Israel-Hamas war live updates: U.S. fighter jets strike Syria; Israel says Hamas commander killed in an airstrike

Volunteers of the new civilian guard unit receive their new M5 automatic assault rifles during the unit’s inauguration ceremony attended by police officers and the national security minister, in the southern city of Ashkelon. 

— Getty Images

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has joined calls for a ceasefire in Israel-Hamas hostilities, saying more than 200 schools have been damaged in the Gaza Strip since the start of the conflict.

This represents around 40% of the total number of schools in the enclave, with forty of these institutions now “very seriously” impaired, UNESCO said in a Friday statement.

A number of schools have been repurposed as shelters for the internally displaced Palestinian population throughout the conflict. This includes many run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which looks after 183 schools in the Gaza Strip, according to UNESCO.

“The Organization calls for the protection of educational establishments, which often serve as shelters for the population, and recalls that targeting them or using them for military purposes constitute violations of international law,” UNESCO said.

— Ruxandra Iordache

Another Hamas commander was killed in an Israeli air strike, the Israel Defense Forces said on social media on Friday.

The Hamas official was Madhath Mubashar, commander of the western battalion for the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.

The IDF said it also struck over 250 Hamas targets, including a tunnel network in the Gaza Strip that detonated as a result of secondary explosions, without specifying when this operation took place.

CNBC could not independently verify the report.

The IDF has been carrying out a war campaign in the blockaded Gaza Strip, looking to demilitarize Hamas and remove its commanders. It has said that multiple Hamas senior commanders have been killed over the past two weeks.

The IDF has previously said that a complete surrender of Hamas and the return of the more-than 200 hostages that the group abducted could end hostilities.

— Ruxandra Iordache

The handful of aid trucks that have entered Gaza are a “drop in the ocean” of need and history will judge those who allowed the mounting humanitarian catastrophe to happen, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees chief Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement.

“Mothers do not know how they can clean their children. Pregnant women pray that they will not face complications during delivery because hospitals have no capacity to receive them,” Lazzarini said.

The U.N. has condemned the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct 7., he said, but warned that “history will judge us all if there is no ceasefire in Gaza … let there be no shadow of a doubt — this does not justify the ongoing crimes against the civilian population of Gaza, including its 1 million children.”

“The reality today in Gaza is that there is not much humanity left and hell is settling in,” he said.

— Natasha Turak

The U.S. has slapped a second round of sanctions on key individuals linked to Hamas and financial networks affiliated to the Palestinian militant group, following its terror attacks in Israel on Oct. 7.

The Friday measures target further assets in the investment portfolio of Hamas and individuals who are assisting the group to evade sanctions, the U.S. Treasury said.

Among those sanctioned is a Hamas official in Iran, members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as a Gaza-based entity that the Treasury said has funneled Iranian funds to Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group. Iran has long supported Hamas and praised its early-October offensives against Israel, but denied involvement in the attack.

The U.S. issued an earlier round of sanctions targeting Hamas on Oct. 18.

“We will not hesitate to take action to further degrade Hamas’s ability to commit horrific terrorist attacks by relentlessly targeting its financial activities and streams of funding,” said Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Wally Adeyemo on Friday.

— Ruxandra Iordache

Eight more aid trucks carrying humanitarian aid are expected to cross into the Gaza Strip on Friday, said Lynn Hastings, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

“We have gotten in approximately 74 trucks. We’re expecting another eight or so today,” she added, in comments reported by Reuters.

She said the U.N. is in talks with Israel to find a faster mechanism for aid to be delivered to the blockaded Gaza Strip, which has been deprived of Israel’s food, water, fuel and fuel deliveries for nearly three weeks. Security, technical and political issues are slowing humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip, Hastings said.

Trucks have been transporting aid through the Rafah crossing linking the Gaza enclave and Egypt since last weekend, but human rights groups say the resources brought in can only meet a fraction of the needs of the local Palestinian people.

In a televised interview with PBS, Thomas White, director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, said the verification process run by Israel on the Egyptian-Israeli border is currently very slow, and called for a new inspection process that can handle over 100 trucks per day.

— Ruxandra Iordache

Israeli shelling of the Gaza Strip has killed 50 of the hostages abducted by Hamas during its terror attacks of Oct. 7, a representative of the Palestinian militant group told Russian news outlet Kommersant, according to a Google translation.

Captives will not be released until a ceasefire is agreed with Israel, Hamas representative Abu Hamid said, as a delegation of the group visited Moscow.

Al-Qassem, the armed wing of Hamas, also posted on its Telegram account that it estimates 50 “prisoners” have been killed in Israeli bombardment.

CNBC could not independently verify the figures, and the Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The IDF has previously said that Hamas captured roughly 224 people, of which only four have been released to date.

Some questions have risen over the accuracy of numbers reported by Hamas and Hamas-controlled facilities, such as the death toll supplied by the Gaza Health Ministry.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Oct. 25 said he has “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using” for the death toll reported in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, according to Reuters, without disclosing why.

— Ruxandra Iordache

Israeli ground troops, fighter jets and drones struck anti-tank missile launch sites, command and control centers and operatives of Palestinian militant group Hamas over the past 24 hours, the Israel Defense Forces said on social media.

“The troops exited the area and no injuries were reported,” it said, in a likely reference to the Gaza Strip.

CNBC could not independently verify the report.

On Thursday, the IDF said they carried out an overnight raid in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, “as part of preparations for the next stages of combat.”

An Israeli ground incursion has been anticipated in the past three weeks, after Israel ordered civilians in the northern Gaza City to evacuate southward of the Wadi Gaza wetlands. Human rights groups have warned against such an offensive, citing the worsening humanitarian crisis in the resource-deprived and blockaded Gaza Strip.

Israel says it only seeks to demilitarize Hamas and does not target civilians.

— Ruxandra Iordache

The U.S. hopes further humanitarian aid supplies will enter the Gaza Strip soon, but there is a multitude of logistical “moving parts” at play in getting truck deliveries, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said.

Speaking Thursday in a MSNBC interview, he expressed hopes that more aid would be coming in by truck during the day through the Rafah Crossing — the only land passageway to the blockaded Gaza Strip that isn’t controlled by Israel, leading instead to Egypt.

Since last weekend, nations and international humanitarian groups have been organizing deliveries that first arrive in Egypt, then continue through the Rafah Crossing to Palestinian civilians by truck.

“There is an inspection regime that has to be done before the trucks go in,” Kirby said of the logistics, “So that Israel can understand there’s no contraband in those trucks. And then, of course, Hamas needs to allow for the free movement of these vehicles inside Gaza to get to the aid organizations, to get to the people. So there’s an awful lot of moving parts here.”

Human rights groups have previously called for a humanitarian pause to the conflict between Israel and Hamas to allow the safe distribution of aid supplies, as the Gaza Strip slowly exhausts its water and food resources and already faces a fuel and electricity crisis.

— Ruxandra Iordache

The U.S. launched strikes on two facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in retaliation for attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups.

“These narrowly tailored strikes in self-defense were intended solely to protect and defend U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin said in a statement Thursday.

“They are separate and distinct from the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, and do not constitute a shift in our approach to the Israel-Hamas conflict,” he added.

Austin said these “precision self-defense strikes” began on Oct. 17. As a result, a U.S. citizen contractor died from a cardiac incident while sheltering in place, while 21 other U.S. forces suffered minor injuries.

“The United States does not seek conflict and has no intention nor desire to engage in further hostilities, but these Iranian-backed attacks against U.S. forces are unacceptable and must stop,” Austin said. “Iran wants to hide its hand and deny its role in these attacks against our forces.”

“If attacks by Iran’s proxies against U.S. forces continue, we will not hesitate to take further necessary measures to protect our people,” the Defense Secretary said.

— Clement Tan

EU leaders called on Thursday for pauses in Israeli bombing and Hamas rocket attacks to get humanitarian aid into Gaza after days of wrangling that highlighted divisions within the bloc over the broader Israel-Palestinian conflict.

In a declaration agreed at a summit in Brussels, the leaders of the Union’s 27 nations expressed the “gravest concern for the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza”.

They called for “continued, rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian access and aid to reach those in need through all necessary measures including humanitarian corridors and pauses for humanitarian needs”.

The summit was the leaders’ first in-person meeting since the deadly Oct. 7 assault on Israel by Palestinian militant group Hamas, which prompted Israel to bombard and blockade Hamas-run Gaza.

— Reuters

The White House pressed for supplemental funding for Ukraine and Israel and said it was unclear when funding for Israel as well as Ukraine would run out.

“It’s difficult to know because it’s driven by the pace of operations and the security assistance that’s flowing and their expenditure,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said during a press briefing.

“I just know that time is not on our side. The runway is getting shorter with every passing week. We need this supplemental funding,” he added.

Last week, President Joe Biden requested more than $105 billion from Congress to support Ukraine, Israel, as well as other U.S. national security matters. Of the $105 billion, the package calls for $61 billion for Ukraine and an additional $14.3 billion for Israel.

— Amanda Macias

Editor’s note: The following post contains a photograph with graphic content.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health released a spreadsheet with the names, ages, sex and ID numbers of the total number of people killed in Gaza so far, NBC News reported.

CNBC and NBC News has not independently verified the details of the documents.

The list includes over 6,700 names, of which more than 2.500 are that of children, NBC News reported.

The list, which is in Arabic, was provided to NBC News journalists.

— Riya Bhattacharjee