Closing summary
This blog is coming to a close. Thank you for following along. Below is a roundup of today’s stories:
Israel’s Channel 12 on Wednesday broadcast security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots. The surveillance footage showed what appeared to be Israeli soldiers lifting up a blindfolded prisoner and taking him out of sight of the camera. They then covered themselves and the prisoner with their riot shields as they encircled him.
Israeli forces stepped up strikes across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing at least 25 people, Palestinian medics said. The continued battles with Hamas-led militants came as Israel braced for potential wider war in the region.
The Israeli military said it had struck an area where two schools were situated in Gaza on Thursday, which it claims had Hamas command centres embedded within. “The school compounds were used by Hamas terrorists and commanders as command-and-control centres, from which they planned and carried out attacks against Israel Defense Forces troops and the state of Israel,” it said.
A new report from Human Rights Watch says Israeli soldiers killed at least seven people and severely wounded two, including a 5-year-old, when they attacked a home in Gaza City where a Palestinian family was sheltering in December. The New York-based rights group released a report Thursday based on interviews with two members of the al-Khalidi family who witnessed the attack, and video footage released by the Israeli military that placed forces in the vicinity of the home at the time.
Israel has given notice it will no longer accredit Norwegian diplomats serving the occupied Palestinian territories, Norway’s foreign ministry said on Thursday, calling it “an extreme act” by the Israeli government. Later in the day, Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz said the decision was due to Norway’s “anti-Israel conduct”.
Yemen’s Houthis will coordinate with other members of the ‘Axis of Resistance’, a network of Iran-backed militant groups, in any joint operation, the group’s leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said on Thursday, Reuters reports.
He said any decision to respond to Israeli attacks would be made by the axis as a whole.
