Smith, the first player to win 100 open beach volleyball tournaments, has been suspended since May 31 and may not participate or attend USA Volleyball sanctioned events, according to USA Volleyball’s suspended list.

The reason for the suspension is listed by USA Volleyball as “U.S. Center for SafeSport administrative hold.”

When asked if the listing of Smith suspension was accurate and what was the reason for the suspension, Liani Reyna, USA Volleyball manager for SafeSport, said: “I have no comment.”

USA Volleyball communications manager B.J. Hoeptner-Evans also declined to comment.

Smith, in a series of telephone interviews and text messages since October 10, said he has “no idea why” he has been suspended by USA Volleyball.

Smith said he was unaware of the suspension until he was informed of it by SCNG more than four months after it went into effect.

“I’m not sure why you are hell bent on trying to mess with me?” Smith said in a text Thursday in response to a question about when he was last a member of USA Volleyball. “I think it is time to stop trying to find a way to tarnish my career. You must have better things to do?”

Smith on October 12 said he spoke with Reyna “who knows nothing.”

Smith said he is no longer a member of USA Volleyball. Nineteen persons on USA Volleyball’s suspended members list have “U.S. Center for SafeSport administrative hold” cited as the rule or code violation for their suspension. All 19 were suspended after their USA Volleyball membership had lapsed.

Smith said he does not remember when he was last a member of USA Volleyball.

“Don’t know,” he said. “Haven’t kept track.”

On Oct. 12, Smith also said he spoke to an official at the U.S. Center for SafeSport after speaking with Reyna. Smith said he did not recall the name of the U.S. Center for SafeSport official he spoke to.

The SafeSport official told Smith “they have no reason to investigate because I am not a USAV member,” Smith wrote in an Oct. 12 text. “She said USAV had no reason to post my name on their suspended list as I am not a member (of USA Volleyball). There is no suspension of non members. If I was trying to become a member, then they could open an investigation. I don’t have a reason to become a member.

“If for some reason there was a serious offense reporter, I am sure I would have heard something from other sources (of course there is not).

“If I decide to become a member of the USAV, I may find out what the issue is but like I said, no reason to do so at this time. Still, my curiosity is peaked!

“The gal at safe sport said there is a range of potential offenses that could be reported including verbal abuse all the way to much worse stuff which I think is listed on their site.”

Smith said the SafeSport official encouraged him to check back with USA Volleyball to see if they would remove his name from the suspended list. More than three weeks ago he said he contacted USA Volleyball again about the suspension. Smith said on Monday he still had not heard back from USA Volleyball.

A U.S. Center for SafeSport spokesman declined to comment on Smith’s status as suspended.

Hoeptner-Evans, USA Volleyball’s communications manager, initially declined to comment on the Smith suspension in early October. On Wednesday SCNG contacted Hoeptner-Evans again detailing Smith’s comments and asking for the reason for the suspension and if the national governing body would confirm that the suspension is still in place. Hoeptner-Evans said she would relay the questions to her bosses at USA Volleyball. In an email Thursday, Hoeptner-Evans wrote, “we do not have a response for your article.”

Smith, 66, has been involved in coaching and putting on clinics since retiring as a player in 2001. He coaches the Sinjin Beach Club, an age-group program based out of Santa Monica, adjacent to the Annenberg Beach House.

“Beach volleyball isn’t just a sport, it’s a lifestyle,” reads the Sinjin Beach Club website. “Our club embodies this by giving our players the tools to compete at the highest level and to have fun while doing so. We achieve this by offering elite coaches and drills that have been tested and proven by King of the Beach, Sinjin Smith. The most important thing to us is growing the sport and bringing it back to what it used to be.”

Smith has also run camps for the past 21 years. This past summer, Sinjin Smith’s Beach Volleyball Camps (BVC) operated camps in nine Los Angeles County communities.

Smith is the third current or former U.S. Olympic volleyball team member to be suspended by USA Volleyball in recent years.

Scott Touzinsky, a 2008 Olympic gold medalist with the United States volleyball team, was suspended by USA Volleyball in July 2018 in response to allegations of sexual misconduct involving an underage female athlete at a camp or clinic in Canada, according to U.S. Center for SafeSport and USA Volleyball documents obtained by the Southern California News Group.  

Beach player Taylor Crabb was suspended by USA Volleyball in 2017 for misconduct involving a minor-aged girl, according to USA Volleyball documents obtained by SCNG. USA Volleyball’s board of directors voted unanimously in May 2019 to extend the suspension through Sept. 28, 2021, after Crabb breached a settlement agreement for the first suspension by coaching at a camp for junior girls.

The decision was made with the clear realization that it would prevent Crabb from competing in the Tokyo Olympics, originally scheduled for 2020. An arbitrator later reduced Crabb’s suspension, clearing the way for him to compete in the 2021 Olympic Games. Crabb, however, missed the Tokyo Games after contracting COVID just days before the Olympics. He most recently teamed with Taylor Sander to win his first Manhattan Beach Open on Aug. 20.

Smith, a 1996 Olympian, led UCLA to NCAA titles in 1978 and 1979 and was a member of the U.S national team indoors from 1979 to 1982 before focusing on the beach game.

Smith won AVP International titles in parts of three decades. He was so dominant that the International Volleyball Hall of Fame called him the “King of the Beach” when he was inducted into the hall in 2003.

Smith even inspired an Electronic Arts video game fittingly called “King of the Beach.”

Smith was also influential off the beach, playing a leading role in the creation of the AVP, eventually serving as president and on the board of directors for the group. He was also a driving force behind the creation FIVB World Tour. Smith also served as president of the Beach Volleyball World Council.

PARIS — Western and Arab nations, international agencies and nongovernmental groups stressed the urgent need for aid for Gaza civilians at a Paris conference Thursday, held as the humanitarian crisis in the besieged territory worsens amid Israel’s massive air and ground campaign against Hamas.

The gathering ended a few hours before the White House said Israel has agreed to put in place four-hour daily humanitarian pauses in Gaza, starting on Thursday.

The French presidency said the participants’ overall pledges topped 1 billion euros ($1.07 billion) in funding, though that included some funds already announced earlier, and stressed that the global amount still remains to be finalized.

French President Emmanuel Macron opened the conference with an appeal for Israel to protect civilians, saying that “all lives have equal worth” and urging for pauses in the fighting to allow deliveries of desperately needed aid.

“In the immediate term, we need to work on protecting civilians,” he said. “To do that, we need a humanitarian pause very quickly and we must work towards a cease-fire.”

The conference brought together officials from over 50 countries, the United Nations and humanitarian organizations as the Gaza Strip is being pounded by Israel in its war against Hamas, sparked by the militants deadly Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel.

Israeli authorities were not invited but have been informed of the talks, Macron’s office said. There was no immediate comment from Israel on the conference.

More than 1.5 million people — or about 70% of Gaza’s population — have fled their homes, and an estimated $1.2 billion is needed to respond to the crisis in Palestinian areas.

Macron said that since the Oct. 7 attack, Hamas “shouldered the responsibility for exposing Palestinians to terrible consequences,” and again defended Israel’s right to defend itself.

“Fighting terrorism can never be carried out without rules. Israel knows that. The trap of terrorism is for all of us the same: giving in to violence and renouncing our values,” he added.

Longer term, Macron said diplomatic work must resume on bringing peace to the Middle East, with a two-state solution. “We must learn from our errors and no longer accept that peace … always be pushed back to later.”

Several European countries, the United States and regional powers such as Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf Arab countries attended the conference, as did Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, who urged the international community to “put an end to the war.”

“How many Palestinians have to be killed for the war to end?” Shtayyeh asked. “What Israel is doing is not a war against Hamas, it’s a war against the whole Palestinian people.”

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry stressed that Israel had only allowed limited quantities of humanitarian aid through the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza and urged “the entire international community, and donor countries in particular, to continue supporting the Palestinian people in Gaza.”

“The aid that has already entered Gaza is not enough to meet the needs of the entire population, and the voluntary and deliberate complications imposed by Israel on the delivery of aid only lead to a further deterioration of the situation,” Shoukry said.

Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides outlined his plan for a humanitarian sea corridor to Gaza “to provide continued rapid, safe and unhindered flow of humanitarian aid” and said the plan is being discussed “with all parties concerned, including Israel.” The plan provides options for the short, medium and longer term, with aid shipments possibly from the Cyprus port of Larnaca, 370 km (230 miles) from Gaza, he said.

The initiative includes the collection, inspection and storage of humanitarian aid in Cyprus, it’s later transfer by ship possibly from Larnaca port and finally it’s offloading and distribution in Gaza.

French officials said they are also considering evacuating the wounded to hospital ships in the Mediterranean Sea off the Gaza coast. Paris sent a helicopter carrier, now off Cyprus, and is preparing another with medical capacities on board.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said his country sent a hospital ship that is en route to Cyprus before deploying as close as possible to the conflict zone.

Thursday’s discussions also included financial support for Gaza’s civilians.

Macron announced France will provide an additional 80 million euros ($85 million) in humanitarian aid for Gaza civilians, bringing France’s funding to a total of 100 million euros ($107 million) this year.

On Tuesday, the German government said it will provide 20 million euros ($21 million) in new funding, in addition to releasing 71 million euros ($76 million) already earmarked for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.

Denmark has decided to increase its humanitarian aid to the civilian population in Gaza by 75 million kroner ($10.7 million), to be channeled via U.N. agencies and the International Red Cross.

European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also attended the conference. The 27-nation bloc is the world’s top aid supplier to the Palestinians. “We have quadrupled the humanitarian support for Gaza and the West Bank, but it’s mostly for Gaza, to 100 million euros ($107 million),” von der Leyen said.

At a news conference following the conference, rights and aid groups urged for an immediate cease-fire, which they said is crucial for them to be able to work in Gaza.

“We’re determined to do everything we can, but if the only thing we get is a day or two without fighting … that won’t be enough,” said Isabelle Defourny, president of Doctors Without Borders France.

Jean-François Corty, vice president of Doctors of the World, said the main challenge “is not so much to mobilize aid as to get it” into Gaza.

“What’s happening in Gaza is a litany of violations of international law … not seen since World War II,” said Amnesty International’s secretary general, Agnès Callamard, and denounced “indiscriminate, disproportionate, deliberate attacks.”

Associated Press writers John Leicester in Le Pecq, France; Geir Moulson in Berlin; Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark; Colleen Barry in Milan and Menelaos Hadjicostis in Nicosia, Cyprus, contributed to this report.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Israeli troops have pushed into Gaza City along a key coastal road on the Mediterranean Sea as part of their war on Hamas, according to satellite images from earlier this week analyzed on Thursday by The Associated Press.

Monday’s images from Planet Labs PBC show a moonscape of impact craters from missile strikes and smoke rising over the northern reaches of Gaza City, the besieged territory’s largest urban zone. The images also show previous positions of Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers on one of three axes of attack used to cut the city off from the rest of the Gaza Strip.

The city has seen hundreds of thousands of people flee it after a month of war since Hamas’ unprecedented Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel that killed some 1,400 people.

That assault sparked a punishing campaign of airstrikes and the Israeli military offensive into the Gaza Strip that has so far killed over 10,500 people — two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run enclave.

Planet Labs has begun delaying the release of imagery from Israel and the Palestinian territories amid the war, as it acknowledged concerns about “the potential for misuse and abuse” of its pictures, said Will Marshall, a co-founder and the CEO of the San Francisco-based firm.

“Planet is continuing to make Earth observation data of Gaza available to clients, including media and humanitarian organizations, consistent with our commitment to transparency and accountability,” Marshall said in responses to questions from the AP ahead of the release of Monday’s images. “Planet does not modify imagery, and we have not received requests to censor imagery.”

The AP has a subscription to access Planet Labs imagery to aid its reporting worldwide and distributes those photos to its subscribers and members.

Monday’s images show Israeli forces just about a kilometer (over half a mile) north of the Shati refugee camp, a dense neighborhood adjacent to Gaza City’s center. Shati houses Palestinian families who fled from or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its establishment.

Their position corresponds with what witnesses in Gaza City have told the AP, whose reporters continue to work in the Gaza Strip. On Wednesday, one witness told the AP he saw Israeli soldiers fighting Hamas close to Shifa Hospital, which is some 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) from the position Israeli forces held on Monday.

Footage released this week by Hamas of its militants engaged in street-to-street fighting with Israeli forces corresponded to features of the northern reaches of the Gaza Strip. Footage released by the Israeli military did the same.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the AP regarding the satellite images.

After ordering civilians out of Gaza City, Israeli soldiers have moved on Gaza City from three positions.

They cut across the southern edge of the city all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. Meanwhile, two other forces have pushed in from the north, with forces around Beit Hanoun to the east and forces seen in the satellite images along the Mediterranean, to the west, according to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.

Such “clearing operations frequently take weeks and sometimes months to complete,” the Institute said.

The satellite photos show over half a dozen Israeli tanks and armored vehicles moving on Monday down Ahmed Orabi Street, a coastal road on the Mediterranean also home to a strip of hotels and restaurants. A streetside mosque is seen in ruins.

Some 20 other vehicles just to the north at a site likely serve as a forward-operating base for the Israeli forces, the photos show. A few hundred meters (yards) away, over three dozen impact craters can be seen, likely the result of an earlier intense barrage of fire by Israel to clear the area for its troops.

Burning fires and destroyed buildings can be seen throughout Gaza City.

With journalists outside the city unable to enter, gathering independent information about what’s going on remains difficult. Apart from videos and images on social media, the growing supply of satellite imagery from commercial companies has become increasingly valuable for reporting on closed-off areas and countries.

Those companies can shoot highly detailed images that rival those that were once only the domain of a few countries. Airbus and Colorado-based Maxar Technologies have provided images to reporters during the Israel-Hamas war as well. Both firms did not respond to a request for comment.

Previously, a 1996 U.S. law known as the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment barred American firms releasing high-resolution satellite imagery of Israel beyond what was commercially available abroad. But as commercial firms put higher-resolution satellites into space, those images became more widely available.

These newly available images have been used in reporting on Israel before. The AP, relying on such imagery, reported in 2021 that a secretive Israeli nuclear facility at the center of the nation’s undeclared atomic weapons program was undergoing what appears to be its biggest construction project in decades. That work appears to be continuing to this day.

JERUSALEM — Fistfights break out in bread lines. Residents wait hours for a gallon of brackish water that makes them sick. Scabies, diarrhea and respiratory infections rip through overcrowded shelters. And some families have to choose who eats.

“My kids are crying because they are hungry and tired and can’t use the bathroom,” said Suzan Wahidi, an aid worker and mother of five at a U.N. shelter in the central town of Deir al-Balah, where hundreds of people share a single toilet. “I have nothing for them.”

With the Israel-Hamas war in its second month and more than 10,000 people killed in Gaza, trapped civilians are struggling to survive without electricity or running water. Palestinians who managed to flee Israel’s ground invasion in northern Gaza now encounter scarcity of food and medicine in the south, and there is no end in sight to the war sparked by Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack.

Over half a million displaced people have crammed into hospitals and U.N. schools-turned-shelters in the south. The schools — overcrowded, strewn with trash, swarmed by flies — have become a breeding ground for infectious diseases.

UPDATE: Israel agrees to 4-hour daily pauses in Gaza fighting to allow civilians to flee

Since the start of the war, several hundred trucks of aid have entered Gaza through the southern Rafah crossing, but aid organizations say that’s a drop in the ocean of need. For most people, each day has become a drudging cycle of searching for bread and water and waiting in lines.

The sense of desperation has strained Gaza’s close-knit society, which has endured decades of conflict, four wars with Israel and a 16-year blockade since Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces.

Some Palestinians have even vented their anger against Hamas, shouting insults at officials or beating up policemen in scenes unimaginable just a month ago, witnesses say.

“Everywhere you go, you see tension in the eyes of people,” said Yousef Hammash, an aid worker with the Norwegian Refugee Council in the southern town of Khan Younis. “You can tell they are at a breaking point.”

Supermarket shelves are nearly empty. Bakeries have shut down because of lack of flour and fuel for the ovens. Gaza’s farmland is mostly inaccessible, and there’s little in produce markets beyond onions and oranges. Families cook lentils over small fires in the streets.

“You hear children crying in the night for sweets and hot food,” said Ahmad Kanj, 28, a photographer at a shelter in the southern town of Rafah. “I can’t sleep.”

Many people say they’ve gone weeks without meat, eggs or milk and now live on one meal a day.

“There is a real threat of malnutrition and people starving,” said Alia Zaki, spokesperson for the U.N.’s World Food Program. What aid workers call “food insecurity” is the new baseline for Gaza’s 2.3 million people, she said.

Famed Gazan dishes like jazar ahmar — juicy red carrots stuffed with ground lamb and rice — are a distant memory, replaced by dates and packaged biscuits. Even those are hard to find.

Each day families send their most assertive relative off before dawn to one of the few bakeries still functioning. Some take knives and sticks — they say they must prepare to defend themselves if attacked, with riots sporadically breaking out in bread and water lines.

“I send my sons to the bakeries and eight hours later, they’ve come back with bruises and sometimes not even bread,” said 59-year-old Etaf Jamala, who fled Gaza City for the southern town of Deir al-Balah, where she sleeps in the packed halls of a hospital with 15 family members.

One woman told The Associated Press that her nephew, a 27-year-old father of five in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya in northern Gaza, was stabbed in the back with a kitchen knife after being accused of cutting the line for water. He needed dozens of stitches, she said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The violence has jarred the tiny territory, where family names are linked to community status and even small discretions can be magnified in the public eye.

“The social fabric for which Gaza was known is fraying due to the anxiety and uncertainty and loss,” said Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.

Israel cut off water to Gaza shortly after the Hamas attack, saying its complete siege would be lifted only after the militants released the roughly 240 hostages they captured. Israel has since turned on pipelines to the center and south, but there’s no fuel to pump or process the water. The taps run dry.

Those who can’t find or afford bottled water rely on salty, unfiltered well water, which doctors say causes diarrhea and serious gastrointestinal infections.

“I cannot recognize my own son,” said Fadi Ihjazi. The 3-year-old has lost 5 kilograms (11 pounds) in just two weeks, she said, and has been diagnosed with a chronic intestinal infection.

“Before the war he had the sweetest baby face,” Ihjazi said, but now his lips are chapped, his face yellowish, his eyes sunken.

At shelters, the lack of water makes it hard to maintain even basic hygiene, said Dr. Ali al-Uhisi, who treats patients at one in Deir al-Balah. Lice and chicken pox have spread, he said, and on Wednesday morning alone he treated four cases of meningitis. This week, he’s also seen 20 cases of the liver infection hepatitis A.

“What worries me is that I know I’m seeing a fraction of the total number of cases at the shelter,” he said.

For most ailments, there is no treatment — zinc tablets and oral rehydration salts vanished the first week of the war. Frustrated patients have assaulted doctors, said Al-Uhisi, who described being beaten this week by a patient who needed a syringe.

Sadeia Abu Harbeid, 44, said she missed a chemotherapy treatment for her breast cancer during the second week of the war and can’t find painkillers. Without regular treatments, she says, her chances of survival dim.

She hardly eats, choosing to give most of the little food she has to her 2-year-old. “This existence is a humiliation,” she said.

Across Gaza, rare scenes of dissent are playing out. Some Palestinians are openly challenging the authority of Hamas, which long has ruled the enclave with an iron fist. Four Palestinians across Gaza spoke to AP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals about what they’ve seen.

A man who was told off by a Hamas officer for cutting the bread line took a chair and smashed it over his head, according to an aid worker in line. In another area, angry crowds hurled stones at Hamas police who cut in front of a water line and beat them with their fists until they scattered, according to a journalist there.

Over the past few night in Gaza City, Hamas rockets streaming overhead toward Israel have prompted outbursts of rage from a U.N. shelter. In the middle of the night, hundreds of people have shouted insults against Hamas and cried out that they wanted the war to end, according to a 28-year-old sleeping in a tent there with his family.

And during a televised press conference Tuesday, a young man with a dazed expression and bandaged wrist pushed his way through the crowd, disrupting a speech by Iyad Bozum, spokesman for the Hamas-run Interior Ministry.

“May God hold you to account, Hamas!” the man yelled, shaking his wounded hand.

Gaza’s future remains uncertain as Israeli tanks rumble down the ghostly streets of Gaza City with the goal of toppling Hamas. Palestinians say it will never be the same.

“The Gaza I know is just a memory now,” said 16-year-old Jehad Ghandour, who fled to Rafah. “There are no places or anything I know left.”

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Crowds of Palestinian families stretching as far as the eye could see walked out of Gaza City and surrounding areas toward the south Thursday to escape Israeli strikes and ground troops battling Hamas militants in dense urban neighborhoods. Others joined tens of thousands taking shelter at the city’s biggest hospital, not far from the fighting.

Gaza’s largest city is the focus of Israel’s campaign to crush Hamas following its deadly Oct. 7 incursion — and the Israeli military says Hamas’ main command center is located in and under the Shifa Hospital complex. The militant group and hospital staff deny that claim.

Growing numbers of people have been living in and around the hospital complex, hoping it will be safer than their homes or U.N. shelters in the north, several of which have been hit repeatedly. Israeli troops were around 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the hospital, according to its director.

The accelerating exodus to the south came as Israel agreed to put in place four-hour daily humanitarian pauses and to open a second route for people to flee the north, the White House said. The scope of the pauses was not immediately clear. The agreement came as Western and Arab officials gathered in Paris on Thursday to discuss ways of providing more aid to civilians in Gaza.

Separately, mediators worked on a possible deal for a three-day cease-fire in exchange for the release of around a dozen hostages held by Hamas, according to two Egyptian officials, a United Nations official and a Western diplomat.

Israeli ground forces battled near Gaza’s largest hospital, Shifa. Conditions are worsening for tens of thousands of people sheltering there, said three people who had left the hospital to go south in the past two days.

Families are sleeping in hospital rooms, even surgical theaters and the maternity ward, or on the streets outside. Daily food distributions helped a tiny number for a time, but there has been no bread for the past four days, they said. Water is scarce and usually polluted, and few people can bathe. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The Israeli military says the complex is a Hamas command center and senior militant leaders are hiding there. Hamas and hospital staff say the military is creating a pretext to strike it.

The hospital has also been overwhelmed with daily waves of wounded from airstrikes, while medical supplies have been running low and electricity has been shut off in large sections of the facility. The U.N. was able to deliver two truckloads of supplies Wednesday night, only the second delivery since the war began — enough to last a few hours, the director said.

Dozens of wounded were rushed to Shifa overnight, and a shell hit close to the hospital around dawn, thought it caused only a few minor injuries, the director Mohammed Abu Selmia told The Associated Press on Thursday.

“The conditions here are disastrous in every sense of the word,” he said. “We’re short on medicine and equipment, and the doctors and nurses are exhausted. … We’re unable to do much for the patients.”

International journalists who entered the north on a tour led by the Israeli military on Wednesday saw heavily damaged buildings, fields of rubble and toppled trees along the Mediterranean shoreline.

The trickle of aid entering Gaza from the south is largely barred from going north, which has been without running water for weeks. The U.N. aid office said all the bakeries there have shut down for lack of fuel, water and flour. Hospitals running low on supplies are performing surgeries without anesthesia.

More than two-thirds of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have fled their homes since the war began, with many heeding Israeli orders to flee to the southern part of the besieged enclave.

But the conditions there are also dire. Israel has continued to strike what it says are militant targets all across the territory. New arrivals from the north are squeezing into homes with extended family, or into U.N. schools-turned-shelters.

The World Health Organization said a lack of clean water and bathing facilities in shelters across Gaza has fueled the spread of infectious diseases, including scabies, lice, chickenpox, skin rash and respiratory illness. It has logged over 33,000 cases of diarrhea since mid-October — more than half among children under 5.

Still, the exodus from Gaza City and surrounding areas in the north has accelerated in recent days. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said 50,000 people fled south on Gaza’s main highway on Wednesday during a daily, hourslong window announced by the Israeli military. There are clashes and shelling near the road, and evacuees reported seeing corpses alongside it, the U.N. office said.

Similar-sized crowds streamed out on Thursday, according to an Associated Pres reporter on the scene as they arrived out of the northern zone. Most are traveling on foot with only what they can carry, many holding children or pushing older relatives in carts.

“We’ve been expelled, we’ve been put through a catastrophe. And who knows what more is coming,” said Kamal Nusseir, a 28-year-old with his possessions tied to his back.

His use of the Arabic word “nakba,” — which literally means “catastophe” — is a reference to the expulsion or flight of some 700,000 Palestinians from their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948 war around Israel’s creation. More than half of Gaza‘s residents are refugees from that war, or their descendants.

The Hamas-run Interior Ministry, which has urged Palestinians to stay in their homes, has told media outlets not to circulate footage of people fleeing.

A month of relentless bombardment in Gaza since the Hamas attack has killed more than 10,800 Palestinians — nearly two-thirds of them women and minors, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. More than 2,300 others are believed to have been buried by strikes that in some cases have demolished entire city blocks.

Israeli officials say thousands of Palestinian militants have been killed, and blame civilian deaths on Hamas, accusing it of operating in residential areas and using Palestinian civilians as human shields. Gaza’s Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its casualty reports.

The occupied West Bank has also seen a surge in violence, with Israel carrying out frequent arrest raids that often spark gunbattles. At least seven Palestinians were killed Thursday during a raid in Jenin, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. The military says it has stepped up operations to prevent attacks.

More than 1,400 people have died in Israel since the start of the war, most of them civilians killed by Hamas militants during their initial incursion. Israel says 32 of its soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the ground offensive began.

Palestinian militants have continued to fire rockets into Israel, and some 250,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate from communities near Gaza and along the northern border with Lebanon, where Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have traded fire repeatedly.

Magdy reported from Cairo and Chehayeb from Beirut. Associated Press writers Amy Teibel and Isabel DeBre in Jerusalem and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Israel has agreed to put in place four-hour daily humanitarian pauses in its assault on Hamas in northern Gaza starting on Thursday, the White House said, as President Joe Biden pressed Israelis for a multi-day stoppage in the fighting in a bid to release hostages held by the militant group.

Biden said Thursday that there was “no possibility” of a formal cease-fire at the moment, and said it had “taken a little longer” than he hoped for Israel to agree to the humanitarian pauses. Biden had asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to institute the daily pauses during a Monday call and said he had also asked the Israelis for a pause of at least three days to allow for negotiations over the release of some hostages held by Hamas.

“Yes,” Biden said, when asked whether he had asked Israel for a three-day pause. “I’ve asked for even a longer pause for some of them.”

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that the first daily humanitarian pause would be announced Thursday and that the Israelis had committed to announcing each four-hour window at least three hours in advance. Israel, he said, also was opening a second corridor for civilians to flee the areas that are the current focus of its military campaign against Hamas, with a coastal road joining the territory’s main north-south highway.

Similar short-term pauses have occurred over the last several days as tens of thousands of civilians have fled southward, but Thursday’s announcement appeared to be an effort to formalize and expand the process, as the U.S. has pressed Israelis to take greater steps to protect civilians in Gaza.

Biden’s push for an even longer pause comes as part of a renewed diplomatic push to free hostages taken by Hamas and other militant groups to the Gaza Strip during their Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel.

Israeli officials estimate that militants still hold 239 hostages, including children and the elderly, from the attack that also saw 1,400 Israelis killed. U.S. officials say it believes fewer than 10 Americans are among those held captive.

Kirby told reporters Thursday that pauses could be useful to “getting all 239 hostages back with their families to include the less than 10 Americans that we know are being held. So if we can get all the hostages out, that’s a nice finite goal.”

“Humanitarian pauses can be useful in the transfer process,” he added.

Indirect talks were taking place in Qatar — which also played a role in the freeing of four hostages by Hamas last month — about a larger release of hostages. CIA Director William Burns was in Doha on Thursday to discuss efforts to win the release of hostages in Gaza with the Qatari prime minister and the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, according to a U.S. official.

Burns met with Mossad chief David Barnea and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said the official, who talked to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Qatar is a frequent go-between in international dealings with Hamas, and some top Hamas political leaders make their home in the Gulf country. The U.S. official stressed Burns was not playing a lead role in the negotiations.

Kirby confirmed that the U.S. continues to have “active discussions with partners about trying to secure the release of hostages,” noting in particular Qatar’s help.

“We know they have lines of communication with Hamas that we don’t,” Kirby said of Qatar. “And we’re going to continue to work with them and regional partners to try to secure the release of all the hostages.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken had warned Israel last week that it risked destroying an eventual possibility for peace unless it acted swiftly to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza for Palestinian civilians as it intensifies its war against Hamas.

In a blunt call for Israel to pause military operations in the territory to allow for the immediate and increased delivery of assistance, Blinken said the situation would drive Palestinians toward further radicalism and effectively end prospects for any eventual resumption of peace talks to end the conflict.

French President Emmanuel Macron had opened a Gaza aid conference on Thursday with an appeal for Israel to protect civilians, saying that “all lives have equal worth” and that fighting terrorism “can never be carried out without rules.”

Kirby said Uzra Zeya, the State Department’s under secretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights; special envoy David Satterfield; and Sarah Charles, who leads the USAID’s bureau for humanitarian assistance, were representing the U.S. at the Paris conference. Israel has not been invited by France to the conference. Kirby demurred when asked about the decision to leave Israel out of the international talks.

“We’re focused on trying to have the most constructive conversation there that we can,” Kirby said.

AP writers Ellen Knickmeyer, Colleen Long and Michelle Price in Washington contributed.

An Airbus A321 aircraft took off from London Stansted Airport last month with four damaged window panes, including two that were missing, according to UK air accident investigators.

Nine passengers and 11 crew members were on board the plane bound for Orlando International Airport in Florida on October 4, when the damage, apparently caused by high-powered lights used during a filming event the previous day, was discovered after takeoff.

The aircraft had reached an altitude of at least 14,000 feet by the time it was turned around, reads a special bulletin by the UK’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB.) The plane landed back at Stansted Airport safely shortly afterward.

‘Increased cabin noise’

The report, published on November 4, details the incident, noting that it could have resulted in “more serious consequences” if “window integrity” had been “lost at higher differential pressure.”

It describes how passengers had noticed that the aircraft appeared to be “noisier and colder than they were used to” after taking off at Stansted Airport.

As the plane continued to climb and the seatbelt signs were switched off, the loadmaster, who had also noticed “increased cabin noise,” walked towards the back of the aircraft and spotted a cabin window on the left side of the aircraft with a window seal that was “flapping in the airflow.”

The loadmaster, who described the cabin noise as “loud enough to damage your hearing” informed the cabin crew and also went to the flight deck to let the commander know.

Ongoing investigation

Although there were no “abnormal indications,” the crew opted to stop the plane’s ascent at 14,000 feet and reduce airspeed while the window was inspected by an engineer and the third pilot.

“Having inspected the window, it was agreed the aircraft should return to Stansted,” the report continues.

“The cabin crew told the passengers to remain seated and keep their seatbelts fastened, and reminded them about the use of oxygen masks if that became necessary.”

The full extent of the damage to the aircraft wasn’t discovered until it was back on the ground.

The flight crew initiated a descent and the aircraft arrived back at Stansted Airport a short while later. The total flight time was 36 minutes, according to the bulletin.

After passengers had disembarked and the plane was parked and shut down, the crew inspected the plane from the outside, and found that two cabin window panes were missing and a third was dislodged.

“The four affected windows were adjacent to each other, just aft of the left overwing exit,” adds the bulletin.

The AAIB explains that the windows may have “sustained thermal damage and distortion” due to increased temperatures when the aircraft was used during filming for four to five and a half hours the day before the flight.

It will continue to investigate the incident to “fully understand the properties of the lights used and how this risk can be managed in future.”

“Aircraft owners and operators should consider the hazard posed by such activities to minimize the risk of aircraft damage,” it added.

CNN has contacted the AAIB for further comment.

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Wozniak told the news outlet that he felt dizzy in the morning while working on his computer, followed by a bout of vertigo, and couldn’t walk. At the hospital, an MRI test showed that he’d had a stroke, the tech titan told ABC News via text message. Wozniak said he’s no longer in the hospital and flying back to the United States.

The celebrity news site TMZ and local media in Mexico reported Wednesday that he’d been hospitalized. People from Wozniak’s team flew to the area to check on him and see if he needed to return to the US for further treatment, TMZ reported at the time.

Representatives for Wozniak, 73, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Bloomberg News.

Mexico’s Reforma reported earlier that Wozniak was “stable” and receiving “first-class treatment” at the hospital.

Wozniak, known as Woz, co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs in 1976. Since leaving the company, he has remained an active entrepreneur and philanthropist.

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Wednesday for a united and Palestinian-led government for Gaza and the West Bank after the war ends, as a step toward Palestinian statehood. That vision sharpens U.S. differences with ally Israel on what the future should look like for the Palestinian territories once Israel’s military campaign against Hamas winds down.

Blinken’s outline of what Americans think should come next for Gaza also serves as a check on the postwar scenarios floated by officials of Israel’s hard-right government and its supporters. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement Monday that Israel’s military would likely maintain security control of Gaza for an “indefinite period” appears to have heightened U.S. concerns.

Any postwar governing plan for Gaza “must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority,” Blinken told reporters in Japan.

APPEALING TO PRESIDENT: Democrats want Biden to protect Palestinians in US from being forced home

He and other top diplomats of the Group of Seven leading industrial democracies were gathered in Tokyo for a meeting focused on Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks in Israel and on easing the suffering of the 2.3 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza under Israel’s now month-old military offensive and blockade.

Blinken reinforced the Biden administration’s rejections of any return of lasting direct Israeli control in Gaza, as well as of a proposal — promoted in a policy report by Israel’s intelligence ministry — to push Gaza’s Palestinian residents into neighboring Egypt.

“We’re very clear on no reoccupation, just as we’re very clear on no displacement of the Palestinian population,” Blinken said. “And, as we’ve said before, we need to see and get to, in effect, unity of governance when it comes to Gaza and the West Bank, and ultimately to a Palestinian state.”

The U.S. diplomat’s remarks highlight the areas of widening daylight between Netanyahu’s government and its most important ally on how Israel conducts the war and its postwar relations with the Palestinians.

The U.S. and Israel agree that the Hamas militant group cannot return to its rule of the Gaza Strip. But none of the ideas that Israeli officials have raised for Gaza’s governance after the war have included independent Palestinian rule as a credible possibility.

The Palestinian Authority administers semiautonomous areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. While internationally recognized, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is widely unpopular among Palestinians even in the West Bank. Netanyahu long has depicted both Abbas and the Palestinian Authority as too incapable to be a credible partner in peace efforts with Israel.

A member of Israel’s decision-making War Cabinet on Wednesday acknowledged that Israel does not yet have a vision for the Gaza Strip after its war against Hamas ends, saying the battle plan is open-ended and will include a long-term Israeli security presence in the besieged territory.

The comments by Benny Gantz added new uncertainty to the Israeli campaign in Gaza, which has come under growing international scrutiny because of the heavy civilian death toll and widespread destruction. The Group of Seven, which includes many of Israel’s closest allies, called for Israel to do more to improve the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Speaking in Israel to international journalists, Gantz, a former defense minister and military chief of staff, said the only certainty in Israeli thinking is that Hamas can have no role in the future of Gaza. But he described a lengthy campaign in Gaza and linked the territory’s future to quiet along Israel’s northern front with Lebanon and eastern front with the West Bank.

“Once the Gaza area is safe, and the northern area will be safe, and the Judea and Samaria region will calm down, we will settle down and review an alternative mechanism for Gaza,” he said, using the biblical term for the West Bank. “I do not know what it will be.”

“We can come up with any mechanism we think is appropriate, but Hamas will not be part of it,” he added. “We need to replace the Hamas regime and ensure security superiority for us.”

Asked how long the war would last, Gantz said, “there are no limitations.”

Since Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, successive Israeli governments have pursued a policy of severing links between the West Bank and Gaza, the two territories that, along with east Jerusalem, were to make up a future Palestinian state. The isolation of Gaza deepened after Hamas drove out the forces of Abbas in 2007 and Israel, along with Egypt, imposed a blockade.

Hamas’ breakout from Gaza on Oct. 7 and Israel’s deepening military response have marked the bloodiest fighting by far in repeated wars. President Joe Biden, whose administration had made a policy of not publicly pushing Netanyahu’s coalition to return to long-abandoned talks to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from the first hours after the Hamas attack declared the U.S. would stand by Israel in its military response.

Biden rushed U.S. weapons to Israel and sent warships to the region. The American president flew on Oct. 18 to Israel, where he clasped Netanyahu and Israeli survivors of the Hamas raids, which killed more than 1,400 people, in tight hugs.

The past week, however, has seen increasing private and public U.S. pressure on Israel to alter how it conducts its air, ground and sea campaign against Hamas.

Deaths in Gaza under Israeli bombardment have soared past 10,000, alienating international governments that had endorsed Israel’s right of self- defense. Israel blames Hamas for the heavy death toll, accusing the group of using civilians as human shields.

Emerging U..S.-Israeli differences already included Americans pressing for what they call humanitarian pauses in the fighting to allow for greater delivery of aid to Gaza’s blockaded residents. Israeli officials have linked any cease-fires to Hamas releasing the more than 240 people it is believed to be holding hostage.

Blinken said Wednesday the time “is now to start the conversation about the future” for Gaza.

“Identifying the longer-term objectives and a pathway to get there will help shape our approach to addressing immediate needs,” he said.

Federman reported from Tel Aviv.

WASHINGTON — Dozens of Democratic lawmakers are urging President Joe Biden to take steps to protect Palestinians in the United States as Israeli forces continue to fight Hamas militants inside Gaza City and thousands flee the area amid increasingly dire humanitarian circumstances.

In a letter Wednesday to Biden, the Democrats call for enacting temporary protections for Palestinians through government programs that shield immigrants from returning to countries that are ravaged by natural disasters or war. The lawmakers cite the rising death toll in Gaza, especially among children, from the month-long Israel-Hamas war and the lack of food and water.

“In light of ongoing armed conflict, Palestinians already in the United States should not be forced to return to the Palestinian territories, consistent with President Biden’s stated commitment to protecting Palestinian civilians,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter, provided to The Associated Press in advance of its release.

The letter is a notable effort from Democrats to defend and protect Palestinians at a time when leading Republicans, including former President Donald Trump and others vying for the GOP presidential nomination, have called for the U.S. to bar Palestinians attempting to escape the war in Gaza.

Last month, while campaigning in Iowa, Trump threatened to expand a travel ban on Muslims that he issued through an executive order during his presidency. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the U.S. should not take in any Palestinian refugees trying to leave Gaza because, he insisted, they “are all antisemitic.”

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, has emphasized that America has “always been sympathetic to the fact that you can separate civilians from terrorists,” which prompted DeSantis’s super PAC to attack Haley on the issue.

U.S. law gives authorities broad leeway to deny people entry if they present security risks. Cases of extremists crossing into the U.S. illegally are also virtually nonexistent.

The request from Democrats to Biden would apply only to Palestinians who are already in the United States.

The U.S. issued about 7,200 temporary visas to people with Palestinian Authority passports in 2022, according to the State Department. Pointing to that figure, the Democrats argued that “the number of beneficiaries would be small, while the benefit could be lifesaving.

The request, signed by just over 100 lawmakers, is led by Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which oversees immigration policy. It is also signed by Sens. Jack Reed, who leads the Armed Services Committee, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. About 70 House Democrats signed, including Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois.

Temporary Protected Status is a program through the Department of Homeland Security that provides provisional residency, including the ability to work, to non-U.S. citizens currently here whose home countries are deemed too dangerous for them to return. The lawmakers also ask Biden to use Deferred Enforced Departure, a program similar to TPS that is used at a president’s discretion.

Similar protections have been issued in the past, the lawmakers say. For instance, the U.S. offered temporary protected status for residents of Kosovo amid armed conflict in 1998. At the time, Kosovo was a province of Serbia and did not declare independence until 2008.