Freed Palestinian inmates were greeted by a cheering crowd in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah yesterday, after Hamas released three Israeli hostages from the Gaza Strip in the fourth exchange under the group’s ceasefire deal with Israel.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has demanded that 2,500 children be immediately evacuated from Gaza for medical treatment after meeting with US doctors who said the children were at imminent risk of death in the coming weeks.
Israel cut ties with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees yesterday following accusations it provided cover for Hamas, a move likely to hamper delivery of its vital services after 15 months of offensive in Gaza.
Iran is ready to discuss its nuclear programme if Western countries show they are “serious”, the foreign ministry spokesman was quoted as saying in an interview published yesterday.
The Israeli military said it intercepted a surveillance drone launched by Lebanese militant group Hezbollah yesterday amid a fragile ceasefire.
Five people were injured in an Israeli drone strike targeting the southern Lebanese town of Majdal Selm yesterday, the Lebanese health ministry said.
Two Hamas officials yesterday accused Israel of delaying the delivery of vital humanitarian aid to Gaza, as agreed in the ceasefire deal, and warned that it could impact the release of hostages.
More than 300,000 Palestinians have crossed from southern Gaza into the north, the Hamas-run Gaza media authority said in a statement early yesterday, as the United Nations warned that “needs on the ground remain immense”.
Three Taliban security personnel were killed when a motorcycle carrying an explosive device blew up near a military vehicle in northern Afghanistan being used in opium poppy eradication operations, an interior ministry spokesman said yesterday.
Fearful medics and patients are fleeing a hospital in Rafah and transfers of the sick and injured via a border crossing with Egypt are at a standstill due to Israel’s military operation, doctors and residents said.
The two main crossings into the southern Gaza Strip remain shut, virtually cutting off the enclave from outside aid with very few stores stationed inside, said UN agencies yesterday.
Some 600,000 children packed into Gaza’s Rafah city face “further catastrophe,” Unicef warned yesterday, urging against their forced relocation after Israel ordered an evacuation ahead of its long-threatened ground invasion.
Palestinian civilians in the southern Gazan city of Rafah voiced despair yesterday as Israel dropped fliers urging them to evacuate for their own “safety” ahead of a “limited” military operation.
Israel played down the likelihood of a ceasefire in Gaza yesterday after Hamas said it had accepted a proposal from mediators, even as residents fled the city of Rafah in fear of an Israeli assault.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels said yesterday they had exposed a “spy” network aiding the United States and Israel and arrested suspected members of it.
Lebanese official media said an Israeli strike yesterday wounded three people in the country’s east, with Hezbollah saying it launched “dozens of Katyusha rockets” at an Israeli base in retaliation.
Prospects for a Gaza ceasefire appeared slim yesterday as Hamas reiterated its demand for an end to the offensive in exchange for the freeing of hostages, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flatly ruled that out.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that his government has decided to shut down the Qatar-based news channel Al Jazeera, with which his administration has had a long-running feud.
