Live: UK halts trade deal talks with Israel, summons ambassador over Gaza
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Israel launched around 20 air strikes on Syria late on Friday in what the country's new rulers branded as a "dangerous escalation".
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Israel hit military targets across Syria in the "heaviest" bombardment so far this year.
The Sana news agency reported Israeli air strikes near Damascus and in the west, in Latakia and Hama, as well as in Daraa in the south.
According to the agency, one civilian was killed at Harasta near Damascus and four others were wounded near Hama.
The latest wave of strikes came hours after Israel targeted an area near the Syrian presidential palace.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz said the attack was intended to send a "message" to the nascent Syrian government against deploying forces south of Damascus.
Read more: Israel launches further air strikes on Syria amid Druze tensions
Ayed Ghafri no longer allows his children to play in the yard.
The Palestinian resident of Sinjil in the occupied West Bank is haunted by the recent uptick in settler violence against Palestinians.
Surrounded by five Israeli settlements from east to west, the town north of Ramallah is often a target of settler violence, including arson attacks and the throwing of stones.
However, the attacks intensified in recent months, forcing some families to flee and others to remain trapped indoors, fearful for their safety.
"The attacks are daily and frequent because the settlement was built next to our homes,” Ghafri told Middle East Eye.
“We cannot leave our children playing outside alone for fear of their safety," he added.
A group of settlers, accompanied by a settlement official, stoned Ghafri’s house early last month and threatened to kill him for trying to reach his land with human rights activists.
Read more: Sinjil: Palestinian town besieged by settler violence and Israeli army wall
Wafa news agency is reporting that a group of armed Israeli settlers harassed three Palestinian journalists and a local activist in the village of Al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
The activist, Rabee Abu Naeem, told Wafa that the settlers approached him along with journalists Mohammad Turkman, Karim Khmayseh, and Ahmad Al-Khatib, while they were filming Israeli attacks in the area.
Naeem said the settlers attempted to take their car keys and phones, as well as issuing them death threats and warning them not to return.
In footage circulated online, armed settlers are seen stopping and approaching the journalists' vehicle.
مستوطنون يعترضون مركبة صحفيين ويطلبون منهم مغادرة المكان ويهددونهم بإطلاق النار عليهم على أطراف قرية المغير، شمال شرق رام الله. pic.twitter.com/gB7iHLCzZL
— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) May 3, 2025
Wafa news agency is reporting that several Palestinians, including children, were killed in an Israeli drone strike on southern Gaza's Rafah.
Citing medical sources, Wafa reported that the strike targeted a group of civilians in the al-Mawasi designated 'safe-zone,' west of Rafah.
The report did not specify a casualty numbers.
Stephen is one of more than a hundred pro-Palestine volunteers in a resident-led campaign that has knocked on every door in the Easton and St Paul’s areas of Bristol, come rain or shine.
“What door knocking can do is shake you from the slumber of any feelings of helplessness that you might have when you see what’s happening in Palestine,” he tells Middle East Eye.
A volunteer from the Bristol Apartheid-Free Zone Campaign, which has signed up over 1,800 households to a pledge to not buy Israeli fresh produce.
It aims to create a mandate that encourages high street businesses to join the boycott.
Nearly 50 shops and businesses stocking fresh produce have joined so far, and the campaign boasts a 50 percent sign-up rate among those who open the door, which the campaigners say is an “unprecedented” rate for door-to-door canvassing.
Read more: Bristol Apartheid-Free Zone: The campaign door knocking for a boycott of Israeli produce
Israeli forces shot and injured a 13-year-old boy in the village of Zababdeh, south of the occupied West Bank’s Jenin city, Wafa news agency is reporting, citing the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS).
According the report, emergency teams transferred the victim to a hospital. He is reported to be in stable condition.
Hamas has issued a statement condemning the governments of Arab and Muslim countries for not fulfilling "their expected duty to stop the open massacre and famine” in Gaza.
The group called on governments “to pressure the US administration and the countries supporting the Zionist aggression”.
Two women have been killed in an Israeli attack on a house in the town of al-Fakhari in southern Gaza's Khan Younis.
In a separate attack, an Israeli naval strike killed a fisherman and injured another off the coast of Gaza City.
The United Nations special envoy for Syria has condemned Israel's attacks on Syria and called for it to cease its aggression "at once".
In a post on X, Geir Pedersen called on Israel “to respect international law and Syria’s sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity and independence”.
“I call for these attacks to cease at once and for Israel to stop endangering Syrian civilians," he added.
@GeirOPedersen I call for these attacks to cease at once and for Israel to stop endangering Syrian civilians and to respect international law and Syria’s sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity, and independence.
— UN Special Envoy for Syria (@UNEnvoySyria) May 3, 2025
Palestinian prisoner advocacy groups reported that Israel continues to hold 49 Palestinians journalists in custody.
The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS), the Commission of Prisoners’ and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs, and Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association said in a joint statement on World Press Freedom Day that Israeli forces have killed over 200 journalists and arrested around 180 since 7 October 2023.
“The targeting of Palestinian journalists has been and remains one of the most prominent policies of the occupation throughout its history,” the statement said, adding that “the assassination operations” on journalists have escalated “in an unprecedented manner” during Israel’s war on Gaza.
Israeli air strikes on Syria have killed two civilians and injured at least eight, Al Jazeera is reporting.
The Israeli military launched fresh air strikes on Syria late on Friday in what the country's new rulers branded as a "dangerous escalation".
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Israel hit military targets across Syria in the "heaviest" bombardment so far this year.
The Gaza government media office has reported that 57 Palestinians have died of malnutrition, with most of the victims children, the sick and the elderly.
It warned that the toll is likely to increase if Israel continues to block aid from entering the strip.
In a statement, the office condemned "in the strongest terms, the continued use of food by the Israeli occupation as a weapon of war and its imposition of a stifling blockade against more than 2.4 million people in the Gaza Strip by completely closing the crossings for the 63rd consecutive day".
It further called on “the international community, humanitarian organisations and human rights organisations to take immediate and effective action and exert pressure by all means to open the Rafah border crossing and all other crossings”.
The director of the Kuwait hospital in southern Gaza's Rafah has warned of acute shortages of medicines and food.
“We confirm that the sector suffers from acute shortages in more than 75 percent of essential medicines, a large part of which constitute life-saving medications, which is directly threatening the lives of the vast majority of patients,” Suhaib al-Hams said.
He added that the available stock medicines and supplies are "currently insufficient for more than one week" and urged “all concerned parties to move immediately” to reopen the borders for entry of medical and humanitarian aid.
He also called for the crossings to be immediately opened in order to “evacuate patients who are slowly dying every day without treatment”.
At least 70 Palestinians have been killed and 275 others injured in Israeli attack across Gaza in the last 48 hours, the enclave's Ministry of Health has reported.
Additionally, emergency teams recovered another seven bodies from the rubble over the last two days.
the latest figures have pushed the overall toll of Palestinians killed in Gaza since October 2023 to 52,495 people, with another 118,366 wounded.
Of that figure, at least 2,396 people have been killed and 6,325 wounded since Israel resumed hostilities in the Strip on 18 March.
Israel launched around 20 air strikes on Syria late on Friday in what the country's new rulers branded as a "dangerous escalation".
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Israel hit military targets across Syria in the "heaviest" bombardment so far this year.
The Sana news agency reported Israeli air strikes near Damascus and in the west, in Latakia and Hama, as well as in Daraa in the south.
According to the agency, one civilian was killed at Harasta near Damascus and four others were wounded near Hama.
The latest wave of strikes came hours after Israel targeted an area near the Syrian presidential palace.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz said the attack was intended to send a "message" to the nascent Syrian government against deploying forces south of Damascus.
Read more: Israel launches further air strikes on Syria amid Druze tensions
