Israel Palestine news LIVE: Israel’s military orders more than 1million Northern Gaza citizens to evacuate as army is accused of using white phosphorus by rights group

Israel is using its massive military might – including thousands of tanks, warplanes and troops – to wipe out Hamas after the terrorists launched their relentless attacks this weekend that have killed more than 1,300 Israelis.

• Israeli forces have already used their strike force of 600 aircraft and 300 rocket launchers to relentlessly pound the Gaza Strip.
• Airstrikes and artillery have destroyed thousands of targets belonging to Hamas and killed 1,530 Palestinians as their neighborhoods were destroyed
• The relentless onslaught will not stop there, with Israel’s 173,000 soldiers, backed by 300,000 reservists, fighting for the chance to kill the Hamas terrorists who massacred 1,300 Israelis.
• This large force, along with 300 military tanks, including self-propelled howitzers, are now preparing to launch a major coordinated ground attack that is likely to inflict greater casualties on both sides.

Hamas, founded as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, took control of Gaza after winning a shock election there in 2006 and now rules with an iron fist.

After launching an unprecedented attack on Israel on Saturday that killed more than 1,300 civilians, the IDF has now vowed to wipe them out.

Here, MailOnline explains the history of the terror group.

Hamas terrorists said today that at least 13 Israeli and foreign hostages held in the northern Gaza Strip have been killed in Israeli airstrikes in the past 24 hours.

• Terrorists attacked Israeli communities near the Gaza border on Saturday, killing thousands of Israelis and taking more than 150 people hostage, including women and children.
• “Thirteen prisoners… including foreigners” were killed in five locations targeted by Israeli warplanes, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigade said in a statement.
• Israel has rained aerial and artillery strikes on the blockaded Gaza Strip – a densely populated enclave of 2.4 million people – flattening buildings and killing more than 1,500 people.
• According to the Hamas media office in Gaza, at least 500 children are among the dead.
• The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades had warned this week that “any targeting of our people without warning will be met with the execution of one of the civilian hostages”.

Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of using white phosphorus munitions in its military operations in Gaza and Lebanon.

The group has shared videos it claims show Israel using the weapons.

Last night, Israel released a series of shocking images of young babies who were killed and burned by Hamas terrorists in their barbaric incarceration.

One gruesome image shows the tiny body of a baby, who could not have been more than 12 months old, lying in a white bloodied body bag.

Two other photographs released by Israel show the blackened and charred bodies of two more babies, killed when Hamas gunmen stormed their homes in southern Israel.

The images confirmed reports from earlier in the week about the brutal killing of babies by Hamas, which some initially dismissed as Israeli propaganda.

MailOnline has chosen to publish very blurry versions of these images to show the horrors that Hamas terrorists unleashed on hundreds of Israelis after they stormed the border from Gaza on Saturday…

Despite the IDF’s ominous evacuation order, the terrorist group Hamas has urged Palestinians living in northern Gaza to stay in their homes.

Hamas’s Authority for Refugee Affairs called on residents of the north of the territory to ‘remain steadfast in your homes and stand firm in the face of this despicable psychological warfare waged by the occupation’.

Israel’s order comes ahead of an expected ground attack on the Gaza Strip and as the IDF continues to bombard the region with airstrikes.

Hamas has long been accused of using civilians as human shields to hide from Israeli attacks, increasing civilian casualties.

The Israeli military sent an evacuation order directly on Friday morning, telling the 1.1 million people living north of an area called Wadi Gaza to move south.

This will mean that the entire population of Gaza City and its surroundings will be displaced from their homes, shown in the green area on the map below.

The UN says it is impossible to relocate so many people without devastating humanitarian consequences and has called on Israel to rescind the order.

The 2.3 million people who live in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip are crammed into a strip of land that is only 25 miles long and 7 miles wide.

It is already facing a severe humanitarian crisis, with no power, food, water or medicine entering the enclave, as Israel flattens entire neighborhoods with attacks.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) today accused Israel of using white phosphorus munitions in its military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, saying the use of such weapons puts civilians at risk of serious and long-term injury.

• The Israeli military said it was “currently unaware of the use of weapons containing white phosphorus in Gaza” when asked for comment on the allegations by the Reuters news agency.
• Israel did not comment on the rights watchdog’s claims about their use in Lebanon
• HRW said it verified videos taken in Lebanon on Oct. 10 and Gaza on Oct. 11 that showed “multiple aerial explosions of white phosphorus fired by artillery over the port of Gaza City and two rural locations along the Israel-Lebanon border.”
• It provided links to two videos posted on social media, which it said showed “155mm white phosphorous artillery shells being used, apparently as smoke screens, marking or signaling”. Both show scenes near the Israel-Lebanon border, he said
• The group did not provide links to videos showing their alleged use in Gaza

Good morning and welcome to MailOnline’s live blog covering the undisclosed Israel-Gaza conflict on 13 October 2023.

Here’s what you need to know today:

• The Israeli military ordered more than a million civilians living in Gaza City to evacuate on Friday ahead of a fierce Israeli ground offensive.
• The directive came after what the United Nations said was a warning it received from Israel to evacuate the 1.1 million people living in northern Gaza within 24 hours.
• Suffering in Gaza has increased dramatically with Palestinians desperate for food, fuel and medicine and the territory’s only power plant shut down due to a lack of fuel as Israel’s blockade of the enclave continues.
• Morgue at Gaza’s biggest hospital overflows as bodies arrive faster than relatives can claim
• US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was due to visit on Friday, a day after Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
• The war has claimed at least 2,800 lives on both sides since Hamas launched an incursion on October 7
• Last night, Israel released shocking images of young babies who were massacred by Hamas during Saturday’s attack