Middle East latest: Israeli strikes kill 12 overnight in Gaza, including kids

Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 52,000 Palestinians, according to the territory's Health Ministry, including more than 2,200 in the six weeks since Israel shattered the ceasefire. Some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in Israel by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attacks which started the war.

Here's the latest:

UN gives an update on Gaza's humanitarian situation as supplies run out

The United Nations humanitarian office describes severe shortages of food, water and medicine as medical services collapse and charity kitchens shut down.

The agency, known as OCHA, said Wednesday it will give out its last five dozen emergency shelter kits in the next few days — kits that don't include tents.

The U.N. Population Fund says all of its shelter materials, hygiene items and menstrual hygiene kits have been completely depleted.

OCHA said only seven hospitals and four field hospitals are still providing obstetric and newborn care for families in Gaza, where more than 2 million people live. Meanwhile, hospitals report that cases of malnourished pregnant and breastfeeding women are rising sharply, and most newborns are now being born underweight.

▶ Read more about the growing dangers for pregnant women in Gaza

Palestinian UN ambassador says Israel blocked him from returning to the West Bank

Israeli authorities held the Palestinian diplomat for five hours before blocking him from traveling to a meeting in Ramallah, the West Bank’s business and administrative hub, he said.

“I am a Palestinian, born in Palestine to Palestinian parents, and I am prohibited from entering my own country,” Riyad Mansour told the U.N. Security Council, appearing to get emotional.

“This is a very small part of the collective punishment imposed on all Palestinians, and of the denial of our existence and rights as a nation and as individuals,” he said.

There was no immediate comment from Israeli authorities. The ambassador was speaking at a Security Council meeting on the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, including Israel’s war in Gaza.

Gaza charity kitchens are running out of food

Scores of Palestinians gathered at charity kitchens in Deir al-Balah and Nuseirat to get their only meal for the day as food across the territory runs out. On Wednesday, one kitchen served pasta in a thin tomato sauce, another served just lentils.

Crowds of people pushed against each other and yelled as they held their pots and containers up high in the air in a desperate attempt to not leave empty-handed.

“There is starvation. There is no food or thing to drink," said Wafaa, a woman displaced in Nuseirat with eight family members, who gave only her first name. "It would be a significant crisis if the charity kitchens close.”

Abu Hamza Fawaz, who works with the charity kitchen in Deir al-Balah, said that the kitchen will close in a few days due to the lack of food and fuel.

Ahmed Yassin who works with another charity kitchen in Nuseirat, said that a significant number of small charity kitchens closed a while ago and people had to rely on the main communal kitchens.

A Palestinian journalist is hospitalized after his arrest by Israel, his son says

Ali Samoudi, who has worked for CNN, Al Jazeera and other international news outlets, was taken to a hospital by Israeli forces after soldiers snatched him from his home in the West Bank, according to his son.

Mohammed Samoudi told The Associated Press that his father needs daily medication for several chronic illnesses. The journalist was wounded by the same Israeli sniper fire that killed veteran Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022.

The Israeli military says Samoudi is affiliated with the Islamic Jihad militant group, but has no information on his current whereabouts.

Dozens of Palestinian journalists have been detained by the Israeli military since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, 2023.

Palestinian rescue service chief urges sanctions against Israel

The international community must sanction Israel over its attacks on Gaza and total cutoff of humanitarian aid, which have rendered conditions there unlivable, the head of the Palestinian Red Crescent said Wednesday.

“Israel has left no space for humanity to live in Gaza. We have to go into sanctions,” said Dr. Younis Al-Khatib, speaking to The Associated Press in Lebanon.

Israel's war in Gaza has killed more than 150 emergency responders from the Red Crescent and Civil Defense groups and over 1,000 health workers, according to the United Nations. Last month, Israeli troops killed 15 Palestinian medics and first responders and buried them in a mass grave, including eight with the Red Crescent.

Wildfires burn near Jerusalem, closing a key highway

On Wednesday, Israel’s fire and rescue authority called for international assistance to help control the raging wildfires, which spread to multiple locations on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

Israel’s police said it was closing part of a main highway connecting Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Video footage showed vehicles stranded near the fire. Police reported that residents living close to the fire zone were evacuated for safety, and volunteers were deployed to evacuate hikers.

Iran executes a man it said worked for Israel’s foreign intelligence agency

The official IRNA news agency reported Wednesday that the man, identified as Mohsen Langarneshin, was hanged. It said he had played role in the 2022 killing of a Revolutionary Guard colonel in Tehran, and called him a “senior spy” for the Mossad.

The report said he had provided “technical support” in the assassination of Col. Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, shot five times by gunmen on a motorbike outside his home in Tehran.

The report said Langerneshin confessed in Iran’s Revolutionary Court.

It said the Mossad recruited Langarneshin in 2020 and that he met with Israeli intelligence officers in Georgia and Nepal.

Langarneshin reportedly rented safe houses for operatives in several Iranian cities, including Isfahan, when, in January 2023, bomb-carrying drones targeted what Iran described as a military workshop. Iran has accused Israel of being behind the attack.

Sirens sound across Israel to mark memorial day

Sirens sounded for two minutes across Israel on Wednesday morning, as the country came to a standstill marking its memorial day for fallen soldiers and victims of attacks.

Jets flew over the military cemetery at Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem, where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commemorated the day in an opening ceremony. Memorial Day lasts from sunset Tuesday until sunset Wednesday.

Speaking about Hamas’ Oct 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Netanyahu said the country was determined to settle the score with those who committed atrocities. “Our sons and daughters are unwilling to hold back on what the monsters who attacked us a year and a half ago have done,” he said.

Memorial Day marked at site of Israeli music festival massacre

In southern Israel, friends and relatives gathered near Reim, a dusty field that hosted the music festival just 3.3 kilometers (2 miles) from the Gaza border, where more than 10%, or over 360, of the festival’s attendees were killed and others were kidnapped on Oct. 7.

“We are still in a war, we can’t digest or clearly summarize everything,” said Tal Zoherman whose 73-year-old father Motti was killed at the festival. “We try to come here and be together, united and to even celebrate him in our way and to hope for a better future."

Israeli strikes kill 12 in Gaza

The pre-dawn strikes hit three houses in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp, according to staff at the Al-Aqsa hospital, which received the bodies. Among the dead were three children, including two brothers whose bodies arrived in pieces, according to the hospital’s morgue.

Israeli forces arrest a Palestinian journalist in the occupied West Bank

Israel's military said it arrested Ali Samoudi, a well-known journalist, in an overnight raid in the northern city of Jenin.

Samoudi previously worked for international outlets including CNN and Al Jazeera. In 2022, he was injured in the same spray of gunfire that killed prominent Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. U.S. officials say Akleh was shot dead by an Israeli sniper.

Israel’s military said Samoudi was affiliated with and transferred funds for the Islamic Jihad militant group, without providing evidence. They said Samoudi had been sent to Israel’s security forces.

Samoudi’s arrest is the latest of dozens of Palestinian journalists detained by Israel since the start Israel’s war with Hamas, which began on Oct. 7, 2023.

Lebanon's president urges US military to pressure Israel to withdraw from his country's south

Joseph Aoun, who met with a U.S. military delegation Wednesday, urged it to pressure Israel to withdraw from areas it still controls in the country and to release Lebanese prisoners.

The delegation was headed by U.S. Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers, the co-chairman of the Cessation of Hostilities Implementation Mechanism.

Aoun told the American delegation that the Lebanese army is carrying out its work along the border with Israel, where troops have been confiscating weapons and preventing armed presence.

A statement released by Aoun’s office said that Jeffers, who had held the post since before the Israel-Hezbollah war ended in late November, will be replaced by Maj. Gen. Michael J. Leeney. It added that Leeney also attended Wednesday’s meeting.

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