Live: Gaza death toll nears 50,700

Another round of air strikes has been reported near the city of Saada in Yemen's northeast, as well as near the Mansouriyah district further south, according to the local news agency Saba on Tuesday.

This is the third consecutive week of US bombings across Yemen, which have also targeted the capital, Sanaa.

Rumeysa Ozturk, a 30-year-old Turkish national on a student visa in the US, is currently being held at the South Louisiana Processing Center in Lousiana, accused of being “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans”.

Masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents approached and physically restrained the Tufts University doctoral student and research assistant while on the street in Somerville, Massachusetts, on Tuesday, 25 March.

The Department of Homeland Security and ICE have not publicly provided evidence for their allegations and she has not been charged with any crime.

Read more: Ozturk is a Fulbright Scholar - a programme which creates mutual understanding between Americans and people around the world

A Muslim Iranian scholar at Yale said on Tuesday that she has been terminated by the institution after being barred from campus two weeks ago. 

The move was prompted by allegations on a lesser-known, largely AI-powered news site called Jewish Onliner, which said that Doutaghi had ties to the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, better known as Samidoun. The group was sanctioned in the US and declared a terrorist group in Canada in October 2024. 

Helyeh Doutaghi's lawyer told Middle East Eye at the time that Yale appeared to be retaliating because of Doutaghi's pro-Palestinian speech. 

On Tuesday, in a statement posted to X, Doutaghi said she "will not legitimise a process driven by Zionist actors", referring to the pro-Israeli lawyer the university hired to question her.

Yale, she added, has not "presented a single shred of evidence demonstrating any unlawful connection or act on my part. I have been terminated based on unproven allegations".

"The legal technologies developed to manage and punish Global South actors who challenge Western oppression and domination are increasingly being redeployed inward, turning their gaze onto scholars, activists, organizations, and movements that critique the US or Israeli regimes," Doutaghi wrote. 

The journalists killed by Israel in Gaza far outnumber similar deaths in any armed conflict since the US Civil War, the Watson Institute's Cost of War project at Brown University has shown. 

"The war in Gaza has, since October 7, 2023, killed more journalists than the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined," the paper, authored by investigative journalist Nick Turse, said.

"It is, quite simply, the worst ever conflict for reporters."

The head of the Duma village council in the West Bank, Suleiman Dawabsheh, told Al Jazeera Mubasher on Tuesday that more than 100 Israeli settlers attacked his village "under the protection of the occupation army" and torched vehicles and buildings. Three Palestinians, all described as young males, sustained injuries. 

The family of a British aid worker killed by an Israeli drone strike in Gaza have slammed the British government for refusing to release information about the attack gathered by a Royal Air Force (RAF) spy plane. 

James Kirby, a 47-year-old former British Army rifleman, was working in Gaza for the World Central Kitchen when he was killed last April in an Israeli targeted attack on a three-car aid convoy. He died alongside several others, including two other British veterans.

Read more: The Kirby family questioned why they were not allowed to be informed about what was filmed

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he held a phone call with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi during which they "discussed... Gaza, and possible solutions", Trump said in a post on his social media platform, TruthSocial.

"We discussed numerous topics, among which was the tremendous Military progress we have made against the Ship destroying Houthis in Yemen," Trump wrote. 

He added that the call went "very well".

Hezbollah has confirmed the death of Hassan Bdeir along with his son, Ali Bdeir, following the Israeli air strike on Beirut's southern suburbs on Tuesday morning.

A Conservative MP has repeated the false claim that a British imam supported the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attack on Israel - despite a Labour MP having previously clarified that the accusation is wrong.

Nick Timothy levelled the accusation against Imam Adam Kelwick on Monday during a parliamentary session.

Kelwick, who is imam at Liverpool's Abdullah Quilliam Mosque, told Middle East Eye on Tuesday that Timothy had abused parliamentary privilege to make "false and defamatory" claims, and urged him to retract them.

But parliamentary privilege means MPs cannot face legal action for defamatory statements made in the House of Commons.

READ MORE: Tory MP repeats false Hamas claims about British imam in parliament

A British-Gambian PhD student has decided to leave the United States after the Trump administration sent immigration officers to deport him for his pro-Palestine activism at Cornell University.

Last month, Momodou Taal launched legal proceedings against US President Donald Trump to stop his attempt at deporting international students and scholars who support Palestine and protest against the war on Gaza.

Taal's attorneys said Trump officials had asked the 31-year-old to turn himself in and were planning to revoke his student visa.

But on Monday night, Taal, a doctoral candidate in Africana studies, said he intended to leave "the United States free and with my head held high".

Taal said: "I decided to sue the Trump administration with the hope that it would offer reprieve for myself and other similarly situated persons."

READ MORE: Cornell student threatened with deportation over Palestine activism to leave US

Israeli settlers, under the protection of Israeli forces, physically assaulted and pepper-sprayed Palestinians who were having a picnic in al-Auja near Jericho, in the occupied West Bank, according to the Wafa news agency.

At least four Palestinians were injured, and only one of the four victims was taken to a hospital, as Israeli forces refused to hand over the other three to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday that Israel would not allow the Palestinian Authority (PA) to control the occupied West Bank during a tour of the territory with far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said Israel was "here to stay".

"Just as we are crushing Palestinian terror in the terror camps of Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur al-Shams, we will prevent any attempt by the PA to take control of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and harm Jewish settlements," Katz said in a video statement alongside Smotrich.

Israeli forces have been attacking Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank for several months, killing and displacing Palestinians in the process.

Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Tuesday that 2024 was a "record" year for demolitions of Palestinian construction in the occupied West Bank that Israel deems "illegal".

"In the past year, the record for demolishing illegal Arab construction in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) has been broken," he said. "In order to win this battle, we must use additional strategic tools," he added, in reference to building new Israeli settlements.

- Reporting by AFP

The Israeli army struck a building in Beirut’s southern suburbs before dawn on Tuesday, killing at least four people, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.

The strike came without a warning at around 3:30am during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Israel’s military said it targeted Hassan Bdeir, a Hezbollah member accused of coordinating attacks on Israel with Hamas.

The attack marks the second strike on the Lebanese capital since a ceasefire ended over a year of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel in late November.

The first strike levelled a building in Dahiyeh, the capital's southern suburbs, just days earlier, on Friday. Before the strike, the Israeli army sent out bombing notices to the residents in the area after two projectiles were fired on Israel from southern Lebanon.

Read more: Israeli dawn strike on Beirut suburb kills four

The Lebanese Speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri, has slammed Israel’s strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, calling it an “attempt with fire, blood, and destruction to assassinate the UN resolution and demolish its implementation mechanism.”

In a social media post on Facebook, Berri condemned the attack, which came during Eid al-Fitr and followed a string of Israeli violations, as part of a broader effort to destabilise Lebanon and weaken its institutions.

He stressed that Lebanon has upheld its ceasefire commitments, while Israel continues to violate the agreement. He urged the international community to act, hold Israel accountable, and push for an end to the aggression.