WHO says Gaza hunger crisis not improving amid Israeli siege

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UNICEF has issued a call for Gaza's ceasefire to hold so that the agency is able to continue its work in the enclave, which has seen it bring in "essential nutrition and medical supplies, hygiene kits, tents and winter clothing" into Gaza.

In Gaza, UNICEF has been bringing in essential nutrition and medical supplies, hygiene kits, tents and winter clothing.@UNICEFmena's Edouard Beigbeder calls for the ceasefire to be sustained and respected and outlines the critical needs for children and families. pic.twitter.com/rt8XQOZ2jR

— UNICEF (@UNICEF) October 24, 2025

Israeli air strikes killed two people in southern Lebanon on Friday, state media and the Ministry of Health reported, with Israel's military saying it had targeted members of Hezbollah.

According to Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA), one man "was targeted by an Israeli drone with a guided missile while he was driving" along the road to the village of Toul, not far from Nabatieh.

It identified the slain man as Abbas Hassan Karky.

In a statement, the Israeli army said it "struck and eliminated" Karky, calling him "the logistics commander of Hezbollah's Southern Front headquarters".

The military said Karky had "led efforts to rebuild Hezbollah's combat capabilities" following last year's war with Israel, and that he had also been responsible "for managing the transfer and storage of weapons in southern Lebanon".

A majority of Israelis believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should not run for reelection, according to a poll aired by Channel 12.

The poll said that 52 percent of Israelis think he should run, to 41 percent who think he should. Seven percent said they were not sure.

Asked about who should lead Likud if not Netanyahu, 48 percent said they don't know, with votes split between several other current cabinet members.

Asked about who should lead the opposition into the election, 44 percent said Naftali Bennett should.

Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian youths in the city of Tubas and the town of Aqaba in the occupied West Bank after Israeli forces stormed the two, according to Al Jazeera.

Israeli settlers have vandalised a mosque, damaging the building, its solar power units and carpets, in the hamlet of Khirbet Tana, located near occupied West Bank town of Beit Furik. The town is close to Nablus.

Settlers also damaged a school, which had largely been demolished earlier in the year.

Israeli forces have killed two Palestinians in shelling east of Deir el-Balah, according to Al Jazeera, citing sources at the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. 

Israel's Defence Minister Israel Katz has told US Vice President JD Vance that Israel believes it has destroyed 60 percent of Hamas' tunnel network in Gaza, according to Israel's Channel 12.

Half of those tunnels are speculated to be on the Israeli side of the yellow line, according to the report.

The UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) has said that some 1.5 million people in Gaza emergency shelters, and that some 90 percent of people in Gaza are displaced.

31,000 items of shelter have been sent, including 2,500 tents, but that falls short of what's needed to relieve residents. Further, 28,000 tents are waiting in Jordan.

Israeli forces stormed the town of Beita, south of Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.

The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that troops entered the town under heavy gunfire and fired tear gas, sparking clashes with residents in the area.

The wife of high-profile Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti, Fadwa Barghouti, appealed to US President Donald Trump to help release the popular leader from his Israeli jail, her son Arab told AFP news agency.

Barghouti, 66, is serving multiple life sentences since 2002 and is seen by many Palestinians as a potential leader who could unite their national movement.

"Mr President, a genuine partner awaits you -- one who can help fulfil the dream we share of just and lasting peace in the region. For the sake of freedom for the Palestinian people and peace for all future generations, help release Marwan Barghouti," lawyer Fadwa Barghouti said in a statement.

Asked whether he would support freeing Barghouti during an interview with US magazine Time on October 15, Trump said he'd be "making a decision" on the matter, without specifying a timeline.

Asked about the matter Friday during a briefing in Israel, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said: "I have nothing new to give you on this topic."

Hailing from Hamas's historic rival Fatah, he was among the Palestinian prisoners Hamas had wanted to see released as part of the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire deal, according to Egyptian state-linked media.

Barghouti, whose supporters sometimes refer to as the "Palestinian Mandela", is regarded as one of the few Palestinian figures who could be accepted by all political factions as a leader.

In a video he shared on social media in August, Israel's National Security Minister and far-right firebrand Itamar Ben Gvir was seen visiting and threatening a physically diminished Barghouti in jail.

The main Palestinian factions, including Hamas, said Friday they had agreed that an independent committee of technocrats would take over the running of post-war Gaza.

During a meeting in Cairo, according to a joint statement published on the Hamas website, the groups agreed to hand "over the administration of the Gaza Strip to a temporary Palestinian committee composed of independent 'technocrats', which will manage the affairs of life and basic services in cooperation with Arab brothers and international institutions".

With Gaza's education system shattered by two years of gruelling war, UNICEF's regional director says he fears for a "lost generation" of children wandering ruined streets with nothing to do.

"This is the third year that there has been no school," Edouard Beigbeder, the UN agency's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, told AFP news agency in Jerusalem on Thursday after returning from the Palestinian territory.

"If we don't start a real transition for all children in February, we will enter a fourth year. And then we can talk about a lost generation."

The devastating conflict between Israel and Hamas reduced swathes of Gaza to rubble, displaced the vast majority of its population at least once and crippled public services.

The destruction "is almost omnipresent wherever you go," Beigbeder said.

"It is impossible to imagine 80 percent of a territory that is completely flattened out or destroyed," he added.

A US-brokered ceasefire which came into effect earlier in October has allowed UNICEF and other education partners to get about one-sixth of children who should be in school into temporary "learning centres," Beigbeder told AFP.

"They have three days of learning in reading, mathematics and writing, but this is far from a formal education as we know it," he added.

Beigbeder said that such learning centres, often located in schools or near displacement camps, consisted of metal structures covered with plastic sheeting or of tents.

He said there were sometimes chairs, cardboard boxes or wooden planks serving as tables, and that children would write on salvaged slates or plastic boards.

"I've never seen everyone sitting properly," he added, describing children on mats or carpets.

The United States named a veteran diplomat on Friday as the civilian lead in a body monitoring the Gaza ceasefire, seeking to push forward a durable end to the war.

The State Department said that Steve Fagin, a career diplomat, will work alongside US Army Lieutenant General Patrick Frank, the military head already appointed to the hub set up after the October 10 ceasefire.

The Civil-Military Coordination Centre was set up in southern Israel on October 17 to observe the ceasefire for any violations and handle logistics including aid delivery into war-ravaged Gaza.

Some 200 US troops were sent to the centre, set up in a rented warehouse, where they work with soldiers from Israel and European countries, representatives of the United Arab Emirates and Jordan, and personnel from the United Nations and aid groups.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the site, which is a short drive from Gaza, on Friday and called it a "historic" undertaking.

"There's going to be ups and downs and twists and turns, but I think we have a lot of reason for healthy optimism about the progress that's being made," Rubio said.

Fagin has long experience in the Middle East.

He has served since 2022 as ambassador to Yemen, managing relations at a turbulent time as the United States bombed Huthi rebels that have lobbed missiles at Israel in professed solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

And it is just the latest time Fagin has taken a major concurrent position.

He served for three months until recently as the top US diplomat in Baghdad while remaining ambassador to Yemen, a job in which he has been based primarily in Saudi Arabia.

They were freed in exchange for Israeli hostages held in Gaza, but instead of going home, 154 Palestinian ex-prisoners were exiled to Egypt, where they are confined to a hotel and kept under tight surveillance.

All of them had been sentenced by Israeli military court to life in prison on charges of murder, belonging to Palestinian groups banned by Israel, and other acts of violence.

But when a ceasefire took effect in Gaza earlier this month, the group was put on buses and sent to Egypt, where authorities have put them in a five-star hotel that they cannot leave without clearance.

"We were separated from our families for 20 years," Murad Abu al-Rub, a 45-year-old who spent two decades behind bars over accusations of murder and for belonging to a Palestinian organisation banned by Israel, told AFP news agency.

Now, he is living in uncertainty and under close surveillance, far from the Palestinian city of Jenin where he was born.

"Nothing has changed. I still can't see mother or my siblings," Abu al-Rub told a team of AFP journalists who were able to access the hotel.

The UN's health agency pleaded Friday for thousands of people in desperate need of medical care to be allowed to leave Gaza, in what it said would be a "game-changer".

The World Health Organization has supported the medical evacuation of nearly 7,800 patients out of the Gaza Strip since the war with Israel began two years ago -- and estimates there are 15,000 people currently needing treatment outside the Palestinian territory.

But a US-brokered ceasefire that came into effect on October 10 has not sped up the process -- the WHO has been able to evacuate only 41 critical patients since then.

Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO's representative in the Palestinian territories, called for all crossings out of Gaza into Israel and Egypt to be opened up during the ceasefire -- not only for the entry of aid but for medical evacuations too.

"All medical corridors need to be opened," he said, particularly to hospitals in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as happened routinely before the war.

"It is vital and is the most cost-effective route. If that route opened, it would really be a... game-changer."

Speaking via video link from Jerusalem, he told journalists in Geneva that two evacuations were planned for next week, but he wanted them every day and said the WHO was ready to take "a minimum of 50 patients per day".

At the current rate, he said evacuating the 15,000 people needing treatment -- including 4,000 children -- would drag on for a decade or so.

The WHO says more than 700 people have died waiting for medical evacuation since the war began.

The UN health agency has called for more countries to step up and accept Gazan patients. While over 20 countries have taken patients, only a handful have done so in large numbers.

Peeperkorn said only a fraction of Gaza's health system remained in service -- just 14 of 36 hospitals are even partially functional for a population topping two million.

Spain's High Court is investigating privately-owned steelmaker Sidenor for allegedly selling steel to an Israeli firm for the purpose of making weapons, it said on Friday, in one of the first potential legal consequences of Spain's ban on such deals.

Judge Francisco de Jorge is leading the investigation targeting Sidenor's CEO Jose Antonio Jainaga Gomez and two other executives for alleged smuggling and complicity in crimes against humanity or genocide, according to the statement.

They were summoned to testify on November 12.

The court said Sidenor sold steel to Israel Military Industries, a subsidiary of Elbit Systems, in a deal allegedly conducted without government authorisation or proper registry.

The executives "went ahead with the deal with full knowledge that (the firm) was a manufacturer of both heavy and light weapons, and that the material sold was to be used for the manufacture of weapons," the High Court said.

Sidenor and Elbit Systems did not immediately respond to the latest developments.

The investigation stems from a complaint filed in July by the association of the Palestinian community of the region of Catalonia.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday he did not believe that Israel would annex the West Bank, playing down this week's Knesset vote to advance two bills.

Rubio said Israeli lawmakers had held the vote as a political stunt to embarrass US Vice President JD Vance and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"Suffice it to say we don't think it's going to happen," he told reporters during a visit to the US-led Civil-Military Coordination Centre in southwestern Israel.

An international security force to be put in place in Gaza under a ceasefire agreement will have to be made up of countries that Israel is "comfortable with", U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday during a visit to Israel.

Rubio added that the future of governance in Gaza still needs to be worked out among Israel and partner nations but could not include Hamas, adding that any potential role for the Palestinian Authority has yet to be determined. 

Afaf Abu Alia had woken early on October 19 to join her grandchildren picking olives near the West Bank village of Turmus Ayya, when she heard a woman scream "settlers".

Masked men burst out of the trees, one of whom hit 55-year-old Abu Alia on the head with a club, according to her account and a video verified by Reuters news agency showing the attack.

While mediators try to bolster a fragile ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, intensified Israeli settler violence targetting the Palestinian olive harvest in the occupied West Bank has continued unabated, according to Palestinian and U.N. officials.

"I fell to the ground and I couldn't feel anything," Abu Alia told Reuters on Wednesday, her right eye bruised from the assault.

Since the harvest began in the first week of October, there have been at least 158 attacks across the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to figures made public by the Palestinian Authority's Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission (CWRC).

There was a 13% rise in settler attacks in the first two weeks of the 2025 harvest compared to the same period in 2024, said Ajith Sunghay, head of the U.N. Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Israeli media reported that Alon Ohel, who was freed by Hamas from Gaza, was admitted to Beilinson Hospital in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva on Monday for medical examination.

According to Yedioth Ahronoth, the hospital said that Ohel has now been discharged and will begin a rehabilitation process, similar to that undertaken by other former captives.

Husam Badran, the head of Hamas’s national relations and a member of its political bureau, said that Palestinian factions share a "unified vision" for the Gaza deal.

Speaking to Egypt’s Al Qahera News on Thursday, Badran said:

"We are in Cairo today to follow up on the steps related to implementing the Sharm el-Sheikh Agreement. What distinguishes this round is the participation of many major Palestinian factions. All factions agree on a unified vision for implementing the agreement in a way that serves the interests of the Palestinian people."

He added that the Sharm el-Sheikh Agreement was the outcome of “extensive dialogue and communication between the Palestinian factions,” noting that “all the statements issued by them affirmed the unity of their position and common approach.”

Delegations from Hamas and the Palestinian Authority met in Cairo on Thursday for the first time as part of ongoing discussions on the second phase of Trump’s Gaza plan, which aims to define the political and security framework for the territory following the ceasefire.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported, citing a senior US official, that “embarrassing” incidents took place during US Vice President J.D. Vance’s visit to Tel Aviv this week, creating visible tension between Washington and Tel Aviv and raising doubts within the US administration about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s commitment to the Gaza ceasefire agreement.

According to the channel, the US official said the events during the visit led the Trump administration to believe that Netanyahu "may work to collapse the agreement," referring to actions and meetings that American officials viewed as "provocative" and a breach of previously agreed protocol.

The source added that "Netanyahu is walking a fine line in his relationship with President Trump, and if he attempts to sabotage the agreement or bypass existing understandings, there will be clear consequences."

He noted that the White House had issued explicit warnings to the Israeli government to fully comply with the terms of the agreement and to refrain from any military or political steps that could be perceived as undermining it.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which has been banned by Israel, has called for an end to the “increasing annexation” of the occupied West Bank.

On X, the UN agency said that since 7 October 2023, “the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has also witnessed a sharp escalation in violence”.

According to the UN humanitarian office, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in settler and Israeli army attacks on the territory since Israel began its war on Gaza, adding that one-fifth of the victims were children.

"The increasing annexation of the West Bank is happening steadily in a gross violation of international law," UNRWA said, referring to the expansion and recognition of illegal Israeli settlements.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, the occupied #WestBank, including East Jerusalem, has also witnessed a sharp escalation in violence.

More than 1,000 Palestinians, one fifth of whom are children, have been reportedly killed according to @‌UNOCHA, and many more injured or… pic.twitter.com/J970olcQTI

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) October 24, 2025

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said the United States and others must do more to push Israel to stop violating the Gaza ceasefire agreement, including the possible use of sanctions or halting arms sales.

According to an official readout of his remarks to reporters aboard a return flight from Oman, Erdogan said the Palestinian group Hamas was abiding by the agreement.

He added that Turkey remains ready to support the planned Gaza task force in any way needed. 

Israel has rejected the participation of countries that have recognised the State of Palestine in the proposed Gaza stabilisation force.

According to Yedioth Ahronoth, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government informed Washington that it opposes the inclusion of any nation that has formally recognised Palestine in the multinational force intended to oversee stability in Gaza.

According to Al Jazeera English, a Palestinian child has died from wounds sustained during an Israeli raid on the Askar refugee camp in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli forces also raided the town of Aqaba, north of Tubas, and carried out several arrests earlier today in Hebron and Tal, AJE additionally reported.

Video footage obtained by Reuters shows far-right Israeli groups attempting to block aid trucks bound for the Gaza Strip near the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing — one of only two entry points opened by Israel following the ceasefire.

This is not the first instance of Israelis gathering to obstruct life-saving aid deliveries to Gaza, as The New Arab reports that the hunger crisis remains severe despite the pause in Israeli airstrikes.

Delegations from Hamas and its longtime rival Fatah met in Cairo on Thursday to discuss the second phase of a US-backed Gaza ceasefire plan, an informed source told AFP news agency.

"The meeting discussed the current situation and issues related to the second phase of the proposed ceasefire in Gaza," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He added that both sides agreed to "continue meetings in the coming period and to work on organising the Palestinian internal front in the face of the challenges posed by the Israeli government".

Egypt's state-linked Al-Qahera News reported that the talks covered "the national scene in general and arrangements after ending the war in the Gaza Strip".

Hamas and Fatah have a history of deep political rivalry, which flared into fighting for a time after a 2006 election, and which has hindered efforts at Palestinian national unity.

Egypt, a long-time mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, hosted the meetings as part of a wider push to build consensus around the long-term ceasefire plan put forward by US President Donald Trump.

Alongside the Hamas-Fatah talks, Egypt's intelligence chief Hassan Rashad met with senior officials from key Palestinian factions.

They included Islamic Jihad, an ally of Hamas, as well as the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- both factions within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Al-Qahera News said the talks were part of Egyptian efforts to "achieve national Palestinian consensus on the implementation of the US president's ceasefire plan in Gaza".