SNAPSHOT-Israel-Hamas war: What you need to know right now

* Israel has called up an unprecedented 300,000 reservists, as Israeli airlines added flights to bring reservists back to the country. INTERNATIONAL REACTION * Jordan's King Abdullah said no peace was possible in the Middle East without the emergence of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel "so that the cycles of killing, whose ultimate victims are innocent civilians, end." * Pope Francis called for the release of all hostages taken by Hamas militants.

(Updates throughout) Oct 11 (Reuters) -

Israeli warplanes bombed Gaza repeatedly

ahead of a possible ground offensive in the Palestinian coastal strip, while U.S. President Joe Biden described Hamas's surprise assault on Israel as 'sheer evil'. The Islamist group's armed wing said it was still fighting inside Israel on Wednesday, as Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles assembled in large numbers just north of Gaza.

CONFLICT * Egypt discussed plans to provide

humanitarian aid through its border with Gaza under a limited ceasefire, Egyptian security sources said. Qatar and Turkey were also involved in the talks.

* Israeli schools, which have been shuttered, will shift to remote learning

on Sunday. The online studies "will focus first and foremost on emotional and social aspects, in order to strengthen resilience. * The United States expects the number of Americans confirmed dead

to rise on Wednesday, the State Department said.

* Hamas militants holding Israeli soldiers and civilians hostage have threatened to execute a captive for each home in Gaza hit without warning. There was no indication Hamas had carried out its threat. * Israeli

shelling hit southern Lebanese towns in response to a fresh rocket attack by Hezbollah.

* To many of Gaza's 2.3 million residents, Israel's mobilisation and intense bombardment

look ominously familiar: the prelude to a ground invasion that may match or even eclipse any in recent years. * Governments around the world have arranged

repatriation flights from Tel Aviv as the war escalates. * How this round of the conflict began: on Saturday, Hamas gunmen rampaged through parts of southern Israel, in the deadliest Palestinian militant attack in Israel's history. * Israel has called up an unprecedented 300,000 reservists, as Israeli airlines added flights to bring reservists back to the country.

INTERNATIONAL REACTION * Jordan's King Abdullah said no peace was possible in the Middle East without the emergence of an

independent Palestinian state alongside Israel "so that the cycles of killing, whose ultimate victims are innocent civilians, end."

* Pope Francis called for the release of all hostages

taken by Hamas militants. He said Israel has a right to defend itself after seeing "a feast day turn into a day of mourning" but was "very worried by the total siege in which Palestinians live in Gaza." * U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will arrive in Israel on Thursday, in a show of solidarity.

* Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Israel's response to Hamas's attack was disproportionate

by "preventing people meeting their most fundamental needs and bombing housing where civilians live". * Britain's King Charles is

appalled by the "barbaric acts of terrorism" in Israel, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said

* Gaza's border crossing into Egypt remained shut as Egypt tries to avert a mass exodus of Palestinians fleeing Israeli bombardment. * EU humanitarian support to the Palestinian people

"is not in question," European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said, but the bloc must review its financial assistance.

* Governments around the world have arranged repatriation flights as the war ecalates. They include these countries.

* Seventeen British nationals including children are dead or missing

in Israel after the Hamas attacks, the BBC reported, citing an official source. HUMAN IMPACT * Gaza's 75 years of woe - a brief history. * A 21-year-old Israeli woman said she had "no tears left" after her father, sister, grandmother and cousin went missing on Saturday and video showed her 12-year-old brother being taken by gunmen. * Gazan rescuers pulled the body of a 4-year-old girl and other dead from the rubble of a municipal building where she and many others were sheltering. "They tried to escape death only to find it," said volunteer Mohammad al Najjar.

* Israeli volunteers helped gravediggers

at Israel's main military cemetery as burials began for slain soldiers "I decided that I'm going to do something for the people of Israel" said one. * Hundreds of cars lie abandoned in the scramble to flee a massacre at an Israeli music festival where Hamas gunmen killed 260 people and took captives back into Gaza. The scene

underlines the scale of the deadliest attack on Israel in decades.

INSIGHTS/EXPLAINERS * How a secretive Hamas commander masterminded the attack on Israel. A survivor of seven Israeli assassination attempts, the most recent in 2021, Mohammed Deif rarely speaks and never appears in public so when Hamas's TV channel announced he was about to speak on Saturday, Palestinians knew something significant was afoot. * Hamas waged a campaign of deception to pull off its stunning attack. * Biden finds himself thrust into a crisis likely to reshape his Middle East policy, and into an uneasy alliance with far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. * Palestinian statehood, Jerusalem and refugees lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. MARKETS AND BUSINESS * Oil prices fell as fears of disruption to supplies due to conflict in the Middle East receded a day after top OPEC producer Saudi Arabia pledged to help stabilise the market.

* International airlines have suspended hundreds of flights to and from Tel Aviv following the attack. Here's a list

. * U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stuck to her view that the American economy is headed for

a soft landing . "Of course the situation in Israel causes additional concerns. I'm not saying soft landing is an absolutely sure thing. But I continue to think it's the most likely path."

* BP says a bid to acquire a stake

in Israel's NewMed remains on track. * Exploratory drilling in Lebanon's maritime Block 9 has

not stopped despite several days of clashes along the land border with Israel, Lebanon's energy minister said. (Editing by Stephen Farrell, Gerry Doyle, Andrew Cawthorne, Lisa Shumaker and Michael Perry)

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)