al jazeeraA pregnant woman and six children were among eight Palestinians killed in a wave of Israeli attacks on Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza. Doctors managed to save the woman’s unborn child.
Israeli forces have killed 14 people during a raid on the Nur Shams refugee camp, the Palestinian health ministry said, while Israeli settlers shot dead an ambulance driver trying to reach Palestinians wounded in violence south of Nablus.
The US House of Representatives has passed $26bn in funding for Israel amid its war on Gaza and tensions with Iran, with the package to now go to the Senate for approval.
At least 34,049 Palestinians have been killed and 76,901 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The death toll in Israel from Hamas’s October 7 attacks stands at 1,139, with dozens still held captives in Gaza.
The US is reportedly considering sanctions against the Netzah Yehuda battalion, according to US news site Axios.
The US State Department has reportedly investigated Netzah Yehuda over alleged abuses pre-dating October 2023, including the death of Palestinian-American Omar Assad, 80, in January 2022.
The news comes after an investigation from Pro Publica reported a State Department panel had recommended that the US restrict arms sales to Israeli military units over credible accusations of human rights abuses.
The male-only Netzah Yehuda was formed in 1999 as a special unit for ultra-Orthodox Jewish soldiers.
According to the battalion’s website, about 1,000 soldiers serve in the unit at any time.
Israel has long tried to get more religious ultra-Orthodox Jews to sign up to its armed forces, despite their exemption from compulsory service.
The Lebanese armed group said three of its fighters were killed in an Israeli raid on a house in southern Lebanon on Saturday.
The group added that it attacked “two buildings used by the enemy soldiers” in Metula and Shlomi in northern Israel “in response to the Israeli enemy’s attacks”.
In earlier statements, Hezbollah said it had fired on several Israeli targets, including soldiers and spy equipment.
Since Hamas’s October 7 attacks, there have been near-daily cross-border exchanges of fire between the Israeli military and Hezbollah.
Turkey and Israel have traded barbs over a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz condemned the meeting on X earlier, saying: “Muslim Brotherhood alliance: rape, murder, desecration of corpses and the burning of babies. Erdogan, shame on you!”.
A spokesman for the Turkish Foreign Ministry responded to Katz’s tweet, saying: “It is the Israeli authorities who should be ashamed. They have massacred nearly 35,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.”
Oncu Keceli added, “The efforts of the members of the Israeli Government to change the agenda will not yield results. Turkiye’s priority is to bring the massacre in Gaza to an end, and the establishment of a Palestinian state to ensure lasting peace in our region.”
More on Israel’s attacks on Rafah.
Emergency workers have rescued a girl from the rubble of a home belonging to the Abdel Aal family.
A video posted online, verified by Al Jazeera, shows workers pulling the girl from the rubble and rushing her to a waiting ambulance.
We reported earlier that five Palestinians, including four children and a woman, were killed in that Israeli attack.
Canada’s Minister for International Development Ahmed Hussen says his office has reached out to Israel for “more information” after a Canadian aid organisation said its water truck had been bombed in Gaza.
“The rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief for Palestinian people is critical,” Hassan said in a post on social media.
The International Development and Relief Foundation (IDRF), a Toronto-based aid organisation, said on Friday its water truck was bombed after helping deliver “clean drinking water to tens of thousands” of people in Gaza for more than six months.
The IDRF said its team was unharmed but that the attack made it “increasingly difficult to meet urgent needs in Gaza” as they were “forced to rely on alternative trucks”.
Iranian state media reported on Friday that the country had activated its air defence systems over the central city of Isfahan, to bring down three aerial objects, amid sounds of explosions.
Flights were briefly suspended in many parts of the country before the alert was lifted.
US broadcasters, quoting senior American officials, reported that Israeli missiles had hit Isfahan.
Go here for a timeline of the escalation between Iran and Israel since the Gaza war broke out following an October 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian group Hamas.
Mr.BadGuy
Publisher
Mr.BadGuy
Publisher
These soldiers are from a country whose president is a Jew Zelensky. Orthodox churches are also being destroyed in this country. Synagogues are not touched. Surprisingly, it turns out that Jews get along well with the Bandera Nazis.