23:10 In an interview with Israel’s Channel 14 network, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that Israel is only getting started in its strikes against the Houthis in Yemen.
“We’re just getting started with them,” he says. “We won’t allow them [to attack Israel] these days, today and any other day. We will strike them to the bitter end until they learn.”
Netanyahu also says he is still “working toward” reaching a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia: “This goal hasn’t gone away; it’s still here,” he says, claiming that if he had remained in power following the 2021 Israeli election, it would have already happened.
23:00: US officials confirmed they requested and secured the retraction of an independent famine monitor's warning about an imminent famine in northern Gaza.
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net) issued the original alert this week, cautioning that starvation deaths in northern Gaza could reach famine levels as early as next month. The report attributed the crisis to Israel’s "near-total blockade" of food and water supplies.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID), which funds FEWS Net, told the Associated Press it had sought the report's withdrawal. USAID officials cited the need to further review the data for discrepancies and emphasized the importance of thorough analysis before publication.
The retraction comes as Israel's war and siege on Gaza intensify, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and a worsening humanitarian crisis across the Palestinian enclave. Northern Gaza, the focal point of Israel’s offensive since 6 October 2024, has seen conditions deteriorate rapidly. Health workers in the region have described the situation as a "genocide within a genocide."
The move has raised concerns among humanitarian and human rights officials, who fear potential US political interference in global famine monitoring systems. The US Embassy in Israel and the State Department declined to comment, while FEWS Net representatives did not respond to inquiries.
The now-withdrawn FEWS Net report warned that unless Israeli policies change, starvation and related deaths in northern Gaza could reach between two and 15 per day sometime between January and March. According to international standards, a mortality rate of two or more deaths per 10,000 people per day constitutes a famine.
FEWS Net, established by USAID in the 1980s, is intended to provide independent, neutral, and data-driven assessments of hunger crises worldwide, including in conflict zones. Despite its reliance on US funding, the monitor is tasked with maintaining impartiality in its analysis.
22:40 Five staff members at one of northern Gaza's last functioning hospitals were killed in an Israeli strike on Thursday, the facility's director reported, marking more than two months into an Israeli assault in the area.
Hossam Abu Safiya, head of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, said that "an Israeli strike resulted in five martyrs among the hospital staff."
Earlier, local sources reported that an Israeli strike killed two paramedics near Kamal Adwan as they were responding to an emergency call.
In a separate incident, an Israeli drone strike near the hospital’s entrance killed one civilian, according to Palestinian news agency WAFA.
Since 6 October 2024, Israel has carried out a deadly assault in northern Gaza, where health workers have described the situation as "genocide within a genocide."
22:30 Syria’s security forces clashed with remnants of pro-Assad "militias" in the village of Balqsa in Homs province, state news agency SANA reported.
Sky News Arabia has reported that more than 600 gunmen loyal to the former regime are currently located in the Balqsa area of western Homs.
Earlier today, SANA said that Syria's security forces launched an operation against pro-Assad "militias" in the western province of Tartus, claiming to have "neutralized a certain number" of armed individuals loyal to the former regime.
21:50 Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday strongly condemned Israeli airstrikes on the main airport in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, as well as key energy and port infrastructure.
Esmail Baghaei, a spokesman of the Foreign Ministry, said Thursday's Israeli strikes were part of a policy for "destroying and weakening Islamic countries” and urged “immediate action” by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation as well as other regional and international bodies.
Baghaei said the U.S. and Britain were “accomplices” in the strikes and had supported them, adding that the attacks were a breach of all international regulations and norms, particularly the U.N. Charter. It also criticized “passivity” by the UN toward Israel breaching international law.
21:20 At least 15 people were killed and dozens more injured in the latest Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, which targeted two residential homes in Gaza City and its southern and northern districts.
WAFA correspondent reported that an airstrike hit a home in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood. The targeted home, belonging to the Hathat family, was destroyed. According to local sources, at least 13 people, including women and children, were killed in the strike, and several others were wounded.
20:20 Medical sources told Al Jazeera that at least 44 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes targeting multiple areas across the Gaza Strip since early Thursday.
20:00 A Syria war monitor said Thursday the country's new authorities had arrested a military justice official under the ousted government of President Bashar al-Assad who issued death sentences in the notorious Saydnaya prison.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Mohammed Kanjo Hassan was arrested in the coastal Tartus province, a stronghold of Assad's clan, along with 20 members of his entourage.
Kanjo Hassan headed Syria's military field court from 2011 to 2014, the first three years of the war that began with Assad's crackdown on Arab Spring-inspired democracy protests, according to Diab Serriya, co-founder of the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison.
He was later promoted to chief of military justice nationwide, he said, adding that he sentenced "thousands of people" to death.
Serriya's group estimates that Kanjo Hassan made $150 million from bribes paid by relatives of detainees desperate for information on their loved ones.
Syria's exiled National Coalition of opposition forces welcomed the arrest, describing it as an "important step on the path to justice and the prosecution of those who committed crimes against the Syrian people".
19:30 The Palestinian resistance group Hamas condemned Israel's strikes on the Houthi rebels in Yemen on Thursday, calling it an aggression against its ally.
"Hamas condemns the brutal terrorist aggression carried out by the Zionist enemy against our brothers from Yemen, targeting civilian sites including Sanaa airport and the port of Hodeida", the group said in a statement.
19:00 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will continue striking the Houthis in Yemen “until the job is done” after several people were reportedly killed in Israeli strikes on Sanaa International Airport and three ports along the western coast.
18:30 Gaza's health ministry has reported the deaths of four newborns due to cold and low temperatures in the past 72 hours.
"An infant was martyred in the Gaza Strip today due to cold and low temperatures. He is the fourth infant to die from cold in the past 72 hours," Palestinian news agency Wafa reported on Thursday.
The latest death comes as Israel continues its tight siege on Gaza, blocking the entry of water, food, fuel, and medical supplies into the war-torn territory.
Earlier, the chief paediatric doctor at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis said a three-week-old girl "was brought to the emergency room with a severe temperature drop, which led to her death."
18:00 The head of the World Health Organization, who was at the Sanaa airport in Yemen amid an Israeli bombardment on Thursday, said there was damage to infrastructure, but he remained safe.
"One of our plane's crew members was injured. At least two people were reported killed at the airport," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on X.
He added that the UN staff were also safe, but their departure was delayed until repairs could be made.
Tedros was in Yemen on a mission to seek the release of detained UN staff and assess the health and humanitarian situation in the war-torn country.
He said the mission "concluded today", and "we continue to call for the detainees' immediate release."
While about to board their flight, he said, "The airport came under aerial bombardment".
"The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge -- just a few metres from where we were -- and the runway were damaged."
17:30 At least eight Palestinians were killed this evening in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City, according to local sources.
The sources reported that the Israeli occupation forces targeted a home in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood, located in the eastern part of Gaza City, resulting in the murder of eight victims, according to WAFA news agency.
16:30 Multiple Israeli air raids targeted an airport, military air base and a power station in Yemen on Thursday, witnesses Houthi rebels said.
Sanaa airport and the adjacent Al-Dailami base were targeted, along with a power station in Hodeida, in attacks that the Houthis' Al-Masirah TV channel called "Israeli aggression".
15:32 Israeli airstrikes on Gaza claimed the lives of at least nine more people, including two paramedics, local sources reported.
The medics were killed near Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya while responding to emergency calls.
In a separate attack, an Israeli drone strike near the hospital’s entrance killed one civilian, WAFA news agency reported.
Meanwhile, rescue teams in Gaza City’s Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood recovered the bodies of four Palestinians trapped under the rubble of a home destroyed in an Israeli airstrike last night.
In the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood of eastern Gaza City, several civilians were killed or injured when Israeli fighter jets struck a home belonging to the Hamada family on Yafa Street, further increasing the day’s death toll.
15:30 Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, says its fighters have hit a Merkava tank of the Israeli occupation army with an explosive device near a mosque south of the besieged Zeitoun neighbourhood in Gaza City.
The Brigades also reported that Palestinian fighters engaged an Israeli infantry force at point-blank range and inflicted casualties among soldiers.
15:00 Jordan's Interior Minister Mazen al-Faraya told state TV channel Al-Mamlaka that "around 18,000 Syrians have returned to their country" since the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
He said the returnees included 2,300 refugees registered with the United Nations.
Amman says it has hosted about 1.3 million Syrians who fled their country since civil war broke out in 2011, with 650,000 formally registered with the United Nations.
14:21 Israel weakened safeguards intended to protect civilians in Gaza, permitting officers to endanger up to 100 people per airstrike, according to a New York Times investigation. This directive led to one of the deadliest bombardments of the 21st century, the report revealed.
The Times investigation found that Israel dismantled much of its system of civilian protections.
It adopted flawed methods for identifying targets and assessing risks, neglected post-strike reviews of civilian casualties, and rarely held officers accountable for mistakes.
The investigation was based on dozens of military records and over 100 interviews with soldiers and officials, including 25 individuals directly involved in vetting or approving targets.
It revealed that the Israeli army removed daily limits on the cumulative number of civilians that strikes could endanger. Initially, a directive permitted up to 500 civilian casualties per day, but even that cap was lifted two days later. Palestinian authorities later reported daily death tolls exceeding even 500.
Israel relied heavily on large munitions, with 90 percent of the bombs dropped in the first two weeks of the war being 1,000- or 2,000-pound bombs, most of them American-made.
Airwars, a London-based conflict monitor, documented 136 Israeli airstrikes in October 2023 alone that killed at least 15 civilians each, nearly five times the number recorded in any comparable period worldwide over the last decade.
Strikes that risked more than 125 civilian casualties were occasionally approved, and the military’s reliance on "dumb bombs" exacerbated the damage.
13:44 Israel has killed 38 Palestinians in Gaza during the last 24 hours, the Health Ministry said in its daily update.
13:09 An Iraqi delegation met with Syria's new rulers in Damascus on Thursday, an Iraqi government spokesman said.
Government spokesman Bassem al-Awadi told state media that the delegation, led by Iraqi intelligence chief Hamid al-Shatri, "met with the new Syrian administration."
He said the parties discussed "the developments in the Syrian arena and security and stability needs on the two countries' shared border."
12:45 p.m.: In its first official message to the new administration in Damascus, Lebanon said it was looking forward to having the best neighbourly relations with Syria.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib passed the message to his Syrian counterpart, Asaad Hassan al-Shibani.
12:10 Syria's security forces launched an operation against pro-Assad "militias" in the western province of Tartus, state news agency SANA reported, a day after deadly clashes with gunmen affiliated with the former government.
The operation had already succeeded in "neutralizing a certain number" of armed men loyal to toppled president Bashar Al-Assad, SANA said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor has reported several arrests in connection with Wednesday's clashes. As we reported earlier, it said that 17 people were killed in clashes in Tartus province.
12:05 The United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, expressed concern at the "continuing" damage done by Israeli troops in the country's south despite a ceasefire in the war.
UNIFIL said in a statement that "there is concern at continuing destruction by the Israeli army in residential areas, agricultural land and road networks in south Lebanon."
The statement added that "this violates Resolution 1701", which was adopted by the UN Security Council and ended the last Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006.
ThUNUN force also reiterated its call for "the timely withdrawal" of Israeli troops from Lebanon and "the full implementation of Resolution 1701".
"Any actions that risk the fragile cessation of hostilities must cease," UNIFIL said.
11:45 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the leader of the new Syrian administration, Ahmed al-Sharaa, aka Al-Jolani, had called relations with Russia long-standing and strategic and that Moscow shared this assessment.
"We are discussing practical issues concerning the secure functioning of our embassy, and in general, we are interested and ready for dialogue on other matters of bilateral relations," he noted during an interview with Russian and foreign media.
"We hope for further development of relations in the economic sphere and investment cooperation when the new power structure is finally settled," said the foreign minister.
He stated that Moscow is in contact with the new Syrian authorities through its embassy in Damascus.
Lavrov added that the collapse of Syria cannot be allowed "even though some may actually wish for it."
He emphasized that Russia will not allow Syria to be divided, urging Israel not to guarantee its security at the expense of other's security.
"One cannot expect to destroy all military facilities of a neighbor and then live in peace forever," Russia's top diplomat said.
He also pointed out that Moscow understands Turkey's legitimate concerns regarding the security situation along its border with Syria.
11:02 The Committee to Protect Journalists' Middle East arm said the organization was "devastated by the reports that five journalists and media workers were killed inside their broadcasting vehicle by an Israeli strike," early this morning.
"Journalists are civilians and must always be protected," it added in a statement on social media.
CPJ has repeatedly denounced Israel’s smearing of killed Palestinian journalists with ‘terrorist’ labels, calling for an end to such unsubstantiated claims. The organization demanded international, swift, independent investigations into these killings.
"Even before the start of the Israel-Gaza war, CPJ had documented Israel’s pattern of accusing journalists of being terrorists without producing evidence," said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna in August.
"Smear campaigns endanger journalists and erode public trust in the media. Israel must end this practice and allow independent international investigations into the journalists’ killings."
10:45 A major-ranked Israeli officer was killed during battles in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Army Radio reported, citing a military source.
10:30 Israel is planning its fourth attack on the Houthis in Yemen after US President-elect Donald Trump takes office on 20 January, the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
The newspaper said that Tel Aviv is considering launching a significant operation deep inside Yemen, including targeting Houthi leaders, following Trump’s inauguration.
Citing Israeli security sources, the report indicated that the Trump administration plans to impose severe bans and sanctions on the Houthis.
It also highlighted ongoing discussions between the United States and Israel regarding a significant attack on Yemen, emphasizing US support for Israel's plans to intensify attacks against the Houthis, according to the Israeli Daily.
09:55 Ten Palestinians, including children, were killed, and others were injured in Israeli occupation airstrikes targeting homes in the Al-Sabra area in southern Gaza City and Jabalia Al-Balad in the northern Gaza Strip.
Additionally, Israeli artillery resumed shelling areas east of Al-Masdar village, southeast of Al-Maghazi camp, in the central Gaza Strip.
Medical sources have indicated that 10% of Gaza's population is either killed, injured, or missing.
09:47 Extremist Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir led settlers in a storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem under heavy protection from Israeli police, marking the start of the Hebrew "Hanukkah" holiday.
Local sources reported that dozens of settlers, led by the far-right minister, entered Al-Aqsa in groups via the Moroccan Gate, performing provocative Talmudic rituals in its courtyards, according to WAFA news agency.
Israeli authorities deployed a special unit within the mosque courtyards to secure the incursion and barred Palestinian worshippers from entering during Ben Gvir's presence.
Additionally, Israeli police intensified military measures around Jerusalem's Old City and at Al-Aqsa's gates, obstructing Palestinians from accessing the mosque grounds.
This marks the fourth time Ben Gvir has stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque since assuming his ministerial position, continuing a pattern of provocative measures often undertaken by the Israeli government.
09:45 In another Israeli violation of the ceasefire agreement with Lebanon, Israeli army vehicles advanced into the towns of Al-Qantara and Wadi Al-Hujair in southern Lebanon.
According to Lebanon's National News Agency, the sudden movement of Israeli vehicles toward these towns forced residents to evacuate the area and seek refuge in the village of Al-Ghandouriya.
Later, the NNA reported that the Israeli forces kidnapped a Lebanese citizen during their incursion.
The citizen was detained while he was on his way to work at the headquarters of the Indonesian battalion affiliated with UNIFIL in the town of Adshit Al-Qusayr in the Marjayoun district.
The Lebanese army closed the road leading to Wadi al-Hujayr while Merkava tanks roamed the valley in conjunction with intensive combing of its forests.
09:29 A Syria war monitor said 17 people were killed in clashes in Tartus province after security forces sought to arrest an officer under deposed leader Bashar Al-Assad who was linked to a notorious prison.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "14 members of the General Security force" of Syria's new authorities were killed, along with "three armed men" in Khirbet al-Maaza, raising an earlier toll of nine dead.
The Observatory added that forces had sought to arrest an officer who was among "those responsible for the crimes of the Saydnaya prison. "
New Interior Minister Mohammed Abdel Rahman said in a statement that "14 interior ministry personnel were killed and 10 others wounded after... a treacherous ambush by remnants of the criminal regime" in Tartus province "while performing their tasks of maintaining security and safety."
09:02 Five journalists of the Palestinian TV channel "Al-Quds Today" were killed in an Israeli strike on their vehicle in the early morning, the outlet and the Health Ministry confirmed.
The missile hit their broadcast truck as it was parked in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, the outlet's statement said.
According to people who saw the attack in Nuseirat, a missile fired by an Israeli aircraft hit the broadcast vehicle, which was parked outside Al-Awda Hospital, setting it on fire and killing those inside.

The five journalists were killed at dawn on Thursday, 26 December 2024, in an Israeli occupation forces bombing in the central Gaza Strip. WAFA
The channel identified the five staffers as Faisal Abu Al-Qumsan, Ibrahim Al-Sheikh Khalil, Fadi Hassouna, Mohammed Al-Lada'a and Ayman Al-Hadi.
Al-Hadi arrived at the hospital with his wife, who was about to give birth to their first child, and took advantage of the waiting hours to check on his colleagues at the hospital door in the TV broadcast vehicle, WAFA news agency said.
They were killed "while performing their journalistic and humanitarian duty," according to the statement.
"We affirm our commitment to continue our resistant media message," it said.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said last week that Israel has killed more than 190 journalists in Gaza, and at least 400 have been injured since it started the war in October 2023.
Israel has not allowed foreign reporters to enter Gaza except on military embeds.
09:00 Two civilians were killed on Wednesday evening in Israeli airstrikes targeting central and southern areas of the Gaza Strip, WAFA reported.
A woman was killed when Israeli warplanes struck a group of people in the Al-Nazla neighbourhood of Jabalia in northern Gaza. Another civilian was killed after an Israeli drone targeted the coast of Rafah, in the south of the Strip.
Additionally, Israeli artillery shelled tents housing displaced families in the Mawasi area of Khan Younis while warplanes carried out a raid near Abu Iskandar Bakery in northern Gaza City.
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