Israel kills 200 in Gaza in three days as ceasefire talks resume

This live blog has now ended. Thanks for following.

The Palestinian health ministry in the Israeli-occupied West Bank stated that Israeli forces had killed a teenager during a raid on a refugee camp near the city of Nablus Sunday.

Mutaz Ahmad Abdul Wahab Madani, 17, was "killed and two others were wounded by occupation forces' gunfire during a raid near Askar Camp east of Nablus", the Ramallah-based ministry said in a statement.

Palestinian official news agency Wafa reported that Madani was hit when Israeli forces fired bullets, flares and tear gas.

Medics reported that Madani had been shot in the chest and that Israeli forces initially kept him with them before handing him to Palestinian medics. He was then transported to Rafidia hospital in a critical condition but succumbed to his wounds, a medic said.

وزارة الصحة: استشهاد معتز أحمد عبد الوهاب مدني (17 عاماً) برصاص الاحتلال في مخيم عسكر بنابلس. pic.twitter.com/MzNAZzSp4P

— فلسطين بوست (@PalpostN) January 5, 2025

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Hamas has not provided a list of hostage names "up to this moment".

A Hamas official told Reuters earlier in the day that the group had approved a list of 34 hostages to be exchanged in a possible ceasefire deal.

More than 100 combatants were killed over the last two days in northern Syria in fighting between Turkish-backed groups and Syrian Kurdish forces, a war monitor said on Sunday.

Since Friday evening, clashes in several villages around the city of Manbij have left 101 dead, including 85 members of pro-Turkish groups and 16 from the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The SDF said it had repelled "all the attacks from Turkey's mercenaries supported by Turkish drones and aviation".

The Turkish defence ministry said it had "neutralised" 32 Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, without providing further details.

Palestinian group Hamas has approved a list of 34 hostages presented by Israel to be exchanged in a possible ceasefire deal, a group official told Reuters on Sunday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, also reiterated that any deal is contingent upon reaching an agreement on an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a permanent ceasefire.

Hamas says it has seen no progress from Israel on issues of withdrawal from Gaza or permanent ceasefire, an official has told Reuters.

The first 50 ultra-Orthodox men have been drafted into the Israeli military's new Haredi brigade, the Times of Israel reported on Sunday, which added that the men will make up the brigades first company.

Another 100 are being drafted into the brigades reserve company. Additional men are expected to be drafted in hte coming month, according to the report.

A Syria war monitor said explosions on Sunday rocked an area near Damascus housing weapons depots used by the toppled regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said the blasts in the Kisweh area, south of the Syrian capital, may be the result of an Israeli air strike.

The Israeli military, which has struck many military sites in Syria since Assad's fall, told AFP in Jerusalem it did not attack the site.

The Britain-based Observatory, which has a network of sources in Syria, said that "loud blasts resonated in the wider capital area".

The explosions occurred "at ammunition depots of the former regime forces... near the town of Kisweh", sending a thick cloud of smoke billowing over the site, the Observatory said.

An AFP video journalist saw small fires burning in the blackened rubble of a flattened building on the outskirts of the town of Kisweh. Several other one-storey buildings stood undamaged nearby.

The explosions continued into Sunday evening, ringing out across surrounding areas, the journalist said.

Brett McGurk, who is President Biden's National Security Council Coordinate for the Middle East and North Africa, has travelled to Doha to participate in Gaza ceasefire and hostage negotiations, according to an Axios reporter citing unnamed US sources.

Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has presented a compensation plan that would see residents of northern Israel evacuated from their homes in October 2023 to start returning in the beginning of March, according to the Times of Israel. 

According to the plan, residents will receive grants of 25,360 New Israeli Shekels (NIS) per adult, and 12,680 (NIS) per child.

Four Palestinians were killed in an Israeli drone strike on a police station north of Khan Younis, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa, which added that Israeli shelling had hit the area earlier on Sunday.

A number of people were also wounded in a strike on the Al-Masdar camp in the central Gaza Strip, Wafa added.

The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission announced on Sunday that the number of Israeli violations in the occupied West Bank, which includes those committed by both Israeli forces and settlers, reached 16,612 in 2024.

According to the head of the commission, Moayad Shaaban, said that 13,641 violations were committed by Israeli forces with 2,971 committed by Israeli settlers.

An Israeli airstrike targeting the Nuseirat refugee camp has killed five people, according to reports from Al Jazeera. 

Syria's Foreign minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani reiterated on Sunday his government's call for the United States to lift sanctions on Syria.

He made the call during an interview with reporters on the sidelines of his visit to Qatar, where he met senior Qatari officials.

(Reuters)

Israeli forces killed a member of the Palestinian security services in the occupied West Bank whom they accused of being a militant.

Israel's paramilitary Border Police said they carried out an operation in the West Bank village of Meithaloun to arrest Hassan Rabaiya, claiming him to be a wanted militant.

They claim he was killed in a shootout while trying to escape and that the troops found a shotgun, weapons parts and around $26,000 in cash inside his home.

The Palestinian security services identified Rabaiya as a first lieutenant in its Preventive Security force, saying he was killed while “"erforming his national duty.”"

Determining the fate of those who went missing during Syria's civil war will be a massive task likely to take years, the president of the International Committee for the Red Cross said.

"Identifying the missing and informing the families about their fate is going to be a huge challenge," ICRC president Mirjana Spoljaric told AFP in an interview.

The fate of tens of thousands of detainees and missing people remains one of the most harrowing legacies of the conflict that started in 2011 when president Bashar al-Assad's forces brutally repressed anti-government protests.

Many are believed to have been buried in mass graves after being tortured in Syria's jails during a war that has killed more than half a million people.

A joint statement by the Palestinian Authority's Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoners Society has said that at least 20 Palestinians have been detained by Israel, including former detainees and children, in the last 24 hours.

The detentions took place across the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including Hebron, Bethlehem, Tulkarm, Jerico, Ramallah and Jerusalem, the statement said.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz accused Lebanese Hezbollah on Sunday of not meeting the terms of a ceasefire, warning that if the militants continued to breach the deal, Israel would "be forced to act".

Katz said Hezbollah had still not withdrawn "beyond the Litani river" in southern Lebanon. He added that, "if this condition is not met, there will be no agreement and Israel will be forced to act on its own to ensure the safe return of residents of the north to their homes."

A Palestinian man was shot dead by Israeli forces during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, the Palestinian Fatah party said in a statement.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Palestinian media said Israeli forces opened fire on the home of a 37-year-old man in a town south of the West Bank city of Jenin. The body was being held by Israel, the report said.

Jenin, in the northern West Bank, has been a centre for Palestinian militant groups for decades and armed factions have resisted repeated attempts to dislodge them by the Israeli military.

Palestinian security forces moved into Jenin last month in a move they say is aimed at suppressing armed groups of "outlaws" who have built up a power base in the city and its adjacent refugee camp.

(Reuters)

Gaza's Ministry of Health has said that 88 people have been killed and 208 have been injured in the past 24 hours by Israeli attacks on the enclave.

The ministry raised the total death toll in 15-month war waged on Gaza to 45,805, with a further 109,064 wounded.

A federal court in Brazil has opened an investigation into an Israeli soldier traveling in the country for committing war crimes in Gaza, according to reports in Brazil.

The complaint, filed by the Belgium-based Hind Rajab Foundation, claimed that the soldier destroyed homes in the enclave.

The foundations head lawyer said on Friday that the soldier "actively contributed to the destruction of homes and livelihoods, ad his own statements and behaviour clearly align with the genocidal objectives in Gaza".

According to Israeli media, the soldier was able to leave Brazil before the order.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid has thanks US President Joe Biden for authorising $8 billion of military aid to Israel, and allowing the country to "wage war".

In a post on social media site X, Lapid said "the support of the United States over the past 15 months has enabled us to defend ourselves and wage war".

"This is an opportunity to thank President Biden and his administration for their support."

The Israeli military said Sunday it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen, the latest in a series of recent attacks.

"Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in Talmei Elazar, a missile launched from Yemen was intercepted prior to crossing into Israeli territory," the military said in a statement posted to Telegram.

Yemen's Houthi rebels, who control much of northern Yemen including the capital Sanaa, said in a statement Sunday they had launched "a hypersonic ballistic missile" targeting a power station south of the Israeli city of Haifa.

The Houthi rebels have also been firing at ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden - destabilising a vital shipping lane and prompting reprisal strikes by the United States and sometimes Britain.

The group's Saba news agency and Al-Masirah TV reported three raids on Sunday east of the city of Saada, in northern Yemen, attributing the operations to the United States and Britain.

Washington and London did not immediately comment on that report.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei on Sunday said Tehran "strongly condemned the American and British air strikes against infrastructure in Saada province".