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Updated 18 Oct, 2023 04:00pm

Biden gives Israel green light to act as it sees fit

US President Joe Biden landed in Israel Wednesday on a solidarity visit following Hamas attacks, under the shadow of a deadly blast at a Gaza hospital that has inflamed regional tensions.

Biden told Netanyahu that Washington would provide Israel everything it needed to defend itself amid the continuing war in Gaza.

Biden added that 31 Americans were among the more than 1,400 people killed inside Israel in the October 7 attack.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally welcomed Biden on the tarmac, putting his arms around the US president who then clasped his hands around Netanyahu in a sign of the newfound bond between the two leaders.

Hundreds of armed police and troops were stationed around the seafront Tel Aviv hotel where

Tel Aviv is just 65 kilometres (40 miles) from the Gaza Strip, the Hamas-ruled territory which Israel has been pounding since a devastating October 7 attack by Hamas.

Here are the latest updates

  • Israeli air strikes on a Gaza hospital, al-Ahli Arab Hospital, compound on Tuesday killed at least 500 people, the health ministry in the Palestinian territory said, international media reported.**
  • Jordan has cancelled a summit with US President Joe Biden and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi after a deadly Israeli strike at a Gaza hospital. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas earlier withdrew from the meeting.
  • The Gaza health ministry says at least 500 were killed in the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, many of them women and children. A UN-run school housing refugees was also struck.
  • Arab representatives at the UN have called for an immediate ceasefire as the Palestinian ambassador urges the world body to stop Israel’s “crime against humanity”.
  • Spontaneous protests have erupted across the Middle East and other major cities around the world amid anger over the deadly strike.
  • More than 3,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since Hamas’s October 7 attack inside Israel, which killed more than 1,400 people.

Anger after attack

The mass killing at the hospital has spurred widespread international condemnation and mass protests broke out in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and the West Bank as well as angry mobs targeting Israeli embassies in several countries.

  • Angry protesters set fire to the Israeli consulate in Istanbul to denounce the massacre last night in Gaza.

  • The Foreign Office of Pakistan condemned in the “strongest possible terms” the Israeli attack on the Hospital. “Attacking a hospital, where civilians were seeking shelter and emergency treatment is inhumane and indefensible. The indiscriminate targeting of civilian population and facilities is a grave violation of international law and constitutes war crimes,” the FO said in a statement.

  • US President Joe Biden on Wednesday condemned the Israeli airstrike on a Gaza City Hospital,

  • Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday cited a marked rise in antisemitism in Canada following Palestinian group Hamas’ attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent deadly air strikes in Gaza.

  • French President Emmanuel Macron said that “nothing can justify targeting civilians” the strike and called for humanitarian access to the coastal strip “without delay.

  • The World Health Organization condemned a deadly strike Tuesday on a hospital in the Gaza Strip and demanded the immediate protection of civilians and health care in the Palestinian enclave.

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