🇵🇸🇮🇱 How many soldiers are in Hamas?

Hamas' precise troop force is unspecified, but various estimations have put the numerical strength of its service members at around 30,000 militants, if non-core members are summoned in an emergency.

The al-Qassam Brigades are organized into six groups. Each group has many smaller groups, and each smaller group has even tinier parts. Three of these groups stay in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. One is in the north of Gaza City, one is to the east of Gaza City, and one is in the south of Gaza City. There is one group in the middle of Gaza, and two are in the south, superintending Khan Yunis and Rafah. The Hamas combat forces are reportedly also dispersed in the West Bank and neighboring countries.

Saturday’s onslaught launched by Hamas begs the question: how many combat forces does the group have?

Find out more here

🇮🇱🇺🇸 US Pentagon chief arrives in Israel following Blinken’s visit, local media reports

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇵🇸🇮🇱 Latest updates on Palestinian-Israeli conflict

▪️Israel used white phosphorus in Lebanon, Gaza strikes, Human Rights Watch says

▪️Latest death toll:

🇮🇱 Israel: 1,300 dead, 3,300 injured
🇵🇸 Palestine: 1,537 dead, 6,612 injured

▪️IDF says it hit 750 military targets overnight

▪️Israel wants all Palestinians in northern Gaza , about 1.1 million people, to move south within 24 hours

▪️Iran's FM Hossein Amir-Abdollahian is not ruling out new fronts opening up in light of Israel's actions, calling the decision to cut off electricity and water supplies to the Gaza Strip a war crime

▪️UK PM Rishi Sunak says British forces will be deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean to support Israel amid the ongoing escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇰🇬 LIVE NOW: CIS summit kicks off in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Join the live stream here or follow this link to Sputnik's website

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🐝🪖 Ukraine to employ bees for demining minefields, government says

💬 "To avoid contact with mines, drones will sow a mined agricultural field with a special mixture of honey-bearing grasses. After that, the nectar is collected by bees, which are also not afraid of mines," the press service for the Honey From Minefields project explained.

Ukrainian diplomats will take the collected honey to meetings and international visits and give it to their colleagues and public people all over the world, thus raising funds to solve the problem of mined areas.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇵🇸🇮🇱 Majority of Israelis blames government for Palestine-Israel conflict escalation, poll shows

According to a Dialog Center poll, 86% of respondents, including 79% of coalition supporters, blame the surprise attack from Gaza on the Israeli leadership, with 92% saying the war is causing anxiety.

Almost all the respondents (94%) believe the government must bear some responsibility for the lack of security preparedness that led to the attack, with over 75% saying the government holds most of the responsibility.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇮🇱🇺🇸 US Secretary of Defense arrives to Israel on Boeing C-17A military transport aircraft

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇵🇸🇮🇱 Hamas: Israel bombings kill 13 hostages in different locations in Gaza

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇵🇸🇮🇱 Israel has dropped about 6,000 bombs against Hamas targets in Gaza, IAF say

By comparison, the US and its allies dropped 2,000-5,000 munitions per month on Iraq and Syria during their 2014-2019 air campaign against Daesh*, according to a Rand Corporation study.

*Daesh (also known as ISIS/ISIL/IS) is a terrorist organization outlawed in Russia and many other states.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺🪖 Russia's state-owned Rostec defense corporation delivers first batch of Zemledeliye mobile mine laying systems to Russian forces

The Zemledeliye (Agriculture) includes a combat vehicle on an 8x8 chassis, a transport and load vehicle, as well as transport and launch containers with engineering munitions.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

💬 "All they can do is make it more dangerous, more volatile"

Larry Johnson, retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official, on US decision to send aircraft carriers to the Eastern Mediterranean

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇵🇸🇮🇱 Muslim paramedic killed during Hamas attack on Israeli music festival.

When the gunfire began, Awad Darawshe stayed behind to treat the wounded. Darawshe was ultimately killed in the attack and his ambulance was reportedly stolen and driven into the Gaza Strip.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺🇵🇸🇮🇱 Russia ready to mediate in Palestinian-Israeli settlement, Putin says

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇮🇱🇺🇸 White House spokesman John Kirby shuts down reporter question about authenticity of photos showing dead Israeli children, saying ‘they're coming from the prime minister of Israel’

During the White House press briefing, Kirby also said he had “taught a whole class at Georgetown” on misinformation after another reporter asked him how to separate between fact and misinformation regarding stories of “beheaded babies or rape.”

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇷🇺🇵🇸🇮🇱 Vladimir Putin on Palestine-Israel conflict

▪️Russia is ready to mediate Palestinian-Israeli settlement

▪️It is necessary to seek a peaceful solution to the escalation, there are no alternatives in this situation

▪️The escalation is a large-scale tragedy, a result of failed US policy, which led the situation into a deadlock

▪️The US was not concerned about finding a compromise in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

▪️The use of heavy military equipment in residential areas is fraught with consequences, and it is more difficult to conduct an operation without such equipment

▪️Civilian casualties are absolutely unacceptable

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇺🇳The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said on Friday it had relocated its central operations center and international staff to the southern Gaza Strip, following the relevant call by the Israeli military.

"UNRWA relocated its central operations centre + international staff to the south to continue its humanitarian operations and support to its staff and Palestine Refugees in Gaza," the UN agency said on X, while also urging Israel to protect all civilians in UNRWA shelters and schools.

The agency added that these shelters and schools are UN facilities and they "must be protected at all times and must never come under attack in accordance with international humanitarian law."

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇵🇸🇮🇱 Various reports claim photo of burned Israeli child published by Netanyahu’s office is fake. Here is what we know

▪️Some users on social media claim they found the original photo featuring a puppy rescue, which was used as the backdrop for the “fake” one. The source of the photo is unknown. However, the puppy looks surprisingly clean and has no visible signs of injury.

▪️X (formerly Twitter) user Arlington Post ran an ELA* (Error Level Analysis) on both pictures, concluding that the baby photo is "most likely not altered, but it could still be a fake photo in the sense that the subject may not be a dead baby, but a prop to look like one.”

* ELA is an analysis of compression artifacts in digital data with lossy compression such as JPEG

▪️Arlington Post says that in the baby photo, the edges of the burned areas are consistent in sharpness and brightness throughout, there is a uniform noise pattern throughout the photo, and there are no clearly defined altered areas.

▪️In the case of the dog photo, compression artifacts in certain areas, especially on the edges of the dog, are distinctly different from the rest of the image. The main background noise in the photo is the same, except for the suspicious area.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

🇵🇸🇮🇱 Israeli army declares area near northernmost city of Metula a closed military zone

Subscribe to @SputnikInt