US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated his expectation on Thursday that negotiators will convene in the next few days to deliberate the next steps regarding the extraction of the remaining hostages from Gaza and the establishment of a ceasefire. The United States’ top diplomat was in Qatar, the site of crucial ceasefire negotiations.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, said that Qatar has resumed communication with the Hamas political bureau in Doha following the assassination of the group’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, in Gaza last week.
An Israeli Defense Forces soldier and five ex-detainees who were victims of the practice have testified that the Israeli military forced Palestinians into entering houses and tunnels in Gaza that may have been planted with explosives in order to rescue its own troops.
The soldier claimed that this practice was common among Israeli units in Gaza and that they had held two Palestinian prisoners with the intention of using them as human shields to investigate dangerous areas.
Health officials have warned that the lack of fuel, medicine, and food in northern Gaza is causing the area to reach a critical point as the Israeli bombardment intensifies. An alarming UN report has raised concerns that Israel’s conflict with Hamas could potentially set Gaza back by a staggering seventy years.
Israeli airstrikes, described by Lebanon’s state news agency as the most violent since the war began, targeted the southern suburbs of Beirut. The strikes caused extensive fires and the destruction of six buildings.
Avichay Adraee, the Arabic spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), warned civilians in the Burj al-Barajneh and Hadath areas of Dahiyeh to stay at least 500 meters away from any Hezbollah-affiliated locations just minutes before the strikes, warning them that they were about to come under attack.
