The Israeli military has ordered another evacuation in central Gaza, even as Israel and Hamas appear to inch closer to a ceasefire agreement.
“This is an advance warning ahead of an offensive,” Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted on X. The order included four residential block areas in the urban refugee camp of Bureij, where Adraee claimed that Palestinian militants fired rockets toward Israel.
He asked the residents to move to a so-called “humanitarian zone” in the al-Muwasi area, which itself has been targeted by deadly Israeli airstrikes and is reportedly overcrowded.
The Israeli media have issued frequent evacuation orders for different parts of Gaza throughout the war, displacing more than 90% of the population, most of them multiple times. There is nowhere safe for Palestinian people to flee Israeli bombardments, international organisations have said.
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The Israeli parliament decided in late October to pass a law banning the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, from operating in the country. Unrwa said the new laws – due to come into effect within the next month – will cause the supply chain of aid to Gaza to “fall apart”, excepting an already dire humanitarian crisis, with widespread shortages of food, medicine and clean water across the Strip.
The agency said that a threatened Israeli ban on Unrwa operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank would not impact the legal status of Palestinian refugees.
“If Unrwa were forced to shut down its schools, health centres, and all its services tomorrow - Palestine Refugees remain Palestine Refugees,” agency spokesperson Tamara Alrifai told Al Jazeera English.
Even if implemented, the Israeli ban on UNRWA’s operations in #Gaza and the #WestBank would not affect the legal status of #PalestineRefugees.
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) December 18, 2024
"If UNRWA were forced to shut down its schools, health centres, and all its services tomorrow - Palestine Refugees remain Palestine… pic.twitter.com/dGFL4eqATF
Almost all of Gaza’s population of more than two million people are reliant on aid and services from Unrwa, which has provided aid, schooling, healthcare and assistance across the Palestinian territories and to Palestinian refugees elsewhere for more than seven decades. You can read more about the agency’s humanitarian activities and its deteriorating relationship with the Israeli government in this useful explainer on the bill that passed in October.
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Iraq’s prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has discussed developments in Syria at a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a visit to Saudi Arabia, Sudani’s office said. Sudani emphasised “Iraq’s keenness on the unity of Syria, non-interference in internal affairs, and respect for the free will of the Syrians,” his office said.
Iraq, which is led by a coalition of mostly Shi’ite political parties and armed groups close to Iran, is a major player in Tehran’s so-called Axis of Resistance that includes Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group. Iraq’s ruling coalition is often pulled in different directions, with some groups that fought alongside Bashar-al Assad in the past and have interests in Syria more partial to entering again, while other parties see such an intervention as destabilising.
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UN special envoy Geir Pedersen has called for “free and fair elections” in Syria and urged humanitarian assistance, AFP reports.
Addressing reporters at the end of a visit to Damascus, Pedersen said “there is a lot of hope that we can now see the beginning of a new Syria”, which he expressed hope would also include a “political solution” in the Kurdish-held northeast.
The UN envoy called for “a new Syria that, in line with Security Council Resolution 2254, will adopt a new constitution... and that we will have free and fair elections when that time comes, after a transitional period.”
Resolution 2254, adopted in 2015 at the height of the civil war, set out a roadmap for a political settlement in Syria.
Pedersen emphasised the importance of a political transition that includes “the broadest range of the Syrian society and Syrian parties”.
He expressed hope that Syrians could rebuild their country and that “the process to end sanctions” imposed under the former government could begin.
He added:
We need immediate humanitarian assistance, but we also need to make sure that Syria can be rebuilt, that we can see economic recovery.
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The White Helmets rescuers have discovered unidentified bodies and remains in a medicine warehouse in a Damascus suburb, a Syrian civil defence official has said.
An AFP video journalist at the scene said the warehouse strewn with medicine boxes was located just around 50 metres (yards) from the Sayyida Zeinab shrine, a revered site for Shiite Muslims.
White Helmets official Ammar al-Salmo said:
We received a report about the presence of bodies, bones and a foul smell at the site.
South Damascus’s Sayyida Zeinab suburb was a stronghold of pro-Iran fighters including Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group before Islamist-led rebels took the capital on 8 December.
“In the warehouse, we found a refrigerated room containing decomposing corpses,” Salmo said, adding that some appeared to have died more than a year and a half earlier.
He said human bones were also scattered on the ground, estimating there were around 20 “victims”.
AFP saw men in white suits removing bodies and remains in black bags and placing them onto a truck.
In 2022, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor estimated that more than 100,000 people had died in prison, mostly due to torture, since the war began.
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German diplomats, led by the country’s Middle East commissioner Tobias Tunkel, yesterday held talks with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s (HTS) leader, Ahmed al Sharaa, its foreign affairs representative Zaid al-Attar and the transition government’s education minister.
At Tuesday’s meeting in Damascus the two sides discussed the political transition in Syria and human rights, Germany’s foreign office said. The German delegation spoke with civil society and religious organisations and inspected Germany’s embassy building in Damascus.
On Wednesday, a German foreign ministry spokesperson said the delegation meeting with members of the Syrian interim government was a good opportunity to make contact with the country’s new de facto rulers.
“This was the first good opportunity to get in touch with HTS and the de facto guardians in Damascus,” the spokesperson said, referring to HTS, the Islamist group left in charge following the ouster of president Bashar al-Assad earlier this month.
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Summary of the day so far...
The US, joined by Arab mediators, is seeking to conclude a long-negotiated ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. A Palestinian official told Reuters earlier today that mediators had narrowed gaps on most of the agreement’s clauses. He said Israel, however, had introduced conditions which Hamas rejected but would not elaborate.
Turkish rescue workers have ended their search for survivors in the notorious Sednaya prison – a facility for political prisoners nicknamed the “human slaughterhouse” on the outskirts of Damascus – after finding no detainees languishing in any hidden cells.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli troops will occupy a recently seized buffer zone in Syria for the foreseeable future. Israeli troops occupied the positions on the mountain when they moved into a demilitarised zone between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights after the collapse earlier this month of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria.
At least 45,097 Palestinian people have been killed and 107,244 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said. Of those, 38 Palestinians were killed and 203 injured in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the ministry said.
A World Health Organization official said that Israeli attacks on northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital has left the facility without surgical or maternal care capacity. “The fear endured by the hospital’s staff and patients in recent days is indescribable – and unacceptable,” she wrote on X.
After months of deadlock, Israel and Hamas appear to be moving closer toward a ceasefire to end Israel’s 14-month-old war on Gaza.
A Palestinian official close to the negotiations told Reuters earlier today that mediators had narrowed gaps on most of the agreement’s clauses. He said Israel had introduced conditions which Hamas rejected but would not elaborate.
Qatar, along with the US and Egypt, has been involved in months of behind-the-scenes negotiations for a Gaza truce and hostage release. In Jerusalem, Israeli President Isaac Herzog met Adam Boehler, US President-elect Donald Trump’s designated envoy for hostage affairs. Trump has threatened that “all hell is going to break out” if Hamas does not release its hostages by 20 January, the day Trump returns to office.
CIA Director William Burns was due in Doha on Wednesday for talks with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on bridging remaining gaps in the truce talks.
Hamas and other Palestinian militia now reportedly appear to be more open and flexible over a slower, phased end to the fighting with talks focused on the number of hostages to be released in any first phase.
As my colleague Peter Beaumont notes in this story, sticking points that torpedoed previous rounds of talks, including the presence of Israel troops in the so-called Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors inside Gaza, appear to have been sidelined for now, although a continuing issue is understood to be the ability of Palestinians in Gaza to return to their homes in the strip’s north.
Israeli forces have detained at least 15 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank since last night, the Palestinian Authority’s Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Commission and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said.
According to Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, the detentions were carried out in Jericho, Tulkarm, Ramallah, Qalqilya and Jerusalem.
These detentions were accompanied by assaults, threats against detainees and their families and the destruction of property, Wafa reported.
It is estimated that over 12,100 Palestinians have been arrested in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since last October.
Human rights groups and international organisations have alleged widespread abuse of inmates detained by Israel in raids in the West Bank.
They have described alleged abusive and humiliating treatment, including holding blindfolded and handcuffed detainees in cramped cages as well as beatings, intimidation and harassment.
Israeli soldiers removed a small far-right group of Israeli civilians who had crossed into Lebanon, appearing to put up a tent settlement, in what the military has said was a serious incident now under investigation.
The Times of Israel reported 10 days ago that the group, advocating the annexation and settlement of southern Lebanon, said they had crossed the border and established an outpost. On Wednesday, the Israeli military said they had been promptly removed.
A statement from the IDF read:
The preliminary investigation indicates that the civilians indeed crossed the blue line by a few metres, and after being identified by IDF forces, they were removed from the area.
Any attempt to approach or cross the border into Lebanese territory without coordination poses a life-threatening risk and interferes with the IDF’s ability to operate in the area and carry out its mission.
The Times of Israel said the area the group claimed to have entered was under Israeli military control as part of a ceasefire deal signed last month between Israel and the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group. Under the terms of the 26 November ceasefire, Israeli forces may remain in Lebanon for 60 days. Israel has not established settlements in southern Lebanon, including when its military occupied the area from 1982-2000.
Staff at northern Gaza's Kamal Adwan hospital describe night of 'horror' as Israeli attacks continue
Hanan Balkhy, the World Health Organization regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, has said that Israeli attacks on Kamal Adwan hospital, located inside the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahiya, has left the facility without surgical or maternal care capacity.
In a post on X, Balkhy wrote:
Who and partners were recently able to deliver 5,000 liters of fuel, medical supplies, and food, and transfer 3 patients with 6 companions to al-Shifa hospital after multiple arbitrarily denied missions.
Despite these efforts, an international medical team urgently needed for Kamal Adwan hospital has not been permitted to deploy.
The fear endured by the hospital’s staff and patients in recent days is indescribable—and unacceptable. Peace in Gaza is now long overdue.
Gaza’s health ministry has said the three main hospitals in northern Gaza – of which Kamal Adwan is one – are barely functioning and have been under repeated attack since Israel sent tanks into Beit Lahiya and nearby Beit Hanoun and Jabalia in October. The Israeli military claims the aim of the renewed assault on the north, launched in October, is to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping there. But the IDF has attacked hospitals and shelters, with many civilians being killed by Israeli forces amid relentless attacks.
Eid Sabbah, the director of nursing at Kamal Adwan Hospital, described a night “full of horror”, with Israeli quadcopter drones reportedly having fired at the medical compound and surrounding buildings.
“They targeted the Battah family home in the vicinity of the hospital. Fifteen bodies arrived at the hospital including six people from the Battah family,” Sabbah told Al Jazeera. “Many have been wounded and many are still under the rubble.” Sabbah said centralised oxygen is unavailable. Elsewhere, Muhammad Saleh, director of al-Awda hospital in Jabalia, said Israeli shelling in the vicinity damaged the facility, injuring seven medics and one patient inside the hospital.
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Death toll from Israeli airstrikes on Gaza reaches 45,097, says health ministry
At least 45,097 Palestinian people have been killed and 107,244 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
Of those, 38 Palestinians were killed and 203 injured in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the ministry said.
Gaza’s health ministry has said in the past that thousands of other dead people are most likely lost in the rubble of the territory..
Hadi al-Bahra, head of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), has said Syria’s transitional government should be credible and not exclude any Syrian party or be based on sectarianism.
The SNC is an alliance of opposition groups formed in exile following the 2011 uprising against former Syrian president Bashar-al Assad.
Syria’s 13-year civil war took on sectarian dimensions as Assad, a member of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam, mobilised regional Shi’ite allies, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, to help fight Sunni rebels.
His rhetoric struck a chord with many in Syria’s minority groups - including Christians, Druze and Shiites - as well as some Sunnis who feared the prospect of rule by Sunni extremists even more than they disliked Assad’s authoritarian rule.
The Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group that toppled the Assad regime are now the de facto rulers of Syria. They have promised to respect minority rights but many are suspicious if this vow will hold in the long-term.
Netanyahu says Israel will occupy Syria buffer zone for foreseeable future
As we mentioned in a previous post, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said yesterday that Israeli forces will stay in a buffer zone on the Syrian border, despite growing calls to withdraw from the newly captured territory.
Netanyahu made the comments from the summit of Mount Hermon, inside Syria, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
My colleague, Peter Beaumont, has written this about Netanyahu’s comments (you can read his full story here):
Israeli troops occupied the positions on the mountain when they moved into a demilitarised zone between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria this month.
While officials have previously described the move as a limited and temporary measure to ensure the security of Israel’s borders, they have given no indication of when their troops might be withdrawn.
The Israel defence minister, Israel Katz, last week ordered Israeli troops to prepare to remain on Mount Hermon over the winter.
Netanyahu, in a statement issued by his office, said: “We are holding this assessment in order to decide on the deployment of the IDF in this important place until another arrangement is found that ensures Israel’s security.”
“It makes me nostalgic,” he added. “I was here 53 years ago with my soldiers in a patrol of the Israel Defense Forces. The place hasn’t changed, it’s the same place, but its importance to Israel’s security has only grown in recent years, and especially in recent weeks with the dramatic events that are happening here below us in Syria.”
Israel captured a significant part of Syria’s Golan Heights during the six day war in 1967, with that territory being regarded as being occupied by most countries.
The new positions seized by the IDF comprise a demilitarised buffer zone in Syria created following the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
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Rescue workers end search for survivors in Sednaya prison
The Assad regime left prisoners to rot for decades in the notorious Sednaya prison, called a “human slaughterhouse” by Amnesty International, on the outskirts of Damascus, the Syrian capital (you can read more about the prison here).
During Assad’s rule and particularly after the 2011 pro-democracy protests began, any hint of dissent could land someone in Sednaya. The prison became inaccessible to journalists and independent observers. In 2017, Amnesty International estimated that 10,000-20,000 people were being held there at the time “from every sector of society”. It said they were effectively marked for “extermination”.
Since the fall of the Assad regime early this month, thousands of people released from prisons have been reunited with their families, but tens of thousands of others remain unaccounted for, leaving families desperate for closure. Turkish rescue workers have now ended their search for survivors in the Sednaya prison, after finding no detainees languishing in any hidden cells.
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Here are some of the latest images coming through from Gaza:
Palestinian medics say an Israeli airstrike has killed at least 10 people in a house in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, where army forces have operated since October.
They added six were killed in separate airstrikes in Gaza City, Nuseirat camp in central areas, and Rafah near the border with Egypt.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military spokesperson.
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The first flight since the ousting of Syria’s former president Bashar al-Assad has taken off from Damascus airport to Aleppo in the country’s north, AFP journalists at the scene are reporting.
43 people, including journalists, were on board the Syrian Air Airbus plane.
Assad fled Syria as a lightning rebel offensive launched on 27 November wrested city after city from his control.
His army and security forces abandoned Damascus airport on 8 December, and until today no flights had taken off or landed.
Earlier this week, airport staff were painting on planes the three-star independence flag that became a symbol of the 2011 uprising and which the country’s new rulers have adopted. In the terminal, the new flag also replaced the one linked to Assad’s era.
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Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has been chastised by her Israeli counterpart for what he claimed was Australia distancing itself from Israel in its “most difficult year”.
Wong held talks with the Israeli foreign affairs minister, Gideon Sa’ar, on Tuesday, Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom reported, after a war of words between the two nations over recent votes at the United Nations general assembly.
Wong reportedly accused Israel of not providing enough humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in Gaza, culminating in a heated clash, the paper, which is known for broadly supporting the Netanyahu government’s agenda, reported.
Sa’ar rejected the response and pointed to the 7 October attacks by Palestinian militant group Hamas against southern Israel.
“Australia chose to distance itself from Israel in its most difficult year, in which it fought against its bitterest enemies,” Sa’ar is reported to have said.
A spokesperson for Wong said the call was “direct but respectful” and that the minister “conveyed Australia’s commitment to countering antisemitism and hate in all forms”.
Australia has shifted its support at the UN in recent months, backing motions condemning Israel’s recent vote to ban Palestinian aid agency Unrwa over allegations its staff had ties with Hamas and supporting a “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza.
Analysis: how Erdoğan’s balancing act in Syria paid off
Away from Gaza, my colleague Ruth Michaelson has this analysis of the relationship between Syria and Erdoğan’s Turkey.
Less than a week after the deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow, Turkish officials raised their flag over the embassy in Damascus. While many of the shutters on the palatial villa remained closed, the red and white crescent flew over the embassy rooftop for the first time in 12 years.
It was a moment preceded days before by the arrival in the Syrian capital of Turkey’s spy chief, Ibrahim Kalin. In this immediate aftermath of the end of the Assad regime, Kalin rode in a black sedan driven by the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Ahmed al-Sharaa, who wore civilian dress as he chauffeured Kalin through the crowded streets. The spy chief prayed beneath the hallowed archways of the Umayyad mosque, before emerging to stunned crowds gathered to see the first foreign dignitary to visit the new Syrian leadership.
Dareen Khalifa of the non-profit International Crisis Group describes Kalin’s visit to the Syrian capital as “a victory lap,” with Ankara emerging as a major beneficiary from the new government in Damascus. The toppling of Assad has vindicated Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s approach on Syria at home in Turkey, granted Ankara new opportunities in a power struggle across Kurdish areas in the north-east and afforded it fresh influence as Syria rebuilds.
“Relations between HTS and Turkey shouldn’t be overestimated, it’s not a proxy relationship, but Turkey was smart to wait until things were settled and then go in full force with Kalin’s visit and other senior people as well,” says Khalifa.
Read on here:
The US state department is facing a new lawsuit brought by Palestinians and Palestinian Americans accusing the agency of deliberately circumventing a decades-old US human rights law to continue funding Israeli military units accused of widespread atrocities in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday, marks the first time that victims of alleged human rights abuses are challenging the state department’s failure to ever sanction an Israeli security unit under the Leahy Law, a 1990s-era law that prohibits US military assistance to forces credibly implicated in gross human rights violations.
The plaintiffs include Amal Gaza, a pseudonym for a mathematics teacher from Gaza who has lost 20 family members; Shawan Jabarin, the director of the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, who endured six years of arbitrary detention in the West Bank; and Ahmed Moor, a Palestinian American with relatives in Gaza who have been repeatedly displaced by the ongoing Israeli offensive. (Moor has written opinion pieces for the Guardian.) Along with two other plaintiffs, they are demanding judicial intervention to force the US to comply with the law.
With the death toll in Gaza since last October reportedly approaching 45,000 and humanitarian aid to the territory severely restricted, the legal challenge represents an attempt to force the administration to implement a law that has been seen as effective in helping the US to stem human rights violations by foreign military units in central America, Colombia, Nepal, and other countries.
Read more here:
Israel will remain on the strategic Mount Hermon site on the Syrian border until another arrangement is found, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said.
Israeli troops occupied Mount Hermon when they moved into a demilitarised zone between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights following the collapse of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government earlier this month.
Officials have described the move as a limited and temporary measure to ensure the security of Israel’s borders but have given no indication of when the troops might be withdrawn and defence minister Israel Katz last week ordered troops to prepare to remain on Mount Hermon over the winter.
Netanyahu went to the site for an operational briefing with military commanders and security officials.
In a statement issued by his office, he said:
We are holding this assessment in order to decide on the deployment of the IDF in this important place until another arrangement is found that ensures Israel’s security.
Israel’s move into the buffer zone created following the 1973 Arab-Israeli war has been criticised as a violation of international agreements by a number of countries and the United Nations, which have called for the troops to be withdrawn.
You can read my colleague Peter Beaumont’s full report on the Gaza ceasefire talks here:
What do we know so far about the latest ceasefire talks?
On Tuesday an Israeli negotiating team travelled to Qatar while a report from Reuters – denied by his office and Egypt – said that the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was planning to travel to Cairo for talks.
Instead, Netanyahu’s office said he had toured a buffer zone inside Syria that was recently seized by Israeli forces after the fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, which he said would remain under Israeli control for the foreseeable future.
Two Egyptian security sources added, however, that Netanyahu was not in Cairo “at this moment” but that a meeting was under way to work through the remaining points – chief among them a Hamas demand for guarantees that any immediate deal would lead to a comprehensive agreement later.
CIA director William Burns, a key US negotiator, was due in Doha on Wednesday for talks with Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on bridging remaining gaps between Israel and Hamas, Reuters reported.
Hamas said in a statement that a deal was possible if Israel stopped setting new conditions. A Palestinian official close to the mediation efforts said negotiations were serious, with discussions under way about every word.
Reinforcing the sense of optimism the White House spokesperson John Kirby said in an interview with Fox News: “We believe – and the Israelis have said this – that we’re getting closer, and no doubt about it, we believe that, but we also are cautious in our optimism.”
He added, however: “We’ve been in this position before where we weren’t able to get it over the finish line.”
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Opening summary
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the Middle East crisis.
The pace of talks aimed at securing a ceasefire-for-hostages agreement in Gaza appeared to be accelerating, amid claims on both sides that a deal may be within reach, perhaps within days.
Senior Israeli officials, Hamas sources, and US and Arab officials have all expressed optimism that a deal may be close for a phased release of the surviving hostages in Gaza in exchange for a ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
About 60 living hostages, mainly Israeli and dual nationals, are believed to be still held in Gaza as well as the bodies of 35 others, out of more than 240 who were abducted to Gaza during Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.
More on that shortly. First, in other developments:
A ceasefire between Turkey and the U.S.-backed Kurdish Syrian forces (SDF) around the northern Syrian city of Manbij has been extended until the end of this week, state department spokesperson Matthew Miller has said. Washington brokered an initial ceasefire last week after fighting that broke out earlier this month as rebel groups advanced on Damascus and overthrew the rule of Bashar al-Assad.
Geir Pedersen, the UN’s special envoy for Syria, however, has warned that the conflict “has not ended”, highlighting the clashes between the Turkish-backed and Kurdish groups.
Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israeli forces will stay in a buffer zone on the Syrian border, seized after the ouster of Syria’s President Bashar Assad, until another arrangement is in place “that ensures Israel’s security.” Netanyahu made the comments from the summit of Mount Hermon about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border with the Israel-held Golan Heights.
Israeli lawmakers narrowly approved the country’s 2025 state budget in an initial vote. The 59-57 vote in the Knesset – the Israeli parliament – to pass the wartime austerity budget in its first of three readings.
A UN refugee agency official said that about one million Syrian refugees are expected to return to the country in the first six months of 2025, with thousands of people already having returned to the country mostly from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said his country’s forces will maintain “security control” over the devastated Gaza Strip, even after the war is over, with Israeli soldiers able to act with “full freedom of action” over the territory.
At least 45,059 Palestinian people have been killed and 107,041 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement. Of those, 31 Palestinians were killed and 79 injured in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the ministry said.
At least 10 people were confirmed killed in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza City that destroyed the building, while further north in the town of Beit Lahiya at least 15 people were reportedly killed while they were sheltering in a house.
Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group that toppled Assad, said all rebel factions would “be disbanded and the fighters trained to join the ranks of the defence ministry” during a meeting with members of the minority Druze community.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said the bloc would send an ambassador back to Damascus. “We are ready to reopen our delegation, which is the European embassy, and we want this to be fully operational again,” she said. Kallas added that the EU would aim to help authorities restore basic services like electricity, water and infrastructure.
