Gaza rescuers say no fuel left as scores killed in Israeli strikes

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Israel's military said Thursday it opened a mobile medical clinic in southern Syria to support the Druze population, which it has committed to defending in recent weeks.

In footage published by the army, military medical personnel can be seen treating a man with his arm in cast, all of whom have their faces blurred, in what appears to be a mobile cabin.

"The IDF (military) has begun operating a forward mobile triage facility in southern Syria, in the area of the village of Hader," a statement said.

"The facility is part of several efforts undertaken by the IDF to support the Syrian-Druze population and ensure their safety."

In the wake of recent bloody inter-communal clashes in Syria, Israel threatened to intervene directly if the new government in Damascus "takes action against the Druze".

Iran's Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami warned on Thursday that any attack by the United States or Israel would "open the gates of hell".

"These are serious warnings to the Zionist and American authorities... If you make the slightest mistake, we will open the gates of hell for you," Salami said in a video carried by Iran's Tasnim news agency.

Governments must act now to stop the horrors in Gaza, the director-general of the Red Cross said on Thursday, adding that the suffering there was reaching a point where it "questions the very foundations of our humanity".

Dozens of community kitchens in Gaza shut their doors on Thursday due to a lack of supplies, closing off a lifeline used by hundreds of thousands of people and raising fears of further malnutrition-related deaths.

"Here is a moment of decision for states and for world actors and for parties to not allow this horror to continue uninterrupted," Director General of the International Committee of the Red Cross Pierre Kraehenbuehl told reporters in Geneva.

"Everybody should feel deep indignation about what is happening in Gaza," he said, without attributing blame.

"I can't reconcile myself with the human cost of this conflict and frankly if this is the future of warfare, we should all be terrified."

"We should all be aware that this questions the very foundations of our humanity," he added.

(Reuters)

Hamas on Thursday blamed "individual" actors for firing rockets towards Israel from Lebanon after it handed over several people, saying it was committed to a Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire.

Hamas claimed attacks on Israel from Lebanon during more than a year of Israel's war, Hezbollah, that erupted over the Gaza war and largely ended with a November truce.

The Lebanese army said Hamas has handed over three suspects after unclaimed March rocket launches at Israel, after the country's top security body last week warned the group against using Lebanon for attacks on Israel.

"The rocket launching incident was an individual act carried out by a number of young people... in reaction to the genocidal war and massacres committed by the Zionist enemy in Gaza," a statement from Hamas representative in Lebanon, Ahmad Abdulhadi, said.

"Hamas did not know about this in advance and did not decide to do this."

The statement added that Hamas is "fully committed to the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon, and the movement's leadership has informed all Lebanese authorities of this".

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees on Thursday condemned the closure of six UNRWA schools in annexed east Jerusalem by Israeli forces as an "assault on children".

"An assault on children. An assault on education. A sad day in occupied East Jerusalem... Storming schools & forcing them shut is a blatant disregard of international law," Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X. "These schools are inviolable premises of the United Nations."

An assault on children.
An assault on education.
A sad day in occupied East Jerusalem.

This morning, heavily armed Israeli Forces entered three @UNRWA schools in Shu’fat Camp in occupied East Jerusalem, forcing 550+ girls & boys who were in classrooms out of their schools.…

— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) May 8, 2025

Israel's military said Thursday it would hold a Palestinian journalist arrested last month in administrative detention, raising fresh concerns over press freedom.

Ali al-Samudi, 58, would remain in custody until October due to "considerations for the security of the region and public safety," the military said in a newly published decree.

The Palestinian Commission for Detainees and the Palestinian Prisoners Club denounced the decision and Samudi's treatment since his arrest on 29 April.

His detention, they said in a joint statement, was part of Israel's increasing use of administrative detention against journalists since the Gaza war began.

They said the practice had "intensified dramatically."

Samudi is a freelance journalist who works with several outlets, including Al Jazeera and was with Shireen Abu Akleh when she was killed by gunfire in Jenin on 11 May, 2022.

The Prisoners Club says Israel has detained 50 Palestinian journalists since 7 October, with 20 held under administrative detention.

Hamas members were engaged in 'fierce fighting' with Israeli soldiers in Gaza's Rafah, the group said on Thursday, despite the Israeli encirclement of the enclave's southern city.

(Reuters)

Israel's plans to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza would amount to illegal forceful displacement, would lead to more violence and would undermine efforts to create a Palestinian state, the foreign ministers of Norway and Iceland said on Thursday.

"We are alarmed and appalled by what we have heard from the Israeli security cabinet about plans to step up even stronger the military campaign in Gaza and to do what they refer to as an evacuation," Norway's Espen Barth Eide said in an interview.

"It will amount to forceful displacement of the Palestinian people, first from north to south, and potentially out of the country. This is clearly illegal in international law," he said, adding "it will undermine the hope for a Palestinian state ... (and be) a recipe for more bloodshed."

The foreign minister of Iceland, the first Western European nation to recognise Palestine as a state in 2011, said Israel must let humanitarian aid in to help civilians.

"What is needed more urgently than ever is a resumption of a ceasefire and the unconditional release of all hostages," Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir said in the joint phone interview.

(Reuters)

Lebanon said heavy Israeli strikes on the country's south on Thursday killed one person as the Israeli army said it struck Hezbollah "infrastructure", the latest raids despite a fragile ceasefire.

Israel has continued to launch regular strikes on its neighbour despite the November truce, which sought to halt more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah, including two months of full-blown war.

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency (NNA) said "Israeli warplanes carried out a wide-scale aerial aggression on the Nabatiyeh region, launching a series of heavy raids in two waves" targeting hills and valleys in the area, located around 12 kilometres (seven miles) from the border.

The health ministry said the strikes killed one person and wounded eight others, adding that the toll was provisional.

The Israeli military claimed it struck "a terrorist infrastructure site" used by Hezbollah "to manage its fire and defence array".

It said it struck Hezbollah operatives, "weapons, and tunnel shafts", adding that "this infrastructure is part of a significant underground project that... has been rendered inoperable" by Israeli military raids.

It called the site and activities there "a blatant violation of the understanding between Israel and Lebanon".

The Red Cross denounced the human cost of the war raging in Gaza, slamming Israel's "unacceptable" full blockade on aid into the besieged and conflict-ravaged Palestinian territory.

"It is unacceptable that humanitarian aid is not allowed into the Gaza Strip," Pierre Krahenbuhl, director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told reporters in Geneva.

"That's just fundamentally against anything that international humanitarian law provides."

The situation in Gaza is on a "razor's edge" and "the next few days are absolutely decisive", he added.

"There's a moment where we will also run out of anything that's left in terms of medical supplies and other" aid, he said.

"Right now, the most effective way to get aid to people is to lift... actions or decisions that were taken to prevent aid from reaching" inside Gaza, Krahenbuhl said.

"There are huge quantities of aid that are on the borders of Gaza that can go in tomorrow," he insisted.

Israel is concerned about the fate of three captives who were part of the 24 that were thought to be alive in captivity in Gaza, with sources telling Haaretz that these include an Israeli and two foreigners. 

Haaretz also reported that the families of the captives have been updated on the situation.

A new documentary reportedly reveals who killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed by Israeli forces in 2022.

The film, "Who Killed Shireen?", by Zeteo, says a 20-year-old Israeli soldier was the one who killed the Palestinian-American journalist. The soldier was on his first tour in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli army claimed the soldier was killed by Palestinian fighters, but eventually changed its narrative, calling Abu Akleh's killing "an accident".

One Palestinian civilian was killed after an Israeli strike targeted a house in central Gaza - Wafa reports.

The agency said the strike was near the Al-Sawariha School, southwest of Nuseirat. Al-Awda Hospital in the area announced the arrival of a body killed in Al-Sawariha.

Dozens of community kitchens in Gaza shut their doors on Thursday due to a lack of supplies, closing off a lifeline used by hundreds of thousands of people in a further blow to efforts to combat growing hunger in the enclave.

The move followed hours after the US-based World Central Kitchen (WCK) charity announced that it had run out of the ingredients necessary to provide much-needed free meals and had been prevented by Israel from bringing in aid.

Amjad al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organisations Network (PNGO) in Gaza, told Reuters that most of the enclave's 170 community kitchens had shut down after running out of stock due to Israel's continued blockade of Gaza.

Shawa said the decision by the WCK, announced late on Wednesday, and the closure of community kitchens on Thursday would cause a drop of between 400,000 and 500,000 free meals per day for the 2.3 million population.

"Everyone in Gaza today is hungry. The world must act now to save the people here," said Shawa, speaking to Reuters by phone from Gaza.

"The remaining kitchens will be closing soon. The hunger catastrophe is beyond words. People are losing their lone source of food," Shawa added.

(Reuters)

First responders in Gaza said Thursday that their operations were at a near standstill, more than two months into a complete Israeli blockade that has left food and fuel in severe shortage.

"Seventy-five per cent of our vehicles have stopped operating due to a lack of diesel fuel," the civil defence agency's spokesman, Mahmud Bassal, told AFP.

He added that its teams, who play a critical role as first responders in the Gaza Strip, also faced a "severe shortage of electricity generators and oxygen devices".

Israel conducted 14 strikes in the Nabatieh area in south Lebanon on Thursday, two Lebanese security sources told Reuters, one of Israel's most intense bombardments since a ceasefire brokered by the US in November.

In April, Israel struck a southern Beirut building that it said it was being used to store precision missiles belonging to the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.

Lebanon and Hezbollah had agreed to a ceasefire in November which halted the fighting and mandated that southern Lebanon be free of Hezbollah fighters and weapons. 

(Reuters)

The Palestinian Authority condemned Israel's closing of schools run by the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees in East Jerusalem on Thursday.

"The Palestinian Ministry of Education condemns Israel's closure of UNRWA schools in Shuafat, considering it a violation of children's right to education," ministry spokesman Sadiq Khaddour told AFP, adding it hoped that pressure from rights groups would cause Israel to reverse its decision.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said Thursday that Israel closed three of its schools in annexed east Jerusalem, months after an Israeli ban on its activities took effect.

An AFP photographer at the scene reported that a closure notice in Hebrew was left at the entrance of at least one of the schools, and UNRWA said at least one of its staff members was detained.

"From May 8, 2025, it will be prohibited to operate educational institutions, or employ teachers, teaching staff or any other staff, and it will be forbidden to accommodate students or allow the entry of students into this institution", the closure order read.

UNRWA's director in the West Bank, Roland Friedrich, told AFP that "heavily armed" forces surrounded three UNRWA schools in east Jerusalem's Shuafat camp at 9:00 am on Thursday.

Friedrich added that 550 pupils aged six to 15 were present when the closure was enforced, calling the event "a traumatising experience for young children who are at immediate risk of losing their access to education."

Friedrich said that police were being deployed at three separate schools in other parts of east Jerusalem.

A Palestinian student arrested during an interview about finalising his US Citizenship is helping to launch an initiative to help other immigrants facing deportation in Vermont on Thursday, a week after a federal judge freed him from custody.

Mohsen Mahdawi, 34, who led protests against Israel’s war on Gaza at Columbia University, spent 16 days in a state prison before a judge ordered him released on 30 April. 

He will join Vermont State Treasurer Mike Pieciak, Senate Majority Leader Kesha Ram Hinsdale and community advocates at the Statehouse to announce the Vermont Immigration Legal Defence Fund.

The group, including lawyers and philanthropists, says the goal is to improve access to legal advice for immigrants and build long-term infrastructure within the justice system as it pertains to immigration law.

Israel will do to Iran what it has done to Hamas in Gaza, Defence Minister Israel Katz warned Thursday, days after an attack on Ben Gurion airport by Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

"I warn... Iranian leaders who finance, arm and exploit the Huthi terrorist organisation: the proxy system is terminated and the axis of evil has collapsed," Katz said in a statement.

"You are directly responsible. What we have done to Hezbollah in Beirut, to Hamas in Gaza, to (now ousted Syrian president Bashar) Assad in Damascus, we will do to you in Tehran too."

Gaza's civil defence agency said an Israeli airstrike killed five people in the north of the war-ravaged Palestinian territory early Thursday.

Several more were wounded in the strike "today at dawn on the home of the Abu Rayyan family in the town of Beit Lahiya", north of Gaza City, the agency's spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told AFP.

The Israeli military has yet to comment on the reported strike.