US secretary of defence Lloyd Austin said rocket strike marked a ‘dangerous escalation’
Palestinian officials say that four Palestinians were killed, including three teenagers, and another seven were wounded by Israeli fire during a military raid in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said on Tuesday that the raid was carried out overnight in the village of Aqaaba in the northern West Bank.
Iran has called in foreign ambassadors based in Tehran to warn of the country’s moral duty to punish Israel for what it sees as its “adventurism” and law-breaking in assassinating Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader, a week ago in the Iranian capital. Iran has also secured an emergency meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Wednesday where it will try to press Arab states to back its right to take reprisal actions against Israel.
Violence, extreme hunger, humiliation and other abuse of Palestinian prisoners has been normalised across Israel’s jail system, according to Guardian interviews with released prisoners, with mistreatment now so systemic that rights group B’Tselem says it must be considered a policy of “institutionalised abuse”. Former detainees described abuse ranging from severe beatings and sexual violence to starvation rations, refusal of medical care, and deprivation of basic needs including water, daylight, electricity and sanitation, including soap and sanitary pads for women.
Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on Monday that allowing 2 million Palestinians to starve to death was the “right and moral” thing to do until Israeli hostages are released but complained that “world won’t let us”. Smotrich, who is actively attempting to annex the occupied West Bank, was speaking at the Katif Annual Conference, which commemorates former Israeli settlements in Gaza, the Haaretz newspaper reported.
The UN has fired nine staff members from its agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, after an internal investigation found they may have been involved in the Hamas-led 7 October attack against Israel. The UN secretary general’s office announced the move in a brief statement on Monday. It did not elaborate on the Unrwa staffers’ possible role in the attack. It said the nine included seven staffers who were fired previously over the claims.
Two people are dead in south Lebanon as a result of an Israel strike on Monday, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. One of those killed was a paramedic, according to Ali Abbas, a rescue worker who spoke to AFP.
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah hit northern Israel in a drone attack early on Monday, in response to what it called “attacks and assassinations” carried out by Israel in several villages in south Lebanon. The Israeli military says the attack wounded two soldiers and set off a fire.
Israel handed over 80 unidentified Palestinian bodies to the Gaza’s civil defence agency, according to Palestinian officials. Gaza’s civil defence director Yamen Abu Suleiman told AFP that no information was provided with the bodies, and so there is no clear idea where they came from. “We do not know if they are martyrs [killed in Gaza] or prisoners from [Israel’s] jails”, he added.
