A senior military commander of Hamas who headed the Islamist group’s aerial operations in Gaza City has been killed in Israeli airstrikes as the war between the two sides entered the eighth day on Saturday. Murad Abu Murad was killed over the past day when fighter jets struck an operational centre of Hamas from where the group carried out its “aerial activity”, the military said. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas.

Thousands of people – Israelis, Palestinians and foreigners – have been killed since Hamas militants attacked Israel from the Gaza Strip on last Saturday. Most were civilians, with horror stories emerging about the militants’ rampage and the devastating military retaliation it provoked.

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Thousands of Palestinians began fleeing their homes and moving south after Israel’s military delivered sweeping evacuation orders for almost half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people earlier on Friday ahead of an expected ground offensive.

The UN said it was told by the Israeli military that about 1.1 million Palestinians in northern Gaza should relocate to the enclave’s south within the next 24 hours. Hamas urged people to stay put and defy the Israeli military order to evacuate homes.

Hamas-Israel war: what we know on Day 8

1. Israel is focusing its main military activities on Gaza City in the north of the Gaza Strip, as it continues its war against Hamas. “Gaza City is where the focus and the hub of Hamas activities are,” said Jonathan Conricus, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces. “That’s where most of their commanders are.”
2. In an Arabic message, the Israel Defence Forces told residents of the northern Gaza Strip that they should move to the southern part of the enclave using evacuation corridors between 10 am and 4pm. “If you care about yourself and your loved ones, go south as instructed,” the military says. “Rest assured that Hamas leaders have taken care of themselves and are taking cover from strikes in the region.”
3. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government is prepared to use “unprecedented” force against Hamas, which killed 1,300 in last weekend’s assault. More than 1,500 people have been killed in Gaza in retaliatory airstrikes.
4. Israeli forces on Saturday killed several “terrorists” trying to cross the border from Lebanon, a military spokesman said. The military “identified a terrorist cell which attempted to infiltrate from Lebanon into Israeli territory,” the spokesman said, adding that a drone strike “targeted the terrorist cell and killed a number of the terrorists”.
5. A pro-Palestine rally in Times Square drew thousands of protesters, who then marched to the Israeli consulate. The event, which also drew a smaller counter-protest, drew a significant police presence and has so far been without major incident. Some videos posted to social media show clashes between opposing demonstrators being broken up by the police.
6. President Joe Biden has said Hamas is worse than al-Qaeda, the terrorist group behind the 9/11 attacks, as he reaffirmed that the US stands with the Jewish state. At least 27 American citizens have died and 14 remain unaccounted for as a result of unfolding violence in Israel triggered after Hamas carried out unprecedented attacks in Southern Israel.
7. Israeli airstrikes on convoys fleeing Gaza City killed 70 people, mostly women and children, the press office of Hamas said. Hamas said the cars were struck in three places as they headed south from Gaza City on Friday.
8. A journalist has been killed and six others injured after an Israeli shell landed in a gathering of international journalists covering clashes on the border in south Lebanon on Friday. Reuters confirmed that its videographer Issam Abdallah was killed. Meanwhile, the BBC said its journalists were assaulted and held at gunpoint after they were stopped by Israeli police in Tel Aviv.\
9. Hamas has released footage of Israeli children whom they claim they held hostage during the deadly attack on Southern Israel, reported The Jerusalem Post. The Hamas group shared the video on their Telegram channel, with the caption, “Hamas fighters, showing compassion for children in the midst of the Kibbutz ‘Holit’ battles on day one of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.”
10. French President Emmanuel Macron has ordered 7,000 soldiers to be mobilised for increased security patrols, his office said on Saturday, a day after a teacher was stabbed to death in an Islamist attack. France was put on its highest security alert on Friday after a 20-year-old man fatally stabbed a teacher and gravely wounded two other people in an attack at a school in the city of Arras in northern France.