World leaders push for Palestinian statehood amid increasingly forceful rejections by Israel
U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said today that refusals to accept the two-state solution were “unacceptable” and that “the right of the Palestinian people to build their own state must be recognized by all.”
The comments, posted on X, follows repeated and increasingly forceful rejections of a Palestinian state from several senior Israeli politicians this week.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “in the future, the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea,” evoking a phrase currently popular among Palestinian liberation campaigners that Israelis have repeatedly claimed is genocidal.
Guterres’ comments also followed repeated demands for a two-state solution by leaders across the world this week, including in the U.S., the U.K. and France.
Writing on X, Stéphane Séjourné, the French foreign minister said, “Palestinians have the right to sovereignty and statehood. France will remain faithful to its commitment to achieve this goal.”
Strikes in Damascus ‘will not go unanswered’ Iran’s president said
An airstrike on the Syrian capital of Damascus which killed at least 5 members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including a high-ranking intelligene officer, prompted a warning from Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
The strike would “not go unanswered,” he said yesterday. Iran has blamed the attack on Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied involvement.
Earlier this month, a strike in Beirut attributed to Israel killed Saleh Al-Arouri, a senior Hamas official.
Medical teams in Gaza ‘cannot respond to the volume and type’ of daily infections, spokesperson says
The collapsing health situation in the Gaza is “catastrophic and painful,” a Health Ministry spokesperson said in a statement today, accusing Israel of “deliberately strangl[ing]” the system.
Medical teams across the strip “cannot respond to the volume and type of daily infections,” spokesperson Dr. Ashraf Al-Qudra said, adding that the accumulation of cases and the lack of treatment facilities in hospitals was accelerating the loss of life.
WHO officials said earlier this week that the health system in Gaza was “collapsing” amid shortages of supplies, staff, and mass displacement leading to the rapid spread of disease.
At least two-thirds of the hospitals in Gaza have ceased functioning entirely as a result of partial or total damage, according to the organization.
Inside underground prison cells in Gaza tunnels where Israel says hostages were kept
Israel’s military says it discovered prison cells where hostages were held in a Hamas tunnel network under the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
NBC News was given access to the cells on Friday, following Israeli troops into the basement of a house and then into a dark tunnel beneath. Each cell had a caged door that could be locked from the outside, a sink, toilet, and a shower — though none had running water. One had a dirty single mattress.
“We’re feeling the way the hostages felt,” Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesman, told NBC News. “It’s dark. It’s hot. It’s wet. It’s lonely. There’s no daylight. You lose the sense of direction, the sense of time.”
Israel’s military said it had discovered hair and other DNA evidence confirming that hostages were held in the cells. Hagari said that the layout of the compound matched descriptions given by hostages released in late November, and the IDF also released pictures of what it said were children’s pictures discovered at the site — drawn by child hostages during their days of captivity.
105 hostages are believed to remain alive and in captivity in the Gaza Strip, along with the bodies of 27 others. 110 hostages have been returned to Israel and other countries, and the bodies of 11 more have been recovered.
U.S. strikes another Houthi anti-ship missile
The U.S. air force has carried out another attack against a Houthi anti-ship missile yesterday, the U.S. Central Command (Centcom) said, the seventh strike against Houthi rebels this month.
Centcom said that that the missile was aimed into the Gulf of Aden and that it “struck and destroyed the missile in self-defense” after determining it was a threat to U.S. Navy ships in the area.
Israeli navy, air force, ground troops continue operations across Gaza as death toll soars
The Israeli military continued its land, sea and air operation in Gaza Saturday and into Sunday across both the north and south of the Gaza strip, the IDF said in a statement today.
In Tuffah in the northern Gaza Strip, ground forces killed 15 people the IDF identified as “terrorists,” and conducted raids on “Hamas structures.” In Khan Younis, snipers assisted by Israel’s air force killed more people, and that they had “located large quantities of weapons inside a Hamas structure.”
Naval forces were assisting troops on the ground with observation and in strikes, the IDF added.
Earlier this month the IDF laid out plans for a more “targeted” phase of the war, but the death toll in Gaza has not abated.
Nearly 180 people were estimated to have been killed within the last 24 hours, sending Gaza’s death toll past 25,000, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
No injuries after 2 British warships collide in a Middle East port
LONDON — Two British warships collided in a harbor in Bahrain, causing damage to the vessels but no injuries, the Royal Navy said.
The HMS Chiddingfold appeared to reverse into the HMS Bangor as it was at a dock, according to video posted on social media.
“Why this happened is still to be established,” said Rear Adm. Edward Ahlgren. “We train our people to the highest standards and rigorously enforce machinery safety standards, but unfortunately incidents of this nature can still happen.”
Ahlgren said an investigation is under way into what went wrong.
The two minehunters have been based in the Middle East to help protect merchant vessels.
The British military last week joined the U.S. in bombing more than a dozen sites used by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, whose relentless attacks on cargo vessels and warships in the Red Sea have disrupted global shipping.
Some U.S. personnel evaluated for brain injury after Iraqi base attacked
A number of U.S. personnel were evaluated for possible traumatic brain injury following a missile and rocket attack on a military base in western Iraq, U.S. Central Command said in a statement Saturday.
The attack was reported at 6:30 p.m. local time at Al-Assad Airbase, where some American personnel are based, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command. The exact conditions of those affected were unavailable; at least one Iraqi service member was injured, Central Command said.
U.S. coalition and Iraqi partners were trying to verify reports of several minor injuries among U.S. personnel and one seriously injured Iraqi Security Force personnel, three defense officials said.
Iraqi military officials said the headquarters of the country’s 29th Brigade, 7th Division were damaged in the attack.
Central Command blamed Iranian-backed militants for the attack that included multiple ballistic missiles and rockets. “Most of the missiles were intercepted by the base’s air defense systems while others impacted on the base,” Central Command said.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed credit for the attack, saying the munitions were launched “in continuation of our approach to resist the American occupation forces in Iraq and the region, and in response to the Zionist entity’s massacres against our people in Gaza.”