Closing summary
It’s almost 4.30am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv and 5.30am in Sanaa, Yemen, and we’re about to shut this blog. Our live coverage of the Middle East crisis will resume later in the day. Here’s a summary of the latest developments. Thanks for reading.
The US has carried out a fifth strike against Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, even as Joe Biden acknowledged that bombing the rebels has yet to stop their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. Late on Thursday US warplanes targeted anti-ship missiles that “were aimed into the southern Red Sea and prepared to launch”, according to US Central Command. The US president told reporters: “When you say working, are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes.”
Also on Thursday night, Houthis fired missiles at a US-owned tanker ship in the Gulf of Aden. The White House and the Houthis gave differing accounts of the launches at the Chem Ranger, with the rebels saying their naval forces had attacked “with several appropriate naval missiles, resulting in direct hits”. However, US Central Command said the Houthis launched two anti-ship ballistic missiles and that they hit the water near the ship, causing no damage or injuries. It said it was the third Houthi strike on a commercial shipping vessel in three days.
A total of 24,620 Palestinians have been killed and 61,830 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, according to the latest figures by the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry on Thursday. The figures include 172 killed and 326 injured in the past 24 hours. At least 16 people were reported killed by an Israeli airstrike on a house in Rafah, southern Gaza.
A new wave of violence has swept the West Bank, with a series of major raids launched by the Israeli military across much of the occupied territory. Israeli forces remained in Tulkarm, in the West Bank’s north, for a second day on Thursday after launching a raid on a refugee camp there. Eight people were killed on Thursday, the Israeli military said.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has told the Biden White House that he rejects any moves to establish a Palestinian state when Israel ends its offensive against Gaza, and that all territory west of the Jordan River would be under Israeli security control. His public statement on Thursday represented his sharpest rebuttal of US foreign policy. The White House responded by saying the US would continue working towards a two-state solution and that there could be no Israeli reoccupation of Gaza when the war concluded.
Pakistan has launched retaliatory strikes against militants in Iran in response to attacks by Tehran that targeted sites within Pakistan’s borders, heightening fears of further instability across the Middle East and surrounding region. Ten people from one family were killed in the attacks, including six children, reportedly all “non Iranian nationals”.
Children in Gaza are suffering from “horrific conditions” and the Palestinian territory remains the most dangerous place in the world to be a child, the deputy chief of the UN children’s agency says. Ted Chaiban said at the end of a three-day visit to Gaza that since his last visit two months ago “the situation has gone from catastrophe to near collapse”. If the staggering decline in conditions persisted, “we could see deaths due to indiscriminate conflict compounded by deaths due to disease and hunger”, the Unicef deputy executive director said.
There was no word on Thursday on whether medicines that entered Gaza as part of a deal brokered by France and Qatar had been distributed to dozens of hostages with chronic illnesses who are being held by Hamas. Qatar confirmed late on Wednesday that the medicine had entered Gaza, but it was not yet clear if it had been distributed to the hostages, who are being held in secret locations.
The EU is set to adopt sanctions against Hamas on Monday that will “target individuals and ban money transfers”, according to the French foreign ministry. EU foreign ministers were also expected to discuss possible measures against violent Israeli settlers, a ministry spokesperson said. Meanwhile, the European parliament has voted to call for a “permanent ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip, but on condition that all Israeli hostages held in the territory are released and Hamas dismantled. The resolution on Thursday, which is non-binding, stopped short of calling for an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.
Mexico and Chile have asked the international criminal court (ICC) to investigate possible crimes against civilians in Gaza. In a statement, Mexico’s foreign ministry said the action “is due to growing worry over the latest escalation of violence, particularly against civilian targets.” Any proceedings by the ICC would be separate from South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide at the UN’s international court of justice.
An airstrike on southern Syria early on Thursday killed at least nine people and was probably carried out by Jordan’s air force, Syrian opposition activists said, after the latest in a series of strikes in an area where cross-border drug smugglers have been active. There was no immediate confirmation from Jordan on the strike that hit the province of Sweida, and there was some confusion over the number of people killed.
Israel has joined a notorious band of authoritarian states with a history of imprisoning journalists by detaining Palestinian reporters without trial since the beginning of the latest war in Gaza. A report by the Committee to Protect Journalists released on Thursday said that for the first time, Israel figures in its list of “worst jailers of journalists”, putting it on a par with Iran.
Updated
Gaza situation goes from 'catastrophe to near collapse', says Unicef
Children in Gaza are suffering from “horrific conditions” and the Palestinian territory remains the most dangerous place in the world to be a child, the deputy chief of the UN children’s agency says.
Ted Chaiban said at the end of a three-day visit to Gaza on Thursday that since his last visit two months ago “the situation has gone from catastrophe to near collapse”.
If the staggering decline in conditions persists, “we could see deaths due to indiscriminate conflict compounded by deaths due to disease and hunger”, the Unicef deputy executive director said in a statement, Associated Press reports.
Chaiban said he met an 11-year-old girl named Sama on Tuesday at al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. She was skipping with friends when shrapnel from a bombing pierced her abdomen, leading to the loss of her spleen. Now, he said, her immune system was compromised “in a war zone full of disease and infection”.
Ten minutes later, he said, he met 13-year-old Ibrahim who had been in a shelter in a designated safe area when everything collapsed. His badly damaged hand went untreated, became gangrenous, and his arm had to be amputated.
Chaiban said:
A matter of hours after we left, many families fled al-Nasser hospital, as fighting closed in on the area.
The “war on children” must stop, he said, pointing to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that nearly 25,000 people have been killed since 7 October, with up to 70% of them reportedly women and children.
Updated
US says no damage to ship from Houthi missile attack as rebels claim 'direct hits'
The White House and Houthi rebels have given differing accounts of a Houthi attack on a US-owned tanker ship on Thursday night.
The Huthis said on social media that their “naval” forces had attacked the Chem Ranger in the Gulf of Aden “with several appropriate naval missiles, resulting in direct hits”.
However, US Central Command said later that the Houthi launched two anti-ship ballistic missiles at the Chem Ranger and that they hit water near the ship, causing no damage to the vessel or injuries.
It said on X (formerly Twitter) that the third Houthi strike on a commercial shipping vessel in three days occurred about 9pm local time.
The Chem Ranger continued its journey after the incident, it added, saying the tanker ship was Marshall Island-flagged, US-owned and Greek-operated.
Third Houthi Terrorists Attack on Commercial Shipping Vessel in Three Days
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) January 19, 2024
On Jan. 18 at approximately 9 p.m. (Sanaa time), Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists launched two anti-ship ballistic missiles at M/V Chem Ranger, a Marshall Island-flagged, U.S.-Owned, Greek-operated tanker… pic.twitter.com/moBkH0Al5B
Updated
The US military says Yemeni Houthis have launched two anti-ship ballistic missiles at a US-owned tanker ship, Reuters reports in a breaking news snap.
There was no reported damage or injuries, the US said.
More on this story as it emerges.
Earlier on Friday, the Houthis claimed to have targeted a US ship in the Gulf of Aden with naval missiles, resulting in “direct hits”.
It was not immediately clear if the reports referred to the same attack.
Updated
There was no word on Thursday on whether medicines that entered Gaza as part of a deal brokered by France and Qatar had been distributed to dozens hostages with chronic illnesses who are being held by Hamas.
The agreement was the first to be brokered between the warring sides since November and includes large shipments of medicine, food and humanitarian aid for Palestinian civilians as well.
Associated Press reports that Qatar confirmed late on Wednesday that the medicine had entered Gaza, but it was not yet clear if it had been distributed to the hostages, who are being held in secret locations including underground bunkers.
The International Committee for the Red Cross, which helped facilitate the hostage releases, said it was not involved in distributing the medicine.
Updated
Israeli war cabinet minister Gadi Eisenkot has appeared to criticise Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge to completely defeat Hamas, suggesting that such rhetoric is unrealistic, the Times of Israel reports.
“Whoever speaks of absolute defeat is not speaking the truth,” Eisenkot told Channel 12’s Uvda investigative program hours after the prime minister pledged to continue the war until “complete victory” over the militant group.
Asked whether Israel’s current leadership was telling the public the truth, Eisenkot responded: “No.”
Eisenkot, a former chief of the Israel Defence Forces, also appeared to criticise Netanyahu’s refusal to hold high-level discussions regarding post-war planning in Gaza.
Eisenkot said:
The goals of the war have not yet been achieved, but the [number of soldiers on the ground] is now more limited… You have to think about what’s next.
Updated
There’s more on Yemen’s Houthi rebels claiming to have fired “naval missiles” at a US ship in the Gulf of Aden on Thursday.
The Huthis said in a statement on their social media that their “naval” forces had attacked the Chem Ranger “with several appropriate naval missiles, resulting in direct hits”, Agence France-Presse reports.
British maritime risk management company Ambrey said the Chem Ranger was a US-owned Marshall Islands-flagged chemical tanker.
“There were no crew casualties or damage reported,” the monitor said.
Chem Ranger was sailing from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia to Shuwaik in Kuwait when it reported a “suspicious” approach by drones, Ambrey said. One fell in the sea about 30 metres from the tanker, it added. “An Indian warship responded to the event.”
Huthi aggression against vessels in the Red Sea has led to strikes in Yemen by US and British forces, with the US reporting its latest attack on Huthi targets on Thursday.
The Iran-backed Huthis have launched and gradually increased attacks on Red Sea shipping since the Gaza war erupted on 7 October with the Hamas attack on Israel.
The Huthi statement said the rebels were acting against “the oppression of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and within the response to the American-British aggression against our country”.
The statement did not give a time or other details for the latest attack in international shipping lanes.
As the US announced its latest attack on the Huthis on Thursday, President Joe Biden said they would continue until the rebels stopped targeting ships in the Red Sea.
Updated
The US president, Joe Biden, said the clashes between Iran and Pakistan this week showed that Iran was not well-liked in the region as the White House said it did not want to see an escalation.
Pakistan launched strikes on separatist militants inside Iran on Thursday, in a retaliatory attack two days after Tehran said it struck the bases of another group within Pakistani territory.
Reuters reports Biden said on Thursday:
As you can see Iran is not particularly well liked in the region and where that goes, we’re working on now. I don’t know where that goes.
The US has been locked in a test of wills with Iran over its support for Houthi rebels in Yemen who have been launching attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
The White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, told reporters on Air Force One as Biden flew to North Carolina that Washington was monitoring the Iran-Pakistan clashes closely.
Kirby said:
We don’t want to see an escalation clearly in South and Central Asia. And we’re in touch with our Pakistani counterparts.
Kirby said the attack on Pakistan was another example of Iran’s destabilising behaviour in the region.
This is Adam Fulton picking up our live coverage – stay with us for the latest developments
Updated
Summary of the day so far
Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
A total of 24,620 Palestinians have been killed and 61,830 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, according to the latest figures by the Gaza health ministry on Thursday. The figures include 172 killed and 326 injured in the past 24 hours. At least 16 people have been killed by an Israeli airstrike on a house in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. A relative of those killed told Al Jazeera that the family had relocated within Gaza three times for safety since 7 October. Israel’s military has repeatedly ordered Gaza’s civilian population to flee to the south.
A new wave of violence has swept the occupied West Bank, with a series of major raids launched by the Israeli military across much of the territory. Israeli forces remained in Tulkarm, in the north of the West Bank, for a second day on Thursday after launching a raid on a refugee camp there. Eight people were killed on Thursday, the Israeli military said.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has told the Biden White House that he rejects any moves to establish a Palestinian state when Israel ends its offensive against Gaza, and that all territory west of the Jordan River would be under Israeli security control. His public statement on Thursday represented his sharpest rebuttal of US foreign policy. The White House responded by saying the US would continue working towards a two-state solution and that there could be no Israeli reoccupation of Gaza when the war concluded.
Internet and mobile services continue to be cut off inside the Gaza Strip by Israel. The present outage has lasted for five days, according to internet access advocacy group NetBlocks. An estimated 85% of Gaza’s population have been displaced and are struggling for food, while local authorites say nearly 25,000 Palestinians have so far been killed by Israeli airstrikes since 7 October.
A Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson has admitted that it is difficult to confirm if a shipment of medicine has reached Israeli hostages held in Gaza. Majed al-Ansari said medicine and aid for Israeli hostages and Palestinian civilians had entered Gaza on Wednesday under a deal mediated by Qatar and France, and that there was every “likelihood” that the medication had reached the Israeli hostages.
The US has carried out a fifth strike against Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, even as Joe Biden acknowledged that bombing the rebels has yet to stop their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. Late on Thursday US warplanes targeted anti-ship missiles that “were aimed into the southern Red Sea and prepared to launch,” according to US Central Command. “When you say working, are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes,” the US president told reporters on Thursday.
The EU is set to adopt sanctions against Hamas on Monday that will “target individuals and ban money transfers”, according to a French foreign ministry spokesperson. EU foreign ministers are also expected to discuss possible measures against violent Israeli settlers, they said. Meanwhile, the European parliament has voted to call for a “permanent ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip, but on condition that all Israeli hostages held in the territory are released and Hamas dismantled. The resolution on Thursday, which is non-binding, stopped short of calling for an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.
Mexico and Chile have asked the international criminal court (ICC) to investigate possible crimes against civilians in Gaza. In a statement, Mexico’s foreign ministry said the action “is due to growing worry over the latest escalation of violence, particularly against civilian targets.” Any proceedings by the ICC would be separate from South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide at the UN’s international court of justice (ICJ).
An airstrike on southern Syria early on Thursday killed at least nine people and was probably carried out by Jordan’s air force, Syrian opposition activists said, the latest in a series of strikes in an area where cross-border drug smugglers have been active. There was no immediate confirmation from Jordan on the strike that hit the province of Sweida, and there was some confusion over the number of people killed.
Pakistan has launched retaliatory strikes against militants in Iran in response to attacks by Tehran that targeted sites within Pakistan’s borders, heightening fears of further instability across the Middle East and surrounding region. Ten people from one family were killed in the attacks, including six children, reportedly all “non Iranian nationals”.
Israel has joined a notorious band of authoritarian states with a history of imprisoning journalists by detaining Palestinian reporters without trial since the beginning of the latest war in Gaza. A report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released on Thursday said that for the first time, Israel figures in its list of “worst jailers of journalists”, putting it on a par with Iran.
Mexico and Chile ask international criminal court to investigate possible crimes in Gaza
Mexico and Chile have asked the international criminal court (ICC) to investigate possible crimes against civilians in Gaza.
In a statement, Mexico’s foreign ministry argued that the ICC was the proper forum to establish potential criminal responsibility, “whether committed by agents of the occupying power or the occupied power”. It added:
The action by Mexico and Chile is due to growing worry over the latest escalation of violence, particularly against civilian targets.
Mexico cited “numerous reports from the United Nations that detail many incidents that could constitute crimes under the ICC’s jurisdiction.”
Chile supports “the investigation of any possible war crime ... whether they are war crimes committed by Israelis or by Palestinians,” Chile’s foreign minister, Alberto van Klaveren, told reporters in Santiago.
Any proceedings by the ICC would be separate from South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide at the UN’s international court of justice (ICJ).
Israel is not a member of the ICC and does not recognise its jurisdiction.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has urged Iran and Pakistan to “exercise maximum restraint to avoid a further escalation of tensions” after an exchange of military strikes between the countries.
Pakistan launched retaliatory strikes against militants in Iran on Thursday in response to attacks by Tehran that targeted sites within Pakistan’s borders.
Stéphane Dujarric, the UN chief’s spokesperson, said in a statement:
The secretary general underlines that all security concerns between the two countries must be addressed by peaceful means, through dialogue and cooperation, in accordance with the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and good neighborly relations.
A UN rights expert has said that Israel has broken international law with its “relentless” bombardment of Gaza that has levelled neighbourhoods and collapsed the territory’s healthcare system.
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, said at a Madrid news conference on Thursday:
Israel has done a number of things that are highly illegal, highly unlawful.
She said that while Israel has the right to self-defence, international humanitarian law must be respected “to protect people who are not actively involved in combat,” AFP reported.
Albanese said she “firmly condemned” the violence carried out by Hamas in Israel – which she said amounted to war crimes and may also be crimes against humanity –but “nothing justifies what Israel has done”. She said:
What has happened is over 100 days of relentless bombing – the first two weeks using 6,000 bombs per week, bombs of 2,000 pounds, in highly crowded area.
Most hospitals in Gaza had been made “dysfunctional”, she said, adding that most Palestinians are dying now “not because of the bombs but because there is not sufficient infrastructure to cure them of wounds.” Albanese added:
The number of kids who get amputated every day is shocking, one or two limbs. During the first two months of this (war) 1,000 kids were amputated without anaesthesia. It is a monstrosity.
Houthis claim another attack on US ship in Gulf of Aden
The Houthis have claimed they fired “naval missiles” at a US ship, Chem Ranger, in the Gulf of Aden on Thursday.
The attack resulted in “direct hits”, a statement from the Houthi group said, adding:
The Yemeni Armed Forces confirm that a retaliation to the American and British attacks is inevitable, and that any new aggression will not go unpunished.
Here’s some more detail on the reports of an incident earlier today near Aden in Yemen.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said it received a report of an incident 115 nautical miles south-east of Aden.
An update from UKMTO said the master reported an unidentified drone “in close proximity” to a merchant vessel and explosion in the water about 30 metres off the port side.
It said coalition forces were responding, and that the vessel and its crew are safe. The vessel is proceeding to the next port, it said.
UKMTO WARNING 015/JAN/2024
— United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) (@UK_MTO) January 18, 2024
INCIDENT 017 – ATTACK UPDATE 001https://t.co/qlApy9q9pq#MaritimeSecurity #MarSec pic.twitter.com/ItBfdWXHLW
British maritime security firm Ambrey said a Marshall Islands-flagged chemical/products tanker reported a “suspicious approach” of drones, 103 miles south-east of Aden. An advisory note reads:
One (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) UAV dropped into the sea approximately 30 metres aft ... an Indian warship responded to the event.
Here are some of the latest images we have received over the newswires from Gaza, Israel and the occupied West Bank.
Israeli forces have destroyed the main campus of Al-Israa university in the south of Gaza City, the university said.
Footage circulating on social media appeared to show the complex of buildings being blown up in what appeared to be a controlled explosion, engulfing it in smoke. It was unclear when the explosion took place, AP reported.
In a statement, the university said its main building for graduate studies and bachelor’s colleges were destroyed. It said Israeli forces had seized the complex 70 days ago and used it as a base.
The family of the youngest hostage held by Hamas in Gaza gathered in Tel Aviv on Thursday to mark “the saddest birthday in the world”.
Kfir Bibas, who turned one on Thursday, was kidnapped by Hamas militants from the kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel alongside his parents, Yarden and Shiri, and his four-year-old brother Ariel. It is not clear whether Kfir and his family are still alive.
A large crowd filled the Hostages Square in the Israeli capital, many holding orange balloons in acknowledgment of Kfir’s red hair, the Jerusalem Post reported. Near them a large screen displayed the number of days the hostages have been held in Gaza – 103.
Shiri Bibas’ cousin, Yifat Zeiler, said at the ceremony:
No abductee should celebrate a birthday in captivity. We thank the children and their families for such a moving gesture, and ask the decision-makers to read these wishes to understand that behind every hostage there is a whole world.
Here’s our video report:
Saudi Arabia is unable to pursue talks about a deal to recognise Israel until there is a ceasefire in Gaza, the Saudi ambassador to the US has said.
Princess Reema bint Bandar al-Saud, speaking on a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, said:
I think the most important thing to realise is the kingdom has not put normalisation at the heart of its policy. It’s put peace and prosperity at the heart of its policy … The kingdom has been quite clear. While there is violence on the ground and the killing persists, we cannot talk about the next day.
Saudi Ambassador to the USA HRH Princess @rbalsaud says the Kingdom has put “peace and prosperity at the heart of its policy” #SaudiAtDavos #WEF24 pic.twitter.com/mqIDUj9Y4g
— وزارة الاقتصاد والتخطيط (@MEPSaudi) January 18, 2024
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, earlier this week said Riyadh was still “certainly” open to the possibility of future ties with Israel, but also stressed the need for a ceasefire and the creation of a Palestinian state. He added:
We don’t see any real sign that any strategic objectives that Israel has claimed are... coming any closer.
Mark Regev, an adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu, has expanded on the Israeli prime minister’s remarks earlier today where he said he opposed the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“Israel would have to have security control in ways that would limit the full exercise of Palestinian sovereignty,” Regev told CNN, adding:
Especially after October 7, to ask the Israeli public, the Israeli people, to say, ‘We’ll light-pedal security,’ that security isn’t the highest priority, to keep our people safe – that is to ignore reality.
He added:
If the Palestinians really want to move forward with Israel they have to be willing to understand those concerns. They are legitimate concerns.
Reports of new attack on ship near Yemen's Aden
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said it has received a report of an incident 115 nautical miles south-east of Aden, Yemen.
Authorities are investigating the report, it said, adding:
Vessels are advised to transit with caution and report any suspicious activity to UKMTO.
UKMTO WARNING 015/JAN/2024
— United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) (@UK_MTO) January 18, 2024
INCIDENT 017 – ATTACKhttps://t.co/qlApy9q9pq#MaritimeSecurity #MarSec pic.twitter.com/nwxFgz2onh
US launches fifth round of strikes on Houthis as Biden concedes bombardment has not worked
Joe Biden has said US strikes against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen will continue, but conceded that the US-UK bombardment so far has not deterred the group’s attacks in the Red Sea.
The US carried out a fifth round of strikes on Thursday, with Navy warplanes targeting anti-ship missiles that “were aimed into the southern Red Sea and prepared to launch”, the US central command said in a statement on social media.
The US president, speaking to reporters in Washington today before departing for a domestic policy speech in North Carolina, said:
When you say working, are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes.
Updated
Union leaders have told Keir Starmer his position on Gaza risks alienating millions of Britons, telling the Labour leader their members are increasingly angry about his refusal to call for an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East.
Members of Britain’s biggest unions used a regular meeting with Starmer this week to urge him to be more critical of Israel, following weeks of tension within the Labour party over the issue.
“Several people at the meeting were pretty clear with Starmer,” said one person with knowledge of what happened at the meeting.
They told him, ‘Your position on Gaza is alienating working people, you are out of step with the majority’.
The person added that the Labour leader responded that he wanted western countries to work towards a “sustainable ceasefire” rather than calling for one to be declared immediately.
Starmer’s response to the Israel-Gaza war has been a source of tension between the Labour leader and many of his MPs, councillors and members for weeks.
Last year he gave an interview in which he appeared to suggest Israel was within its rights to withhold water and power from Gaza. Even though he has since rowed back from that position, many of his colleagues and supporters remain angry that he has not done more to show sympathy with the plight of people in Gaza.
Families of hostages being held in captivity by Hamas shut down a road in Tel Aviv in protest.
Protesters stopped traffic on the major road in Tel Aviv. Protesters also constructed a sign, reading “136”, to represent the 136 people still being held hostage.
NEW:
— Megatron (@Megatron_ron) January 18, 2024
⚡ 🇮🇱 Hostage families block Ayala's n road in protest in Tel Aviv pic.twitter.com/FWB3e2au9A
Updated
The US Pentagon clarified on Thursday that the US is not at war with the Houthis in Yemen, Reuters reported.
During a Thursday briefing, a Pentagon spokesperson said that attacks against the Houthis have been acting in self-defense.
The announcement comes as the US launched another round of attacks against the Houthis’ missile launchers that were used to attack international shipping lanes, CNN reported.
The US has said that there is “no way” to solve security challenges in Israel and the broader region without establishing a Palestinian state, Reuters reported.
Speaking at a news briefing, [US state department spokesperson Matthew Miller] said Israel has an opportunity right now as countries in the region are ready to provide security assurances to Israel.
“But there is no way to solve their long-term challenges to provide lasting security and there is no way to solve the short-term challenges of rebuilding Gaza and establishing governance in Gaza and providing security for Gaza without the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
Miller’s comments come as Netanyahu said on Thursday that he rejected the notion of a Palestinian state and would only support a deal that allowed Israel to gain security control over the entire Gaza Strip.
Updated
The Israeli military announced on Thursday that it killed eight people during a raid in the city of Tulkarm located in the occupied West Bank.
Here is more information from Reuters:
The Israeli military raided the city of Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank for a second day on Thursday, saying it had killed eight people.
The Palestinian health ministry confirmed that six people had died and an organisation which represents those held in Israeli jails - the Palestinian Society Prisoner’s Club - said hundreds had been arrested over the two days.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said four had been badly beaten by Israeli forces. Video footage showed many buildings had also been badly damaged or destroyed.
The Israeli-occupied West Bank has seen a surge of violence in parallel to the Gaza war that erupted on Oct. 7 with a shock cross-border killing and kidnapping spree by Islamist Hamas militants in southern Israel…
Updated
US says ‘no reoccupation of Gaza’ after war
A White House spokesperson said the US will not stop working towards a two-state solution as Israel continues to launch airstrikes against Gaza, Reuters reported.
White House national security adviser John Kirby told reporters on Thursday that the US is still committed to a two state-solution.
“There will a post-conflict Gaza, no reoccupation of Gaza,” Kirby said to reporters aboard Air Force One.
Kirby’s latest comments comes as Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the idea of a future state for Palestinians, NBC News reports.
As recent as last month, Netanyahu said: “I am proud that I prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state,” NBC reported.
Updated
Summary of the day so far
Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said he opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state as part of any postwar scenario. Israel will only agree to a deal that would see the country gain security control over the entire Gaza Strip, the Israel prime minister said at a news conference on Thursday, adding that he had “told this to the Americans”.
The leader of the Iran-backed Houthis, Abdulmalik al-Houthi, has vowed to continue attacks on ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. In an hour-long address on Thursday, al-Houthi urged the Arab world to mount mass boycotts of Israeli goods. Overnight the US military fired another wave of missile strikes against Houthi-controlled sites, marking the fourth time in a week that it has directly targeted the group in Yemen.
A total of 24,620 Palestinians have been killed and 61,830 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, according to the latest figures by the Gaza health ministry on Thursday. The figures include 172 killed and 326 injured in the past 24 hours. At least 16 people have been killed by an Israeli airstrike on a house in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. A relative of those killed told Al Jazeera that the family had relocated within Gaza three times for safety since 7 October. Israel’s military has repeatedly ordered Gaza’s civilian population to flee to the south.
Internet and mobile services continue to be cut off inside the Gaza Strip by Israel. The present outage has lasted for five days, according to internet access advocacy group NetBlocks. An estimated 85% of Gaza’s population have been displaced and are struggling for food, while local authorites say nearly 25,000 Palestinians have so far been killed by Israeli airstrikes since 7 October.
A Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson has admitted that it is difficult to confirm if a shipment of medicine has reached Israeli hostages held in Gaza. Majed al-Ansari said medicine and aid for Israeli hostages and Palestinian civilians had entered Gaza on Wednesday under a deal mediated by Qatar and France, and that there was every “likelihood” that the medication had reached the Israeli hostages.
Israel’s military has said it is operating on the ground “in the southernmost area that IDF ground troops have operated in so far”. In a statement on Thursday, it said it targeted Hamas infrastructure there, claiming to have recovered “numerous weapons and intelligence documents, including dozens of hand grenades, AK-47s, ammunition, excavation equipment, launchers, RPG missiles, explosives, and combat management documents”.
The EU is set to adopt sanctions against Hamas on Monday that will “target individuals and ban money transfers”, according to a French foreign ministry spokesperson. EU foreign ministers are also expected to discuss possible measures against violent Israeli settlers, they said.
The European parliament has voted to call for a “permanent ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip, but on condition that all Israeli hostages held in the territory are released and Hamas dismantled. The resolution on Thursday, which is non-binding, stopped short of calling for an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.
An airstrike on southern Syria early on Thursday killed at least nine people and was probably carried out by Jordan’s air force, Syrian opposition activists said, the latest in a series of strikes in an area where cross-border drug smugglers have been active. There was no immediate confirmation from Jordan on the strike that hit the province of Sweida, and there was some confusion over the number of people killed.
Tehran has strongly condemned a strike inside Iran by Pakistan which killed nine people, which Islamabad said was aimed at “terrorists”. A deputy governor of Iran’s Sistan-Balochistan province said the dead included three women and four children, and were not Iranian citizens. The strike follows an Iranian attack inside Pakistan the previous day, which Tehran said was aimed at terrorists there. Pakistan said its military was on “extremely” high alert and any more “misadventure” from the Iranian side will be met forcefully.
Israel’s president has said that there is an “empire of evil” emanating from Tehran which must be faced by a very strong coalition, and that Gaza’s population is entrenched in a network of terror. Billions of dollars, Isaac Herzog told the Davos conference, are being spent to destabilise the world, with Iran funding proxies all around the region. Of the situation in Gaza, he said “We care, we care, it is painful for us that our neighbours are suffering so much,” adding that they were entrenched in a network of terror, which Israel was determined to remove.
Israel has joined a notorious band of authoritarian states with a history of imprisoning journalists by detaining Palestinian reporters without trial since the beginning of the latest war in Gaza. A report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released on Thursday said that for the first time, Israel figures in its list of “worst jailers of journalists”, putting it on a par with Iran.
Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to press ahead with Israel’s offensive until it achieves a “decisive victory over Hamas” during a nationally broadcast news conference on Thursday.
Israel has destroyed about two-thirds of Hamas’ fighting regiments in Gaza, the Israeli prime minister said, Reuters reported. He said:
There are two stages to the fighting; The first is destroying the Hamas regiments, those are their organised combat frameworks.
Up until now, 16 or 17 out of 24 have been destroyed. After that there is the (stage) of clearing the territory (of militants). The first action is usually shorter, the second usually takes longer.
The victory will take “more long months, but we are determined to achieve it,” the Israeli leader added, the Times of Israel reported. He said:
We will continue to fight at full strength until we achieve all our goals – the return of all our hostages – and I say again, only military pressure will lead to their release; the elimination of Hamas; and certainty that Gaza will never again represent a threat to Israel.
Netanyahu says he opposes Palestinian state in any postwar scenario
Benjamin Netanyahu has said he informed the US that he opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state as part of any postwar scenario.
Israel will only agree to a deal that would see the country gain security control over the entire Gaza Strip, the Israel prime minister said at a news conference on Thursday. He said:
In any future arrangement … Israel needs security control all territory west of the Jordan. This collides with the idea of sovereignty. What can you do?
Netanyahu added that he had “told this to the Americans”, adding:
The prime minister needs to be capable of saying no to our friends.
Updated
The leader of Yemen’s Houthi movement, Abdulmalik al-Houthi, has urged the Arab world to mount mass boycotts of Israeli goods as he claimed US and UK missile attacks launched on his country were a sign of the impact of the Houthis’ attacks on Israeli-linked commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
In an hour-long address carried on Arabic media channels and suffused with religious rhetoric, al-Houthi said it was “a great honour and blessing to be confronting America directly”.
Overnight the US military fired another wave of missile strikes against Houthi-controlled sites, marking the fourth time in a week that it has directly targeted the group in Yemen.
In his speech on Thursday, al-Houthi claimed the only impact of the recent missile strikes had been to improve his army and navy’s technology, and he ridiculed Joe Biden “as an elderly man that has trouble climbing the stairs of an aeroplane yet is travelling 9,000 miles to attack those that wanted to stand by the oppressed people of Gaza”.
He asked why those that oppressed Gaza felt they had the right to label others as terrorists for fulfilling their religious duty to come to the help of Palestinians, a reference to Washington’s decision on Wednesday to give notice it intends formally redesignate the Houthis as a terrorist group.
And he said the Houthis had been singled out because they were prepared to take practical steps to support the Palestinians whereas the general position of the leaders of many Arab and Islamic countries remained lukewarm and weak.
His speech, containing attacks on the Zionist lobby and homosexuals, was replete with warnings that the war was part of a wider battle between Zionists that worship the devil and the Muslim world. He urged Yemenis to come out in a mass show of support on Friday for their countrymen killed by US forces.
US and UK airstrikes 'do not scare us': Yemen's Houthi leader vows to continue attacks in Red Sea
The leader of the Iran-backed Houthis, Abdulmalik al-Houthi, has vowed to continue attacks on ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
“We will continue targeting ships linked to Israel,” al-Houthi said on Thursday in his first public address since the UK and US launched strikes last week against Houthi-controlled sites, AP reported.
Houthi operations would “also include American and British ships”, the Houthi leader added.
He said his forces will continue to develop their military capabilities and that the US and UK strikes on Houthi targets do “not scare us”.
Updated
Talks are progressing to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that could include a month-long humanitarian pause to allow the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, according to a report.
A senior Arab official told NBC News that the negotiations were part of a bigger deal that could result in the normalisation of ties betwen Israel and Saudi Arabia. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said:
Arab states are in advanced discussions on an initiative to secure a ceasefire and a release of hostages, part of a broader plan that could offer Israel normalisation of ties with Arab and Muslim states, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia if [Israel] agreed to irreversible steps to the creation of a Palestinian state.
A western diplomat told the outlet that talks included a proposal for a “humanitarian pause”, lasting between a month or longer, followed by a permanent ceasefire. The pause would enable more hostages to be released, they added.
The outlet cited two diplomats as saying that Hamas was refusing to agree to a deal without the promise of a permanent ceasefire, something Israeli officials have balked at.
Updated
Israel has joined a notorious band of authoritarian states with a history of imprisoning journalists by detaining Palestinian reporters without trial since the beginning of the latest war in Gaza.
A report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released on Thursday said that for the first time, Israel figures in its list of “worst jailers of journalists”, putting it on a par with Iran.
The worst offenders were China and Myanmar, two countries with a long history of suppressing free speech, which each imprisoned more than 40 journalists in 2023. They were followed by Belarus, Russia and Vietnam.
Israel is in sixth place after the CPJ recorded 17 Palestinian journalists in its jails in December, the first time the country has featured among the worst offenders. It is now holding 19. Others were detained and released. Iran was also imprisoning 17 journalists.
Jodie Ginsberg, CPJ’s chief executive, said Israel’s inclusion on the list of detained journalists reflected a broader crackdown on free speech and criticism of the war in Gaza. She said:
Israel’s standing in CPJ’s 2023 prison census is evidence that a fundamental democratic norm – press freedom – is fraying as Israel exploits draconian methods to silence Palestinian journalists. This practice must stop.
The CPJ said Palestinian journalists are mostly held under the Israeli military’s powers to detain people in the occupied territories without trial or time limit. The practice, known as administrative detention, permits the army to arrest a person on suspicion alone. Some Palestinians have been held for years without charge.
Updated
A Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson has admitted that it is difficult to confirm if a shipment of medicine has reached Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
On Wednesday, Majed al-Ansari said medicine and aid for Israeli hostages and Palestinian civilians had entered Gaza under a deal mediated by Qatar and France.
It came a day after Doha announced a deal “between Israel and [Hamas], where medicine along with other humanitarian aid is to be delivered to civilians in Gaza … in exchange for delivering medication needed for Israeli captives in Gaza”.
Al-Ansari told CNN today that 11 tonnes of medical supplies were delivered to Palestinian health authorities in Gaza through Egypt, and that there was every “likelihood” that the medication had reached the hostages held in Gaza since the 7 October attacks. He added:
The security situation is certainly not easy. It would be very difficult to involve the Red Cross or any other organisation at the moment.
As we reported earlier, the International Committee of the Red Cross has said it is not playing any part in delivering medicine to Israeli hostages being held in Gaza as part of the deal.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari said yesterday it did “not have the ability to guarantee” that medicine would reach Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Updated
A 27-year-old man was shot dead by Israeli forces on Thursday during a two-day operation in the occupied West Bank area of Tulkarm, according to reports.
The latest fatality took place in Nur Shams refugee camp on the edge of Tulkarm, in the north of the West Bank, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and health ministry said.
A local official described the man killed as a civilian who was not involved in fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants, AFP reported.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its troops had killed “at least eight terrorists” in Tulkarm and were working to “uncover roads where explosive devices were planted”.
Updated
Here’s some detail on the news that the EU is set to adopt sanctions against Hamas on Monday, according to a French foreign ministry spokesperson.
Brussels will adopt “a regime of sanctions against Hamas” that will “target individuals and ban money transfers”, Christophe Lemoine told reporters on Thursday.
On Tuesday, the EU added Yahya Sinwar, the political leader of Hamas in Gaza, to its “terrorist” sanctions blacklist over the 7 October attacks. The EU last month added two of Hamas’s top military commanders, Mohammed Deif and Marwan Issa, to its terrorist blacklist. Hamas has already been designated as a terrorist organisation by the EU.
EU foreign ministers are also expected to discuss possible measures against violent Israeli settlers, Lemoine said.
Updated
In videos from 7 October, the body of a young woman is lying face down in the back of a pickup truck, stripped to her underwear, one leg bent at an unnatural angle. One of the men sitting next to her pulls her long hair as armed men around him shout praises to God.
Footage of the body of Shani Louk, the young Israeli-German national described by her mother as a “very happy, lively person [who] liked music and dancing and living”, being paraded around the streets of Gaza was some of the first to surface on 7 October as the scale of the horror visited on sleeping families in kibbutzim neighbouring the strip and people partying at a nearby rave started to become clear.
In the more than three months since the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian group Hamas, the atrocities the militants committed have been well documented. Israel is still grappling with the trauma: entire families burned alive, torture and mutilation, children and elderly people ripped from the arms of their loved ones, seized as hostages.
Emergency responders risked their lives in the fighting on 7 October and several days afterwards to rescue the wounded and retrieve the dead. The chaos meant there were significant failings in preserving evidence of gender-based violence and what is coming to be seen as the systematic use of rape as a weapon of war by Hamas.
Israel’s top police investigations unit, Lahav 433, is still poring over 50,000 pieces of visual evidence and 1,500 witness testimonies, and says it is unable to put a number on how many women and girls suffered gender-based violence.
Read the full story: Evidence points to systematic use of rape and sexual violence by Hamas in 7 October attacks
European parliament calls for 'permanent ceasefire' in Gaza - but with conditions
The European parliament has voted to call for a “permanent ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip, but on condition that all Israeli hostages held in the territory are released and Hamas dismantled.
The parliament stopped short of calling for an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza, instead calling “for a permanent ceasefire and to restart efforts towards a political solution provided that all hostages are immediately and unconditionally released and the terrorist organisation Hamas is dismantled”.
The resolution, which is non-binding, was backed by 312 lawmakers, with 131 voting against and 72 abstaining.
The 27-nation bloc has struggled to come up with a unified position on the conflict, with countries such as Germany staunchly backing Israel and others being more pro-Palestinian.
The socialists, centrists and greens had sought a resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire and the restart of efforts towards a political solution.
However, the centre-right European People’s party – the largest group in the parliament – opposed an initial demand for an unconditional ceasefire, and pushed through an amendment to adjust the text.
Updated
The number of Palestinians living in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip has nearly quadrupled during the war, according to figures by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza have pushed nearly all Palestinians towards the southern city of Rafah along the Egyptian border.
The area now has more than 1.2 million people, UNRWA said, compared with a prewar population of about 280,000.
In south📍#Gaza, the population of Rafah has almost quadrupled to +1.2 million people.
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) January 18, 2024
In middle areas, overcrowding is claustrophobic, people struggle for food & medicine, feeling cold & damp.
There's very little info about north #GazaStrip & access remains highly restricted. pic.twitter.com/yLMV5Y0zCz
The International Committee of the Red Cross has said in a statement that it is not playing any part in delivering medicine to Israeli hostages being held in Gaza as part of a deal brokered by Qatar and France.
This appears to contradict an earlier claim by Hamas that the ICRC would be involved. Israeli media had reported that senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk had said the ICRC would deliver the medicine to hospitals and the hostages.
In its statement the ICRC writes:
The ICRC has been engaging with the parties to agree to a mechanism to deliver medicines to the hostages. The ICRC initiated the conversation in its role as a neutral intermediary.
The parties negotiated the agreement, including how much medicines would be delivered and by whom, with Qatar brokering the deal.
The mechanism that was agreed to does not involve the ICRC playing any part in its implementation, including the delivery of medication.
The ICRC welcomes the agreement to deliver medications to the hostages and to medical facilities for the residents of Gaza as a positive humanitarian step.
The deal caused political controversy in Israel yesterday when it emerged that the shipment of medicine was not to be inspected by Israel on entry into the Gaza Strip, contrary to the current Israeli policy that all humanitarian aid entering Gaza must be viewed by Israel before it can be delivered.
Updated
In Turkey, the soccer club Başakşehir has fined the Israeli player Eden Kartsev for a social media post in support of Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Reuters reports that a spokesperson said the club had decided to send the player on loan to a club in Israel.
Kartsev had shared on Instagram the slogan “Bring them home now”. The club said his post had “violated the sensitive values of our country”.
On Monday, the Israeli player Sagiv Jehezkel was released from Turkish police custody before returning to his home country.
Jehezkel had been detained in Antalya after wearing a bandage on his left wrist during a match with the slogan “100 days”, referring to the time since the 7 October Hamas attack inside southern Israel and the length of time Israeli hostages had been held in captivity.
Updated
The IDF has posted to Telegram to state that the warning sirens and interceptor launch in Eilat, in southern Israel earlier, were a “false identification”.
More than 24,600 killed by Israel since 7 October, Gaza health ministry says
A total of 24,620 Palestinians have been killed and 61,830 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
Reuters reports the ministry, which is run by Hamas, said 172 Palestinians were killed and 326 have been injured in the past 24 hours. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, and has said that the majority of those killed are women and children.
Earlier today Israel’s military claimed in a statement that it had killed “approximately 60 terrorists” during its ground operation in the previous 24 hours.
In addition, at least 350 Palestinians including 95 children have been killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank since 7 October by either Israeli security forces or Israeli settlers, and an estimated 4,000 have been wounded. Israel is also estimated to have detained 6,000 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank during that period.
Israel’s campaign came after the surprise attack inside southern Israel by Hamas on 7 October. During the attack an estimated 1,200 people were killed, and over 8,500 wounded. About 240 were seized as hostages and abducted into Gaza. Of those, about 132 are believed still to be held, although not all of those in captivity are thought to still be alive.
It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty counts issued during the conflict.
An estimated 85% of Gaza’s population has been displaced from their homes by the continual Israeli bombardment of the territory.
Updated
EU to adopt new ad hoc sanctions against Hamas on Monday – reports
EU foreign ministers will adopt a new ad hoc sanctions regime against Hamas next Monday, Reuters reports the French foreign ministry deputy spokesperson, Christophe Lemoine, told journalists.
Updated
Here are some of the latest images from the news wires:
Updated
The Guardian’s graphics team created this map to illustrate violence in the region since 7 October.
Summary of the day so far …
It is 2.30 in Gaza City, Beirut and Tel Aviv, 4pm in Tehran and 5.30pm in Islamabad. Here are the latest headlines …
Israel’s president has told the Davos conference that there is an “empire of evil” emanating from Tehran which must be faced by a very strong coalition, and that Gaza’s population is entrenched in a network of terror. Billions of dollars, Isaac Herzog said, are being spent to destabilise the world, with Iran funding proxies all around the region. Of the situation in Gaza, he said “We care, we care, it is painful for us that our neighbours are suffering so much,” adding that they were entrenched in a network of terror, which Israel was determined to remove.
Israel’s military has said it is operating on the ground “in the southernmost area that IDF ground troops have operated in so far”. It says it is has targeted Hamas infrastructure there, claiming to have recovered “numerous weapons and intelligence documents, including dozens of hand grenades, AK-47s, ammunition, excavation equipment, launchers, RPG missiles, explosives, and combat management documents”.
At least 16 people have been killed by an Israeli airstrike on a house in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. A relative of those killed told Al Jazeera that the family had relocated within Gaza three times for safety since 7 October. Israel’s military has repeatedly ordered Gaza’s civilian population to flee to the south.
Internet and mobile services continue to be cut off inside the Gaza Strip by Israel. The present outage has lasted for five days, according to internet access advocacy group NetBlocks. An estimated 85% of Gaza’s population have been displaced and are struggling for food, while local authorites say nearly 25,000 Palestinians have so far been killed by Israeli airstrikes since 7 October.
An airstrike on southern Syria early on Thursday killed at least nine people and was probably carried out by Jordan’s air force, Syrian opposition activists said, the latest in a series of strikes in an area where cross-border drug smugglers have been active. Associated Press reports there was no immediate confirmation from Jordan on the strike that hit the province of Sweida, and there was some confusion over the number of people killed.
Tehran has strongly condemned a strike inside Iran by Pakistan which killed nine people, which Islamabad said was aimed at “terrorists”. A deputy governor of Iran’s Sistan-Balochistan province said the dead included three women and four children, and were not Iranian citizens. The strike follows an Iranian attack inside Pakistan the previous day, which Tehran said was aimed at terrorists there. Pakistan said its military was on “extremely” high alert and any more “misadventure” from the Iranian side will be met forcefully.
The Baloch Liberation Army, a separatist group, said in a statement that strikes by Pakistan inside Iran had targeted and killed its people. Turkey has urged Iran and Pakistan not to escalate further.
The US military has fired another wave of missile strikes against Houthi-controlled sites, marking the fourth time in a week that it has directly targeted the group in Yemen. The strikes were launched from the Red Sea.
India’s navy said on Thursday that it had responded to a drone attack distress call from a vessel in the Gulf of Aden and that the ship’s crew were safe, with a fire on board under control.
Denmark will join the US-led coalition of six countries set up to take on Yemen’s Houthis over attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea, the Danish foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, said on Thursday.
Reuters reports the minister said Denmark’s contribution would consist of a single staff officer.
Updated
Here is a clip of Israel’s president Isaac Herzog speaking at Davos earlier today. During the address, he said there is an “empire of evil emanating from Tehran”, which must be faced by a very strong coalition.
The Israel Defense Forces has issued a statement that the reported incident causing sirens to sound in Eilat is over.
In a statement posted to its Telegram channel, the IDF reported:
A short while ago, following the sirens that sounded in the city of Eilat, southern Israel, an interceptor was launched in the area of the Red Sea toward a suspicious aerial target that was approaching Israeli territory. Sirens were sounded in the area of Eilat following the launch of the interceptor. The incident has concluded and there is no risk of a security incident.
Patrick Wintour is the Guardian’s diplomatic editor
British based relatives of Israeli hostages captured by Hamas have made a direct emotional plea to the British and Israeli government to back a pause in the fighting or see their relatives killed.
The plea was made by Steve Brisley, whose brother-in-law was held hostage in Gaza and Sharon Lifschitz, the British-based daughter of an 83-year-old peace activist still believed to be among the estimated 132 hostages presumed alive.
They made their emotional pleas at a meeting in Westminster attended by Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell and the deputy Israeli ambassador Oren Marmorstein.
This week Hamas revealed in a video that Brisley’s brother-in-law Yossi Sharabi had been killed in captivity. Yossi’s brother Eli Sharabi remains captive.
Brisley said this week has been a special psychological torture since Hamas had released the video crushing his hopes that Yossi had survived.
He said he is convinced he was murdered, and not killed in an Israeli airstrike as Hamas claims, and judged from markings on his body that he had been mistreated. “Make no mistake these are war criminals that revel in compounding our distress”, he says.
He says Eli is now all that he has left to fight for. But he cannot stop thinking how he has spent “over 100 days in underground captivity in tangible visceral torment, with no lamp to comfort him or light switch in easy reach, hungry, thirsty, scared.”
He says he does not care about the semantics of a pause or a ceasefire, saying “The only way hostages are getting out or the Red Cross are getting in is through a pause or a ceasefire. Those are the facts. I am not a politician. I am not a diplomat. This is not my world, but I can see that as plain as the nose on your face, the only way this progresses is some end to the hostilities.”
Lifschitz, the daughter of two elderly hostages, admitted at the start of her campaign to bring her parents home she had been “petrified” that she would say or do the wrong thing and harm the cause. But she added “I have learnt one thing over the past 103 days, is that I as an individual can make a difference”.
She also had a message Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and possibly the British government might not like. She is clear that now is the time to put the hostages first, and pursue a diplomatic path.
“There will not be a solution to this that is just military. We also know there will not be a deal to return the hostages unless there is some agreement with the other side. It is time for being brave. The vast majority within the Israeli population support a deal and think that is the way Israel will win in this war.”
Warning sirens have sounded in Israel’s southern port and resort city of Eilat.
Nestled in between Egypt and Jordan, since 7 October the city has previously been a target of both long-range missile fire from inside the Gaza Strip, and from attacks by Yemen’s Houthis.
More details soon …
Our video team have this report, which shows footage from the Pakistan strike inside Iran, which Islamabad claims was aimed at Baloch separatist groups who operate from there, who it describes as terrorists.
Updated
An airstrike on southern Syria early on Thursday killed at least nine people and was probably carried out by Jordan’s air force, Syrian opposition activists said, the latest in a series of strikes in an area where cross-border drug smugglers have been active.
Associated Press reports there was no immediate confirmation from Jordan on the strike that hit the province of Sweida, and there was some confusion over the number of people killed.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said nine people, including two children and at least three women, had been killed in the strike on the village of Orman. Rayan Maarouf, editor-in-chief of the local activist collective Suwayda24, told the AP that 10 people were killed in the strike.
There was also a strike on the nearby village of Malah, he said, but no casualties were inflicted. Maarouf said that search operations were still ongoing and the death toll might still rise. “Innocent people are always losing their lives in such strikes,” he said, adding that sometimes the strikes hit the homes of people living near smugglers or close to warehouses where drugs are stored.
Updated
IDF: ground troops operating in 'southernmost area' of Gaza Strip so far
Israel’s military has said it is operating on the ground “in the southernmost area that IDF ground troops have operated in so far”, and says it is has targeted “the ‘Martyrs’ outpost’, belonging to the southern battalion of Hamas’ Khan Younis Brigade, and the offices of the battalion commander and other Hamas military commanders”.
It claims to have “located numerous weapons and intelligence documents, including dozens of hand grenades, AK-47s, ammunition, excavation equipment, launchers, RPG missiles, explosives, and combat management documents”.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Updated
Associated Press has some quotes from inside Rafah, from people dealing with the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike which is believed to have killed 16 people, half of them children.
Dr Talat Barhoum at Rafah’s el-Najjar Hospital confirmed the death toll from the strike in Rafah and said dozens more were wounded. Associated Press footage from the hospital showed relatives weeping over the bodies of loved ones.
“They were suffering from hunger, they were dying from hunger, and now they have also been hit,” said Mahmoud Qassim, a relative of some of those who were killed.
Al Jazeera has spoken to Abu Khaled, a relative of those killed in the Rafah attack. He told the news network:
They fled their homes in Gaza City to the Bureij refugee camp to Khan Younis, before coming to Rafah because they thought it was safer. Every day, hundreds of us are killed. If we’re not killed by the bombs, we die from the cold, or starvation, or from disease.
Updated
Internet and mobile services continue to be cut off inside the Gaza Strip by Israel. The present outage has lasted for five days, according to internet access advocacy group NetBlocks.
Al Jazeera reports that at least two more Palestinians have been killed inside the Gaza Strip after Israel bombed “the Abasan area, east of Khan Younis”.
Turkey has recommended that Iran and Pakistan do not escalate further, and called for calm to be restored as soon as possible.
Reuters reports that in a press conference in Jordan, Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan said he has held calls with his counterparts from both nations.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has held his annual briefing in Moscow. During the course of it he was asked about Russia’s assessment of US strikes on Yemen and its support of Israel.
The US and UK “have overstepped and basically trampled into the ground all the norms of international law,” he said.
He compared the situation to Libya in 2011, and said no one had been given the authority to bomb Yemen. Lavrov also suggested that US troops were overstaying their welcome in Iraq.
Summary of the day so far …
It has just gone 12.15pm in Gaza City, Beirut and Tel Aviv, 1.15pm in Damascus, 1.45pm in Tehran and 3.15pm in Islamabad. Here are the headlines across the region …
Israel’s president has told the Davos conference that there is an “empire of evil” emanating from Tehran which must be faced by a very strong coalition, and that Gaza’s population is entrenched in a network of terror. Billions of dollars, Isaac Herzog said, are being spent to destabilise the world, with Iran funding proxies all around the region to undermine any peace process. Of the situation in Gaza, he said “We care, we care, it is painful for us that our neighbours are suffering so much,” adding that they were entrenched in a network of terror, which Israel was determined to remove.
Since 7 October Palestinian authorities say nearly 25,000 Palestinian people have been killed by Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip, and more than 350 killed over the same period by Israeli security forces in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967. 1.9 million people, or nearly 85% of Gaza’s population, are estimated to have been internally displaced since Israel military began ordering evacuations. The Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that Israel has detained at least another 48 Palestinians overnight and this morning in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that the death toll from an overnight Israeli airstrike on Rafah in the Gaza Strip has risen to 19. It describes the victims as “mostly children and women”. In its daily operation briefing, Israel military claims to have killed “approximately 60 terrorists” inside the Gaza Strip in the last day.
Fears are growing that Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, the largest hospital still partly functioning in Gaza, may be forced to close due to Israeli attacks. The aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said Israeli forces had “heavily bombed the area close to the hospital with no prior evacuation order, causing patients and many of the thousands of displaced civilians, who had sought refuge in Nasser, to flee in a panic”.
Suspected airstrikes by Jordan on southern Syria killed 10 people including children early on Thursday, according to local Syrian media and monitors tracking the conflict.
Tehran has strongly condemned a strike inside Iran by Pakistan which killed nine people, which Islamabad said was aimed at “terrorists”. A deputy governor of Iran’s Sistan-Balochistan province said the dead included three women and four children, and were not Iranian citizens. The strike follows an Iranian attack inside Pakistan the previous day, which Tehran said was aimed at terrorists there. Pakistan said its military was on “extremely” high alert and any more “misadventure” from the Iranian side will be met forcefully. The Baloch Liberation Army, a separatist group, said in a statement that strikes by Pakistan inside Iran had targeted and killed its people.
The US military has fired another wave of missile strikes against Houthi-controlled sites, marking the fourth time in a week that it has directly targeted the group in Yemen. The strikes were launched from the Red Sea.
India’s navy said on Thursday that it had responded to a drone attack distress call from a vessel in the Gulf of Aden and that the ship’s crew were safe, with a fire on board under control.
France’s ambassador to Israel, Frédéric Journès, has said he has hopes that the deal to allow medicine into the Gaza Strip, some of it for hostages being held by Hamas, might be the first humanitarian step to lead to a renewal of hostage releases.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, during his latest trip to the Middle East that there was no military solution to Hamas and that the Israeli leader needed to recognise that or history would repeat itself, the US broadcaster NBC has reported, citing anonymous US officials.
Updated
Reuters has been carrying some quotes from Pakistan’s military about the strikes it carried out inside Iran.
It said the “precision strikes” were carried out using killer drones, rockets, loitering munitions and standoff weapons. It claimed that maximum care was taken to avoid collateral damage.
It claimed that hideouts used by the Balochistan Liberation Army and the Balochistan Liberation Front were successfully struck, labelling them as “terrorist” organisations.
Going forward, it said, dialogue and cooperation was deemed prudent in resolving bilateral issues between the two neighbouring brotherly countries.
Earlier Iran reported that nine people, including four children, had been killed in the strikes, and that none of them were Iranian nationals. Tehran has strongly condemned the strike, which happened a day after Iran itself had struck at what it described as terrorists inside Pakistan.
Updated
Suspected Jordanian airstrikes inside southern Syria kill ten people – reports
Suspected airstrikes by Jordan on southern Syria killed ten people including children early on Thursday, according to local Syrian media and monitors tracking the conflict. Reuters reports there was no immediate comment from Jordanian authorities.
Herzog at Davos: Gazan population entrenched in a network of terror, and 'empire of evil' emanating from Tehran
Graeme Wearden is in Davos for the Guardian, and has been watching an appearance by Israel’s president Isaac Herzog:
Israel’s president has told the Davos conference that there is an “empire of evil” emanating from Tehran which must be faced by a very strong coalition, and that Gaza’s population is entrenched in a network of terror.
Billions of dollars, Isaac Herzog said, are being spent to destabilise the world, with Iran funding proxies all around the region to undermine any peace process.
Herzog began by telling Davos delegates that Israel’s world was shattered on 7 October by the Hamas attacks.
He said Israelis had suffered atrocities including rapes, the chopping of heads, the burning of families. And he cited the example of Kfir Bibas, who turns one in Hamas captivity today after he, his four-year-old brother Ariel and parents, Yarden and Shiri Bibas, were taken hostage.
Herzog said he called on those at Davos, and indeed the “entire universe”, to work endlessly to release all the hostages still held. The oldest hostage was 85 years old, he added, and many were people of peace.
Herzog said he wanted a better future for the Palestinians, who are “our neighbours”.
Since 7 October Palestinian authorities say nearly 25,000 Palestinian people have been killed by Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip, and more than 350 killed over the same period by Israeli security forces in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967. 1.9 million people, or nearly 85% of Gaza’s population, are estimated to have been internally displaced since Israel military began ordering evacuations.
If you speak to Israeli citizens, Herzog said, they cannot think about a peace agreement because everyone wants to know if they can be promised security. Every Israeli wants to know they won’t be attacked from the north, south or east, he added.
Herzog said he had been calling for peace with Israel’s neighbours for years, but that terror cannot be accepted, adding it has to be totally stopped and made out of the question.
In its case at the international court of justice against Israel accusing it of committing genocide in Gaza, South Africa cited Herzog as a president “signing bombs destined for Gaza” and “having previously noted that the entire population in Gaza is responsible [for 7 October] and that ‘this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, is absolutely not true … we will fight until we break their backbone’”.
Herzog said at Davos this morning that people who supported Hamas were supporting barbaric terror. He then spoke about the Hamas infrastructure Israel claims to have found in shops, living rooms, bedrooms and schools in Gaza.
He said: “We care, we care, it is painful for us that our neighbours are suffering so much,” adding that they were entrenched in a network of terror, which Israel was determined to remove.
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The death toll in Pakistan’s attack inside Iran has risen to nine, AFP reports.
“Two men were also killed in the missile attack this morning in one of the border villages of Saravan, bringing the death toll to nine,” the official IRNA news agency said, quoting Alireza Marhamati, deputy provincial governor of Iran’s Sistan-Balochistan province.
Marhamati had earlier said that three women and four children were killed in the strikes.
In a televised interview, Iran’s interior minister, Ahmad Vahidi, said all the dead “were foreign nationals”.
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The Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that Israel has detained 48 Palestinians overnight and this morning in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
It is estimated that Israel has detained 6,000 Palestinians from the occupied territory since the 7 October attack by Hamas inside southern Israel.
Wafa also reports that one Palestinian has been killed as Israel continues a raid on the city of Tulkarm for the second day, where “a house was blown up by the forces, who burned another, and severely beat a number of civilians, amid widespread destruction of the infrastructure”.
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Pakistan’s military is on “extremely” high alert and any more “misadventure” from the Iranian side will be met forcefully, a top Pakistani security source has told Reuters.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanani has reiterated that Tehran strongly condemns the strike inside its borders by Pakistan.
India’s navy said on Thursday that it had responded to a drone attack distress call from a vessel in the Gulf of Aden and that the ship’s crew were safe, with a fire on board under control. The ship was flagged from the Marshall Islands, Reuters reports.
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The Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that the death toll from an Israeli airstrike on Rafah has risen to 19. It describes the victims as “mostly children and women”.
In Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, Wafa reports that two Palestinians have been injured by live fire from Israeli forces, which it says “searched and inspected a Red Crescent vehicle during the raid”.
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Associated Press reports that the Baloch Liberation Army, a separatist group, said in a statement the strikes by Pakistan inside Iran targeted and killed its people.
“Pakistan will have to pay a price for it,” the group warned. “Now the Baloch Liberation Army will not remain silent. We will avenge it and we announce war on the state of Pakistan.”
A deputy governor of Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province, Ali Reza Marhamati, said the dead included three women and four children, and were not Iranian citizens.
Several insurgent groups operate in Iran and Pakistan. They all have a common goal of an independent Balochistan for ethnic Baloch areas in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan.
Iran and Pakistan share a 900km (560 mile) border.
Israeli media is reporting that France’s ambassador to Israel, Frédéric Journès, has been speaking on the radio in Israel, and has said he has hopes that the deal to allow medicine into the Gaza Strip, some of it for hostages being held by Hamas, might lead to a renewal of hostage releases.
He told Kan radio:
In a process like this there is a first humanitarian step, and then it can advance us toward a deal. This is also the first sign since the end of the earlier deal that something is possible in the issue of the hostages.
About 132 hostages are still believed to be in Gaza of the estimated 240 seized on 7 October. About 27 of those being held are believed to have been killed.
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Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Rafah for Al Jazeera, has described “another night of death and destruction”. He writes for the news network:
Rafah is becoming increasingly dangerous. We’re looking at overcrowded evacuation centres and overcrowded homes. People are everywhere – on the sidewalks and in tents – trying to get away from the horror of the bombs and missiles. Because Rafah is so overcrowded, a single missile can kill a large number of people. This is why we are seeing so many casualties from every airstrike. Most of the victims are women and children.
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Reuters has a quick snap that Iran has summoned Pakistan’s charge d’affaires in Tehran. Pakistan withdrew its ambassador from Iran yesterday.
In its latest operational update, issued vis the Telegram messaging app, Israel’s military has claimed “over the past day approximately 60 terrorists were killed” by its “operations in the Gaza Strip against terrorist operatives and infrastructure”.
It specifically claims to have killed “approximately 40 terrorists” in Khan Younis, where, it says, “grenades, AK-47 rifles, military equipment, and technological assets were located”.
The claims have not been independently verified.
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Fears are growing that Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, the largest hospital still partly functioning in Gaza, may be forced to close due to Israeli attacks.
Palestinian health officials have said seven people were killed by Israeli airstrikes on homes near the hospital overnight to Wednesday.
The aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said Israeli forces had “heavily bombed the area close to the hospital with no prior evacuation order, causing patients and many of the thousands of displaced civilians, who had sought refuge in Nasser, to flee in a panic”.
The UN agency OCHA said that Israeli forces withdrew from the area at around 7am on Wednesday and that initial reports and video footage showed that the nearby Al Namsawi cemetery had been destroyed and some graves empty, with bodies reportedly missing.
In a statement the Israeli army claimed that it had come under fire from the area, according to AFP.
The MSF’s head of mission for Palestine, Léo Cans, said during a visit to the hospital on Tuesday:
The fighting is very close. We hear bombings around and a lot of shooting. Yesterday [Monday], there was an airstrike 150 metres from the entrance of the hospital that killed eight people and injured more than 80 people. Among those were two boys, four years old and five years old who got killed.
He said the hospital was operating at 300% capacity, adding: “the situation is catastrophic. There are way too many patients for the staff to handle.”
During a visit to the hospital yesterday, MSF Head of Mission for Palestine Leo Cans said that Nasser, now Gaza’s largest functioning health facility, was operating at 300% capacity, adding "the situation is catastrophic. There are way too many patients for the staff to handle”. pic.twitter.com/I9b83pW3xB
— MSF International (@MSF) January 17, 2024
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US secretary of state Antony Blinken told Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that there is no military solution to Hamas and that the Israeli leader needs to recognize that or history will repeat itself during his last trip to the Middle East, the US broadcaster NBC has reported citing anonymous US officials.
Netanyahu was reportedly unmoved. He also rejected an offer by Saudi Arabia to normalise relations as part of a Gaza reconstruction agreement if Israel agrees to provide Palestinians with a pathway to statehood, the officials said.
The Biden administration is reportedly increasingly frustrated with the Israeli prime minister and is laying the groundwork for a post-Netanyahu government with other Israeli and civil society leaders.
As part of that strategy and in an attempt to work around Netanyahu, Blinken met individually with members of his war cabinet and other Israeli leaders, including opposition leader and former prime minister Yair Lapid, the officials told NBC.
The broadcaster wrote further:
The United States is now following up with Arab leaders on Blinken’s discussions, but the senior administration officials acknowledged that Biden’s lofty hopes of reshaping the Middle East are now inextricably linked to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
As a result, one senior administration official conceded, the president’s aspirations for a durable regional peace may have to await a post-Netanyahu government.
While Iran has taken low-level action against Balochistan in the past, Tuesday’s strikes were unusually heavy-handed and Thursday’s retaliatory bombings were the first time that Pakistan has responded with comprehensive military action against its neighbour.
Sources in Islamabad said the decision was taken after heavy political and military pressure on the top army leadership to show strength against Tehran.
The military’s decision to respond to Iran with retaliatory strikes raises concern of further escalation in the tensions that have been spreading across the Middle East and beyond since the 7 October attacks by Hamas and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza.
In Gaza, where a communications blackout has entered a seventh day, Al Jazeera is reporting that 16 people including small children have been killed in Israeli shelling in Rafah.
The broadcaster said it had verified footage showing the bodies of three children killed in the shelling of a house east of Rafah arriving at Abu Youssef Al Najjar hospital.
Here are some of the latest images sent to us by wires in Gaza, where there has been no let-up in Israeli attacks.
Israeli raid on West Bank city of Tulkarem enters second day, at least seven killed
A deadly Israeli raid on the West Bank city of Tulkarem has continued into a second day, Al Jazeera is reporting, with the UN saying at least seven people – including two children – have been killed.
The broadcaster said residents of the occupied city were still reporting the sounds of explosions and gunfire early on Thursday, and that the Israeli army had blocked off all entrances to the refugee camp and positioned snipers on rooftops.
Raids were also carried out on other areas of the West Bank, including the cities of Hebron and Ramallah overnight and five Palestinian militants were killed in an Israeli strike near Balata refugee camp on Wednesday, the UN and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party, said.
Forty-six people were arrested from one family alone in Tkoo’ village in Bethlehem, Al Jazeera reported, while arrests were also made in the towns of Balaa, Beit Rima, Kafr ad-Dik, and al-Jalama.
In its daily update on hostilities the UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA on Wednesday said two paramedics had also been injured and another two detained in the Israeli raid on Tulkarem. It reported:
In the early morning, Israeli forces raided the camp, where clashes erupted between Israeli forces and Palestinians, including an exchange of gunfire and the use of explosive devices by the latter was reported.
Subsequently, an Israeli airstrike targeted a group of Palestinians, killing four, including two children.
During the operation, seven Palestinians, including two PCRS paramedics, and one Israeli soldier had been injured.
An ambulance was severely damaged by shrapnel and two Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) paramedics were detained by Israeli forces.
The Israeli military confirmed it carried out an air strike during the Tulkarem raid, adding that “a number of terrorists were killed in the strike”.
As of Wednesday, Israeli forces and settlers had killed 355 Palestinians including 90 children since Hamas’ 7 October attack on Israel, according to OCHA.
If you’re looking for a bit of background to the strikes launched on Iranian territory by Pakistan, it’s worth looking back to some of our earlier coverage, including this piece by our diplomatic correspondent Patrick Wintour. He covered Tuesday’s attack by Iran on what it said was a militant group in Pakistan. Here’s a snippet:
Iran said its attack mounted on Tuesday using “precision missile and drone strikes”, destroyed two strongholds of the Sunni militant group Jaish al-Adl in the Koh-e-Sabz area of Pakistan’s south-west Balochistan province.
The missile strikes were part of Iran’s sweeping reprisals across Syria, Iraqi Kurdistan and Pakistan, designed to exact revenge for a suicide bombing mounted by Isis-K, the Afghan branch of Islamic State, that killed 85 Iranians in the south-eastern city of Kerman on 3 January.
Tuesday’s strike into Pakistan was the first time Iran had struck so severely inside the nation’s sovereign territory. Ironically, the strike came as Pakistan and Iran’s naval forces were in the midst of a joint exercise designed to underscore the close security cooperation between the two countries.
Pakistan recalled its ambassador from Iran on Wednesday, with the foreign ministry describing the airstrike as an “unprovoked violation of its airspace by Iran … inside Pakistani territory”.
“It is even more concerning that this illegal act has taken place despite the existence of several channels of communication between Pakistan and Iran,” the ministry said.
The Iranian charge d’affairs was summoned to give an explanation.
US carries out fourth round of strikes on Yemen's Houthis
The US military has fired another wave of missile strikes against Houthi-controlled sites, marking the fourth time in a week that it has directly targeted the group in Yemen.
The strikes were launched from the Red Sea, hitting more than a dozen sites – the officials told the AP news agency – and came after a drone launched from areas controlled by the Houthis hit a US-owned vessel in the Gulf of Aden.
The Houthi-controlled Saba news agency said that the areas targeted were Hodeidah, Taiz, Dhamar, al Bayda and Saada. The media group claimed that UK aircraft were also involved in the strikes but the Guardian was not able to verify those claims.
The US military said that its forces conducted strikes on 14 Houthi missiles that were loaded to be fired from Yemen, and that they presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and US Navy ships in the region.
Since November, attacks by the Iran-backed Houthi militia on ships in the region have slowed trade between Asia and Europe and alarmed major powers. The Houthis, who control most of Yemen, say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Wednesday’s attack on Red Sea shipping saw a drone launched by the Houthis smash into the Genco Picardy bulk carrier, causing a fire that was soon extinguished, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations organisation. The vessel and its crew were said to be safe and proceeding to their next port of call.
More from the Pakistani foreign ministry statement, which justifies this morning’s strikes on Iranian territory by saying that they were taken “in light of credible intelligence of impending large-scale terrorist activities.” The statement says:
Over the last several years, in our engagements with Iran, Pakistan has consistently shared its serious concerns about the safe havens and sanctuaries enjoyed by Pakistani origin terrorists calling themselves “Sarmachars” on the ungoverned spaces inside Iran.
Pakistan also shared multiple dossiers with concrete evidence of the presence and activities of these terrorists.
However, because of lack of action on our serious concerns, these so-called Sarmachars continued to spill the blood of innocent Pakistanis with impunity.
It continued:
Pakistan fully respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The sole objective of today’s act was in pursuit of Pakistan’s own security and national interest which is paramount and cannot be compromised.
🔊: PR NO. 1️⃣7️⃣/2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣4️⃣
— Spokesperson 🇵🇰 MoFA (@ForeignOfficePk) January 18, 2024
Operation Marg Bar Sarmachar
🔗⬇️ https://t.co/1n5BvtEZBZ pic.twitter.com/VVf5VwL00L
Three women, four children killed in Pakistani strikes on militants in Iran, reports say
At least three women and four children have been killed in Pakistan’s retaliatory strikes on militants in Iran, Reuters has reported.
Several missiles hit a border village in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province, a local security official told Iranian state media, the news wire reported.
The official added that none of the women and children were Iranian nationals.
Iran’s official Irna news agency meanwhile reported that “several explosions have been heard in several areas around the city of Saravan”, quoting a provincial official.
Pakistan carries out retaliatory strikes on 'terrorists' in Iran
Pakistan has launched retaliatory strikes against militants in Iran, in an apparent response to attacks by Tehran two days ago targeting sites within Pakistan’s borders belonging to a Sunni separatist militant group.
Pakistan had already condemned Tuesday’s attacks, which killed and injured at least six people, as “illegal” and had warned Tehran of “serious consequences”. Pakistan also downgraded its diplomatic relations with Iran, recalling its ambassador from Tehran and expelled the Iranian envoy in Islamabad
A statement by Pakistan’s foreign office early Thursday confirmed that Pakistan had undertaken “a series of highly coordinated and specifically targeted precision military strikes against terrorist hideouts in Siestan-o-Baluchistan province of Iran. A number of terrorists were killed during the Intelligence-based operation – codenamed ‘Marg Bar Sarmachar’.”
The missile and drone strikes by Iran were in response to a suicide bombing carried out by Isis-K, the Afghan branch of Islamic State, which killed 85 Iranians in the south-eastern city of Kerman on 3 January. Iran had also carried out strikes against Syria, Iraq and Kurdistan.
Iran has long accused Pakistan of allowing separatist terrorists to hide out in the border region of Balochistan, which was targeted in the strikes.
Pakistan’s decision to respond with retaliatory strikes raises concern of further escalation of the tensions and violence that have been spreading across the Middle East and Asia since the 7 October attacks by Hamas and Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
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Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the Middle East crisis with me, Helen Livingstone.
Pakistan has carried out a retaliatory strike on militants in Iran, the foreign ministry in Islamabad has said, two days after two children were killed in an Iranian strike on what Tehran claimed were bases belonging to a Sunni militant group, Jaish al-Adl.
At least three women and four children were killed when several missiles hit a border village in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province, a security official from the province said on Thursday according to the semi-official Young Journalist Club news agency.
Reports of the attack came hours after the US military said it had launched a fourth round of strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, after a drone launched by the rebel group hit a US-owned cargo ship in the Red Sea.
The US conducted strikes on 14 Houthi missiles that were loaded and ready to be fired from Yemen, US Central Command said, adding that they presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and US Navy ships in the region.
More on that soon. In other key developments:
At least 24,448 Palestinians have been killed and 61,504 wounded in Israeli strikes on Gaza since the war began on 7 October, according to the latest figures by the territory’s health ministry on Wednesday. Another 355 Palestinians, including 90 children, have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank.
Eleven people including two children were killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, Palestinian officials and the UN said. The UN agency OCHA said six people were killed, including two children, in an airstrike on Tulkarem refugee camp. A separate Israeli airstrike near Balata refugee camp, east of the city of Nablus, killed five fighters with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party, it said.
There were fears that Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, the largest hospital still partially functioning in Gaza, may be forced to close due to Israeli attacks. The aid agency Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) said overnight to Wednesday Israeli forces had “heavily bombed the area close to the hospital with no prior evacuation order, causing patients and many of the thousands of displaced civilians, who had sought refuge in Nasser, to flee in a panic.”
A shipment of medicine for Israeli hostages and Palestinian civilians entered Gaza on Wednesday, a Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson has confirmed, under a deal mediated by Qatar and France. The agreement marks the first significant progress in indirect talks between Israel and Hamas since December, when a short-lived ceasefire collapsed.
The likelihood of a war in Lebanon is “higher than before”, the head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said. Speaking to troops in northern Israel on Wednesday, IDF chief of staff Lt Gen Herzi Halevi said Israel’s military is “increasing readiness for fighting in Lebanon”.
A telecommunications blackout in the Gaza Strip entered its sixth day on Wednesday, the longest continuous outage since the war began, according to the internet monitoring group NetBlocks. Internet and telephone services collapsed across Gaza on Friday, marking the ninth blackout the territory has endured since 7 October.
Doctors have been instructed by Israel’s health ministry not to speak with UN representatives investigating the Hamas attacks on 7 October. Members of the UN independent international commission of inquiry, in areas including East Jerusalem and Israel, had been contacting senior physicians and hospital staff who treated the 7 October victims, requesting information and interviews for its investigation into potential war crimes committed since 7 October.
The Jordanian army has said its military field hospital in the city of Khan Younis in Gaza was badly damaged as a result of Israeli shelling in the vicinity. In a statement on Wednesday, the army said it held Israel responsible for a “flagrant breach of international law”.
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