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”.
The chief of the United Nations’ food program has warned of a “full-blown famine” in northern Gaza and reiterated calls for a ceasefire in Israel’s offensive in the Palestinian enclave.
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.
Students at Trinity College Dublin protesting Israel’s offensive in Gaza have built an encampment that forced the university to restrict campus access yesterday and close the Book of Kells exhibition, one of Ireland’s top tourist attractions.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels threatened to extend their attacks on Israel-bound shipping to the Mediterranean after months of strikes on vessels in the Red Sea.
Hamas negotiators yesterday began intensified talks on a possible Gaza truce that would see a halt to the fighting and the return to Israel of some hostages, a Hamas official told Reuters, with the CIA director already present in Cairo for the indirect diplomacy.
An Israeli military incursion into Gaza’s southern city of Rafah could lead to a “bloodbath”, the World Health Organization warned Friday, announcing contingency plans.
Police have arrested nearly 2,200 people during pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses across the United States in recent weeks, sometimes using riot gear, tactical vehicles and flash-bang devices to clear tent encampments and occupied buildings.
An Israeli incursion in Rafah would put the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians at risk and be a huge blow to the aid operations of the entire enclave, the UN humanitarian office said yesterday, as the World Health Organization announced contingency plans for an incursion.
Schools and many offices were closed across the United Arab Emirates yesterday as heavy rains returned to the desert country just two weeks after record downpours that experts linked to climate change.
Doubts grew yesterday over the fate of a Gaza truce plan that, as the week began, had raised hopes of an end to nearly seven months of Israeli offensive in the Palestinian enclave.
