Israel aims to ensure more Palestinians are let out of Gaza than back in

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Human Rights Group Human Rights Activists in Iran have said that it had recorded the deaths of 5,137 people killed during protests in Iran, including 4,834 protesters and 208 government/affiliated forces.

The group added that 12,904 deaths were under investigation, and that 7,402 had been severely injured.

Iran will treat any attack "as an all-out war against us," a senior Iranian official said on Friday ahead of the arrival of a US military aircraft carrier strike group and other assets in the Middle East region in the coming days.

"This military buildup - we hope it is not intended for real confrontation - but our military is ready for the worst-case scenario. This is why everything is on high alert in Iran," said the senior Iranian official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"This time we will treat any attack - limited, unlimited, surgical, kinetic, whatever they call it - as an all-out war against us, and we will respond in the hardest way possible to settle this," the official said.

US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Jushner are set to visit Israel next week for a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Haaretz.

A US carrier strike group led by the USS Lincoln has yet to arrive in the region, according to Fox News, citing a US official, whose correspondent said that the strike group has not entered CENTCOM's area of operation from INDOPACOM and is not yet in the Gulf of Oman.

KLM and Air France have cancelled flights to Israel scheduled for Friday and Saturday due to tention with Iran, according to Haaretz.

Europeans were among 150 senior Islamic State group detainees transferred this week by the US military from Kurdish custody in Syria to neighbouring Iraq, whose premier urged EU countries to repatriate their nationals.

An Iraqi security official said the 150 detainees, who the US military transferred to Iraq on Wednesday, were "all leaders of the Islamic State group, and some of the most notorious criminals", and included "Europeans, Asians, Arabs and Iraqis".

Another Iraqi security source said the group included "85 Iraqis and 65 others of various nationalities, including Europeans, Sudanese, Somalis and people from the Caucasus region".

They "all participated in IS operations in Iraq", including the major 2014 offensive that saw the jihadists seize large pieces of territory, he said, adding "are all at the level of emirs" within the group's hierarchy.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said there were signs that Israel was still seeking an opportunity to attack Iran, warning such a move could further destabilise the region.

"I hope they find a different path, but the reality is that Israel, in particular, is looking for an opportunity to strike Iran," Fidan said in a televised interview on Friday.

The UN refugee agency said Friday it had managed to enter a camp in northeastern Syria housing thousands of suspected relatives of Islamic State group fighters, and had resumed aid deliveries.

After initially saying volatile security had prevented it from entering, UNHCR said on X that it, "accompanied by Syrian Government officials, was able to enter inside Al-Hol camp", adding that "the delivery of essential supplies has resumed, including trucks carrying bread".

The chief of the UN's agency for Palestine refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, has said that the occupied West Bank is currently "in the grip of its most severe humanitarian crisis since 1967."

"One year since the start of Israel's 'Iron Wall' military operation, 33,000 people remain forcibly displaced from Palestine Refugee camps in the north," he said, adding that "Israeli forces have been demolishing swathes of the camps, reducing the chances for these communities to recover."

He said that while UNRWA teams are working on the ground to alleviate the situation, more political and financial support is needed for the agency from UN member states.

The occupied #WestBank is in the grip of its most severe humanitarian crisis since 1967.

One year since the start of Israel's 'Iron Wall' military operation, 33,000 people remain forcibly displaced from #Palestine Refugee camps in the north. Meanwhile, Israeli forces have been…

— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) January 23, 2026

Turkey's foreign minister said the current ceasefire in Syria should remain in place while Islamic State prisoners are transferred to Iraq, saying this would limit security risks.

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said in a televised interview that the truce between Syrian government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces was necessary to prevent instability during the transfer process and to avoid further destabilisation in northern and eastern Syria.

The United States unveiled sanctions Friday targeting Iran's "shadow fleet" said to be supporting the country's oil exports, as Washington steps up pressure over the government's crackdown on protesters.

The Treasury Department took aim at nine vessels and their respective owners or management firms, which US officials said "collectively transported hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of Iranian oil and petroleum products to foreign markets."

The department charged that revenue from these products is being diverted to fund "regional terrorist proxies, weapons programs, and security services."

The move comes as a US-based rights group said that it had confirmed the deaths of more than 5,000 people during protests that swept Iran, adding that most of them were demonstrators targeted by security forces.

The United Nations Human Rights Council voted Friday to deepen its scrutiny of Iran amid alarm over its crackdown on protests that left thousands dead.

The 47-member body voted - with 25 in favour, seven opposed and the rest abstaining - for a resolution extending and broadening the mandate of independent investigators gathering information towards ensuring accountability for rights violations in the country.

Six-month-old infant Youssef Omar Abu Hamala died from hypothermia on Friday in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources reported.

According to the Palestinian News Agency WAFA, the baby passed away in his tent in Al-Mawasi area.

His death raises the toll of children who have died in Gaza from severe cold since the start of winter 11, amid scarce aid and lack of heating.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Friday that Israeli settler attacks in the occupied West Bank have displaced about 100 Palestinian families over the past two weeks.

In a report, OCHA said ongoing attacks, threats and intimidation by settlers forced more than 100 families from five communities across the West Bank to flee their homes.

It noted that most of the displaced families are from the Bedouin community of Ras Ein al-Auja in the Jericho governorate in the eastern West Bank.

The office said settler violence has disrupted farmers' access to homes, grazing lands and water sources, undermining their sense of safety.

OCHA added that more than 72,000 farming and herding families — nearly two-thirds of all agricultural households — are in urgent need of emergency agricultural assistance.

President Joseph Aoun said Lebanon insists on the return of displaced residents from the south and on ending Israeli attacks on the country.

He made the remarks while hosting in the presidential palace a delegation from southern border towns, stressing that developments in the area are being followed on a daily basis.

Aoun said the state is committed to rebuilding the border region and strengthening the Lebanese Army’s presence to protect residents.

He denied any plans to evacuate the southern border areas, calling instead for compensation and economic support for displaced families.

The president urged the international community to pressure Israel to halt its attacks and withdraw from five occupied hilltops Israeli forces remain in.

An Israeli tank opened fire on Friday near a Lebanese Army unit while it was carrying out a joint field mission with UN peacekeepers (UNIFIL) in the south of the country.

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that the vicinity of a Lebanese Army unit came under fire from an Israeli tank.

NNA said the Israeli tank targeted the Lebanese force "while it was conducting a joint field mission with UNIFIL forces near Wadi al-Asafir, south of the town of Khiam."

There were no reports of casualties.

Washington has threatened senior Iraqi politicians with sanctions targeting the Iraqi state — including potentially its critical supply of oil revenue sourced via the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — should Iran-backed armed groups be included in the next government, four sources told Reuters.

If US President Donald Trump's Board of Peace is narrowed down to focus on Gaza, European leaders can work with the plan, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.

"We want to work for the peace in the Middle East and we want this board of peace to be limited to the UN Security Council resolution as it was foreseen," Kallas said before a summit of EU leaders where Trump's proposal was among items to be discussed.

"So if we narrow it down to Gaza like it was meant to be, then we can work with it," she added. 

Israel wants to restrict the number of Palestinians entering Gaza through the border crossing with Egypt to ensure that more are allowed out than in, news agency Reuters reports- citing three sources briefed on the matter- ahead of the border's expected opening next week.

The head of a transitional Palestinian committee backed by the US to temporarily administer Gaza, Ali Shaath, announced on Thursday that the Rafah Border Crossing - effectively the sole route in or out of Gaza for nearly all of the more than 2 million people who live there - would open next week.

The border was supposed to have opened during the initial phase of President Donald Trump's plan to end the war, under a ceasefire reached in October between Israel and Hamas.

Earlier this month, Washington announced that the plan had now moved into the second phase, under which Israel is expected to withdraw troops further from Gaza and Hamas is due to yield control of the territory's administration.

The Gaza side of the crossing has been under Israeli military control since 2024.

The three sources told Reuters it was still not clear how Israel planned to enforce limits on the number of Palestinians entering Gaza from Egypt, or what ratio of exits to entries it aimed to achieve.

Israeli officials have spoken in the past about encouraging Palestinians to emigrate from Gaza, although they deny intending to transfer the population out by force.

Palestinians are highly sensitive to any suggestion that Gazans could be expelled, or that those who leave temporarily could be barred from returning.

The United Nations rights chief decried Friday that "thousands" of people, including children, had died in Iran's crackdown on nationwide protests, and urged the authorities to "end their brutal repression".

Speaking at the start of a UN Human Rights Council urgent meeting on the situation in Iran, Volker Turk urged the authorities in Tehran "to reconsider, to pull back, and to end their brutal repression".

Europeans were among 150 senior Islamic State group detainees transferred from Syria to Iraq earlier this week as part of a US operation, two Iraqi security officials told AFP Friday.

The group, which the US military transferred to Iraq on Wednesday, were "all leaders of the Islamic State group, and some of the most notorious criminals," and included "Europeans, Asians, Arabs and Iraqis," one security official said.

Another security source said the group included "85 Iraqis and 65 others of various nationalities, including Europeans, Sudanese, Somalis, and people from the Caucasus region".

He added that they "all participated in IS operations in Iraq," including the 2014 offensive that saw the extremist group seize large areas of Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

"They are all at the level of emirs," the official added. They are now held at a prison in Baghdad.

An influential Iranian cleric warned on Friday that Iran may target U.S.-linked investments in the region in retaliation for any U.S. attack on the Islamic Republic, Iranian news agencies reported.

"The one trillion dollars you have invested in the region is under the watch of our missiles," said Mohammad Javad Haj Ali Akbari, a leader of prayers that are held on Fridays in Tehran before a large gathering. He did not specify which investments he was referring to.

Separately, Iran's top prosecutor Mohammad Movahedi denied that Iran had called off 800 executions of people arrested in recent nationwide protests, as Trump has said.

"This claim is completely false, No such number exists, nor has the judiciary made any such decision," Movahedi was quoted as saying by the judiciary's news agency Mizan.

The EU said Friday that alleged breakouts by detained foreign fighters from the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria were of "paramount concern", and it was monitoring the transfer of prisoners to Iraq.

"The recent alleged breakouts of Daesh (IS) detainees amidst the clashes is of paramount concern," EU spokesman Anouar El Anouni said, referring to fighting between the Syrian government and Kurdish-led forces who had previously secured the prisoners.

"We closely monitor the situation, including the transfer of remaining fighters detained, including foreign terrorist fighters to Iraq," EU spokesman Anouar El Anouni said.

Two Israeli drone strikes targeted an area in east Lebanon's Baalbek district on Friday, in what local media reported were to hit a Palestinian militant leader

One strike targeted a vehicle at the Majdaloun junction on the main Baalbek highway, while a second attack targeted Douris, just south of the city of Baalbek.

According to LBCI,  the unnamed individual targeted in the strikes is a military official affiliated with a Palestinian faction. It added that this was the third time Israel had attempted to target this official over the past year in different locations.

The New Arab could not independently verify this.

🔻غارة من مسيّرة معادية على سيارة قرب مستشفى دار الامل في دورس في البقاع ولا يوجد وقوع اصابات. pic.twitter.com/ynNtYj9b63

— HANZALAH حنظلة (@revolt_hanzalah) January 23, 2026

The Israeli army announced on Friday that it has concluded its four-day military operation in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

In a statement, the army said that its forces, together with the internal security agency (Shin Bet), Border Police and regular police, completed a "regional operation" on Thursday in the Jabal Jawhar neighborhood of Hebron, which included surrounding the area and raiding homes.

The army added that during the campaign its forces searched some 350 buildings and arrested 14 wanted individuals, claiming to have seized eight weapons and dozens of knives.

The raids were carried out in the part of Hebron known as H2, which remains under full Israeli control under the 1997 Hebron Protocol between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

A training centre for hundreds of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank could be closed within days by Israeli authorities, jeopardising the education of students, the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency said on Friday.

The Kalandia Training Centre, which teaches 350 young male students from across the West Bank skills such as plumbing and vehicle maintenance, could be shut, as the land it sits on is at risk of expropriation by Israeli authorities, UNRWA said.

"If the centre were to be forcibly closed - and we do fear that this could happen within days - there is no educational alternative for these students. So you're depriving a large cohort of Palestine Refugees of economic opportunities," Jonathan Fowler, UNRWA's spokesperson, told reporters in Geneva speaking via video link from Amman, Jordan.

"The right to education would be under attack there...The international community needs to wake up," he added.

Iran’s top prosecutor says Trump's claim that Tehran halted execution of 800 protest prisoners "is completely false."

The U.N. nuclear watchdog must clarify its stance on U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran's nuclear sites last June before inspectors are allowed to visit those facilities, Iranian media on Friday quoted the country's atomic chief as saying.

Mohammad Eslami said the inspections so far had been limited to undamaged sites and he criticised the watchdog for letting Israeli and U.S. pressure influence its actions.

Access to sites that were attacked needs "a specific protocol", Eslami said, adding: "When a military strike occurs and there are environmental risks, it must be defined and a guideline must be designed."

"The agency has to clarify its position regarding the military attacks on the nuclear facilities that have been registered by the agency and are under its supervision so we can understand what role they play," state TV quoted Eslami as having told reporters in Tehran on Thursday.

He said Tehran had submitted a statement at the IAEA's General Conference last September demanding that attacks on nuclear sites be prohibited. But it was not placed on the agenda and was ignored, he said.

The U.N. Human Rights Council will hold an emergency session on Friday to discuss the "alarming violence" used in Iran against protesters, while a group of states will call on United Nations' investigators to document alleged abuses for future trials.

At least 50 countries backed the call for a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council to address credible reports of violence, crackdowns on protesters and violations of international human rights law across the country, according to a letter drafted by Iceland.

"The scale of the crimes is unprecedented," Payam Akhavan, a former U.N. prosecutor with Iranian-Canadian nationality, told Reuters ahead of the session, where he is set to speak.

"We are trying to set the stage for transitional justice in Iran, for the country’s Nuremberg moment, should that come to pass," he said, referring to the international criminal trials of Nazi leaders following World War Two.

Human rights advocates hope that the emergency session will pressure Iran's government.

The death toll from Iran's bloody crackdown on nationwide protests reached at least 5,002 people killed Friday, activists said, warning many more still were feared dead as the most-comprehensive internet blackout in the country crossed the two-week mark.

The challenge in getting information out of Iran persists due to authorities cutting off access to the world through the internet on January 8.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency offered the toll, saying 4,716 were demonstrators, 203 were government-affiliated, 43 were children and 40 were civilians not taking part in the protests. It added that over 26,800 people had been detained in a widening arrest campaign by authorities.

Iran’s government offered its first death toll Wednesday, saying 3,117 people were killed. It added that 2,427 of the dead in the demonstrations that began December 28 were civilians and security forces, with the rest being "terrorists." Iran’s theocracy in the past has undercounted or not reported fatalities from unrest.

The Syrian interior ministry said on Friday it had taken over Al-Aktan prison in the city of Raqqa in northeast Syria, a facility that was formerly under the control of Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

The prison held detainees linked to the militant group Islamic State, and witnessed clashes in its vicinity between advancing Syrian government forces and SDF.

Poor security conditions at a camp in northeast Syria housing thousands of suspected relatives of Islamic State group fighters including foreigners has prevented the UN refugee agency from entering, a spokesperson told AFP on Friday.

"UNHCR was able to reach Al-Hol for the past three days but has not yet been able to enter inside the camp due to the volatile security situation," the refugee agency's spokesperson in Syria, Celine Schmitt, said.

Spain will not take part in the Board of Peace initiative launched by U.S. President Donald Trump to tackle global conflicts, saying the decision was consistent with its belief in multilateralism and the United Nations system.

"We appreciate the invitation, but we decline," Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told reporters late on Thursday after an EU summit in Brussels.

Sanchez cited consistency with Madrid's commitment to international law, the U.N. and multilateralism as the main reasons it was declining to participate.

Sanchez also said the Board of Peace did not include the Palestinian Authority.

U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew on Thursday an invitation for Canada to join his Board of Peace initiative aimed at resolving global conflicts. Trump's about-face follows Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he openly decried powerful nations using economic integration as weapons and tariffs as leverage.

"Please let this Letter serve to represent that the Board of Peace is withdrawing its invitation to you regarding Canada’s joining, what will be, the most prestigious Board of Leaders ever assembled, at any time," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post directed at Carney.