Live: Arab and Muslim countries urge Israel to allow 'permanent' shelter into Gaza as weather worsens

Israeli occupation forces moved into the Syrian village of Taranga on Saturday, advancing towards the outskirts of Jabatha al-Khashab in the northern countryside of Quneitra, Syrian state media reported.

According to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), a unit made up of six Israeli military vehicles entered from the direction of Tulul al-Humr. The convoy passed through the area between Beit Jann and Hadar before reaching Taranga and continuing towards Jabatha al-Khashab.

SANA said the vehicles were seen on the southern edge of Jabatha al-Khashab and on one of the elevated areas overlooking the town. The incursion coincided with the presence of a drone flying over the area, before the force later moved towards the village of Ufania in the province’s northern countryside.

A day earlier, Israeli occupation forces shelled the eastern Tel al-Ahmar area in southern Quneitra, firing three rounds and opening machine gun and medium weapons fire, according to the report

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said on Saturday that Israeli attacks on Palestinian journalists have expanded beyond killings, injuries, arrests and restrictions on coverage to include the systematic targeting of their families.

In a report released, the union said Israeli forces have increasingly targeted the relatives of journalists in what it described as a deliberate effort to turn journalism into an existential threat, forcing families to pay the price for a loved one’s work.

The findings, based on documentation by the syndicate’s Freedoms Committee, show that attacks on journalists’ families have become a repeated and organised pattern across 2023, 2024 and 2025. The committee recorded the deaths of about 706 relatives of journalists in the Gaza Strip during that period, stressing that the scale and consistency of the attacks indicate they are not the result of random wartime conditions.

According to the committee, Israeli attacks killed about 436 relatives of journalists in 2023, followed by roughly 203 in 2024 and at least 67 more in 2025, even as many families were forcibly displaced and living in tents or makeshift shelters.

The report said the most recent case came just days ago, when recovery teams found the bodies of journalist Hiba Al-Abadla, her mother and around 15 members of the Al-Astal family. Israeli aircraft had bombed their home west of Khan Younis nearly two years earlier.

The syndicate said the figures show that hundreds of children, women and elderly people were killed solely because of a family member’s work in journalism, calling it a grave violation of international humanitarian and legal standards.

A group of UN human rights experts warned the UK government that eight pro-Palestine activists on hunger strike in UK prisons risk organ failure and death after seven weeks of hunger strike. 

The seven experts who work independently of each other said the activists' decision to refuse food reflected a "measure of last resort" taken by people who believe "their right to protest and effect remedy have been exhausted".

Among the UN experts who signed the statement are Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories, and Gina Romero, UN special rapporteur on the freedom of peaceful assembly.

"The State's duty of care toward hunger strikers is heightened, not diminished," the experts said.

"Authorities must ensure timely access to emergency and hospital care when clinically indicated, refrain from actions that may amount to pressure or retaliation, and respect medical ethics."

Read more: Palestine Action linked hunger-strikers at risk of death, UN warns

Israel's decision to become the first country to recognise the breakaway region of Somaliland has been condemned by a string of countries, while the US president said he was not ready to immediately follow in Israel's footsteps. 

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, announced on Friday that he had signed a mutual declaration to recognise Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state.

Somaliland has been part of the unified Somali Republic since 1960, but declared its independence in 1991 and established a de facto state.

Although it has had unofficial diplomatic relations with several countries, its sovereignty had not been recognised by any permanent UN member state until this week.

US President Donald Trump told the New York Post that the US was looking into the issue. 

Read more: How Trump, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others reacted to Israeli recognition of Somaliland

France has condemned Israeli gunfire in southern Lebanon that slightly injured a United Nations peacekeeper, describing it as part of a pattern of recent incidents targeting UN forces.

In a statement on Friday, the French foreign ministry said: "France condemns the Israeli army's firing on December 26, 2025, near UNIFIL patrols," denouncing "a series of similar actions by the Israeli army against Unifil in recent weeks."

The incident is the latest reported by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which operates in southern Lebanon as a buffer between Israel and Lebanon and works alongside the Lebanese army to uphold a truce in place for about a year between Israel and Hezbollah.

Unifil said Israeli positions opened "heavy machine gun fire from positions of the Israeli Defense Forces" near a patrol in the village of Bastarra, "slightly injured a Blue Helmet, who suffered an ear concussion."

The UN force added that "another patrol carrying out a routine operational task also reported machine gun fire coming from the Israeli side in the immediate vicinity of its position" in the southern village of Kfarshouba on the same day.

Unifil said it had already notified the Israeli army in advance about its patrol movements in both areas.

Earlier this month, the peacekeeping mission reported further incidents in which Israeli forces fired at UN personnel, following similar episodes recorded in October and November.

Israeli settlers raided the Al-Malih community in the northern Jordan Valley on Saturday in the occupied West Bank, launching attacks on residents, according to local emergency officials speaking to Wafa.

Nidal Awda, the director of ambulance and emergency services in Tubas, said teams received a report that a child had been injured after settlers beat him during the assault.

Awda added that Israeli occupation forces present in the area, accompanied by settlers, blocked ambulances from reaching the scene, delaying medical assistance to the injured child.

The director of the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza reported that there was a 40-percent drop in births in the strip and a sharp rise in miscarriages compared with last year, blaming malnutrition and restricted medical supplies.

Munir al-Bursh added that low birth weight has become widespread in Gaza. 

Israeli attacks on fertility centres during the war, including the Basma Centre, destroyed around 4,000 embryos, according to UN reports.

Bursh said this points to a pre-planned Israeli strategy targeting Palestinian reproduction.

Hamas strongly condemned the mutual recognition between the breakaway region of Somaliland and Israel.

The Palestinian movement criticised Somaliland for setting a dangerous precedent in an attempt to gain "false legitimacy" from what it described as an occupying, war-criminal state.

It also rejected Israeli plans to forcibly displace Palestinians, including proposals to use Somaliland as a destination for people from Gaza, and praised Arab and Islamic countries that condemned the move.

Hamas added that Israel's decision to recognise the sovereignty of the breakaway region in East Africa reflects "the deep international isolation of the Israeli regime, resulting from the acts of genocide it has committed against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip".

The death toll from Israel's genocidal war on Gaza has risen to 71,266, the Palestinian health ministry reported on Saturday.

In the past 48 hours, four people were killed by Israeli fire, while the bodies of 25 others were recovered and taken to hospitals.

Since the ceasefire in October, at least 414 people have been killed by Israeli fire, the ministry added.

Municipalities in northern Gaza say Israeli forces have turned the area into a disaster zone by continuing to block the entry of water, fuel, spare parts and reconstruction materials, deepening the collapse of basic services and the humanitarian crisis.

They report widespread destruction, including more than 150 kilometres of roads, 70 main water wells and treatment plants, all privately owned electricity generators, and 50,000 dunams of farmland.

Officials warn that fuel shortages, a lack of maintenance materials and the build-up of thousands of tonnes of waste are driving the spread of disease and posing a serious threat to public health.

Good morning Middle East Eye readers, 

Israeli forces carried out widespread air, artillery and naval attacks across the Gaza Strip on Saturday, largely in areas meant to be under Israeli control under the ceasefire agreement.

Naval forces fired shells and machine-gun rounds off the coast of Gaza City, close to tents sheltering displaced people.

In central Gaza, Israeli artillery and helicopter gunfire targeted Palestinian homes.

On Friday, Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, as daily violations of the ceasefire continued.

Hundreds of violations have been reported since the ceasefire came into effect in October, with at least 410 Palestinians killed and 1,134 wounded.

The ceasefire was intended to bring an end to a two-year genocidal war on Gaza, during which Israel killed around 70,000 Palestinians and destroyed nearly 90 percent of the Strip’s infrastructure.