Live: UK halts trade deal talks with Israel, summons ambassador over Gaza

A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that Tufts University PhD candidate Rumeysa Ozturk must be transferred from Louisiana to Vermont in a blow to the Trump administration.

Ozturk was detained by immigration and customs enforcement (ICE) agents on 25 March.

She is one of several foreign students in the US on legal visas who have been arrested by the Trump administration in its crackdown on pro-Palestinian voices.

Ozturk’s lawyers said she was arrested for co-authoring an opinion article in a student newspaper. She has not been charged with any crime.

Activists and legal experts have said moving her to Louisiana put her in a court system that could be more favourable to Trump’s deportation push.

Last month, a judge in Massachusetts ordered that Ozturk’s case be moved to Vermont, where she was previously being held. Judge William Sessions III, who is overseeing the Vermont case, gave the federal government a 1 May deadline to transfer Ozturk.

The federal government appealed that decision. 

Wednesday’s ruling is a strike against the federal government’s push to keep Ozturk in Louisiana, a Republican-leaning state. It likely marks the first time that a federal appeals court has determined in which state the Trump administration can detain students.

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Israeli military killed a 20-year-old Palestinian man at one of the checkpoints at the south of the city of Hebron in the West Bank, reported Wafa news agency on Wednesday.

The report says that soldiers manning a checkpoint at al-Fahs junction opened fire at Abdul-Fattah Ahed Ahmad al-Hreibat and killed him. The military has not yet released al-Hreibat’s body.

After soldiers killed al-Hreibat, additional soldiers stormed his family home in Dura city and held dozens of his family members captive, subjecting them to interrogation and assault, including kicking and hitting them with rifle butts.

The full circumstances of the incident are still unknown. Wafa reported that soldiers said that al-Hreibat was “neutralised” after he allegedly rammed his vehicle into soldiers at the checkpoint and tried to stab them.

Wafa also reported that Israeli media frequently use the term "neutralised" to denote that a suspected attacker is under control but is later revealed to have been injured or killed. Previous incidents have appeared to be car accidents rather than premeditated attacks.

The Arab American University in the West Bank has been accredited by the World Federation of Medical Education, Wafa news agency reported on Wednesday.

Acting university president Bara Asfour said the Arab American University secured the prestigious international accreditation for the Faculty of Human Medicine for four years, making it the first Palestinian university to do so.

Asfour added that the university would seek international accreditations for all its departments, except for the faculties of dentistry and engineering, which have already obtained international accreditation.

At least 212 Palestinian journalists have been killed by the Israeli military since the onset of the war in October 2023, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) announced on Wednesday.

The PJS condemned the continuous targeting of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli military, saying it is a deliberate policy aimed at silencing the truth and erasing the Palestinian narrative and amounts to a war crime under international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions. The statement came on the back of World Press Freedom Day on Saturday.

The PJS mourned the loss of journalists Yahya Subeih and Nour al-Din Abdo, who were killed while carrying out their professional duties. Subeih was killed in a direct air strike on a Thai Restaurant in western Gaza, just hours after the birth of his first daughter. Abdo was killed in a bombing that targeted al-Karama school in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood in the east of the city.

The PJS called on the international community, the UN Security Council, and the International Criminal Court to take urgent action to launch investigations, hold perpetrators accountable, and end the policy of impunity.

The forcible displacement of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip constitutes a crime against humanity, Amnesty International said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Any move by Israel to displace Palestinians to the south of the Gaza Strip and confine them into so-called “closed bubbles” or continue to impose inhumane conditions of life to push Palestinians out of Gaza, would amount to the war crime of unlawful transfer or deportation. If these actions are committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against the civilian population, they would also constitute crimes against humanity,” Amnesty International said in a press statement.

The human rights organisation added that “Israel has continued to commit genocidal acts, fully aware of the irreversible harm being inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza”.

There have been "high-level" consultations between the US and Israel over the possibility of Washington leading the post-war administration of Gaza.

Five people familiar with the matter told Reuters that a transitional government would be headed by a US official that would oversee Gaza until it had been demilitarised and stabilised, and a viable Palestinian administration had emerged.

The five sources, who are familiar with the preliminary discussions, suggested there would be no fixed timeline for how long such a US-led administration would last.

They compared it to the Coalition Provisional Authority led by the US in Iraq following the 2003 invasion.

Six European countries have said they "firmly reject any demographic or territorial change in Gaza" and said Israeli plans for "conquest" of the enclave would be a "dangerous escalation".

Spain, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway and Slovenia said in a joint statement that Israel should "immediately" lift the blockade of Gaza.

"What is needed more urgently than ever is the resumption of the ceasefire and the unconditional release of all the hostages," they said.

Hamas wants to reach a "comprehensive agreement" to end the war in Gaza and rejects attempts to impose a "partial agreement" before US President Donald Trump's visit to the Middle East, one of its leaders told AFP on Wednesday.

Basem Naim, a member of its political bureau, said Hamas insists "on reaching a comprehensive agreement and a full package to end the war".

"There are desperate attempts ahead of Trump's visit to the region... to force through a partial deal that would return some Israeli captives in exchange for a limited number of days of food and water - without any guarantees from any party to actually end the war," he said. 

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa declared the Gaza Strip a famine zone on Wednesday during a press conference on Gaza’s deteriorating humanitarian crisis. 

Mustafa also urged the UN to immediately activate its mechanisms and treat Gaza as a famine zone. He called on UN member states to implement UN resolutions prohibiting the use of starvation as a weapon of war and to take urgent action in accordance with their obligations under international humanitarian law.

On Tuesday, an Israeli strike targeted the Bureij refugee camp’s Abu Hamisa school, which is sheltering displaced people. The attack killed 33 and injuring 52. 

The death toll from two separate Israeli attacks on schools in the al-Bureij refugee camp and Gaza City last night and early on Wednesday has risen to 49, according to Wafa news agency. 

On Tuesday, an Israeli strike targeted the Bureij refugee camp’s Abu Hamisa school which is sheltering displaced people, killing 33 and injuring 52, according to Wafa. 

This morning, two Israeli strikes targeting the Karama school in Tuffah, a suburb of Gaza City, killed 16 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. 

Among those killed was local journalist Nour Abdu, according to Palestinian media. 

A ceasefire deal between Yemen's Houthis and the United States does not include sparing Israel from operations, the Houthis said on Wednesday, suggesting shipping attacks that disrupted global trade will not come to a complete halt.

"The agreement does not include Israel in any way, shape or form," Mohammed Abdulsalam, the chief Houthi negotiator, told Reuters.

President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday the US will stop bombing Houthi targets in Yemen, saying that the group had agreed to stop interrupting important shipping lanes in the Middle East.

After Trump made the announcement, Oman said it had mediated the ceasefire deal to halt attacks on US vessels.

There were no reports of Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea area since January.

Egypt and Qatar issued a joint statement on Wednesday affirming their ongoing mediation efforts to address a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

Egypt and Qatar said their efforts are closely coordinated with the United States to reach an agreement that ensures civilian protection and resolves the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Since 2 March, Gaza has faced a total Israeli blockade, with food, water and medical supplies nearly gone. The Israeli military resumed its war on the besieged Strip on 18 March, ending a fragile two-month truce.

“Netanyahu government’s latest decision to expand its occupation of Gaza is yet another manifestation of the same expansionist and destructive mentality,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement last night. 

In the statement, the ministry also called on Israel to “put an end to its irresponsible actions aimed at dragging the entire region into an all-out conflict” as well as the international community who “must not remain silent.”

The airport in Yemen's capital Sanaa has suspended all flights until further notice, its director said on Wednesday, after it sustained "severe damage" in Israeli strikes a day earlier.

"As a result of the Zionist (Israeli) aggression on Sanaa International Airport that resulted in severe damage, it has been decided to suspend all flights to and from the airport until further notice," said the airport's general director Khaled al-Shaief.