Gaza: At least six Palestinian babies die from freezing temperatures, lack of heating

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US envoy Steve Witkoff could travel to the Middle East on Sunday if negotiations on the next stage of the Gaza ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas go well, Axios reporter Barak Ravid reported on X on Tuesday.

The US Middle East envoy told an American Jewish Congress event that an Israeli delegation will travel in the coming days to Doha or Cairo to negotiate the next stage of the deal, Ravid wrote. Qatar and Egypt have acted as mediators in the talks.

"If it goes well I might travel to the region on Sunday," Ravid quoted Witkoff as saying.

Ravid, citing a source, reported earlier on Tuesday that Witkoff delayed a planned trip to the Middle East by a few days due to US diplomatic efforts related to Russia and Ukraine.

The three-stage ceasefire, which came into effect on 19 January, is now nearing the end of its first phase. Some Israeli captives in Gaza and Palestinian detainees and prisoners held by Israel have been released during the truce. The UN has condemned the treatment of the captives and said their images upon release suggested they were kept in dire circumstances.

The ceasefire has largely held despite accusations of violations by both sides and a series of setbacks.

If no agreement is reached by Friday, officials expect either a return to fighting or a freeze in the current situation in which the truce would continue but Israeli captives in Gaza would not return and Israel may block the entry of aid into the Palestinian enclave.

(Reuters)

An Israeli source has told the Times of Israel that the release of 602 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails will occur on Wednesday through Egypt following an agreement reached with Hamas.

Mediators have reached an agreement, under Egyptian supervision, to release all Palestinian prisoners who were due to be freed last week in exchange for the bodies of four Israeli hostages, Egyptian state-linked media reported on Tuesday.

Hamas confirmed the agreement, saying it is part of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement.

At least two people were killed by Israeli air strikes on a military position south of the Syrian capital on Tuesday night, a war monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the deaths were caused by Israeli strikes at a "military unit's headquarter southwest of Damascus", but that it could not confirm if they were civilians or military personnel.

Hamas said on Tuesday it has agreed during a visit to Cairo on a solution to end the delay of releasing of Palestinian prisoners.

The solution is to release the Palestinian prisoners simultaneously with the bodies of the killed Israeli hostages who were agreed to be handed over during the first phase, the group posted on social media platform X. 

(Reuters)

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz confirmed the military attacked southern Syria on Tuesday.

"The Air Force is attacking strongly in southern Syria as part of the new policy we have defined of pacifying southern Syria - and the message is clear: we will not allow southern Syria to become southern Lebanon," his spokesperson said in a statement. 

(Reuters)

Israeli warplanes hit a town south of Syria's capital as well as the southern province of Daraa late on Tuesday, residents, security sources and local broadcaster and The New Arab's affiliate Syria TV said.

Israeli strikes struck the town of Kisweh approximately 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Damascus, a Syrian security source and Syria TV said. The security source said a military site was targeted, without providing further details.

Additional Israeli air raids hit a town in the southern province of Daraa, a resident and Syria TV said.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Residents of Damascus and Reuters reporters in the city heard the sound of airplanes flying several low passes over the capital and a series of blasts.

The bombardment came hours after Syria condemned Israel's incursion into the country's south and demanded it withdraw, according to the closing statement of a national summit.

Israel moved forces into a UN-monitored demilitarized zone within Syria after rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former Al Qaeda affiliate, toppled former President Bashar al-Assad in December.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel will not tolerate the presence of HTS in southern Syria, nor any other forces affiliated with the country's new rulers, and demanded the territory be demilitarized. 

(Reuters)

A series of blasts and the sound of airplanes flying low were heard over the Syrian capital, Damascus, late on Tuesday, residents of the city and Reuters reporters there said. 

In a rare acknowledgement of the agency's covert operations, Israel's spy chief declared on Tuesday that last year's "pager operation" against Hezbollah "turned the tables" on the Lebanese militant group in its war with Israel.

"This operation marked a turning point in the north, during which we turned the tables on our enemies," said David Barnea, head of Mossad, speaking at a conference in Tel Aviv.

"A direct line can be drawn from the pager operation to the elimination of (Hassan) Nasrallah and the ceasefire agreement. Hezbollah suffered a devastating blow that shattered the organisation's spirit," he added, referring to Israel's assassination of the Hezbollah leader.

On September 17 and 18, an Israeli operation detonated hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah. Lebanese authorities reported that the attack killed 39 people and wounded thousands.

The bombs detonated all across Lebanon, including in shops and homes, and were called a violation of international law by the United Nation's human rights chief Volker Turk.

Four former Israeli captives have penned a joint letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling on him and the government to "bring fathers back to their children", explaining that the families of captives are also suffering.

"The State of Israel has a duty to put the welfare of children and the welfare of families first, and to do everything in its power so that the hostage fathers, some of whom are dead... are returned as soon as possible," the letter read according to the Times of Israel. 

A Palestinian man has been killed by Israeli forces during a raid on Nablus, Palestinian news agency WAFA reported, adding that another eight people were wounded by live fire during the raid.

Human Rights Watch has said that Israel must allow residents of the occupied West Bank who have been displaced from their homes to return home following statements from Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz that some 40,000 Palestinians from three refugee camps who have been displaced won't be allowed to return for at least a year.

"States should act to prevent atrocities and allow Palestinians to return to their homes," HRW said.

Lebanese state media said that an Israeli air strike on Tuesday killed at least two people in the country's east, where Israel has previously targeted Hezbollah militants.

"An enemy drone carried out an air strike on the town of Shaara... near the eastern Lebanon mountain range, killing two people and wounding two" others, said the state-run National News Agency.

A monitor of civilian casualties caused by bombing in a series of conflicts around the world has released an online tool allowing users to easily search through name and identification data for Palestinians killed in Israel’s military onslaught in Gaza.

That data comes from the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

"To aid our own documentation, Airwars built a tool to search these lists - which were only released as PDFs. Today, we're making that tool public," Airwars said.

The Middle East is undergoing changes that could represent the last chance for the long-sought goal of a two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a UN official said Tuesday.

Sigrid Kaag, the UN envoy for the peace process in the region, also warned against calls for Israel to annex the occupied West Bank.

"The Middle East today is undergoing rapid transformation -- its scope and impact remain uncertain, but it also presents a historic opportunity," Kaag told the UN Security Council.

"The people of the region can emerge from this period with peace, security, and dignity. However, this may be our last chance to achieve the two-state solution," said Kaag.

She said Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, Israeli military operations in this occupied territory "and continued calls for annexation, present an existential threat to the prospect of a viable and independent Palestinian State and thereby the two-state solution."

Kaag called on Hamas and Israel to agree on the second phase of the ceasefire in the Gaza war and avoid a resumption of fighting.

The closing statement of Syria's national dialogue conference held Tuesday in Damascus said that any armed groups outside the country's military were considered "outlawed".

The statement said that attendees called for "a monopoly on weapons by the state, building a professional national army and regarding any armed formations outside the official institutions as outlawed groups" -- an implicit reference to Kurdish-led forces and other factions that have refused to lay down their arms since the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.

Israel's opposition leader Yair Lapid said on Tuesday that Egypt should run the Gaza Strip for at least eight years once the war is over, in exchange for massive debt relief.

"The solution is Egypt will take responsibility for the management of the Gaza Strip for eight years with an option to extend to 15 years," the former prime minister told a think tank in Washington.

Opening arguments begin on Tuesday in the trial of a 73-year-old man accused of murdering a Palestinian-American boy in an attack in the US state of Illinois which police have linked to Israel's war in Gaza.

Joseph Czuba has pleaded not guilty to murder, attempted murder and hate crime charges in connection with the October 14, 2023 stabbing which left six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoumi dead and his mother, Hanan Shaheen, seriously wounded.

A jury was seated on Monday for the trial, which is taking place at the Will County Courthouse in Joliet and is expected to last about one week.

According to the Will County Sheriff's Office, the victims were targeted "due to them being Muslim and the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis."

US President Donald Trump's envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, has reportedly cancelled his visit to the Middle East scheduled to begin tomorrow, according to Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

Israel is considering an extension of the 42-day truce in Gaza as it seeks to bring home the remaining 63 hostages, while putting off agreement on the future of the enclave for now, Israeli officials said.

The initial phase of the ceasefire deal, launched with the backing of the United States and the help of Egyptian and Qatari mediators on January 19, is due to end on Saturday and it remains unclear what will follow.

"We are being very cautious," Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel told reporters in Jerusalem, when asked whether the truce might be extended without the start of talks on a second phase which would include difficult issues such as a final end to the war and the future governance of Gaza.

"There wasn't a particular agreement on that, but it might be a possibility," she said. "We didn't close the option of continuing the current ceasefire, but in return for our hostages, and they have to be returned safely."

If no agreement is reached by Friday, officials expect either a return to fighting or a freeze in the current situation in which the truce would continue but hostages would not return and Israel may block the entry of aid into Gaza.

Four Hamas members suspected of plotting attacks on Jewish institutions in Europe went on trial in Berlin on Tuesday, in what prosecutors described as the first court case against militants of the Islamist group in Germany.

The Hamas members were detained in late 2023 on suspicion of planning attacks, German prosecutors said at the time.

"For the first time in Germany, suspects are facing charges of having participated as members of the foreign terrorist organisation Hamas," prosecutor Jochen Weingarten told Reuters.

He added the defendants were accused of seeking to locate a secret weapons depot in Poland for possible attacks, while receiving orders from the deputy commander of the Qassam Brigades in Lebanon.

According to previous statements by prosecutors, the defendants are also accused of operating other weapons caches in Europe.

Israeli forces have demolished a house and several structures in the town of Al-Issawiya, northeast of occupied Jerusalem.

The Jerusalem governorate reported that the occupation forces stormed the eastern area of ​​the town and destroyed a house belonging to a local Palestinian, under the pretext that it was built without a license.

A Trump administration move to halt  funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) has frozen $46 million for its operations in Gaza, a top official said on Tuesday.

Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative for Occupied Palestinian Territories, said the freezing would Rik Peeperkorn said the "freezing" of the financial assistance would leave six areas underfunded in Gaza, including EMT operations, rehabilitation of health facilities, coordination with partner organisations, and medical evacuation operations.

Hamas has released a statement concerning the children in Gaza who died from freeing temperatures on Monday, accusing Israel of carrying out "criminal policies" and "preventing the entry of humanitarian aid and shelter materials for more than two million people" in Gaza.

Hamas said the deaths come at a time "when the international community continues its silence on addressing the unprecedented humanitarian disaster” unfolding in Gaza.

The Israeli army’s ongoing raid on the Tulkarem refugee camp in the northern West Bank has forcibly displaced 12,000 Palestinians from their homes, according to a local official.

"The occupation authorities are still occupying and besieging the Tulkarem camp and displacing its residents at gunpoint," Deputy Governor Faisal Salama said in a statement.

Additionally, 40 residential buildings, including 100 apartments, have been destroyed in the offensive, and 10 homes have been burned.

Parties in Syria's semi-autonomous Kurdish administration condemned what they called the "token" representation of minority groups at a national dialogue conference underway Tuesday in Damascus.

In a joint statement, the 35 parties said: "Conferences with token representation... are meaningless, worthless, and will not contribute to finding real solutions to the country's ongoing crisis."

A "real national dialogue conference must be inclusive", the statement added, saying the composition of the current initiatives "do not reflect the reality of the makeup of Syrian society".

The conference, held at the capital's presidential palace, aims to discuss the country's future after Bashar al-Assad's overthrow, and marks the beginning of a crucial phase for Syria's governance after years of civil war.

Organisers said the Kurdish administration -- which controls swathes of Syria's north and northeast, including important oil-producing areas -- and its affiliated bodies were not invited to the conference because armed groups were excluded.

The US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces serve as the Kurdish administration's de facto army.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has imposed sanctions on Palestinian prisoners and their families who are citizens and residents of Israel and receive funding from the Palestinian Authority, Israeli media reported.

Following these sanctions, Israeli security forces raided the homes of those subjected to the move, confiscating cash and assets amounting to hundreds of thousands of shekels. 

Katz said: ""We will not allow the Palestinian Authority to continue rewarding terrorists for murdering and harming Israeli citizens".

The World Health Organization is very concerned about attacks on health care in the West Bank, an official told journalists on Tuesday.

"We see the current flashpoints of violence, attacks on health care ... starkly rising in the West Bank", Dr Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the occupied Palestinian Territories, told a press briefing via video link from Gaza. 

Israeli communications Minister Shlomo Karhi has called for the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza in a video promoting a right-wing rally by ultranationalist groups calling for the occupation of the Strip, the expulsion of its Palestinian population and the re-construction of Jewish settlements in the territory.

The rally, scheduled for Thursday, is being organised by the ultranationalist Nachala gtoup, which promotes the construction of settlements and illegal outposts in the West Bank and the establishments of Jewish settlements in Gaza since 7, October 2023.

"We have a historic opportunity in which the US president supports eliminating Hamas and the deportation of Gazans outside of the Gaza Strip," Karhi said.

The Israeli army said on Tuesday an earlier report of suspected aerial targets in the Golan Heights was the result of false identification.

The army earlier said it had intercepted the suspected targets. It said the incident has ended and was under investigation.

Egypt rejects proposals to displace the Palestinian people in order to not "liquidate" the Palestinian cause and to avoid threatening the national security of countries in the region, according to a statement by the Egyptian Presidency on Tuesday.

U.S. President Donald Trump has infuriated the Arab world with a plan to permanently displace the population of more than 2 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, claim U.S. control of it and turn it into the "Riviera of the Middle East". 

Syria's new interim president pledged on Tuesday to ensure the state has a monopoly on weapons at a national dialogue conference on the country's future after Bashar al-Assad's overthrow.

Ahmed al-Sharaa, whose Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led a rebel alliance that toppled Assad in December, also said he plans to establish a national dialogue conference during the country's transition.

The conference, held at the presidential palace in Damascus, marks the beginning of a crucial phase for Syria's future governance after years of devastating civil war.

"The unity of arms and their monopoly by the state is not a luxury but a duty and an obligation," Sharaa told the gathering.

"Syria is indivisible; it is a complete whole, and its strength lies in its unity."

Sharaa has previoulsy said that Kurdish-led forces should be integrated into the national army.

The Saudi minister of defence, Prince Khalid bin Salman met with his US counterpart Peter Hegseth on Monday, where they discussed the "enduring friendship and strategic partnership between the US and Saudi Arabia".

"During the meeting, we explored ways to bolster our defense cooperation. We also discussed regional and international developments and efforts to promote security and stability," he said on X.

Israeli forces stormed the Imam Ali Mosque on al-Mamoun Street in the city of Nablus, blowing off its doors and confiscating surveillance camera footage, amid the army's ongoing raids in the West Bank.

Images published by Palestinian media show the mosque's windows smashed, as well as other damage done to the facility.

قوات الاحتلال تقتحم مسجد الإمام علي في شارع المأمون بمدينة نابلس، وتفجر أبوابه وتصادر تسجيلات كاميرات المراقبة. pic.twitter.com/shnY9MpaOf

— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) February 25, 2025

Three Palestinian children have died from freezing temperatures in Gaza, according to the enclave's health ministry.

The children's deaths come as Palestinian returnee families return to a lack of shelter or adequate housing amid the ongoing ceasefire, and as temperatures plummet during the winter season.