Closing summary
This live blog will be closing shortly. You can find all the Guardian’s Middle East coverage here.
Here is a summary of the latest key developments:
United Nations experts said on Wednesday that countries were at a moral crossroads over the conflict in Gaza, facing the choice between acting to halt the violence and witnessing “the annihilation of the Palestinian population” in the territory. “The decision is stark: remain passive and witness the slaughter of innocents or take part in crafting a just resolution,” more than 20 independent UN experts said in a statement, urging the world to avert the “moral abyss we are descending into”.
French president Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday that the humanitarian situation in Gaza had reached “critical” levels unseen in the past and that it was urgent to allow the distribution of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Macron also said that while Israel was entitled to fight a terrorist organisation, it was “unacceptable” it acted without respecting any rules.
The UN’s human rights chief told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Wednesday that Israel’s plan for an expanded offensive in the Gaza Strip represented “a very dangerous moment” for civilians there. “What we see is only more destruction, more hatred, more dehumanisation,” said Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, during a visit to Copenhagen for a UN meeting. “It’s a very dangerous moment for civilians,” he added, criticising the Israeli plan for an expanded offensive in the Gaza Strip.
The blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip “needs to be lifted immediately”, Türk told AFP. “Humanitarian assistance needs to come in. That’s an obligation, that’s an obligation under international law,” he added.
The Dutch government, seen as one of Israel’s most loyal allies in the European Union, is calling for an urgent review of the EU Israel association agreement, the basis for the EU-Israeli free trade agreement, the Dutch foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp told the Guardian. Veldkamp described the Israeli ban on the supply of aid into Gaza as “catastrophic, truly dismal” and in clear breach of international humanitarian law.
Spain will present a draft resolution at the UN general assembly aimed at “proposing urgent measures to stop the killing of innocent civilians and ensure humanitarian aid” in Gaza, prime minister Pedro Sánchez said on Wednesday. Sánchez told the Spanish parliament that “the international community cannot remain indifferent to what is happening” in the Palestinian territory.
Israeli strikes across Gaza killed at least 59 people, including women and children, hospital officials said on Wednesday. The strikes included one attack on Tuesday night on a school sheltering hundreds of displaced Palestinians, which killed 27 people, officials from the al-Aqsa hospital said, including nine women and three children. An early morning strike on another school turned shelter in Gaza City killed 16 people, according to officials at al-Ahli hospital, while strikes on targets in other areas killed at least 16 others.
Aid agencies have criticised Israeli plans to take over distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza and use private companies to get food to Palestinians after two months in which the military has prevented supplies from entering the territory. It comes as Gaza has been hit by a wave of looting and theft as increasingly desperate Palestinians struggle to get food while criminal gangs exploit a breakdown in law and order.
Medical officials in Gaza report rising cases of acute malnutrition, and community kitchens that served 1m meals a day are shutting down for lack of basic essentials. Aid agencies say they have distributed all remaining stocks of food. “By the time a famine is declared, it will be too late. The crime wave is because you have 2 million or more desperate, traumatised people packed together with virtually no policing,” said one humanitarian official in Gaza.
Israel’s hostages coordinator on Wednesday said the number of living captives held in Gaza since Hamas’s October 2023 attack remained unchanged, contradicting US president Donald Trump’s announcement that three more had died. “The terrorist organisation Hamas is currently holding 59 hostages. 24 of them are on the list of living hostages. 35 of them are on the list of hostages whose deaths have been officially confirmed,” Hostages and Missing Persons coordinator Gal Hirsch wrote on X.
Donald Trump plans to announce while on his trip to Saudi Arabia next week that the United States will now refer to the Persian Gulf as the “Arabian Gulf” or the “Gulf of Arabia”, according to two US officials. The move has prompted a push back from Iranian leaders.
Iran has welcomed the end of US attacks on Yemen, its foreign ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday after president Donald Trump announced Washington would stop bombing the Iran-aligned Yemeni Houthi militia. Trump said Yemen’s Houthis had agreed to stop disrupting important shipping lanes in the Middle East.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels said on Wednesday that they would continue targeting Israeli ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden despite a ceasefire deal with the United States. “The waterways are safe for all international ships except Israeli ones,” Abdulmalik Alejri, a member of the Houthi political bureau, told AFP.
US vice-president JD Vance on Wednesday described US talks with Iran as “so far, so good” and said there was a deal to be made that would reintegrate Iran into the global economy while preventing it from getting a nuclear weapon.
Syrian interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa on a visit to France on Wednesday met a whistleblower, previously known only as ‘Caesar’, who smuggled out tens of thousands of pictures depicting the tortured corpses of detainees under ousted ruler Bashar al-Assad. Al-Sharaa and foreign minister Asaad al-Shaibani “met with Farid al-Madhan, known as ’Caesar’, on the sidelines of their visit” to Paris, the Syrian presidency said in a statement, posting images of the meeting.
Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa is to meet French leader Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, marking his first visit to Europe since overthrowing longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad. In Paris, al-Sharaa will discuss postwar reconstruction and economic cooperation during his meeting with Macron, a Syrian government official has said.
The Israeli government “must immediately abandon its plans for expanded military operations … in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip”, said Amnesty International. The organisation said the plans, including annexing territory and forcibly displacing Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip, would “gravely violate international law”.
An Israeli drone strike on a car in southern Lebanon killed a Hamas official early on Wednesday, authorities said. Hamas said in a statement that Khaled Ahmad al-Ahmad, who was a member of its military wing, was killed while he was on his way to a mosque to attend dawn prayers. The Israeli military confirmed that it had targeted al-Ahmad, saying he was a commander with Hamas in south Lebanon and was behind several attacks against Israel.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has set up a backchannel for talks between Israel and Syria, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Syria’s new rulers seek regional help to manage an increasingly hostile relationship with their southern neighbour. The indirect contacts, which have not been previously reported, are focused on security and intelligence matters and confidence-building between two states with no official relations, a person with direct knowledge of the matter, a Syrian security source and a regional intelligence official told Reuters.
Greece backs an Arab plan for the reconstruction of Gaza once a ceasefire is achieved, prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Wednesday. “The first priority is for hostilities to stop and restore the flow of humanitarian aid to civilians,” Mitsotakis said after meeting Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Athens.
UK firms have exported thousands of military items including munitions to Israel despite the government suspending key arms export licences to the country in September, new analysis of trade data shows. The research also raises questions over whether the UK continued to sell F-35 parts directly to Israel in breach of an undertaking only to sell them to the US manufacturers Lockheed Martin as a way of ensuring the fighter jet’s global supply chain was not disrupted, something the government said was essential for national security and Nato.
More than a dozen senior Conservative MPs and peers have written to the prime minister calling for the UK to immediately recognise Palestine as a state, breaking ranks with their own party to do so. Seven MPs and six members of the House of Lords have signed the letter to Keir Starmer urging him to defy the Israeli government and give formal recognition to Palestine in advance of key UN talks next month.
Protesters interrupted the opening minutes of Barclays’ annual general meeting (AGM) in London on Wednesday. One protester said that Barclays “provides loans worth billions to armed companies”, while people outside gathered to shout “free Palestine” and “stop arming Israel”. Barclays’ chair, Nigel Higgins, responded that the bank would be “more than willing to answer questions on the topic during the Q&A” session.
Some global airlines have again halted their flights to and from Tel Aviv after a missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels towards Israel on Sunday landed near the country’s main international airport. KLM, Ryanair, Wizz Air, United Airlines, Air India and the Lufthansa group are among the airlines that cancelled flights after Sunday’s attack.
Israel’s attack on the airport in Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital Sana’a destroyed terminal buildings and caused $500m in damage, its director told Houthi media on Wednesday. He said earlier in a statement on X that the airport was suspending all flights until further notice after sustaining “severe damage” in the Israeli strikes.
Israeli strikes across Gaza kill at least 59 people, say hospital officials
Israeli strikes across Gaza killed at least 59 people, including women and children, hospital officials said on Wednesday, reports the Associated Press (AP)
The strikes included one attack on Tuesday night on a school sheltering hundreds of displaced Palestinians, which killed 27 people, officials from the al-Aqsa hospital said, including nine women and three children. It was the fifth time since the war began that the school in central Gaza has been struck.
An early morning strike on another school turned shelter in Gaza City killed 16 people, according to officials at al-Ahli hospital, while strikes on targets in other areas killed at least 16 others.
A large column of smoke rose and fires pierced the dark skies above the school shelter in Bureij, a built-up urban refugee camp. Paramedics and rescuers rushed to pull people out from the blaze, reports the AP.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strikes, according to the AP.
Spain seeking 'urgent measures' at UN to 'stop killing' in Gaza, PM Sánchez says
Spain will present a draft resolution at the UN general assembly aimed at “proposing urgent measures to stop the killing of innocent civilians and ensure humanitarian aid” in Gaza, prime minister Pedro Sánchez said on Wednesday.
Sánchez told the Spanish parliament that “the international community cannot remain indifferent to what is happening” in the Palestinian territory, where Israel resumed its offensive against Hamas in March after a two-month ceasefire, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The socialist premier has been one of the most outspoken critics of Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, which has caused shortages of food, water, fuel and medicine. Spain also broke with some European allies and infuriated Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government last year by recognising a Palestinian state.
US vice-president JD Vance on Wednesday described US talks with Iran as “so far, so good” and said there was a deal to be made that would reintegrate Iran into the global economy while preventing it from getting a nuclear weapon, reports Reuters.
Vance said president Donald Trump loathed nuclear proliferation and would be open to sitting down with Russia and China in the coming years to discuss reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world.
UN experts demand action to avert 'annihilation' of Palestinians in Gaza
United Nations experts said on Wednesday that countries were at a moral crossroads over the conflict in Gaza, facing the choice between acting to halt the violence and witnessing “the annihilation of the Palestinian population” in the territory, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“The decision is stark: remain passive and witness the slaughter of innocents or take part in crafting a just resolution,” more than 20 independent UN experts said in a statement, urging the world to avert the “moral abyss we are descending into”.
Here are some of the latest images coming in via the newswires:
Updated
Iran has welcomed the end of US attacks on Yemen, its foreign ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday after president Donald Trump announced Washington would stop bombing the Iran-aligned Yemeni Houthi militia, reports Reuters.
Trump said Yemen’s Houthis had agreed to stop disrupting important shipping lanes in the Middle East. Under the agreement, neither the US nor the Houthis would target the other, including US vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden’s narrowest point, the strait known as Bab al-Mandab, mediator Oman said.
Syrian interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa on a visit to France on Wednesday met a whistleblower, previously known only as ‘Caesar’, who smuggled out tens of thousands of pictures depicting the tortured corpses of detainees under ousted ruler Bashar al-Assad, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Al-Sharaa and foreign minister Asaad al-Shaibani “met with Farid al-Madhan, known as ’Caesar’, on the sidelines of their visit” to Paris, the Syrian presidency said in a statement, posting images of the meeting.
Syrian state media earlier reported that al-Sharaa had arrived in Paris, where he was due to meet French leader Emmanuel Macron, on his first visit to Europe since overthrowing Assad in December.
Madhan revealed his identity in February during an interview with Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera after being known for years only as a Syrian military photographer under the pseudonym ‘Caesar’.
He fled Syria in 2013 with 55,000 graphic images taken after Syria’s war erupted two years earlier with the brutal repression of anti-government protests, smuggled in a flash drive. The photos, authenticated by experts, show corpses tortured and starved to death in Syrian prisons.
He testified to a US Congress committee and his photographs inspired a 2020 US law which imposed economic sanctions on Syria and judicial proceedings in Europe against Assad’s entourage.
Germany, the Netherlands and France have since 2022 convicted several top officials from the Syrian intelligence service and militias.
After war erupted, Madhan told Al Jazeera he was tasked with “taking pictures of victims of detention”. He had said that these included “old men, women and children, who were detained at security checkpoints in Damascus, and from protest squares that called for freedom and dignity”.
He said he postponed his defection from the government forces and fleeing the country in order to be able to “collect the largest number of pictures documenting and incriminating the Syrian regime apparatuses of committing crimes against humanity”.
In March, al-Sharaa signed into force a constitutional declaration for a five-year transitional period during which a “transitional justice commission” would be formed to “determine the means for accountability, establish the facts, and provide justice to victims and survivors” of the former government’s misdeeds.
In Paris, al-Sharaa will discuss postwar reconstruction and economic cooperation during his meeting with Macron, a Syrian government official has said.
Syria’s new authorities are seeking the full lifting of Assad-era sanctions but are under increasing pressure from Europe to show their commitment to protecting minority rights.
Updated
Donald Trump plans to announce while on his trip to Saudi Arabia next week that the United States will now refer to the Persian Gulf as the “Arabian Gulf” or the “Gulf of Arabia”, according to two US officials.
The move has prompted a push back from Iranian leaders.
On Wednesday, Iran’s current foreign minister weighed in, saying that names of Mideast waterways do “not imply ownership by any particular nation, but rather reflects a shared respect for the collective heritage of humanity”.
“Politically motivated attempts to alter the historically established name of the Persian Gulf are indicative of hostile intent toward Iran and its people, and are firmly condemned,” Abbas Araghchi wrote on the social platform X.
“Any short-sighted step in this connection will have no validity or legal or geographical effect, it will only bring the wrath of all Iranians from all walks of life and political persuasion in Iran, the US and across the world.”
Arab nations have pushed for a change to the geographic name of the body of water off the southern coast of Iran, while Iran has maintained its historic ties to the gulf.
The two US officials spoke with the Associated Press on Tuesday on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. The White House and national security council did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
The Israeli government “must immediately abandon its plans for expanded military operations … in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip”, said Amnesty International.
The organisation said the plans, including annexing territory and forcibly displacing Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip, would “gravely violate international law”.
Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns, said:
Israel’s declared intentions to expand its already devastating military offensive, further entrench its unlawful occupation of the Gaza Strip, and forcibly displace Palestinians could inflict a final blow leading to the destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, who for months on end have been struggling to survive amid Israel’s ongoing genocide.
Any attempts to weaponise humanitarian aid, use it to coerce forced displacement, or establish discriminatory aid distribution zones would violate international law and must be rejected.
The international community must reject these dangerous plans and pressure Israel to comply with its obligations under international law and ensure unhindered humanitarian aid access throughout Gaza.
Humanitarian situation in Gaza 'critical', says France's Macron
French president Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday that the humanitarian situation in Gaza had reached “critical” levels unseen in the past and that it was urgent to allow the distribution of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.
Macron also said that while Israel was entitled to fight a terrorist organisation, it was “unacceptable” it acted without respecting any rules.
Israel announced plans on Monday to take over the distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza as part of an expanded operation it says could include seizing the entire Gaza Strip.
Greece backs an Arab plan for the reconstruction of Gaza once a ceasefire is achieved, prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Wednesday.
“The first priority is for hostilities to stop and restore the flow of humanitarian aid to civilians,” Mitsotakis said after meeting Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Athens.
He added that the plan was a realistic basis of discussion for the day after the war.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has set up a backchannel for talks between Israel and Syria, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Syria’s new rulers seek regional help to manage an increasingly hostile relationship with their southern neighbour.
The indirect contacts, which have not been previously reported, are focused on security and intelligence matters and confidence-building between two states with no official relations, a person with direct knowledge of the matter, a Syrian security source and a regional intelligence official told Reuters.
The first source described the effort, which began days after Syrian president Ahmed Sharaa visited the UAE on 13 April, as currently focused on “technical matters,” and said there was no limit to what may be discussed.
The senior Syrian security source told Reuters the backchannel was limited strictly to security-related issues, focusing on several counter-terrorism files. The source said that purely military matters, particularly those concerning Israeli army activities in Syria, fell outside the scope of the current channel.
The intelligence source said UAE security officials, Syrian intelligence officials and former Israeli intelligence officials were involved in the mechanism, among others. They spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.
Syria’s presidency and the UAE foreign ministry did not respond to a request by Reuters for comment. The Israeli prime minister’s office declined to comment, it added.
The mediation effort preceded Israeli strikes in Syria last week, including one just 500 metres from the presidential palace in Damascus, and Reuters could not establish if the mechanism has been used since the strikes occurred.
Israel has framed the strikes as a message to Syria’s new rulers in response to threats against Syria’s Druze minority.
Informal mediation between Israel and Syria aimed at calming the situation has taken place in the last week via other channels, according to one of the sources and a regional diplomat. They declined to elaborate, reports Reuters.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels said on Wednesday that they would continue targeting Israeli ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden despite a ceasefire deal with the United States.
“The waterways are safe for all international ships except Israeli ones,” Abdulmalik Alejri, a member of the Houthi political bureau, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim said on Wednesday that the group insists on a “comprehensive agreement” to end the war with Israel in Gaza, now in its 19th month.
Naim told Agence France-Presse (AFP):
There are desperate attempts ahead of [US president Donald] Trump’s visit to the region, through the crime of starvation, the ongoing genocide and threats of expanding military operations, to force through a partial deal that would return some Israeli captives in exchange for a limited number of days of food and water – without any guarantees from any party to actually end the war.
Iran is aghast at reports from the US that Donald Trump is planning for the US to offer Saudi Arabia to change the name of the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Arabia, a move that would cause deep offence in Iran and have large diplomatic repercussions.
There has been a decades long dispute between Arab states and Iran about the appropriate terminology for the stretch of water, but historically dating back to the Greeks it has been called the Persian Gulf.
Intermediaries are trying to persuade Trump of the diplomatic folly of the move just as Iranian diplomats are trying to convince hardliners in Iran that Trump is serious about negotiating a balanced nuclear deal with Iran.
He would make the announcement as a gift to Saudi Arabia as part of his three day tour in the Gulf.
One source said:
It is the height of stupidity, but we are trying to tell the Iranians that Trump will be there for four years, but the Persian Gulf will be there for thousands of years.
The source added that Trump believes the move might be enough to persuade Arab states of the value of normalisation of relations with Israel, one of the great second term goals of Trump diplomacy.
Trump has already renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
Updated
Protesters have interrupted the opening minutes of Barclays’ annual general meeting (AGM) on Wednesday, reports the PA news agency.
The disruption broke out at the beginning of the shareholder meeting in London, with groups of people being pulled out by security at the request of the bank’s chair.
One protester said that Barclays “provides loans worth billions to armed companies”, while people outside gathered to shout “free Palestine” and “stop arming Israel”. Another was shouting “Barclays funds Shell; Barclays funds hell” before being removed by security.
Barclays’ chair, Nigel Higgins, responded that the bank would be “more than willing to answer questions on the topic during the Q&A” session, according to the PA news agency.
Updated
Israel’s Gaza plan 'dangerous moment' for civilians, says UN official
The UN’s human rights chief told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Wednesday that Israel’s plan for an expanded offensive in the Gaza Strip represented “a very dangerous moment” for civilians there.
“What we see is only more destruction, more hatred, more dehumanisation,” said Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, during a visit to Copenhagen for a UN meeting.
“It’s a very dangerous moment for civilians,” he added, criticising the Israeli plan for an expanded offensive in the Gaza Strip.
On Monday, Israel announced an expanded military campaign, which an Israeli official said would entail the “conquest” of the Palestinian territory. On Tuesday, Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said this meant that the Gaza Strip would be “entirely destroyed”.
Several countries and world leaders have already condemned the plan, and Türk said the parties needed to “come to a place of reason and peace, and not just of continuous fighting and war”. The war needed to end, he said, there needed to be a ceasefire, a political solution with all the hostages “released unconditionally and immediately”.
Hamas has said that ceasefire talks are pointless at this stage, reports AFP.
The blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip “needs to be lifted immediately”, Türk told AFP. “Humanitarian assistance needs to come in. That’s an obligation, that’s an obligation under international law,” he added.
Türk argued that the current situation worldwide underlined the need to reaffirm the principles of international cooperation. The UN security council “is not functioning well” to address “the big crisis of our time”, he added.
“With what is happening at the moment, in this current geopolitical moment, it is all the more important to come back to the principles, the values, to the norms, to the institutions, because they have served humanity well for 80 years,” said Türk.
“And if we lose them, we lose a lot of what has been actually possible by way of progress, human progress, development, and also when it comes to humanitarian action and human rights,” he added.
He hoped “that the world comes together again, shows the political leadership … including the most powerful countries around the world, that they act in favour of peace and not in favour of war”.
Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa is to meet French leader Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, marking his first visit to Europe since overthrowing longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad, despite alarm over deadly clashes that have shadowed the new authorities’ first months in power.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that the visit comes with al-Sharaa and his fellow top officials, who have roots in the al-Qaida jihadist network, under pressure from Europe to show they are serious about protecting human rights as Damascus seeks the full lifting of Assad-era sanctions.
Sectarian clashes in March, in which more than 1,700 people were killed, mostly among the Alawite minority, drew international condemnation and doubts over Syria’s new path.
By welcoming Sharaa, Macron hopes to help the authorities on the way to “a free, stable, sovereign Syria that respects all components of Syrian society,” a French presidential official, asking not to be named, told AFP. The official said France was aware of “the past” of certain Syrian leaders and was demanding that there be “no complacency” with “terrorist movements” operating in Syria.
“If we are inviting him [Sharaa] here, it is precisely to ask him to go further in the fight against impunity,” foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot told broadcaster TF1.
More than a dozen senior Conservative MPs and peers have written to the prime minister calling for the UK to immediately recognise Palestine as a state, breaking ranks with their own party to do so.
Seven MPs and six members of the House of Lords have signed the letter to Keir Starmer urging him to defy the Israeli government and give formal recognition to Palestine in advance of key UN talks next month.
The letter, which has been seen by the Guardian, was written in late March soon after Israel broke its peace agreement with Hamas, diminishing hopes of an eventual two-state solution. On Monday, the Israeli cabinet went one step further, approving a plan to “conquer” the Gaza Strip and occupy most if not all of it.
In the letter, which was organised by the former minister Kit Malthouse, the group writes:
For decades, the Palestinian people have endured occupation, displacement and systemic restrictions on their basic freedoms.
Recognising Palestine would affirm our nation’s commitment to upholding the principles of justice, self-determination and equal rights. It would send a clear message that Britain stands against indefinite occupation and supports the Palestinian people’s legitimate aspirations.
The letter continues:
Recognition should not be treated as a distant bargaining chip but as a necessary step to reinforce international law and diplomacy. Prime minister, we stand ready to offer our public support for this decision.
This is an opportunity for Britain to show leadership, to be on the right side of history and to uphold the principles we claim to champion. More than 140 UN member states have already recognised Palestine – it is time for the United Kingdom to do the same.
Some global airlines have again halted their flights to and from Tel Aviv after a missile fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels towards Israel on Sunday landed near the country’s main international airport.
Foreign airlines had begun to resume flights to Israel after a ceasefire deal with Palestinian militant group Hamas in January. Many carriers had halted them for much of the last year and a half since the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023.
KLM, Ryanair, Wizz Air, United Airlines, Air India and the Lufthansa group are among the airlines that have cancelled flights after Sunday’s attack, according to Reuters.
Updated
Israeli drone strike in southern Lebanon kills Hamas official
An Israeli drone strike on a car in southern Lebanon killed an official with the Palestinian militant group Hamas early on Wednesday, authorities said, reports the Associated Press (AP).
Hamas said in a statement that Khaled Ahmad al-Ahmad, who was a member of its military wing, was killed while he was on his way to a mosque to attend dawn prayers.
The Israeli military confirmed that it had targeted al-Ahmad, saying he was a commander with Hamas in south Lebanon and was behind several attacks against Israel.
Since Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Israel’s military has targeted members of the group in Lebanon, where Hamas has a military presence.
The group has also carried out rocket attacks from Lebanon since the Israel-Hamas war began, and in recent weeks Lebanese authorities detained several men linked to Hamas on suspicion of firing rockets toward Israel.
According to the AP, Lebanese authorities warned Hamas last week that it would face the “harshest measures,” if it carried out any attacks from Lebanon.
Netherlands urges review of EU-Israel trade deal over ‘catastrophic’ Gaza aid block
The Dutch government, seen as one of Israel’s most loyal allies in the European Union, is calling for an urgent review of the EU Israel association agreement, the basis for the EU-Israeli free trade agreement, the Dutch foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp told the Guardian.
Veldkamp described the Israeli ban on the supply of aid into Gaza as “catastrophic, truly dismal” and in clear breach of international humanitarian law.
He has written to the head of the European Union foreign service Kaja Kallas requesting an urgent review, saying he believes Israel is now in breach of the association agreement.
Veldkamp, a former Dutch ambassador to Israel, said he expects the issue to be discussed at a two day informal EU foreign ministers meeting in Poland starting Wednesday.
The EU is Israel’s largest trade partner. The Dutch government has in the past led moves to block discussion of the association agreement’s suspension, a lever most persistently advocated by Ireland and Spain.
Explaining his position Veldkamp said:
You cannot starve the people of the Gaza Strip. It is against international law. It’s morally wrong. It’s dangerous. I don’t think it’s in Israel’s own interest.
Chances for a ceasefire appeared “very, very slim,” he said, making the situation “unbearable”.
Israel says number of living Gaza hostages unchanged, contradicting Trump
Israel’s hostages coordinator on Wednesday said the number of living captives held in Gaza since Hamas’s October 2023 attack remained unchanged, contradicting US president Donald Trump’s announcement that three more had died, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“The terrorist organisation Hamas is currently holding 59 hostages. 24 of them are on the list of living hostages. 35 of them are on the list of hostages whose deaths have been officially confirmed,” Hostages and Missing Persons coordinator Gal Hirsch wrote on X.
On Tuesday, Trump said that three more hostages held by Hamas in Gaza had died. “We want to try and get as many hostages saved as possible,” he said. “This is a terrible situation.”
The Israeli military, in its most recent update, said that out of the 251 people abducted by militants on 7 October 2023, 58 are still held in Gaza including 34 believed to be dead. Hamas is also holding the remains of an Israeli soldier killed in a previous war in Gaza in 2014.
Trump, who heads next week to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, has repeatedly demanded the return of the hostages.
Israeli strikes kill 13 in Gaza school housing displaced families, medics say
Israeli strikes on a school housing displaced families in northern Gaza killed 13 Palestinians on Wednesday, local health authorities said, as Israeli forces continued to demolish homes and buildings in Rafah in the south of the territory.
According to Reuters, medics said two strikes targeted the Karama school in Tuffah, a suburb of Gaza City. Among those killed was a local journalist, Nour Abdu, Palestinian media said. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli army.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said the death of Abdu on Wednesday raised to 213 the number of Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli fire since the war began.
Two Israeli airstrikes on another school, housing displaced people in central Gaza, killed at least 29 people, including women and children, on Tuesday, local health authorities said. The Israeli military said it struck “terrorists” operating from a command centre in the compound, reports Reuters.
Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, said on Wednesday their fighters had detonated a pre-planted minefield targeting an Israeli armoured force east of Khan Younis. They said they inflicted casualties, followed by mortar shelling of the area.
In the nearby area of Rafah, near the border with Egypt, residents and Hamas sources said Israeli forces, who have taken control of the city, continued to blow up and demolish houses and buildings.
Israeli troops have already taken over an area amounting to around a third of Gaza, displacing the population and building watchtowers and surveillance posts on cleared ground the military has described as security zones.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday an expanded offensive against Hamas would be “intensive” after his security cabinet approved plans that may include seizing the entire Gaza Strip and controlling aid. Israeli officials have said Rafah could be used as a potential new humanitarian zone.
UK sent Israel thousands of military items despite export ban, study finds
UK firms have exported thousands of military items including munitions to Israel despite the government suspending key arms export licences to the country in September, new analysis of trade data shows.
The research also raises questions over whether the UK continued to sell F-35 parts directly to Israel in breach of an undertaking only to sell them to the US manufacturers Lockheed Martin as a way of ensuring the fighter jet’s global supply chain was not disrupted, something the government said was essential for national security and Nato.
The findings have led the former Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell to call for a full investigation, adding it was a resigning matter if the foreign secretary, David Lammy, was shown to have misled parliament in breach of the ministerial code when he told MPs in September that much of what the UK sends to Israel was “defensive in nature”.
McDonnell said:
The government has shrouded its arms supplies to Israel in secrecy. They must finally come clean in response to this extremely concerning evidence and halt all British arms exports to Israel to ensure no British-made weapons are used in Netanyahu’s new and terrifying plans to annex the Gaza Strip and ethnically cleanse the land.
The research – conducted jointly by the Palestinian Youth Movement, Progressive International and Workers for a Free Palestine – uses Israeli tax authority import data to try to uncover what the continuance of the 200 arms export licences has allowed Israel to import. It covers the first seven months of the Labour ban to March.
Israeli military on Wednesday reported that it had intercepted an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) launched from the east.
Sirens were sounded as part of standard protocol, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said, reports Reuters.
Updated
US-Houthi ceasefire deal does not include Israel, says Houthi spokesperson
A ceasefire deal between Yemen’s Houthis and the United States does not include operations against Israel “in any way, shape or form,” the group’s chief negotiator Mohammed Abdulsalam told Reuters on Wednesday.
Israel attack on Sana'a airport caused $500m in damage, says its director
Israel’s attack on the airport in Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital Sana’a destroyed terminal buildings and caused $500m in damage, its director told Houthi media on Wednesday, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
He said earlier in a statement on X that the airport was suspending all flights until further notice after sustaining “severe damage” in the Israeli strikes.
The strikes came after a Houthi missile gouged a crater near Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport on Sunday.
“Around $500m in losses were caused by the Israeli aggression on Sana’a airport,” its general director Khaled alShaief told the rebels’ al-Masirah television.
“The enemy destroyed the terminals at Sana’a airport, including all equipment and devices,” he said, adding that a warehouse was also “completely levelled”. Yemenia Airways lost three planes, he said, adding that six planes in total had been destroyed.
“There are alternatives to temporarily reopen the airport, and we need a long time to rehabilitate it and restore operations,” he said.
On Tuesday, the Houthi rebels and the United States agreed a ceasefire that would ensure freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, mediator Oman said. But the deal that was announced does not mention Israel, with the rebels vowing to respond to Tuesday’s strikes.
Houthi rebels have been attacking Israel and merchant shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden since late 2023, saying they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians as the Gaza war rages.
The Yemeni rebels had paused their attacks during a recent two-month ceasefire in the Gaza war. In March, they threatened to resume attacks on shipping over Israel’s aid blockade on the Gaza Strip, triggering a response from the US military, which began attacking the rebels with near-daily airstrikes.
Medical officials in Gaza report rising cases of acute malnutrition
Medical officials in Gaza report rising cases of acute malnutrition, and community kitchens that served 1m meals a day are shutting down for lack of basic essentials. Aid agencies say they have distributed all remaining stocks of food. Dozens of bakeries that supplied vital free bread closed last month.
“By the time a famine is declared, it will be too late. The crime wave is because you have 2 million or more desperate, traumatised people packed together with virtually no policing,” said one humanitarian official in Gaza.
Gaza City has been worst hit by the crime wave, though some incidents have been reported elsewhere in the territory.
One group of armed men broke into two or three bakeries in Gaza City last week, hoping to find flour, then targeted a soup kitchen when they found nothing. In another incident, thieves took a community kitchen’s last stocks as well as all its pots and pans.
In a third theft, staff at a distribution site run by an NGO were held at knifepoint as it was looted, while the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa) said it had to evacuate staff on Wednesday after thousands of Palestinians breached its Gaza City field office and took medications. Louise Wateridge, a senior emergency officer at Unrwa, called the looting “the direct result of unbearable and prolonged deprivation”.
Witnesses described clashes between armed thieves and security guards in recent days.
Anas Raafat, a 25-year-old lawyer in Gaza City, said he and his family had been woken when armed gangs attacked a warehouse of a humanitarian aid organisation nearby. “By a miracle, none of my family members were injured. We lay flat on the ground for over two hours during the gunfire,” he said.
You can read more of the reporting by Jason Burke in Tel Aviv and Malak A Tantesh in Gaza here:
Israel’s aid plan, combined with plans for moving much of the Gaza Strip’s population to the south, has reinforced fears that the overall intention is full occupation, reports Reuters.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Tuesday the plan was “the opposite of what is needed” and other agencies also questioned the plan, which they have only been briefed on verbally, according to two aid officials.
“It is totally wrong that a party to the conflict – in this case Israel – should be in control of lifesaving aid for civilians,” Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council said on the social media platform X.
“This new Israeli aid plan is both totally insufficient to meet the needs in Gaza, and a complete breach of all humanitarian principles,” he said.
Aid agencies criticise Israeli plans for Gaza aid distribution as territory faces wave of looting, theft and violence
Aid agencies have criticised Israeli plans to take over distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza and use private companies to get food to Palestinians after two months in which the military has prevented supplies from entering the territory.
It comes as Gaza has been hit by a wave of looting and theft as increasingly desperate Palestinians struggle to get food while criminal gangs exploit a breakdown in law and order.
Aid officials and witnesses in the devastated territory describe armed men attacking humanitarian warehouses, firefights over remaining food stores and a spate of stealing of supplies vital for survival, such as solar chargers, batteries, phones and cooking pots.
Gaza is on the brink of catastrophe after two months of a total blockade by Israel, aid workers say, with many families down to one meal a day. Spoiled flour is being sold for 30 or 40 times its usual price and no fuel is available other than wood or discarded plastic.
Israel has provided few details about its Gaza aid distribution plans, announced on Monday as part of an expanded operation that it says could include seizing the entire Gaza Strip.
For the moment, the blockade will continue until a large-scale evacuation of the population from northern and central areas to the south, where there will be a specially designated area cleared near the southern city of Rafah, Israeli officials have said.
More on this story in a moment, but first, here are some other key developments:
Medical officials in Gaza report rising cases of acute malnutrition, and community kitchens that served 1m meals a day are shutting down for lack of basic essentials. Aid agencies say they have distributed all remaining stocks of food. Dozens of bakeries that supplied vital free bread closed last month.
An Israeli government minister has vowed that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed” as a result of an Israeli military victory, and that its Palestinian population will “leave in great numbers to third countries”, raising fears of ethnic cleansing in the occupied territory. The declaration on Tuesday by the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, came a day after Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan for Operation Gideon’s Chariots, which an Israeli official said would entail “the conquest of the Gaza Strip and the holding of the territories”.
The US will halt its bombing campaign against Yemen’s Houthis after the Iran-aligned group agreed to stop targeting shipping in the Red Sea. The halt – announced by the US president, Donald Trump, during an Oval Office meeting with Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, came on a day in which Israel claimed its jets had fully disabled Yemen’s main airport, including three civilian aircraft on the ground, in retaliation for a missile strike on Sunday that hit within the perimeter of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport.
Israel’s attack on the airport in Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital Sana’a destroyed terminal buildings and caused $500m in damage, its director told Houthi media on Wednesday. He said earlier in a statement on X that the airport was suspending all flights until further notice after sustaining “severe damage” in the Israeli strikes.
UK firms have exported thousands of military items including munitions to Israel despite the government suspending key arms export licences to the country in September, new analysis of trade data shows. The research also raises questions over whether the UK continued to sell F-35 parts directly to Israel in breach of an undertaking only to sell them to the US manufacturers Lockheed Martin as a way of ensuring the fighter jet’s global supply chain was not disrupted, something the government said was essential for national security and Nato.
More than a dozen senior Conservative MPs and peers have written to the prime minister calling for the UK to immediately recognise Palestine as a state, breaking ranks with their own party to do so. Seven MPs and six members of the House of Lords have signed the letter to Keir Starmer urging him to defy the Israeli government and give formal recognition to Palestine in advance of key UN talks next month.
Sudan’s security and defence council has declared that it will break diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates over its alleged backing of the paramilitary Sudanese Rapid Support Forces. During a televised speech on Tuesday, Sudan’s defence minister, Yassin Ibrahim, said Sudan was “severing diplomatic relations with the UAE” and recalling its ambassador, claiming the Gulf nation had breached Sudan’s sovereignty through its RSF “proxy”, which has been fighting the army in a bloody civil war since April 2023.
