Latest news on Gaza conflict

The U.S. is in talks with Israel and Qatar over a proposed pause in the hostilities in the Gaza Strip of up to three days, in exchange for the potential release of some hostages held by Palestinian militant group Hamas, NBC News reports two foreign diplomats and a U.S. official as saying. The news organization did not name its sources.

The pause would allow the delivery of further humanitarian aid and create opportunities for the safe passage of Palestinian civilians looking to flee the north of the Gaza Stirp southward.

A final agreement has yet to be brokered. Qatar, which hosts the Hamas political bureau on its territory, has been in talks with the Palestinian militant group over the past two weeks over the proposal, NBC News says.

“We are at a critical stage of the negotiations,” a senior Arab source told NBC News.

Israel has previously said it is unwilling to pause its offensive in the Gaza Strip until hostages are released and Hamas is fully demilitarized. An official of the Palestinian militants has meanwhile said that captives will not be returned before a cease-fire is instituted. Hamas has only released four of the over 200 hostages it took captive on Oct. 7, with another rescued by the Israel Defense Forces.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration has been facing increasing pressures from the international community over the exacerbating humanitarian crisis for civilians stranded in the Gaza Strip, with even close ally U.S. President Joe Biden now floating the possibility of a humanitarian pause.

CNBC has reached out to the Israeli prime minister’s office, IDF, U.S. State Department and Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

— Ruxandra Iordache

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said on Wednesday that it received 106 trucks from the Egyptian Red Crescent branch that delivered humanitarian aid, along with five ambulance vehicles from Kuwait.

The latest trucks carried food, water and medical supplies.

The organization said 756 trucks — or about 39 trucks per day — have entered the resource-deprived and besieged Gaza enclave since Oct. 21, when humanitarian deliveries started. No fuel has been allowed in so far, the PRCS says.

Israel sealed the Gaza Strip off from its own supplies of water, food, fuel and electricity in the early days of the conflict, and the Israeli military has repeatedly accused the Palestinian militant group Hamas of denying stocks of fuel to the population and rerouting them toward its war efforts.

The Gaza Strip received roughly 500 trucks of supplies per day before the conflict, the U.N. noted in the past.

— Ruxandra Iordache

The Israel Defense Forces said in a social media update they have discovered water and oxygen storage in the wide-spanning tunnel network beneath the Gaza Strip, which “indicates Hamas’ preparations for prolonged stays underground.”

This comes after the Israeli military on Wednesday announced it had destroyed 130 tunnel entrances, amid a broader refocus on eliminating Hamas’ underground infrastructure. CNBC could not independently confirm this figure.

A key advantage in the Gaza territory in the event of a ground incursion, the tunnel network can facilitate transport, weapons and explosives storage and ambushes for Hamas operatives.

— Ruxandra Iordache

Israel carried out an aerial attack targeting military sites in southern Syria leading to some material losses, Syrian state media said on Wednesday, citing a military source.

The source quoted by state media said missiles flying over Lebanon’s Baalbek region had targeted several sites, but it did not identify them.

Israel has for years carried out attacks on what it has described as Iran-linked targets in Syria, where Tehran’s influence has grown since it began supporting President Bashar al-Assad in a civil war that started in 2011.

The strikes are believed to have targeted Syrian army air defence base and a radar station in Tel Qulaib and Tel Maseeh in the Sweida province in southwestern Syria, according to two Syrian military defectors familiar with the matter.

— Reuters

The U.N. human rights chief said collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians and their forced evacuation, as well as atrocities committed by Palestinian armed groups on Oct. 7 and their continued holding of hostages, amount to war crimes.

Volker Türk, standing in front of Egypt’s Rafah border crossing into Gaza, told reporters Wednesday: “These are the gates to a living nightmare.”

“We have fallen off a precipice. This cannot continue,” he said later in Cairo.

Türk said international human rights and humanitarian law must be respected to help protect civilians and allow desperately needed aid to reach Gaza’s beleaguered population of some 2.3 million people.

He said the U.N. rights office received reports in recent days about an unspecified orphanage in northern Gaza with 300 children who need urgent help, but communications were down and access were impassable and unsafe, so “we cannot get to them.”

“I feel, in my innermost being, the pain, the immense suffering of every person whose loved one has been killed in a kibbutz, in a Palestinian refugee camp, hiding in a building or as they were fleeing,” Türk said. “We all must feel this shared pain — and end this nightmare.”

Hospitals in Gaza are nearing collapse under Israel’s wartime siege, which has cut power and deliveries of food, fuel and other necessities to the territory.

Inside the maternity department at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, the workload has doubled because of the mass displacement from Gaza’s north. That’s according to neonatal specialist Dr. Asaad al-Nawajha, who said Wednesday his team has seen an increase in premature births as the monthlong war intensifies.

Shouq Hararah is one of those mothers. She says her delivery took place with “no proper birth procedures, no anesthesia, painkillers or anything.”

“I gave birth to twins. The boy was discharged, but the girl remains in the maternity ward,” she said.

Standing before a row of beeping incubators, al-Nawajha emphasized the war’s life-threatening consequences.

“All of our work depends on electricity; all the machines you see here rely on it,” the doctor said. “When the electricity is cut, these devices stop working, and all the babies will face certain death.”

— Associated Press

A U.S. military MQ-9 drone was shot down on Wednesday by Yemen’s Houthis, two U.S. officials and the Iran-aligned Houthi movement said.

While U.S. drones have been shot down by Houthis in the past, this incident comes at a particularly tense time in the region.

Washington is on heightened alert for activity by Iran-backed groups as regional tensions soar during the Israel-Hamas war.

The U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the drone, made by General Atomics, had been brought down off the coast of Yemen. They did not say if it was taken down in international airspace.

In a statement, a Houthi military spokesperson said they shot down the drone in airspace over Yemeni territorial waters.

In 2019, U.S. drones were brought down on two separate occasions by the group in Yemen.

The Pentagon has surged thousands of troops to the region to try and contain the conflict, including two aircraft carriers. Some of those troops have been in the Red Sea aboard military vessels.

Last month, a U.S. Navy warship intercepted four cruise missiles and more than a dozen drones launched by the Houthis from Yemen headed toward Israel.

— Reuters