The latest Israel-Palestinian war reverberated around the world Tuesday, as foreign governments tried to determine how many of their citizens were dead, missing or in need of medical help or flights home.
Numerous countries also offered to play a role in mediating an end to the fighting, which already has killed at least 1,800 people. The death toll was expected to grow as Israel pummeled the Gaza Strip with airstrikes and sent Palestinians fleeing into U.N. shelters.
Here’s what is happening on Day 4 of the conflict:
WASHINGTON — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday that a small group of U.S. special operations forces is now working with the Israelis to help with planning and intelligence in their counteroperations against Hamas.
Austin released the information to reporters traveling with him to a Ukraine contact group meeting in Brussels.
The number of French people killed in Israel has risen to eight — with 20 unaccounted for — the French Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. Several of those are believed held hostage.
The ministry previously confirmed the deaths of four other French citizens killed in the Hamas militant attacks in Israel. At the time, the ministry said another 13 French citizens were missing and that some of them have “very likely” been kidnapped, including a 12-year-old boy.
French media identified the boy by his first name, Eitan, and reported that he lived with his family in the Nir Oz kibbutz in southern Israel. Le Parisien newspaper quoted an aunt as saying that the boy was captured Saturday by Hamas militants who took him away on a motorbike.
DHAKA, Bangladesh — Some 1,000 members of Islami Andolon Bangladesh, an Islamist group seeking to establish Sharia law in Bangladesh, rallied Tuesday in the South Asian nation’s capital, Dhaka, denouncing “Israeli aggression” on Gaza.
They marched through streets in front of the nation’s main Baitul Mokarram Mosque in downtown and chanted anti-Israeli slogans amid police guard.
“All the Muslim countries including Qatar have been united for the Palestinians to protect (them) and get back their land. Everything must be done to achieve this,” Moulana Syed Mosaddek Al Madani, a leader of the group, said. “We, the Bangladeshi Muslims, raise our voice so that the brothers in Palestine go ahead. And we, the Muslims of Bangladesh, are with you.”
Bangladesh is a Muslim-majority nation of more than 160 million people, but its legal system is based on British common law.
The Ford carrier strike group has arrived in the far Eastern Mediterranean, within range to provide a host of air support or long-range strike options for Israel if requested, but also to surge U.S. military presence to prevent the now four-day old war with Hamas from spilling over into a more dangerous regional conflict, a U.S. official told the Associated Press.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the arrival ahead of an official announcement.
The Pentagon has said that the U.S. warplanes, destroyers and cruisers that sailed with the Ford will conduct maritime and air operations which could range from intelligence collection and interdictions to long range strike.
Along with the Ford, the U.S. is sending the cruiser USS Normandy and destroyers USS Thomas Hudner, USS Ramage, USS Carney, and USS Roosevelt, and augmenting regional Air Force F-35, F-15, F-16, and A-10 fighter aircraft squadrons in the region.
ANKARA — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has criticized Israel’s blockade of Gaza saying cutting off electricity and water is against the Palestinians’ human rights.
Speaking at a joint news conference with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer on Tuesday, Erdogan criticized U.S. plans to send an aircraft carrier to the region, saying the deployment could lead to “massacres.”
“What is the U.S. aircraft carrier doing in Israel? What is it coming to do? It will take down Gaza by striking the surrounding areas and start committing serious massacres,” he said.
The Turkish leader reiterated his offer to mediate between the sides and said he would continue his efforts to end the war. He said he also would hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres later on Tuesday.
BEIRUT — A Lebanese security official said six rockets were fired from southern Lebanon into northern Israel Tuesday evening.
The officials said it was not immediately clear who fired the rockets from the area of the Lebanese southern village of Qlaileh. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. A statement from UNIFIL, the U.N. peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, also confirmed the rocket fire and urged “everyone to exercise restraint at this critical time.”
Officials from the Hezbollah militant group did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Spokespeople with Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad said they had no information on the rockets.
The firing of the rockets from southern Lebanon came a day after three Hezbollah fighters were killed along the border and an Israeli army officer as well.
The social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, says it is trying to take action on a flood of posts sharing graphic media, violent speech and hateful conduct about the latest war between Israel and Hamas.
X said it’s treating the crisis with its highest level of response.
But outside watchdog groups say misinformation about the war abounds on the platform that billionaire Elon Musk bought last year. Musk himself has recommended unreliable accounts posting about the war. And his job cuts since taking over Twitter last year have left fewer people responsible for taking action on posts that violate the platform’s policies.
MOSCOW — Russia’s embassy in Israel said the number of Russian citizens killed in the latest Israel-Palestinian war has risen to four.
The embassy’s spokesperson Marina Ryazanova told the Russian state news agency Tass that the victims had dual Israeli and Russian citizenship. She said six others remain missing.
Previously, two Russian citizens were believed to have been killed and four were missing, according to Anatoly Viktorov, Russian Ambassador to Israel.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt said Tuesday the ongoing escalation between Israel and Palestinian militant groups in Gaza “is very serious,” warning of repercussions on the region’s “security and stability.”
El-Sissi, whose government maintains ties with Israel and Hamas, said they have intensified their efforts to reach a cease-fire of the ongoing war, according to the state-run MENA news agency.
“We are communicating with all international and regional parties in order to reach an immediate cessation of violence and achieve de-escalation,” he was quoted as saying.
The Egyptian leader affirmed his country’s position on establishing a “just and comprehensive peace” based on the two-state solution.
JERUSALEM — An official at the International Committee of the Red Cross says his organization has been in touch with both Hamas and Israeli officials about accessing prisoners, but so far have had no access to them.
Fabrizio Carboni, the regional director for the Near and Middle East for the ICRC, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that included the Israelis taken hostage by Hamas during their unprecedented incursion into Israel from the Gaza Strip.
“The level of violence is still very high but we’ve asked for access,” Carboni said from Geneva. “We ask also for the civilians who have been captured to have an opportunity to communicate with their family, to tell them that they are safe and well.”
The United Nations human rights chief said Tuesday Israel’s announcement of a “complete siege” of Gaza would exacerbate the “already dire” humanitarian situation in the strip, as he condemned alleged mass killings and executions by Palestinian militants.
Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement that such siege “risks seriously compounding the already dire human rights and humanitarian situation in Gaza, including the capacity of medical facilities to operate.”
Türk also said he was “deeply shocked and appalled by allegations of summary executions of civilians and, in some instances, horrifying mass killings by members of Palestinian armed groups.”
“It is horrific and deeply distressing to see images of those captured by Palestinian armed groups being ill-treated, as well as reports of killings and the desecration of their bodies,” he said.
He called on Palestinian militant groups to “immediately and unconditionally release all civilians who were captured and are still being held.”
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday described the latest Israel-Palestinian war as a result of failed U.S. foreign policy.
Speaking at the start of his talks with visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Sudani, Putin said in his first comment on the war that “many will agree with me that this is a vivid example of the failure of the U.S. policies in the Middle East.”
He added that the U.S. has “tried to monopolize the settlement, but, regrettably hasn’t bothered to search for compromises that would be acceptable to both parties and, just the opposite, sought to enforce their own view of how it should be done, exerting pressure on both parties.”
Putin said the U.S. has failed “to take vital interests of the Palestinian people into account,” ignoring U.N. General Assembly resolutions envisaging the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
CAIRO — The head of Doctors Without Borders for the Palestinian territories said he is concerned their team in Gaza will soon run out of medical supplies now that the enclave’s borders have closed.
Leo Cans told The Associated Press that he is particularly concerned about the supply of surgical equipment, bandages, antibiotics and fuel. The group, otherwise known as MSF, are currently operating from Shifa Hospital, in Gaza City, and Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
“We are just running on the stock we have,” Cans said. The group had previously brought in all its supplies through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom border crossing.
In Gaza, MSF has 300 local staff and 23 international workers, he said.
BERLIN — German prosecutors are investigating after German citizens were apparently kidnapped in the attack by Hamas on Israel.
The federal prosecutor’s office said in an emailed statement that the investigation of unknown members of Hamas on suspicion of hostage-taking, murder and membership in a foreign terrorist organization was opened on Tuesday.
The German Foreign Ministry has said it has to assume that an unspecified number of German-Israeli dual citizens were among those kidnapped by Hamas on Saturday.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Tuesday that Germany is working closely with Israel to determine how many citizens were kidnapped and how they might be freed.
It is standard practice for German prosecutors to open an investigation when the country’s citizens are harmed abroad.
NEW DELHI — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said he had spoken with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the phone and thanked him for “providing an update on the ongoing situation.”
“People of India stand firmly with Israel in this difficult hour,” Modi wrote on X, the social media platform, and said India strongly condemns terrorism in all forms.
During the Cold War, India didn’t have open relations with Israel and leaned heavily in favor of the Palestinians. The two countries established diplomatic relations in 1992. Ties between the two countries have grown under Modi, who became the first Indian prime minister to visit Israel in 2017.
MOSCOW — Russia’s ambassador to Israel said that two Russian citizens have been killed in of the latest Israel-Palestinian war.
Ambassador Anatoly Viktorov didn’t name the victims, saying in remarks broadcast by Russia’s state Channel 1 that the embassy isn’t aware of the circumstances of their deaths and hasn’t contacted their families yet.
Viktorov said that four other Russian citizens remain missing. He said the embassy has no information confirming Hamas’ claim that several Russian citizens were among the hostages it has taken.
