Katz says Israel plans to move 600,000 Gazans to 'humanitarian' city on Rafah's ruins
Israeli army strikes Yemen ports after ship attack in Red Sea
US envoy 'unbelievably satisfied' with Lebanon's response to plan to disarm Hezbollah
Israeli army captures Iran-linked 'terrorist' cell in Syria
At least 57,523 Palestinians killed and 136,617 wounded since Gaza war began
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Gulf Today
20 minutes ago
- Gulf Today
Israeli strikes kill 43 more Gazans as truce talks deadlocked
Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli air strikes on Sunday killed more than 40 Palestinians, including at a market and a water distribution point, as talks for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas stalled. Delegations from Israel and Hamas group have now spent a week trying to agree on a temporary truce to halt 21 months of devastating fighting in the Gaza Strip. But on Saturday, each side accused the other of blocking attempts to secure an agreement at the indirect talks in the Qatari capital, Doha. On the ground, civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said at least 43 people were killed in the latest Israeli strikes, including 11 when a market in Gaza City was hit. Elsewhere, eight children were among the 10 victims of a drone strike at a water point in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in central Gaza, Bassal said. Mourners recite a prayer over the body of Seraj Ebrahim, after he was killed in an Israeli strike that hit Nuseirat camp. AFP Khaled Rayyan told AFP he was woken by the sound of two large explosions after a house was hit in Nuseirat. "Our neighbour and his children were under the rubble," he said. Another resident, Mahmud al-Shami, called on the negotiators to secure a deal. "What happened to us has never happened in the entire history of humanity," he said. "Enough." 150 targets in 24 hours The Israeli military, which has recently intensified operations across Gaza, said that in the past 24 hours the air force "struck more than 150 terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip." It released aerial footage of what it said were fighter jet strikes attacking Hamas targets around Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza, showing explosions on the ground and thick smoke in the sky. Relatives carry the body of 13-year-old Seraj Ebrahim, killed in an Israeli strike on a drinking water distribution point, for burial in Nuseirat. AP Hamas-run Gaza's health ministry says that at least 58,026 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed in Israel's retaliatory campaign. The UN considers those figures reliable. UN agencies Saturday warned that fuel shortages had reached "critical levels," threatening to worsen conditions for Gaza's more than two million people. A Palestinian woman bids farewell to her child Saraj Ebrahim. AFP "Only 150,000 litres of fuel have been allowed in over the past few days — an amount that covers less than one day's needs," the head of the Palestinian NGOs Network in Gaza, Amjad Shawa, told AFP on Sunday. "We require 275,000 litres of fuel per day to meet basic needs." The Handala — a former Norwegian trawler loaded with medical supplies, food and children's equipment — set sail from Italy, with the pro-Palestinian activists on board hoping to reach Gaza, despite Israel having recently detained and deported people aboard a previous vessel. Agence France-Presse
The National
3 hours ago
- The National
Lebanon faces existential threat unless it addresses Hezbollah weapons, US envoy warns
Lebanon risks being taken over by regional powers unless Beirut acts to address Hezbollah's weapons stockpiles, US special envoy Tom Barrack warned on Friday. Mr Barrack, who is the special envoy for Syria and US ambassador to Turkey, told The National in an exclusive interview that Lebanon needs to resolve the issue or else it could face an existential threat. 'I honestly think that they are going to say 'the world will pass us by'. Why? You have Israel on one side, you have Iran on the other, and now you have Syria manifesting itself so quickly that if Lebanon doesn't move, it's going to be Bilad Al Sham again,' he said, using the historical name for the Syria region. 'Syrians say Lebanon is our beach resort. So we need to move. And I know how frustrated the Lebanese people are. It frustrates me.' Mr Barrack said the US, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are ready to help if Lebanon takes the lead. On Saturday, Mr Barrack posted on social media that his comments were intended to praise 'Syria's impressive strides'' rather than being a 'threat to Lebanon'. 'I can assure that Syria's leaders only want co-existence and mutual prosperity with Lebanon, and the United States is committed to supporting that relationship between two equal and sovereign neighbours enjoying peace and prosperity,' he said on X. Last month, Mr Barrack presented Lebanese officials with a proposal to disarm Hezbollah and implement economic reforms, to help lift the country out of its six-year financial crisis – one of the worst in modern history. The US proposal ties reconstruction aid and a halt to Israeli army operations to Hezbollah's full disarmament across the country. Since a US-brokered ceasefire began in November, the Iran-backed group has withdrawn most of its troops from the Israeli border. Israel insists it must be disarmed nationwide. In response to the proposal, Lebanese authorities submitted a seven-page document calling for a full Israeli withdrawal from disputed territory, including Shebaa Farms, and reaffirming state control over all weapons while pledging to dismantle Hezbollah's arms in south Lebanon. The document stopped short of agreeing to disarm Hezbollah nationwide. 'I thought it was responsive, very responsive,' Mr Barrack said, while acknowledging that sticking points remain. 'There are issues that we have to arm wrestle with each other over to come to a final conclusion. Remember, we have an agreement … it was a great agreement. The problem is, nobody followed it." He stressed the urgency for Lebanon to act. When asked if Hezbollah agreeing to lay down its arms and become a purely political party would prompt President Donald Trump's administration to remove the group from the US foreign terrorist list, as it did with Hayat Tahrir Al Sham in Syria, Mr Barrack declined to elaborate. 'I'm not running from the answer, but I can't answer it,' he told journalists in New York earlier on Friday. Asked why Lebanon's President Joseph Aoun has not publicly committed to a disarmament timetable, Mr Barrack said: 'He doesn't want to start a civil war.' The Lebanese armed forces are widely viewed as the 'best, neutral, reliable mediator' in the current crisis but face severe funding shortages due to Lebanon's economic collapse, Mr Barrack said. He noted that despite the Lebanese army's credibility, it operates 'on a shoestring budget', forcing UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, Unifil, to fill the gap with 10,000 troops. 'God bless the United Nations and the Unifil troops, but they don't really have command and control over harsh things,' Mr Barrack said. Mr Barrack acknowledged that any attempt to fully disarm Hezbollah could be volatile and risk sparking a civil war. He suggested a possible path could involve Hezbollah agreeing to voluntarily disarm its heavy weapons, including rockets and drones, handing them over to monitored depots under a 'mechanism' involving the US, France, Israel and the Lebanese army. Mr Barrack said the Lebanese army lacks the resources and manpower to take on such a mission. 'We don't have the soldiers on the ground for the LAF to be able to do that yet, because they don't have the money. They're using equipment that's 60 years old,' he said. As a result, Hezbollah argues it cannot rely on the Lebanese army for protection, he added. 'Hezbollah is looking at it saying, 'We can't rely on the LAF. We have to rely on ourselves because Israel is bombing us every day, and they're still occupying our land,'' he said, referring to disputed border areas known as the 'five points". Mr Barrack said addressing these security concerns, while preventing escalation into conflict, would require international support to strengthen Lebanon's army and a mechanism to manage heavy weapons, with buy-in from all sides. He said the US has approached its Gulf partners to seek funding for the Lebanese armed forces but has faced resistance. 'The US is going to our valued Gulf partners and saying, 'We want money to go to the LAF,'' he said. 'Why do the Gulf partners not want to do that? Because they've given so much money to Lebanon in the past that's gone to the corrupt leaders. So they're saying, 'Yeah, we're done.'' He noted that Gulf states are reluctant to invest further without assurances that funds will bypass Lebanon's entrenched political elite and corruption. 'This is the big dilemma,' Mr Barrack said, adding that without sustained support for the Lebanese army, it will remain under-resourced, complicating any efforts to stabilise the country and reduce Hezbollah's hold. 'We need to help bolster the LAF,' Mr Barrack said. 'We can do it hand-in-hand with the Gulf countries, hand-in-hand with Unifil, as we redefine what their role is on a continued basis.'
Dubai Eye
4 hours ago
- Dubai Eye
Israeli missile hits Gaza children collecting water, IDF blames malfunction
At least eight Palestinians, most of them children, were killed and more than a dozen others were wounded in central Gaza on Sunday, local officials said, in an Israeli missile strike which the military said missed its intended target. The Israeli military said it had intended to hit a militant in the area but that a malfunction had caused the missile to fall "dozens of metres from the target". "The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians," it said in a statement, adding that the incident was under review. The strike hit a water distribution point in Nuseirat refugee camp, killing six children and injuring 17 others, said Ahmed Abu Saifan, an emergency physician at Al-Awda Hospital. Water shortages in Gaza have worsened sharply in recent weeks, with fuel shortages causing desalination and sanitation facilities to close, making people dependent on collection centres where they can fill up their plastic containers. In another attack, Palestinian media reported that a prominent hospital consultant was among 12 people killed by an Israeli strike mid-morning on a busy market in Gaza City. Gaza's health ministry said on Sunday that more than 58,000 people had been killed since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in October 2023, with 139 people added to the death toll over the past 24 hours. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its tally, but says over half of those killed are women and children. TALKS BLOCKED Talks aimed at securing a ceasefire appeared to be deadlocked, with the two sides divided over the extent of an eventual Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian enclave, Palestinian and Israeli sources said at the weekend. The indirect talks over a US proposal for a 60-day ceasefire were continuing in Doha, but optimism that surfaced last week of a possible deal has largely faded, with both sides accusing each other of intransigence. The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led fighters stormed into Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages into Gaza. At least 20 of the remaining 50 hostages there are believed to still be alive. Israel's campaign against Hamas has displaced almost the entire population of more than 2 million people, but Gazans say nowhere is safe in the coastal enclave. Early on Sunday, a missile hit a house in Gaza City where a family had moved to after receiving an evacuation order from their home in the southern outskirts.
