Six killed in Israeli operation in West Bank refugee camp, Palestinian ministry says
An Israeli operation in a Palestinian refugee camp in the north of the occupied West Bank left six people dead and several others wounded early on Wednesday, according to the Palestinian ministry of health.
“Six martyrs killed by the occupation [Israel] and some who were seriously wounded were transported to the Thabet Thabet government hospital in Tulkarem,” the ministry said in a statement, Agence France-Presse reports.
According to the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, the six people were killed by Israeli airstrikes on the Nur Shams refugee camp near the town of Tulkarem, where Israeli soldiers were also deployed.
The army did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the operation.
Violence across the West Bank has flared since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted in Gaza after the militant group’s 7 October attack on Israel.
More than 300 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers since the Gaza war erupted, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry.
Key events
Images taken in southern Israel on Wednesday morning show that Israel continues to bombard the Gaza Strip.
Lebanese state media is reporting that three people have been killed and one wounded by an Israeli strike on the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil.
الوكالة الوطنية للإعلام – 3 شهداء وجريح في الغارة المعادية على بنت جبيل ليلًا https://t.co/7iTjibNkLu
— National News Agency (@NNALeb) December 27, 2023
The claims have not been independently verified.
Israel and anti-Israeli forces have frequently exchanged fire over the UN-drawn blue line that separates the two countries since the surprise Hamas attack inside southern Israel on 7 October. Bint Jbeil is about 2.5 miles (4km) north of the blue line.
Reuters reports that Iran’s atomic energy chief, Mohammad Eslami, has said there was “nothing new” in an international nuclear watchdog report saying that Tehran had reversed a months-long slowdown in its uranium enrichment programme, Iranian media reported.
“We did nothing new and are doing the same activities according to the rules,” Eslami was quoted as saying.
Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, included Iran in a list of countries and territories that he said were attacking Israel in “seven theatres”. In addition to Iran, Gallant listed Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria [an Israeli term for the Israeli-occupied West Bank], Iraq and Yemen.
The international community has long accused Iran of enriching uranium in pursuit of a nuclear weapons programme. Israel has never declared in public that it possesses nuclear weapons, but is believed by observers to possess at least 80 warheads.
In its morning operational update on the Telegram messaging app, Israel’s military has listed several incidents within the Gaza Strip in which it claims to have targeted and eliminated what it described as terrorists.
It said that aircraft and tanks were directed to fire at what it said were Hamas fighters, and in one incident in the area of Shejaiya “the strike led to secondary explosions, which indicate that the area was rigged with explosives aimed at attacking the [Israeli] troops”.
It also claimed that “Israeli Navy forces identified suspects in a compound who posed a threat to the ground forces and struck them. In addition, in order to assist the ground forces, Israeli Navy forces struck Hamas terrorist targets along the coastline”.
The update did not give a total number of fighters that Israel claims to have killed, or offer a total number of targets which Israel had attacked.
The claims have not been independently verified.
Overnight, Israel announced the names of three more Israeli troops who had been killed in action inside the Gaza Strip.
Nimo Omer
In today’s First Edition newsletter, Nimo Omer has spoken to Emma Graham-Harrison about Israel’s long-term plans for the war, and how the US president, Joe Biden, has responded to them:
Israel’s military strategy is to demilitarise Hamas by degrading its capabilities so that it cannot attack again. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has dismissed the prospect of the Palestinian Authority running Gaza, a suggestion from US president Joe Biden, and has rejected the idea of foreign peacekeepers brokering a deal, insisting that only the Israeli army could be trusted to make sure that Gaza stays demilitarised. The only stated and clear military goal is to “destroy Hamas”. But this is not “an achievable military goal”, Emma says, because Hamas is an ideological organisation that operates beyond Gaza in practical and political terms.
Netanyahu has said that there is a chance the Israeli military could maintain indefinite security control over Gaza after the war ends, which suggests that the plan is to reintroduce a form of extended Israeli occupation over the strip. Biden has warned Netanyahu against this strongly. “Israeli officials have also discussed the possibility of having a buffer zone in Gaza – as Gaza is really tiny already, taking away more land for this would be massively controversial,” Emma says.
Biden has warned Israel that “vengeance” is not a viable military strategy. He sees the danger in waging a war like this, as he remembers the Bush administration’s war in Afghanistan. “What you had was almost 20 years over which the Taliban grew stronger and stronger and reversed the original American military victory,” Emma says. “Biden clearly sees the danger in something similar happening in this conflict.”
Read more here: Wednesday briefing: Can there be any winners in the Israel-Hamas war?
Their precise location is classified, but somewhere in Israel there are multiple closely guarded warehouses that contain billions of dollars’ worth of weapons owned by the US government, Harry Davies and Manisha Ganguly report.
Long shrouded in secrecy, the warehouses are part of an extensive but previously little-known stockpile now facing scrutiny as pressure mounts on the Biden administration over its support for Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
The stockpile was first established in the 1980s to rapidly supply US forces for any future Middle East conflicts. However, over time, Israel has been permitted in certain situations to draw from its extensive supplies.
Israel now appears to be receiving munitions from the stockpile in significant quantities for use in its war on Gaza, yet there has been little transparency about transfers from the arsenal.
In interviews with the Guardian, multiple former US officials familiar with US security assistance to Israel have described how the stockpile enables expedited arms transfers to the Israel Defence Forces. It could also shield movements of US weapons from public and congressional oversight, they said.
The full report is here:
The US president, Joe Biden, and the Qatari emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, have discussed the need to release hostages held in Gaza and efforts to boost humanitarian aid, the White House says.
Qatar and Egypt were mediators between Israel and militant group Hamas in the late November truce. Diplomatic efforts on a new truce have yielded little public progress so far, Reuters reports.
The White House readout said Biden and Hamad also talked about increasing access to aid.
The two leaders discussed the urgent effort to secure the release of all remaining hostages held by Hamas, including American citizens.
The Qatari state news agency said the emir received a phone call from Biden to discuss the latest developments and joint mediation efforts for calming the situation in Gaza to reach a permanent ceasefire.
Three more fighters were killed in the Israeli attack that left a senior general with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards dead near the Syrian capital of Damascus, a war monitor has said.
The strike on Monday targeted Razi Moussavi, the most senior commander in the Quds Force – the foreign arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – to be killed outside Iran in nearly four years.
“Two foreign fighters and one Syrian fighter were also killed in the Israeli strike,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said on Tuesday, Agence France-Presse reports.
Moussavi was targeted shortly after he entered a farm in an area controlled by Iran-backed groups, said the British-based monitor, which has a vast network of sources on the ground.
Residents in the Sayyida Zeinab district south of Damascus, where the strike hit, said Iran-backed groups have tightened security there.
Later on Tuesday, the observatory reported that “Israeli ground-to-ground missiles targeted two positions belonging to pro-Iran fighters near the [Israeli] occupied Syrian Golan”, without immediately reporting casualties.
It said pro-Iran groups in that area had also been on alert since Moussavi’s killing.
On Monday, Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi expressed condolences for Moussavi’s death, saying Israel “will certainly pay for this crime”.
There was no immediate comment from Israel.
US and Israel discuss Gaza ‘day after’
The White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and Israel’s strategic affairs minister, Ron Dermer, have discussed planning for the day after the Israel-Gaza war, including governance and security in Gaza, a White House official says.
During a meeting in Washington on Tuesday, the two also discussed efforts to bring home the remaining hostages and a transition to a different phase of the war to maximise focus on high-value Hamas targets, Reuters quoted the official as saying.
Six killed in Israeli operation in West Bank refugee camp, Palestinian ministry says
An Israeli operation in a Palestinian refugee camp in the north of the occupied West Bank left six people dead and several others wounded early on Wednesday, according to the Palestinian ministry of health.
“Six martyrs killed by the occupation [Israel] and some who were seriously wounded were transported to the Thabet Thabet government hospital in Tulkarem,” the ministry said in a statement, Agence France-Presse reports.
According to the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, the six people were killed by Israeli airstrikes on the Nur Shams refugee camp near the town of Tulkarem, where Israeli soldiers were also deployed.
The army did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the operation.
Violence across the West Bank has flared since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted in Gaza after the militant group’s 7 October attack on Israel.
More than 300 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers since the Gaza war erupted, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian health ministry.
Opening summary
Welcome to our continuing live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war – this is Adam Fulton. It’s 7.30am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv and here’s an overview of the latest developments.
An Israeli operation in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank left six people dead and several others wounded early on Wednesday, the Palestinian ministry of health said.
Some of the wounded were taken to the Thabet Thabet government hospital in Tulkarem, in the occupied territory’s north, the Ramallah-based ministry said.
The six people were killed by Israeli airstrikes on the Nur Shams refugee camp near Tulkarem, according to official Palestinian media.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the operation.
Meanwhile, the White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and Israel’s strategic affairs minister, Ron Dermer, have discussed planning for the day after the Israel-Gaza war, a White House official says.
More on those stories shortly. In other headlines on this 27 December:
-
The Israeli military said it had expanded its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip to refugee camps in the central part of the Palestinian territory. Israeli forces continued to bombard the densely populated Nuseirat, Maghazi and Bureij refugee camps in central Gaza for a fourth day on Tuesday. The World Health Organisation emergency medical teams coordinator, Sean Casey, said “100-plus patients” had been brought into al-Aqsa hospital in the space of 30 minutes on Monday, adding that “about 100” more lifeless bodies were brought into the hospital around the same time.
-
Israel is engaged in a “multi-front war”, its defence minister Yoav Gallant, has said, hinting at military operations across the Middle East as the war in Gaza showed new signs of a dangerous regional escalation. Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, Gallant said Israel was “coming under attack from seven theatres: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria [an Israeli term for the West Bank], Iraq, Yemen and Iran”.
-
Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza will probably go on for many months, the country’s military chief has said. Herzi Halevi, the Israel Defence Forces’ chief of staff, said on Tuesday that its forces would reach the Hamas leadership “whether it takes a week or whether it takes months”.
-
Nearly 21,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said on Tuesday. The latest figures say 20,915 people have been killed and 54,918 injured, including 241 Palestinians who were killed in the past 24 hours and 382 injured.
-
Israeli forces killed two Palestinian people in a raid on a refugee camp near the occupied West Bank city of Hebron on Tuesday, the Palestinian health ministry has said. The two people – aged 17 and 31 – were shot dead in the Fawwar refugee camp, south of Hebron, the ministry said.
-
All telecommunications and Internet services have been lost in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian phone service provider, Paltel, said on Tuesday. In a social media post, it said its services had experienced a “complete breakdown” that was “due to the ongoing offensive”.
-
The United Nations is “gravely concerned” about the “continued bombardment” of central Gaza by Israeli forces, a UN human rights office spokesperson has said. In a statement, Seif Magango urged Israeli forces to take all measures available to protect civilians and that attacks must adhere to the principles of humanitarian international law.
-
The Israel Defence Forces said nine of its soldiers were wounded in an anti-tank missile fired by Lebanon’s Hezbollah group on Tuesday. The IDF soldiers were evacuating a civilian who had been injured in an earlier Hezbollah attack on a church, the army said. One of the soldiers was in a “serious condition”, it said. Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari accused Hezbollah of “committing war crimes by indiscriminately attacking places of worship”.
-
Sigrid Kaag, the Dutch former deputy prime minister and a Middle East expert, has been appointed the United Nations’ coordinator for humanitarian aid to Gaza. The announcement by the UN secretary general, António Guterres, follows last week’s security council resolution calling for aid to be delivered to the territory “at scale”. The US welcomed Kaag’s appointment. She is expected to start on 8 January.
-
Yemen’s Houthi rebel group has said it carried out drone attacks targeting the Israeli port city of Eilat, as well as a commercial vessel in the Red Sea. A Houthi military spokesperson said the group launched an attack with missiles on a MSC United commercial ship in the Red Sea after it rejected three warning calls, as well as drone attacks on the southern Israeli city of Eilat “and other areas in occupied Palestine”.
-
US Central Command said the US had downed 12 drones, three anti-ship ballistic missiles and two land attack cruise missiles fired by Houthis in the southern Red Sea.
-
The Israeli army has said it arrested senior Palestinian politician Khalida Jarrar in the occupied West Bank, along with other activists of her party. Jarrar, a prominent figure in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), had been previously arrested by Israeli forces in October 2019 and released in September the following year, after being held without trial.
-
A blast occurred near the Israeli embassy in New Delhi on Tuesday, authorities said. No staff members were wounded or killed in the incident, authorities said, adding that investigations into its cause were ongoing. Israel urged its citizens in India, specifically in New Delhi, to exercise caution.
-
Israel will no longer grant automatic visas to UN employees, after accusing the global body of being “complicit partners” in Hamas’s tactics. The move comes after Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, said on Monday that he had instructed his ministry not to renew the visa of a UN staff member in Israel.