Israeli bombardment of Gaza persists amid calls to address worsening humanitarian disaster

Amna Nawaz:

Hamas has freed two more hostages tonight, a pair of Israeli women. Israeli officials say 220 people, with more than 30 nationalities, are believed to be still held captive.

Meanwhile, Israel's bombardment of Gaza continues. Gaza's Health Ministry says more than 5,000 Palestinians have been killed. That's in the more than two weeks since more than 1,400 Israelis were killed in the Hamas attacks.

Leila Molana-Allen has our report on this day's events. And a warning, some images in this report are disturbing.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Kidnapped from their homes, held captive for more than two weeks, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz and 79-year-old Nurit Cooper, two of the oldest hostages taken by Hamas, are finally free. Hamas said it released them for humanitarian reasons, but their husbands remain in captivity.

The release follows mediation efforts by Qatar and Egypt. This comes even as preparation for a ground invasion rolls on, and Israeli airstrikes continue to pound Gaza. The Palestinian prime minister warned against an Israeli offensive in a Cabinet meeting.

Mohammad Shtayyeh, Palestinian Prime Minister (through interpreter):

What we hear from the leaders of the occupying state preparing for a ground invasion means the continuation of committing new crimes, forced displacement and killing for the sake of killing and revenge.

Leila Molana-Allen:

At a meeting of European leaders in Luxembourg, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said there was a consensus for a pause in fighting to allow for humanitarian support.

Josep Borrell, European Union Minister for Foreign Affairs (through interpreter): Even for a humanitarian aid to get in, there needs to be a pause in the war. Otherwise, humanitarian aid itself will fall victim to military activity.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Another group of 20 aid trucks entered Gaza from the Egyptian border at Rafah. But the United Nations said they carry only a fraction of what's needed. Israel barred the trucks from bringing in one key resource, fuel.

Without it, hospitals, water pumps and sanitation systems will grind to a halt. Hospitals are struggling to keep power running for critical equipment, including incubators for premature babies, all this as Israeli airstrikes rain down on Gaza, spreading dust and rubble into the streets not far from the Rafah Crossing.

Israel is intensifying its bombardment. Screams of fear echo from the clouds of dust cloaking the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City, as families escape another Israeli airstrike.

Not too far away in the Jabalia refugee camp, paramedics rescued civilians trapped in the rubble. The injured were rushed to hospital. Palestinian health officials said 266 people have been killed in the last 24 hours, more than 100 of them children.

Khan Yunis in Southern Gaza meant to be a safe haven also woke up to an intense barrage that toppled residential buildings. Tarek Salout thought his daughter was safe here. He came from Northern Gaza when Israel ordered civilians to evacuate.

Tarek Salout, Gaza Resident (through interpreter):

We were told that Khan Yunis is considered to be a safe place. And everyone came here from the north or from Gaza City because it is considered safe. But, unfortunately, last night was the hardest night so far we saw in Khan Yunis.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Another father who could not save his child. He was one of dozens mourning their loved ones killed in Israeli airstrikes in Deir al Balah in Central Gaza, including this father, who held his child close even in death.

Man (through interpreter):

Look, because of how worried he was about his daughter, they both died together. God have mercy on them.

Leila Molana-Allen:

This daughter broke down as she identified her dead mother by her hair. She lost her mother and sister today, after already losing her grandparents, aunt and cousins.

Girl (through interpreter):

I wish that you would have taken me. Haven't they had enough? Have mercy on us.

Leila Molana-Allen:

In Northern Israel, a growing threat, not just rockets but anti-tank missiles, and even marauding groups of fighters with guns now assaulting towns here.

Just beyond the hills behind me is Lebanon, and we have been hearing the gunfire in the background after multiple exchanges of fire over the last few days with both Hezbollah and the Palestinian factions based in south Lebanon. Israeli authorities are evacuating all the towns along the Lebanese border as they prepare for another potential conflict on this frontier.

In Kiryat Shmona, painted tanks from a previous war in a children's playground, but now the real tanks are back. And as the army rolls in, residents flee. But as Israel attempts to evacuate not only the Gaza border towns, but northern ones too, space in safer parts of the country is running out. And some here say they haven't received any help to leave at all yet

Adva and her neighbor Olga with 10 young kids between them are the only families left on their street.

Adva Cohen, Kiryat Shmona, Israel, Resident (through interpreter):

We're waiting to — for someone to call us to take us to any place. No space. No space. People go, and I hear. I call every day. And, last night, I call. I will be waiting two hours.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Frightened and alone, they wait and hope as the conflict around them intensifies.

Today, militants from across the border attacked an IDF checkpoint just outside the town.

Adva Cohen:

My feeling is to save my family. We are very, very scared. We don't know what happened, what we're going to do. And we wait. And we're sleeping on the (speaking in foreign language).

(Laughter)

Leila Molana-Allen:

You're sleeping in the shelter.

Adva Cohen:

Yes, in the shelter, two weeks.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Adva grew up here amidst the withdrawal of Israel's occupation of Southern Lebanon in 2000 and the chaos of the 2006 cross-border war. Now she fears her children will suffer the same trauma.

Adva Cohen (through interpreter):

It was a very hard war. We were terrified. I still don't sleep at night, nightmares, so many rockets. The kids don't understand what's happening. We don't know what's going to happen now, and that's the biggest fear.

Olga is afraid too, but believes, if this war happens, it must secure their area's future once and for all.

Olga Ashtamker, Kiryat Shmona, Israel, Resident (through interpreter):

This is not life. We are not really living. We are always feeling threatened.

Leila Molana-Allen:

Miri won't wait for the government to find them refuge. We meet her and her son scrambling to pack everything they can into their small car, evacuating on their own to stay with family in Central Israel.

Miri, Kiryat Shmona, Israel, Resident (through interpreter):

They are not helping us for now. There is no space. A lot of people traveled to the hotels and they came back there because their stay was canceled.

Leila Molana-Allen:

And whether it's to fight or to flee, as this violence grows, people across the country are preparing themselves, Amna.

Amna Nawaz:

That's Leila Molana-Allen reporting for us in Jerusalem tonight.

And joining us here in our studio is our foreign affairs and defense correspondent, Nick Schifrin.

Leila, I want to return to you now because I know, earlier today, you saw firsthand the video that Israeli officials showed you about the kind of violence that Hamas militants and terrorists inflicted on those Israeli communities back on October 7.

Tell us about those videos and why the officials were showing them to you now.

Leila Molana-Allen:

So, officials told us they decided to show us. It was a 45 minute film at a screening held in private of hundreds of hours of footage that they have collected.

They said they felt that we had to see this. You saw a small clip of it there. That's all that's been released, because it is so graphic. And I have to say that, in 15 years of reporting on conflicts, this is some of the worst, most brutal personal violence I have seen.

We saw horrific scenes. I can't describe a lot of it to you because it's too graphic. But we saw a parent rescuing his two young boys half-dressed in the morning, trying to take them into a safe room, a Hamas militant immediately throwing a grenade in there. The two young boys screaming for their father as they watched him die covered in shrapnel wounds, as were they.

We still don't know the fate of those young boys. They put together footage from victims' phone cameras found at that music festival together with Hamas body camera footage. And we can see the victims after they had been piled into the shelter together. We see some of them alive on a phone video, and then we see most of them dead piled on top of each other, others with missing limbs being piled into trucks as they're taken into Gaza.

And it is the treatment of those hostages as well that really was a focus today. We see them being taken into Gaza. And people are, of course, incredibly worried about their welfare. And this is one of the things that's created such a fear, a chill in the heart of Israelis across the country, because this does feel like an existential fight with this level of horrific violence they have endured.

Amna Nawaz:

Just horrifying imagery there.

Nick, meantime, the U.S. is working very hard to prevent this war from expanding further. What are U.S. military officials telling you about how they're doing that?

Nick Schifrin:

They are sending significant assets to the Middle East and to the area both to deter Iranian-backed groups, but also to defend U.S. troops.

So we talked about, on deterrence, they have sent the USS Ford, the carrier strike group, off the coast of Israel, thousands of other soldiers given prepare-to-deploy orders. But now we have a second carrier. That's what you see there, a second carrier. The USS Eisenhower will sail through the Suez Canal into the Middle East.

That is a clear warning to Iran. U.S. officials believe the carriers does deter Iran. On the protection, air defense, a single Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, will go to the region to defend U.S. troops, and multiple Patriot battalions will also do that.

A U.S. defense official told me tonight that roughly eight strikes have been hit of U.S. — sorry — eight attacks on U.S. troops across four locations in Iraq and Syria just since the October 7 attack. That is a significant escalation across the region.

And the fear is among U.S. officials that that will increase both in lethality and in number the minute that Israel invades Gaza in a further ground invasion.

Amna Nawaz:

And what about that ground invasion? I mean, do U.S. officials want Israel to delay that while they move these assets into place?

Nick Schifrin:

So, the U.S. officials I have talked to do not like the word delay or asking Israel to delay.

But the fact is that U.S. — the U.S. has four main priorities right now, releasing the hostages, getting those military forces in place, delivering humanitarian assistance and freeing American citizens trapped in Gaza.

And, Amna, in each of those cases, they benefit from more time, and each of those priorities get much more difficult the moment Israel invades.

Amna Nawaz:

Leila, what have you been hearing from Israeli officials you're talking to in terms of the timeline for any potential ground invasion?

Leila Molana-Allen:

Well, of course, the hostages are a concern.

But from the beginning, Israeli officials have said that they will go in anyway, as concerned as they are. Now, there's a suspicion here on the ground that one of the reasons why Hamas has started to release hostages — we have seen these two more elderly hostages released today — is that they want to try and delay a bit to try and recoup their forces in Gaza and get ready.

Now, mainly, what officials are telling me here is, this is actually strategic. That's not that they're in any rush to go in. They're currently trying to remove what capability Hamas has. They're striking top commanders there. They're removing weapons depots they know, their operational command they know is there, so they can be ready to go.

And, at the same time, they are upskilling and training over 300,000 reservists who've just come in to active duty. Now, that's double the number of active-duty soldiers that there were before. So this is a huge operation,teaching them how to fight in tunnels, urban warfare, just so many skills they need to learn in a very short amount of time.

And they're now being deployed across the country to cover multiple frontiers. It's a huge challenge, and they want to be ready.

Amna Nawaz:

That is Leila Molana-Allen in Jerusalem and Nick Schifrin here in our studio.

Thank you to you both.