Live: Six more Palestinians die of famine as Israel blocks Gaza aid
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The United Nations Security Council on Thursday unanimously extended a long-running peacekeeping mission in Lebanon until the end of 2026, when the operation will then begin a year-long "orderly and safe drawdown and withdrawal."
The UN Interim Force in Lebanon, established in 1978, patrols Lebanon's southern border with Israel.
Reporting by Reuters
Hamas senior official Basem Naim said on Thursday that Bahrain's credentialing of a new Israeli ambassador in Manama goes against what nearly 60 Muslim-majority nations agreed to do at this week's Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit, which is to isolate Israel from the community of nations.
"While some countries around the world are expelling the ambassador of the occupying entity due to its genocide and ethnic cleansing, and others are downgrading its representation, and some ministers are even resigning from their governments, we find that 'sisterly' Arab countries (as happened in Bahrain yesterday) are warmly welcoming new ambassadors of the entity, accrediting their credentials, and the scene appears 'normal,'" Naim said in a statement.
This is, he said, "despite the fact [it] contradicts the decisions of the recent Organisation of Islamic Cooperation summit, which called for collective action to 'suspend the entity's membership in the United Nations,' if not for the sake of Gaza and Palestine, then at least to reject the enemy's declared and explicit threats to collective Arab national security".
Yemen's Houthis on Thursday denied Israeli media claims that an Israeli air strike targeted a meeting of senior officials in the capital Sanaa, the Yemen News Agency Saba reported.
"Reports of leaders being targeted in Sana'a during today's Zionist aggression on the capital are false," a defence source told the news outlet. "What is happening is the targeting of civilian objects and the targeting of the entire Yemeni people because of their support for Gaza, which is being subjected to genocide and starvation in full view of the world".
Field Marshal Mahdi al-Mashat, president of the Supreme Political Council, later said in a statement that Yemen's "long arm will teach [Israel] the necessary lesson".
"You have entered into a challenge with a people whose struggle you are not equal to," he warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Times of Israel had earlier cited Hebrew-language media, which reported that Israeli intelligence learned of a meeting of 10 Houthi ministers on Thursday, and arranged for an air strike aiming to wipe out Houthi leadership.
An israeli air strike did land in an area close to the presidential complex in Sana'a on Thursday.
The director of Gaza's al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza, Muhammad Abu Salmiya, issued an urgent warning on Thursday about what he described as a "new virus" spreading in the enclave.
"Symptoms of the virus include a high body temperature, joint pain, a runny nose, and a cough accompanied by bouts of diarrhea lasting more than a week," Abu Salmiya said in a statement.
"We do not have tests to determine the cause of the virus," he added, but its spread is linked to "a lack of immunity resulting from malnutrition, in addition to the lack of clean water and cleaning materials, and the overcrowding of people in tents".
"The new virus is exacerbating the pressure on the exhausted health system," Abu Salmiya said.
A group of 26 Israeli citizens based in New York filed an amicus brief in support of Palestinian student Mohsen Mahdawi on Monday, saying that deporting him sends a message that promoting peace between Israel and Palestine is “contrary to the foreign policy of the US”.
Columbia University graduate Mahdawi, 34, a legal permanent resident of the US who was born in the occupied West Bank, was targeted by the Trump administration for his pro-Palestinian activism at the Ivy League campus and is currently fighting deportation proceedings.
Mahdawi’s case is expected to be heard by the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in the coming weeks.
Read more: New York-based Israelis file legal brief supporting Palestinian student Mohsen Mahdawi
The Lebanese army said on Thursday that two military personnel were killed and two others wounded when an Israeli drone crashed and then exploded in the Ras al-Naqoura area of southern Lebanon.
The drone exploded while the personnel were searching it, the army added in a statement.
Reporting by Reuters
Students from Gaza, 52 of them, will arrive in Ireland this week to begin scholarships granted by education institutions, the Irish Foreign Minister Simon Harris has said.
“I welcome the arrival of these Palestinian young people to Ireland, and wish them every success with their studies here,” Harris told AFP.
The first group of 26 Palestinians will arrive on Thursday, with the remaining arriving between Friday and Sunday.
Ireland has supported more than 200 people to leave Gaza and travel to the country since Israel’s genocide began.
Israel attacked the Yemeni capital of Sanaa on Thursday, Al Masirah TV reported.
The strikes hit an area near the presidential complex and a building in southern Sanaa, residents told Reuters.
This follows an Israeli strike on Sanaa on Sunday, which Houthi officials said killed six people.
At least 12 Palestinians killed across Gaza today in Israeli attacks were aid seekers, Al Jazeera is reporting, citing medical sources.
Israeli forces have killed at least 24 people since dawn, the sources said.
US envoy Tom Barrack apologised on Thursday for calling reporters “animalistic” during a press conference in Lebanon earlier this week.
In an interview with media personality Mario Nawfal on X, Barrack, the US ambassador to Turkey and envoy to Syria, said he had not intended the remark “in a derogatory manner” but acknowledged it was “inappropriate”.
He visited Beirut on Tuesday with a delegation of US officials to discuss Lebanon’s efforts to disarm Hezbollah and implement the ceasefire agreement with Israel that ended last November.
During the press conference, journalists shouted for him to move to the podium. Barrack received backlash when he told them to “act civilised” and threatened to end the conference early.
🚨MAJOR INTERVIEW: U.S. ENVOY BREAKS SILENCE AFTER MIDDLE EAST PEACE TALKS
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) August 27, 2025
I just finished an incredible conversation with arguably the most important man in the thick of the current peace deliberations between Hezbollah, Lebanon, Israel, and Syria.
Special Envoy and Ambassador… https://t.co/qCMRNJPlVj pic.twitter.com/5t8TDVcAMX
The Israeli army said on Thursday that it struck several alleged Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon, including a rocket launcher and other infrastructure.
In a statement on Telegram, the military said the targets represented a “violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon”.
Lebanon will present its plan to persuade Hezbollah to disarm on Sunday, US envoy Thomas Barrack said on Tuesday.
Israel has indicated it could scale back its presence in southern Lebanon if Beirut moved to disarm Hezbollah. Despite that pledge, Israeli strikes have continued in the weeks since the cabinet approved the plan.
Sweden and the Netherlands have urged the EU to impose sanctions on both Israel and Hamas over the war in Gaza, including suspending the EU-Israel trade deal, according to a document seen by AFP on Thursday.
In a letter to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, the Swedish and Dutch foreign ministers called for targeted sanctions on Israeli government ministers and Jewish settlers in occupied Palestinian land, as well as on the political leadership of Hamas.
They also pressed for suspending the commercial section of the EU-Israel association accord, which grants free trade in several sectors, notably agriculture.
EU foreign ministers are set to discuss the proposals on Saturday.
Two Microsoft employees were fired on Wednesday after taking part in a sit-in at the office of company president Brad Smith, to protest against the firm’s ties to Israel, activist group No Azure for Apartheid said.
The two were among seven protesters arrested on Tuesday after occupying Smith’s office.
The activist group, referencing Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, is calling on the company to cut its ties to Israel and pay reparations to Palestinians.
Anna Hattle, one of the employees, said Microsoft was providing Israel with the “tools it needs to commit genocide while gaslighting and misdirecting its own workers about this reality”.
The UK, France and Germany will begin the process of reimposing UN sanctions on Iran at the Security Council on Thursday, two European diplomats said.
The three countries met with Iran on Tuesday in a last effort to revive diplomacy over its nuclear programme before they lose, in October, the ability to restore sanctions lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal.
Talks failed to produce concrete commitments from Tehran, prompting the Europeans to trigger the “snapback” of UN sanctions over alleged violations of the accord designed to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, however, noted it has no credible evidence of a coordinated weapons project within Iran’s nuclear programme.
Reporting by Reuters
More food aid is reaching Gaza, but it remains far from enough to avert widespread starvation, the World Food Programme (WFP) told Reuters on Thursday.
The WFP's executive director, Cindy McCain, said the organisation is currently delivering about 100 aid trucks into Gaza each day, far below the 600 trucks that entered daily during the ceasefire.
A report published Friday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification declared famine in Gaza, warning that around 514,000 people, nearly a quarter of the besieged enclave’s population, are being starved in Gaza City and surrounding areas.
