Israeli bombing killed dozens of people in besieged Gaza Thursday, with regional tensions surging over the almost three-month-old war.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was headed back to the Middle East for his fourth trip to the region since the bloodiest ever war on Gaza began on October 7.
Blinken is scheduled to meet with Palestinian officials in the occupied West Bank, as well as Israeli leaders, and “will discuss swift action to particularly increase humanitarian assistance to Gaza,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
TNA’s live coverage of the latest from the war on Gaza concludes for today. Join us again at 0800 GMT for updates from the besieged Palestinian enclave.
Republican U. S. Senator Lindsey Graham visited Israel, where he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the context of the crisis in Gaza.
“We are going to do everything we can. . . to act and make Iran’s worst nightmare a reality,” Lindsey said.
“The Arabs and the Israelis are moving toward the light,” Graham said, referring to Arab countries that have normalized relations with Israel.
Khaled Meshal, the former Hamas leader who most recently heads its foreign affairs office, spoke of the death of senior Hamas figures, Saleh al-Arouri,
He stated that the recent killings will not impede the existing resistance against the Israeli occupation.
“Israel has killed dozens, hundreds, and thousands, of our people’s leaders over the past few decades, from all groups,” Meshal said, referring to the assassination of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin in 2004.
“And what was the result? Every time a leader fell, another leader rose. The martyrdom of a leader produces other leaders on the same path, with the same conviction and perseverance. They are wonderful people who do not collapse.
Here’s what he said in his speech:
“This arrogant and corrupt Zionist enemy, despite its failure and sadness after months of barbaric aggression against Gaza, this Holocaust and the war of extermination it commits every day. . . it wants to annihilate the other peoples of Gaza in the gentile of its failure and confusion. and the double loss of their foot soldiers today. “
Palestinian news firm Wafa reported that the latest attacks by Israeli forces in southern Gaza, the town of Khan Younis, have led to an increase in the death toll to 32.
The recent attacks include an air strike on a residential apartment in the al-Amal area, which has killed one Palestinian, according to local sources that told the Palestinian outlet.
Another user was also reportedly killed in an Israeli airstrike on a space in al-Qararah.
Israeli forces attacked the occupied towns of Beit Rima, near Ramallah, and Azzun, near Qalqilya, in the West Bank.
According to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, Israeli forces circulated in military vehicles and also stormed several civilian homes.
After U. S. Senator Bernie Sanders called on the United States to end its military aid to Israel in its war on Gaza, Congresswoman Elizabeth Warren also said that Washington restricts its military aid to Israel to works aimed at a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
“When it comes to military aid to Israel, the United States cannot give a blank check to a right-wing government that has been egregious to Palestinian lives,” Warren said.
“The United States uses every tool at its disposal to condition aid and move the parties toward lasting peace. “
Citing gun violence in the United States, deaths of families in Ukraine and Gaza due to war and threats from synthetic intelligence, the daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said Thursday that the world urgently wants to examine and embrace her father’s situation. Philosophy of Nonviolence. Towards Self-Destruction.
The Rev. Bernice King used a speech to announce the occasions of the upcoming holiday in her father’s honor and warn humanity at a critical time.
“We are witnessing an unprecedented loss of life among Black, Brown and Indigenous populations around the world,” he said.
He also spoke of conflicts in Yemen, Congo and Ethiopia and cited anti-black racism as a risk to human beings, saying it remains a “scourge” more than 50 years after his father’s murder.
Overall, humanity is perilously close to fulfilling his father’s prophecy that it could destroy itself through the misuse of its own instruments, he warned. But he also presented a solution.
Studying and practicing her father’s philosophy of nonviolence can teach others how to live in peace, she said.
Local Palestinian media and The New Arab’s Arabic-language site, Al Araby Jadeed, reported relentless Israeli attacks in the north and in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
Meanwhile, in Rafah, Gaza-based journalist Maha Husseini said at least Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential house.
Rafah is where Palestinians have fled after being forcibly displaced by Israeli forces.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Gallant’s “post-war” plan is a repeat of the plans for Gaza that preceded Oct. 7.
Smotrich has instead supported what is referred to as “voluntary migration”- which has been firmly condemned by many rights groups and Palestinians as forced displacement- that calls for the return of illegal settlements in the Strip.
Denmark’s Maersk said on Thursday it had diverted four of its five container ships stuck in the Red Sea to the Suez Canal and the long voyage around Africa in the face of any threat of attack.
Maersk, which last week briefly tried to resume Red Sea travel after a pause, said on Tuesday that its container ships would support the direction that provides access to the Suez Canal, a shortcut between Asia and Europe.
But five Maersk ships headed towards Asia had already traversed the canal from the north and were poised to travel south past Yemen when the pause was announced, leaving the crews and tens of thousands of containers in limbo.
Container ships Maersk Genoa, Maersk Londrina, Ebba Maersk and Gjertrud Maersk, which were stationed in the Red Sea south of the Saudi port of Jeddah in recent days, were diverted on Thursday around the Cape of Good Hope, according to a Maersk calendar. . Formation
A fifth vessel, Maersk Utah, that had also been stuck in the area, had not yet been rerouted, but a Maersk spokesperson said it would not sail past Yemen.
Returning ships to the Suez Canal would generate new fees to pay for passage through the canal and lead to significant delays and higher fuel prices for a trip around the Cape of Good Hope.
Yemen-based Houthis recently attacked a series of shipments in the southern Red Sea, adding a Maersk shipment on Saturday, disrupting the global industry and raising fears of a further surge in global inflation as shipping rates soared.
Three Israelis believed to be missing since Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 are being held hostage in the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces said Thursday.
“Three missing citizens have been identified as hostages and their families have been informed,” army spokesman Daniel Hagari told reporters.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on Thursday outlined Israel’s plans for the next stage of its war in Gaza, with a new more targeted approach in the northern section of the enclave, which has been severely devastated.
Southern Gaza, which has recently been under heavy Israeli bombardment of civilian homes and refugee camps considered “safe zones”, is reportedly frequently pursued by Israeli forces.
He said the operations would include raids, tunnel demolitions, air and ground movements and special forces operations.
The south of the besieged enclave is where up to 2. 3 million Gazans now live, most of them in tents and temporary shelters.
“It will continue for as long as is deemed necessary,” Gallant’s office said in a statement.
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Israel’s goal is to prevent the return of Palestinians to northern Gaza in order to reach an agreement for the return of the remaining captives.
The newspaper said it was an attempt to “take advantage of the return of citizens to force Hamas to accept” a deal.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel would “exercise civilian control” over Gaza, but reiterated his position that the besieged enclave would be ruled through Gaza.
“It’s the Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip, that’s why Palestinian actors will be guilty of it, as long as they’re not hostile to Israel and don’t act against it,” Gallant said in a conversation with army correspondents. according to Israeli news publication Haaretz.
He added that a multinational force made up of Arab countries will lead efforts to help rebuild Gaza, which has been destroyed by Israeli attacks.
The defence minister also said that there would be no Israeli “civil presence” in the Strip after the war- which has contradicted other far-right ministers and Israeli soldiers who have called for the renewal of illegal Jewish settlements to Gaza.
A U. S. strike in Iraq killed a pro-Iranian commander in strikes on U. S. troops, a U. S. defense official said Thursday.
“This attack was carried out in self-defense. No civilians were injured. No infrastructure or services were affected,” the official said in a statement.
Their target was a leader of Harakat al-Nujaba, a pro-Iranian armed organization in Iraq, who was “actively engaged in making plans and carrying out attacks against U. S. personnel,” the official said, adding that he also killed another member of the organization. members of the group.
The attack comes amid rising regional tensions over Israel’s presence in Gaza, America’s best friend.
Israel’s top diplomat said Thursday he was sending back the country’s envoy to Madrid after his predecessor recalled her after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez questioned the legality of Israel’s war in Gaza.
Radian-Gordon recalled this in November through then-Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, following what he called “scandalous comments” made through Sánchez in an interview.
In an interview with Spanish public television, Sánchez said the world will have to tell Israel “that it will have to base its moves on foreign humanitarian law, and with the photographs we see and the growing number of other people who are dying, especially children”. And girls, I have serious doubts. “
But on Thursday, Cohen’s successor, Israel Katz, said he had to send the envoy back to Madrid.
Katz said the resolution was made because there is “a change in the message for the better” from the Spanish government.
The White House has said that the US is “in no position to doubt” the Islamic State’s claim that it was responsible for the attack in Iran’s Kerman that killed at least 103 people on Wednesday.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said at a news briefing that the U. S. “has said and maintained for a long time” that ISIS “remains a viable terrorist threat. “
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has issued a statement, sharing their worries amid Israeli attacks on the El Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, following another strike that killed five people- including a five day old baby on Wednesday.
The PRCS said Israeli forces on Thursday attacked the hospital, where thousands of displaced people sought refuge.
“The Palestine Red Crescent Society calls on the foreign community, the partners of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and the United Nations formula to interfere without delay and urgently in the Al-Amal Hospital compound of the People’s Republic of China; and medical personnel, the wounded, the insane and around 14,000 displaced people,” the PRCS said.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said that if Houthi attacks continued on the Red Sea sea lanes, appropriate action would be taken.
The number of tourists visiting Israel in 2023 compared to 2022 fell in October after the outbreak of Israel’s war in Gaza and remained low for the rest of the year, Israel’s Ministry of Tourism said on Thursday.
Until October, the tourism industry was recovering from the collapse caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, but after October 7, the number of foreign visitors plummeted.
In total, in 2023, 3 million tourists entered Israel, up from 2. 7 million in 2022. December was the worst month of the year with only 52,800 tourists, down from more than 300,000 the previous month of the year.
U. S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit five Arab countries — Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt — as well as the occupied West Bank, in addition to Israel, the State Department said.
So will Turkey and Greece.
The U. N. Security Council on Thursday condemned the attack in Iran that killed at least 84 other people on Wednesday, claimed by the Islamic State group.
“The members of the Security Council want to hold accountable, organizers, monetary and sponsors the perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of these reprehensible acts of terrorism and bring them to justice,” the Security Council said in a statement.
An Israeli strike flattened a home Thursday in an area of southern Gaza that the military had declared a safe zone as Israeli troops pressed their assault in the nearby city of Khan Younis.
Palestinian hospital officials said the explosion killed at least 12 people, all of them children.
The Islamic State group on Thursday claimed responsibility for twin bombings that killed 84 people in Iran.
In a message posted on Telegram, the organization said two of its members “activated their explosive vests” at a demonstration near the tomb in the southern city of Kerman of slain Revolutionary Guards general Qasem Soleimani.
Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels on Thursday introduced an explosives-laden maritime drone that exploded in sea lanes, the first use of such a weapon in recent months, a senior U. S. military official said.
“A Houthi one-way attack unmanned surface ship, or USV, exploded in the sea lanes. Fortunately, there were no casualties and no ships were hit,” said Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U. S. naval forces in the Middle East. Journalists.
U. S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna have agreed to take steps for a broader war in the Middle East in the wake of measures in Lebanon and Iran, the State Department said Thursday.
In a phone call the day before, the two senior diplomats “discussed the importance of measures to prevent the spread of clashes in Gaza, adding positive measures to defuse tensions in the West Bank and an escalation in Lebanon and Iran. “said the state,” ministry spokesman Matthew Miller said.
Five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a car in the Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, Fitness told Reuters on Thursday.
More than 326 medical staff have been killed since Israel began its war on Gaza on October 7, Gaza’s health ministry spokesman said.
Dr. Ashraf al-Qedra said Israeli shelling destroyed 121 ambulance vans and 150 medical facilities, leading to the closure of 30 hospitals and 53 gymnasiums across the territory.
He added that Israeli forces were still holding 99 medical staff and hospital administrators in the northern Gaza Strip.
Hamas’ deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri who was killed in an Israeli strike on a southern suburb of Beirut Tuesday night were laid to rest in the Lebanese capital on Thursday.
He was buried along with two other Hamas officials killed in the attack.
Gunfire was heard at one point during the ceremony in Beirut’s Tariq al-Jdideh neighbourhood.
The death toll from the Israeli bombardment rose to 22,438, with more than 57,600 wounded, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
An earlier tally provided through government media put the death toll at more than 29,000.
U. N. human rights chief Volker Turk said Thursday he was “very disturbed” after comments by senior Israeli officials calling on Palestinians to leave Gaza.
“Very disturbed by high-level Israeli officials’ statements on plans to transfer civilians from Gaza to third countries,” Turk wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Iraq said the US-led coalition bore responsibility for an “unjustified” attack on an Iraqi security force on Thursday, according to the Prime Minister’s Office.
“This attack constitutes a damaging escalation and a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty,” he said.
The airstrike killed senior commanders of pro-Iranian factions, formerly paramilitaries integrated into the Iraqi security forces.
Gaza government media said a total of 29,313 people had been killed and disappeared in the territory since Oct. 7.
It said 16,000 were women and children.
“Gaza is occupied Palestinian territory and will be a component of a long-term Palestinian state,” a spokesman for Britain’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said on Wednesday.
“The UK strongly rejects any suggestion of resettling Palestinians outside Gaza. We share the concern of our allies and partners that Gazans will not be forcibly displaced or resettled from Gaza. “
Iran’s government said on Thursday that two explosions in the south of the country killed another 84 people a day earlier, revising downwards the death toll from explosions that occurred in commemoration of a sensible general.
Tehran’s official IRNA news firm quoted Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi as saying that “according to forensic statistics, the number of martyrs from this incident has been announced at 84 so far. “
The revised death toll was also revealed by the head of Iran’s emergency services, Jafar Miadfar, who stated that the previous death toll rose to 95 because some bodies had been dismembered and counted “several times. “
Saudi Arabia rejects the “extremist comments” of two Israeli ministers who have called for the displacement of Gaza’s population, the reoccupation of the enclave and the structure of settlements, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
Three senior leaders of pro-Iranian factions in Iraq were killed in a drone strike in the Iraqi capital, sources said.
Smoke billowing from the headquarters of Hashd al-Shaabi, near the Interior Ministry in Baghdad, was shared on social media. The coalition blamed the attack on the United States.
The Iranian-backed coalition of militias has been attacking military bases housing U. S. and foreign troops in Iraq since the start of the Gaza war.
An Israeli airstrike landed near a Lebanese army post in the southern domain of Nabatiyeh on Thursday, local media reported.
Four Hezbollah fighters were killed overnight in Israeli airstrikes on the southern Lebanese coastal city of Naqoura, the Iranian-backed militant organization said on Thursday.
One of them killed the group’s leader in Naqoura, Hussein Yazbek, according to local media.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency said Israeli jets “carried out strikes in the center of Naqoura, which destroyed an area and shattered the surrounding spaces. “
A video of the aftermath of the strike shared on social media.
Clashes were reported Thursday between Palestinian factions and Israeli forces in Sir, a village south of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank.
An Israeli army raid on the Nur Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank continued for a day on Thursday.
Al Araby TV reported that Israeli forces blew up several houses and a vehicle in the camp near Tulkarm.
The Israeli army reportedly dropped phosphorus bombs on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on Thursday morning.
The us of phosphorus is banned in densely populated areas under international law, but Israel has used them numerous times in Gaza and southern Lebanon since October 7.
At least 14 Palestinians, including children, were killed on Thursday in Israeli movements in Al-Mawasi, west of Gaza’s Khan Younis, a health ministry official told Reuters.