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ABC News’ Matt Gutman reports on the latest developments on the Israel-Hamas war.

ABC News’ Matt Gutman reports on the latest developments in the Israel-Hamas war.

Plus, the State Department said they were aware of reports of U.S. doctors trapped in Gaza. It is working with Israel to reopen the Rafah gate to facilitate the departure of U.S. citizens.

STORY: Civilian casualties continue to tick up as Israel stepped up its assault in the northern and southern parts of Gaza on Monday. Rescue crews brought in badly-wounded civilians, some of them children, to a hospital in northern Beit Lahiya. Some of the most intense fighting for weeks is raging in both the north and south. Israeli forces had gone back into Jabalia, where they’ve said they have dismantled Hamas months ago, to prevent militants regrouping there. A medical worker, Fares Afana, says they’ve tried to reach the Jabalia camp. Bodies were recovered there after overnight strikes. But he claims Israeli forces had been targeting ambulance crews, blocking them from saving wounded and trapped civilians. In southern Gaza’s Rafah, streets were near empty as Palestinians fled the fighting. Israel on Monday cut across a main highway into Rafah, closing a main crossing point for aid. The U.N. says a foreign security staff member was killed on Monday when a U.N.-marked vehicle travelling to a hospital in Rafah was struck. This marks the first international U.N. fatality in the Gaza war. Hamas' armed wing says due to Israeli bombardments it lost contact with militants guarding four Israeli hostages, including U.S.-Israeli citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who appeared in a Hamas video in April. Supplies are also wearing thin for many displaced Palestinians, who’ve fled the north and south to Deir al-Balah, in the center of the Gaza strip. “There is not enough water for all displaced people, there is not enough food, not enough markets for everyone." "This water tank that you see, this was barely enough for those who were already here, it was already not enough but we were living with it, so what about those who joined us? There are people from two camps, in addition to our camp.” The U.N. says around 360,000 people have fled Rafah since Israel’s evacuation order a week ago. Many uprooted families are moving to empty tracts of land along the coast, but the U.N. warns of poor sanitary conditions there. Starving Palestinians on one side of the border – and on the other… Israeli protesters blocking aid trucks to Gaza on Monday. Some Israelis were seen spilling contents of the trucks onto a road at a West Bank checkpoint – the second such incident in less than a week. This comes even as Israel has pledged to allow uninterrupted humanitarian supplies into the besieged enclave. Washington, which has paused some deliveries of weapons to Israel, as it disagrees with an assault on Rafah, has denounced "looting" these convoys. Gaza health officials say the Palestinian death toll in the war has now surpassed 35,000. The conflict began after militant group Hamas burst into Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 and taking more than 250 hostages.

STORY: :: Israeli protesters block an aid convoy heading to Gaza :: Tarqumiya checkpoint, West Bank :: May 13, 2024 :: Four protesters, including a minor, were arrested, according to lawyers representing them Videos circulated on social media showed protesters throwing supplies from the trucks on to the ground, with the contents of opened cartons lying spilled across the road. The video was verified by buildings, signs and hills seen in the footage which match file imagery of the checkpoint. Separate visuals from the same location also show the same truck being unloaded, which corroborates the video. Last week, four people were arrested in southern Israel after a similar protest by Israelis who object to delivering humanitarian supplies into an area controlled by the Islamist movement Hamas, according to their lawyers. The protests came as Israel has faced heavy international pressure to step up the flow of aid into Gaza, where international organizations have warned of a severe humanitarian crisis threatening a population of more than 2 million people.

Israel’s leaders have said the military needs to move into Rafah to dismantle the remaining battalions of Hamas. Photo: Hatem Khaled/Reuters

Ruby and Hagit Chen are still waiting to bury their son. Itay was killed in Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7. But unlike scores of other families of soldiers killed that day, Chen doesn’t have a grave to visit because his son’s remains are held captive in Gaza. The absence of a final resting place is being felt acutely now, as Israel marks its memorial day for fallen soldiers, when cemeteries are brimming with relatives mourning over the graves of their loved ones. (AP Video shot by Moshe Edri and Ami Bentov)