carboni said.

But Israel's energy minister, Israel Katz, who had ordered the cutoff of water and power to Gaza, said no relief would be allowed until Hamas’ hostages were all released. 

"Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electrical switch will be lifted, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli hostages are returned home,” Katz said on X, the former Twitter. “Humanitarian for humanitarian. And nobody should preach us morals."

The whereabouts of the hostages are unknown. Hamas said Tuesday that four captives, including an 19-year-old Israeli soldier, had been killed in Israeli bombings, along with their captors. 

Katz’s comments came as Israel said it was preparing for a possible ground offensive to destroy Hamas. “Every Hamas operative will die. Hamas is ISIS,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday. 

"Every member of Hamas is a dead man."

Secretary of State Blinken arrived in Israel for meetings with Netanyahu and the war cabinet for Israel’s new national unity government.

“I’m in Israel today to make one thing clear: The United States stands with Israel and its people, and we will always stand — resolutely — against terrorism,” Blinken said on X. 

Gazans woke up Thursday after a night in total darkness and lined up at bakeries for food, as others came to grips with the toll of another wave of Israeli air strikes. 

“In previous escalations, there would always be some time, even a half-hour, without airstrikes,” Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent, told the Associated Press. “But now, there is not a single minute. That’s why the casualties keep going up and up.”

At Gaza’s Shifa hospital, Muhammad Al-Gharabli described how four missiles smashed into a mosque in the seaside Shati refugee camp on Monday, decapitating his 2-year-old son, Mohammed, and sending shrapnel into the leg of his 5-year-old son, Lotfi.

Al-Gharabli told AP he saw the bodies of dozens of neighbors amid the ruins of their homes. 

“I can’t sleep from the horror,” he said.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, said at a briefing on the Thursday that the army’s goal was to destroy “Hamas capabilities and sovereignty in Gaza.” On Wednesday, an Israeli military official told local media Gaza would be reduced to "a city of tents."

While Israel said on Tuesday that it had secured the Gaza border after Hamas breached several spots on the border fence, Hagari said that firefights with Hamas militants were still ongoing Thursday morning--six days after Hamas began its bloody incursion.

The Egyptian government rejected an American proposal to allow Palestinians fleeing Israel’s bombardment to leave Gaza, a senior Egyptian official told AP early Thursday. Egypt believes a Palestinian exodus from Gaza would harm the wider Palestinian cause.

Convoys stood loaded with fuel and food Wednesday on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, but were unable to enter Gaza, the official said, after Israel bombed the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza.

The official said Egypt was in talks with Israel and the U.S. to set up safe corridors for the delivery of humanitarian aid and to evacuate foreigners trapped in Gaza through Rafah.