Israeli forces killed 15 people in south Lebanon yesterday as a deadline for their withdrawal passed and thousands of people tried to return to their homes in defiance of Israeli military orders, Lebanese authorities said.
US President Donald Trump floated a plan to “just clean out” Gaza, and said he wants Egypt and Jordan to take Palestinians from the territory, as a fragile truce between Israel and Hamas aimed at permanently ending the war entered its second week yesterday.
Palestinian militants and Israel carried out a hostage-prisoner swap yesterday under a Gaza ceasefire deal, but a last-minute dispute blocked the expected return of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to devastated northern Gaza.
The Israel-Hamas war has put back development in Gaza by 60 years and mobilising the tens of billions of dollars needed for reconstruction will be an uphill task, the United Nations said.
Israeli operations in the West Bank have killed at least 12 Palestinians since Tuesday and could threaten the newly agreed ceasefire in Gaza, United Nations Human Rights office spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan said yesterday.
A Palestinian official said hundreds of residents of the occupied West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp were leaving their homes yesterday, days into a large-scale Israeli raid in the area.
Guns may have fallen silent in Gaza, but for Mahmoud Abu Dalfa, the agony is not over. He is desperately searching for the bodies of his wife and five children trapped under the rubble of his house since the early months of the war.
A Palestinian official reported shooting and explosions in the flashpoint West Bank town of Jenin yesterday as Israeli forces pressed on with a raid that the military described as a “counterterrorism” operation.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said an Israeli strike hit a school in Gaza City yesterday, killing at least 12 people, while top US diplomat Antony Blinken was in Egypt for talks on a Gaza ceasefire.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group said it launched several rocket salvos at Israeli army positions in the annexed Golan Heights yesterday “in response” to Israeli strikes on eastern Lebanon the previous day.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned yesterday that the latest push for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal was probably the best and possibly last opportunity, urging Israel and Hamas towards an elusive agreement.
Israeli strikes killed 25 people in Gaza yesterday, including six children, Palestinian health authorities said, ahead of a visit to the region by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to try to push forward ceasefire talks.
A senior Hamas official yesterday dismissed optimistic talk by US President Joe Biden that a Gaza truce is nearer after negotiations in the Gulf emirate of Qatar.
Undertakers are working like bricklayers in a Gaza cemetery, piling cinder blocks into tight rectangles, side by side, for freshly dug graves.
Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 40,005 Palestinians since October 7, the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry said yesterday, as there was no let-up in Israeli strikes across the enclave.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps yesterday said one of its colonels has died of wounds suffered in an air strike it blamed on the US-led coalition in Syria.
The Palestinian group Hamas said yesterday it would not take part in a new round of Gaza ceasefire talks slated for today in Qatar, dimming hopes for a negotiated truce that Iranian sources say could hold back an Iranian attack on Israel.`
Iran yesterday rejected Western calls to stand down its threat to retaliate against Israel for the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran late last month.
