Live: At least 74 children killed in Gaza in first week of 2025

Israel has killed three Palestinians, including two children, in an air strike in the occupied West Bank town of Tammun on Wednesday.

Palestinian sources said the three victims of the attack near the city of Tubas in the north of the occupied territory were cousins.

They were named locally as 24-year-old Adam Bisharat, as well as Hamza Bisharat aged 10 and Reda, eight.

Two air strikes in Tammun within the past 24 hours have left five Palestinians dead.

Israeli media outlets said the attack, which targeted the yard outside the victims’ family, had “liquidated an armed Palestinian cell”.

Read more: Israel kills two children in air strike in occupied West Bank

Seventy four Palestinian children have been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza City, Khan Younis and the Israeli designated "safe zone" within the first week of this year, Unicef said on Wednesday.

“For the children of Gaza, the new year has brought more death and suffering from attacks, deprivation, and increasing exposure to the cold,” the UN children's agency's executive director Catherine Russell said.

“A ceasefire is long overdue. Too many children have been killed or lost loved ones in a tragic start to the new year," she added.

Unicef highlighted in a statement that lack of shelter amid plummeting temperatures has also posed a "major threat" to children in the strip.

“With more than a million children living in makeshift tents, and with many families displaced over the past 15 months, children face extreme risks,” it said.

“Since December 26, eight infants and newborns have reportedly died from hypothermia – a major threat to young children who are unable to regulate their body temperature".

At least 74 children have reportedly been killed in relentless violence in the #Gaza Strip in just the first seven days of 2025. The most recent attack, yesterday, saw five children reportedly killed in Al Mawasi - a unilaterally designated 'safe zone’.https://t.co/sbEJluYmK4

— UNICEF MENA - يونيسف الشرق الأوسط وشمال إفريقيا (@UNICEFmena) January 8, 2025

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has condemned an Israeli drone strike on the town of Tammun in the occupied West Bank, which killed two children, as a "clear reproduction of violations committed by the Israeli government against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip".

Wafa news agency identified the victims, who were all cousins, as Reda Ali Ahmed Basharat, 9, Hamza Ammar Ahmed Basharat, 10, and Adam Khair al-Din Ahmed Basharat, 23.

The Israeli military claimed the strike targeted a "terror squad" accused of planting explosives.

“This comes as a continuation of the occupation’s crimes, as happened when it stormed Balata camp using an ambulance and targeted civilian citizens, which confirms the falsity of the occupation’s narratives and its direct and deliberate targeting of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” the ministry said in a statement.

“The Ministry considers these crimes a practical implementation and a clear reproduction of the violations committed by the Israeli government against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and an application of its aggressive policies in the West Bank, in flagrant violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions,” the statement added.

Students at the London School of Economics who staged a protest to draw attention to the university’s investments in Israel were described as being "dressed as terrorists" in emails between senior staff seen by Middle East Eye.

The comment was made in messages between management staff discussing the university's response to the protest, which took place during a registration event for a summer school at the central London campus on 7 July 2024.

In one email on the same day as the protest, Elizabeth Aitken, who heads the LSE's summer school programme, wrote that "staff and students thought that it was a terrorist attack as the protestors [sic] were wearing full face masks and carrying rucksacks".

Other staff members in the email thread, including LSE's president, Larry Kramer, sympathised with Aitken without questioning her recollection of events and recommended possible expulsion and involving police to stop student activists from disrupting future events.

In a subsequent email Aitken suggested that "it may be possible to identify these particular 'protestors' [sic], whilst they were dressed as terrorists with balaclavas".

Read more: London university described pro-Palestine protesters as 'dressed as terrorists'

Nasser medical complex  in southern Gaza's Khan Younis, has said that it has been forced to suspend its heath services due to fuel shortages.

In a statement, the hospital said that it was suspending all services except for intensive care and emergency operations.

It added that the complex's remaning fuel supplies are only sufficient to operate a small generator for only three hours, adding that the hospital requires 5,500 litres of diesel per day to run.

It said that most of the complex's generators have stopped, with only one small one continuing to operate.

Wafa news agency is reporting that Israeli forces have stormed a residential building and positioned snipers throughout it, amid their ongoing raid of the city.

The agency said that soldiers detained the families living in the building, including children and women, in one room.

Intense armed clashes between Palestinian fighters and Israeli forces have been reported by Al Jazeera Arabic after occupation forces stormed the city of Tulkarm in the occupied northern West Bank.

The raid is the latest in a series of incursions by Israeli troops, which critics argue aim to quash Palestinian resistance while fuelling unrest in the occupied territories.

If there was an image from 2024 that captured the year’s news, it was this one: Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, in a white lab coat, picking his way through the wreckage of the Kamal Adwan hospital he ran - the last surviving major medical facility in northern Gaza - towards two Israeli tanks, their gun barrels aimed at him.

The past year has been dominated by the death and destruction Israel has wrought throughout the tiny enclave. 

It has been marked by the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians - the deaths we know about - and the maiming of at least 100,000 more; the starvation of the entire population; the levelling of the urban and agricultural landscape; and the systematic erasure of Gaza’s hospitals and health sector, including the killing, mass arrest and torture of Palestinian medics. 

2024 was dominated, too, by a growing consensus from international legal and human rights authorities that all this amounts to genocide. 

Here was an image, from the very final days of the year, that said it all. It showed a lone doctor - one who had risked his life to keep his hospital operational as it was besieged by Israeli forces, battered by Israeli shells and drones, and had its staff picked off by Israeli snipers - bravely heading towards his, and his people’s, exterminators. 

Read more:  How Israel is turning Gaza into a hellscape ruled by tanks and criminal gangs

The US Central Command has announced what it claimed were precision air strikes on underground weapons storage facilities used by Yemen's Houthi movement.

Media outlets linked to Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, have reported that five air strikes by American and British forces targeted the Harf Sufyan District in Yemen's Amran Governorate.

The Houthis have fired drones and missiles towards Israel for over a year, in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

Teachers and students at Kisan School, east of Bethlehem, were left gasping for air after Israeli forces fired tear gas canisters into the premises, according to the Wafa news agency.

Israel is obstructing a UN investigation into alleged sexual violence committed during the Hamas-led 7 October attacks, according to a report by Haaretz.

The Israeli media outlet said that officials opposed an investigation as it would also look into allegations of sex crimes against Palestinians by Israelis.

Pramila Patten, the UN under secretary-general for sexual violence in conflict, requested that Israeli detention centres be investigated as condition for an inquiry into purported sexual crimes on 7 October 2023. 

The request, which was rejected by Israel, would have allowed the UN access into Israeli prisons to conduct investigations into the treatment of Palestinians held there.  

Palestinian Authority officials had initially made the request to Patten.

Read more: Israel obstructs UN investigation into 7 October sex crime accusations

Medical sources confirmed to Al Jazeera Arabic that at least 40 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air strikes targeting the Gaza Strip since dawn today.

Amongst the casualties, 26 were reported in the northern region of the besieged enclave.

University economics professor Jeffrey Sachs sharply criticised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a video shared by the incoming US President Donald Trump on Truth Social.

Truth Social is a social media platform launched by Trump as an alternative to mainstream platforms, promoting itself as a space for free speech. 

In the video, Sachs described Netanyahu as "obsessive" and "a deep, dark son of a bitch" while accusing him of persistently pushing the United States into war with Iran and Syria.

"He's still trying to get us to fight Iran to this day," Sachs stated, adding, "He has gotten us into endless wars."

Israeli forces have abducted at least 45 Palestinians, including a child and two women, during a series of raids across the occupied West Bank from last night until this morning, according to prisoners' advocacy groups.

The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) confirmed that these arrests took place in Hebron, Nablus, Tubas, Tulkarm, Ramallah, and Jerusalem.

The groups also highlighted that the raids were marked by extensive abuse, including threats and physical attacks on detainees and their families. Israeli soldiers reportedly vandalised and destroyed Palestinian homes during these operations.

Three Palestinians, including two children under the age of ten, were killed in an Israeli drone strike in the occupied West Bank town of Tamun on Wednesday, reported the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

The victims, all cousins, were identified by Wafa as Reda Ali Ahmed Basharat, 9, Hamza Ammar Ahmed Basharat, 10, and Adam Khair al-Din Ahmed Basharat, 23.

The Israeli military claimed the strike targeted a "terror squad" accused of planting explosives.