Israeli soldiers burn hospital in North Gaza after removing staff, patients

Israeli soldiers stormed and burned a hospital in isolated northern Gaza after forcibly removing staff and patients on Friday, Health Ministry officials said. The Israeli military said the hospital was being used by Hamas fighters as a base, although it did not provide evidence.

In Israel, an 83-year-old woman was stabbed to death by a Palestinian from the West Bank, and police say the suspect was arrested.

Israel said it intercepted a missile fired by the Houthi rebels in Yemen, hours after a wave of deadly Israeli warplanes bombed key infrastructure in Yemen including an airport where the World Health Organisation's director-general was about to board a flight.

The Houthis have also been attacking shipping in the Red Sea corridor attacks they say won't stop until Israel agrees to a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza has killed over 45,400 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians in its count.

Hamas ignited the war with its October 7, 2023, attack in southern Israel in which about 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage by Palestinian militants. Around 100 hostages are still being held in Gaza, although only two-thirds are believed to still be alive.

Here's the latest:  Israeli troops burn a hospital in north Gaza after forcibly removing staff and patients, officials say  DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip Israeli troops stormed and set fire to one of the last hospitals operating in the northernmost part of Gaza on Friday, forcing many of the staff and patients out of the facility, the territory's health ministry said.

The Kamal Adwan Hospital has been hit multiple times over the past three months by Israeli troops, according to staff. Israel says it is waging an offensive against Hamas fighters in surrounding neighbourhoods.

Israel's military said it was conducting operations against Hamas infrastructure and fighters in the area of the hospital, without providing details. It repeated claims that Hamas fighters were operating inside Kamal Adwan , though it provided no evidence.

Hospital officials have denied the accusations.

The Health Ministry said troops forced medical personnel and patients to assemble in the hospital yard and remove their clothes amid the winter temperatures. They were led out of the hospital, some to an unknown location, while some patients were sent to the nearby Indonesian hospital, which was knocked out of operation after an Israeli raid earlier this week.

The ministry said troops set fires in several parts of Kamal Adwan, including the hospital's lab and surgery department. It said 25 patients and 60 health workers remained in the hospital out of 75 patients and 180 staff who had been there. The ministry's account could not be independently confirmed, and attempts to contact hospital staff were unsuccessful.

Since October, Israel's offensive has virtually sealed off the north Gaza areas of Jabaliya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya and levelled large parts of the districts.

Last week, the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders accused Israel of systematically attacking Gaza's healthcare system and restricting essential humanitarian assistance.

Syrians protest to demand answers about loved ones who disappeared under Assad's rule  DAMASCUS Dozens of relatives of missing Syrians gathered Friday in Damascus to demand answers about the fate of their loved ones, as many Syrians have been missing for years, some disappearing after being detained by the now-toppled government of Bashar Assad.

The gathering comes nearly three weeks after insurgents freed dozens of people from Syrian prisons following the fall of Assad's government. Since then, no additional detainees have been found, leaving thousands of families still in anguish over the fate of their missing relatives.

Relatives have been travelling across Syria in search of information.

We accept nothing less than knowing all details related to what happened to them, said Wafa Mustafa, whose father, Ali Mustafa, has been missing for over a decade.

Who is responsible for their detention? Who tortured them? If they were killed, who killed them? Where were they buried? Mustafa said, speaking at the gathering held at Al-Hijaz Station in Damascus.

In 2023, the United Nations established an independent body to investigate the fate of more than 130,000 people missing during the Syrian conflict.

Marah Allawi, whose son Huzaifa was detained in 2012 at the age of 18, said she saw how they tortured young men, how they put them in cages and tortured them.

She called on the international community to act. I call on the whole world to know where our sons are.

Yemen international airport resumes operations a day after it was struck  SANAA, Yemen -- The international airport in Yemen's capital Sanaa and the Red Sea port of Hodeida resumed operations Friday, a day after being struck by Israeli missiles, Yemeni officials said.

Deputy Transport Minister Yahya al-Sayani told a press conference that the Israeli airstrikes at Sanaa International Airport hit the control tower, navigation systems and the departures terminal. He said flights resumed on Friday as scheduled.

The strikes Thursday afternoon at the airport and the Hodeida seaport killed six people and wounded 40 others, according to the Health Ministry. The airport's director, Khaled al-Shaif, said travellers were in the airport at the time of the strike.

Israel said its strikes targeted the infrastructure of Yemen's Houthi rebels in retaliation for repeated volleys of missiles fired by the rebels toward central Israel in recent days.

The strikes on the airport came as the head of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was preparing to board a plane nearby. Ghebreyesus said Friday on X that a UN colleague wounded in the strike underwent surgery and was in stable condition, but has not yet been evacuated from Yemen.

Israel carries out more airstrikes deep inside Lebanon, state media say  BEIRUT Israeli warplanes carried three airstrikes deep into eastern Lebanon on Friday for the second time since a ceasefire ended the war between Hezbollah and Israel a month ago, Lebanon's state-run news agency said.

No casualties were reported in the strikes on the Bekaa Valley town of Qousaya and the target remained unclear. The Israeli military said its air force struck infrastructure used to smuggle weapons via Syria to Hezbollah near the Janta crossing on the Syrian-Lebanese border, about 9 kilometers (5 miles) north of Qousaya. Israel accused Hezbollah's Unit 4400 of overseeing smuggling operations from Iran through Syria, adding that it had killed the unit's commander in early October.

Since the ceasefire took effect on Nov. 27, the Israeli army has conducted near-daily operations in southern Lebanon, including shootings, house demolitions, excavations, tank shelling and airstrikes. These actions have killed at least 27 people, wounded more than 30 and destroyed residential buildings, including a mosque.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL, said it has observed concerning actions by Israeli forces, including the destruction of homes and road closures.

On Thursday, the Lebanese army accused Israeli troops of breaching the ceasefire by encroaching into southern Lebanon. Israeli bulldozers erected dirt barricades to block roads in Wadi Al-Hujayr.

The Lebanese army later on Thursday said that following intervention by the ceasefire supervision committee, Israeli forces withdrew, and Lebanese soldiers removed the barriers to reopen the road in the area.

The US-brokered ceasefire, which ended the 14-month war, demands that Hezbollah and Israeli forces withdraw from southern Lebanon within 60 days, allowing Lebanese troops to gradually deploy south of the Litani River.

Houthi rebels fire a missile at Israel following airstrikes on Yemen's main airport  JERUSALEM Yemen's Houthi rebels fired a missile toward Israel early Friday, hours after Israel carried out a wave of airstrikes on Yemen's main airport.

The Israeli military said the Houthi missile was intercepted by air defenses before it entered Israeli territory. Air raid sirens were set off in several areas in central Israel.

A day earlier, a wave of Israeli airstrikes hit Yemen's main airport outside the capital, Sanaa, killing three people and wounding dozens of others, according to the U.N.

The strikes hit just as the World Health Organization's director-general was about to board a flight at the airport. Israel said it attacked infrastructure used bv the Houthis.

For several days this past week, Houthi launches have set off air raid sirens in Israel. The Houthis have also been targeting shipping in the Red Sea corridor, saying their attacks are in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

Last week, Israeli jets bombed Sanaa and Hodeida, killing nine people. The US military also has targeted the Houthis in Yemen in recent days.

83-year-old woman stabbed to death in Israel  TEL AVIV A Palestinian from the West Bank stabbed to death an 83-year-old woman in Israel on Friday, police said.

The attack took place in the town of Herzliya on the Mediterranean coast outside Tel Aviv. Police said the attacker was arrested.

A medic with Israel's emergency services, Kobi Avriel, said first responders found the woman unconscious on the sidewalk outside a nursing home with stabbing wounds. The Tel Aviv Ichilov Medical Centre said she was pronounced dead on arrival.

Israel has experienced an increase in attacks amid a surge in violence in the West Bank since the start of the military's nearly 15-month-old war in Gaza.

Displaced Syrians face dire winter conditions in tent camps, UN says  UNITED NATIONS An estimated 730,000 people living in tents in camps for the displaced in northwest Syria are experiencing dire conditions this winter including from flooding, the U.N. humanitarian office said.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, said Thursday that more than 200 family tents in camps in Idlib and northern Aleppo were damaged by flooding from heavy rainfall on Dec. 23.

Since the start of 2024, flooding and strong winds have damaged more than 8,800 family tents including nearly 2,000 that were fully destroyed across 260 camps," OCHA said.

On another issue, OCHA quoted a report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor based in Britain, that since Dec. 8 - when Syrian President Bashar Assad was ousted --- episodes involving explosive ordnance have killed more than 70 civilians including a dozen children and five women, with scores more injured.

OCHA said mine experts have identified 109 new minefields across Idlib, Aleppo, Hama and Latakia since Nov. 26. So far, it said experts have destroyed more than 850 individual items of explosive ordnance.

Elsewhere, OCHA said Israeli forces on Wednesday reportedly wounded six civilians when they opened fire in Al-Suweisah town in Quneitra province, which includes the Golan Heights. It said residents were ordered to evacuate and Israeli forces imposed a curfew.