Live: At least 74 children killed in Gaza in first week of 2025
Live Updates
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, has called on Israel to reverse its decision to ban the organisation as it continues providing humanitarian aid in Gaza.
"It has never happened in the history of the United Nations that a member state decides to ban a UN agency, in the middle of a war, from doing its work," said Juliette Touma, Unrwa's communications director.
"What needs to happen is for the Israeli parliament to retract the decision."
⏰The clock is ticking for a possible ban on UNRWA to deliver essential services for millions of #PalestineRefugees in #Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) January 4, 2025
Our @JulietteTouma tells to @RTE that the UN is not planning to replace UNRWA. “What needs to happen is for… pic.twitter.com/0caZfBC0oQ
Good morning, Middle East Eye readers,
Here are the latest updates:
- The Israeli army bombed a vehicle in southern Gaza's Khan Younis, killing six Palestinian security guards who were working to provide humanitarian aid, according to Al Jazeera. Dozens of Palestinians have been killed by Israel since dawn.
- The US is preparing an $8bn arms package for Israel, including heavy bombs.
- The Israeli Broadcasting Authority reports that Israel is expected to inform the US it will not withdraw from Lebanon following the 60-day truce with Hezbollah.
- Israel’s deputy UN ambassador, Jonathan Miller, defended the Israeli attack on Gaza's Kamal Adwan Hospital, saying that "terrorists" were in the facility. He also attempted to justify the arrest of the hospital's director, Hussam Abu Safiya, accusing him of being a "Hamas operative".
Our liveblog will shortly be closing until tomorrow morning.
Here are the day's key developments:
- Israeli air strikes killed at least two Palestinians in the centre of Khan Younis in southern Gaza in the early hours of Saturday morning, local time, according to Al Jazeera. There are also a number of injuries at the scene. The area is meant to be part of a so-called "safe zone" for forcibly displaced Palestinians, per Israeli "evacuation" orders.
- A senior health official in Gaza has told Aljazeera that of the 38 public and private medical facilities in Gaza, only 17 remain somewhat functional.
- Israeli forces ordered people inside al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza on Friday to evacuate the facility or be bombed, Aljazeera reported. Israeli air strikes had earlier damaged the hospital’s emergency department, injuring two of the 96 people sheltering in the facility.
- Israel on Friday defended its raid on a northern Gaza hospital last week while the United Nations human rights chief called the justification unsubstantiated, and the World Health Organisation urged Israel to release the Kamal Adwan Hospital chief medic from detention. The deputy US ambassador to the UN said Washington is collecting information on Dr. Hussam Abu Safiyeh.
- The Israeli army has issued a forced evacuation order for Palestinians in the Bureij neighbourhood, following a rocket which it said was fired from central Gaza. “Terrorist organisations are once again firing rockets from this area that has been warned several times in the past. For your own safety, move immediately to the humanitarian zone,” the Israeli army’s Arabic language spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in a post on X.
- A senior Hamas official on Friday confirmed that ceasefire talks have indeed resumed in Doha, Qatar, and that the group is serious about reaching a deal as soon as possible.
- The White House on Friday insisted that despite repeated Israeli assertions about degrading Hamas capabilities over the last 15 months of the war on Gaza, the group "still exists as a viable threat".
- Palestinian Islamic Jihad issued a statement on Friday demanding that the now month-long raids by the US-trained Palestinian Authority forces in the Jenin camp of the West Bank cease immediately. At least eight Palestinians have been killed in Jenin over the past month.
Israeli air strikes killed at least two Palestinians in the centre of Khan Younis in southern Gaza in the early hours of Saturday morning, local time, according to Al Jazeera.
There are also a number of injuries at the scene.
The area is meant to be part of a so-called "safe zone" for forcibly displaced Palestinians, per Israeli "evacuation" orders.
Israel on Friday defended its raid on a northern Gaza hospital last week while the United Nations human rights chief called the justification unsubstantiated and the World Health Organisation (WHO) urged Israel to release the hospital's director from detention.
Israel's UN ambassador in Geneva, Daniel Meron, posted on social media a letter he sent on Friday to the WHO and Volker Turk, the UN human rights official. It said the raid on Kamal Adwan hospital a week ago was "triggered by irrefutable evidence" that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants were using the hospital.
Israel's deputy UN ambassador Jonathan Miller said more than "240 terrorists were apprehended, including 15 who participated in the 7 October massacre" in southern Israel in 2023, which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip. The hospital's director, Hussam Abu Safiyeh, was also detained in the raid.
"We suspect him of being a Hamas operative as hundreds of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists were hiding inside the Kamal Adwan hospital under his management. He is currently being investigated by Israeli security forces," Miller said.
The WHO is deeply concerned about Abu Safiya, said WHO representative Richard Peeperkorn, adding: "We have lost contact with him since and call for his immediate release."
The United States is gathering information about Abu Safiya, deputy US ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea told the Security Council.
- Reporting by Reuters
Al Jazeera is reporting that one Palestinian has succumbed to his injuries after being fired on by Israeli forces in the Balata refugee camp, east of Nablus in the West Bank.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said earlier on Friday that at least seven people had been wounded by Israeli fire in the area, with two of them in critical condition.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad issued a statement on Friday demanding that the now month-long raids by the US-trained Palestinian Authority forces in the Jenin camp of the West Bank stop immediately.
"We condemn the deliberate shooting of the security forces of the Ramallah Authority at the home of the Al-Hajj family in Jenin camp," the statement said.
"We renew our demand that the authorities stop their attacks on our people, stop besieging the camp, and stop pursuing the resistance fighters."
In the first United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting on the Middle East for 2025, Palestinian ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour asked the international body to show "courage" in demanding the release of Dr Hussam Abu Safiyeh, the medical director of Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza was detained by Israeli forces last week.
A global social media campaign is underway demanding that he be freed and reunited with his family.
The UNSC meeting in New York was specifically held to discuss Israel's attacks on the health system in Gaza.
"Dr Abu Safiyeh was himself injured. And now he has been abducted, detained, his fate unknown. He refused to leave the victims behind. Can't we display some degree of that same courage?" Mansour said.
"This is not a war; this is an assault against Palestinian existence. Its target is, therefore, life itself in Gaza, and all those who are trying to sustain it, all those trying to ensure survival in the midst of this genocide," he said.
"And, according to this criminal intent, it is therefore logical that medical personnel, doctors, nurses, paramedics, are among its primary victims. This is immoral, unbearable and must be stopped."
A senior Hamas official on Friday confirmed that ceasefire talks have indeed resumed in Doha, Qatar, and that the group is serious about reaching a deal as soon as possible.
A Palestinian man and his son were killed in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, local medical officials said on Friday, as a month-long standoff between Palestinian security forces and armed militant groups in the town continued.
Separately, a security forces officer died in what Palestinian Authority (PA) officials said was an accident, bringing to six the total number of the security forces to have died in the operation in Jenin which began on 5 December. There were no further details.
The PA denied that its forces killed the 44-year-old man and his son, who were shot as they stood on the roof of their house in the Jenin refugee camp, a crowded quarter that houses descendants of Palestinians who fled or were driven out in the 1948 Middle East war. The man's daughter was also wounded in the incident.
At least eight Palestinians have been killed in Jenin over the past month, one of them a member of the armed Jenin Brigades, which includes members of the armed wings of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah factions.
- Reporting by Reuters
The White House on Friday insisted that despite repeated Israeli assertions about degrading Hamas capabilities over the last 15 months of the war on Gaza, the group "still exists as a viable threat".
"You've got to talk to the [Israeli Defence Forces] about the missions they're conducting. No question that they have visited significant damage to Hamas's military capabilities, their ability to resource, to operate and to continue to conduct lethal attacks, but Hamas still exists as a viable threat," White Houe National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.
"There are still Hamas fighters. There's still some Hamas infrastructure. Hamas still has some abilities, and I'll let the Israelis speak to the actions they've taken to mitigate the threat that Hamas poses," he added.
"Hamas started this war. Hamas put them in this position, and Hamas can easily end that suffering by signing on to this new hostage deal, which we are still trying to work to conclude."
Asked whether there is upcoming travel scheduled for US envoys involved in the ceasefire talks, Kirby only said that President Joe Biden "has made clear his national security team will be a participant all the way to the very end, and we're going to be doing everything we can to see if we can broker a new ceasefire deal again that will get the hostages home."
"We welcome Israel's decision to send another team to Doha," he added.
Hamas has denounced the Palestinian Authority’s actions in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank as a ‘complete crime,’ as its forces clash with Palestinian resistance groups.
“The security forces of the Authority practise siege, deliberate killing, arrest, torture and abuse against the free people of our country. The latest crime of the Authority is the cold-blooded execution of a father and his son while they were on the roof of their house in Jenin camp,” a Hamas statement, cited by Al Jazeera, said.
“We mourn the martyrs of our people who were killed by these forces since the beginning of the operation and the siege. We warn of the danger of this encroachment on our social fabric and the future of our cause,” the group said.
The Palestinian Authority has denied involvement in the killing of a man and his son in Jenin, insisting its forces were not present at the scene during the incident.
Several rights groups have warned there are "alarming indications" of torture and abuse of Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, after he was abducted by Israeli forces in late December.
Safiya, who oversaw north Gaza's last functioning hospital, is reportedly being held at Israel's notorious Sde Teiman prison, where abuse - including torture, murder and rape - is rife.
According to information received by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, the doctor's health has deteriorated following his detention.
"Euro-Med Monitor warns of the grave risk to [Safiya's] life, following patterns of deliberate killings and deaths under torture previously suffered by other doctors and medical staff," the Geneva-based NGO said.
Testimonies gathered by the group indicate that Abu Safiya has endured abuse after Israeli forces stormed the bombed-out Kamal Adwan Hospital.
Read more: Gaza chief doctor's life 'in danger' after Israeli abduction, monitor groups warn
Israeli forces ordered people inside al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza to evacuate the facility or be bombed, Al Jazeera reported.
Israeli air strikes damaged the hospital’s emergency department an hour earlier, injuring two of the 96 people sheltering in the facility.
Several Palestinians have been injured during confrontations with Israeli forces across the occupied West Bank.
Clashes erupted in Kafr Qaddum, east of Qalqilya, Beita, south of Nablus, and Jabal al-Tawil in el-Bireh. Israeli forces reportedly fired live ammunition and tear gas to disperse demonstrators, according to Anadolu news agency,
The Palestine Red Crescent Society confirmed one individual sustained a gunshot wound in Jabal al-Tawil and was transported to hospital for treatment. Witnesses reported that the clashes in this area occurred during an Israeli military raid.
Field medics reported that they treated several people who inhaled tear gas in Kafr Qaddum and Beita where people gathered to protest Israel's settlement expansion.
