Middle East latest: Israel is establishing a new military corridor across Gaza
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel is establishing a new security corridor across the Gaza Strip to pressure Hamas, suggesting it would cut off the southern city of Rafah, which Israel has ordered evacuated, from the rest of the Palestinian territory.
The announcement came after Netanyahu’s defense minister said Israel would seize large areas of Gaza and add them to its so-called security zones.
A wave of Israeli airstrikes overnight into Wednesday killed more than 40 Palestinians, nearly half of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials.
One strike killed at least 17 people in a United Nations building, previously a clinic, that had been converted into a shelter for more than 700 displaced people. Israel said it struck Hamas militants in a “command and control center.”
Israel has vowed to escalate the nearly 18-month war with Hamas until the militant group returns dozens of remaining hostages, disarms and leaves the territory. Israel ended a ceasefire in March and has cut off all food, fuel and humanitarian aid to Gaza — a tactic that rights groups say is a war crime.
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Here’s the latest:
Israel says it struck military sites in Syria
The Syrian state news agency SANA said Israeli airstrikes targeted an abandoned scientific research center in the Barzeh area outside the capital Damascus late Wednesday. SANA said another strike hit near the city of Hama. No information on casualties was reported.
An Israeli military statement said these were the latest in a series of strikes aimed at destroying Syrian military capabilities left over after President Bashar Assad was overthrown by Islamist insurgents late last year.
Israel has also seized a buffer zone inside Syria, with Israeli officials saying they will thwart any threats. Critics say Israel is trying to weaken and divide Syria as the new leaders attempt to consolidate control after years of civil war.
UN chief condemns Israel killing over 1,000 people in Gaza since the ceasefire collapsed
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is “deeply alarmed” at the rising death toll from large-scale Israeli bombardments and ground operations, and called for an immediate restoration, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Wednesday. The ceasefire collapsed on March 18.
In response to reports that Israel plans to seize more land in Gaza, Dujarric said the secretary-general issued a reminder that a U.N. Security Council resolution adopted last year “rejects any attempt at demographic or territorial change in the Gaza Strip, including any actions that reduce the territory of Gaza.”
Guterres is also increasingly concerned at “inflammatory rhetoric” calling for the Israeli military to capture and add extensive territory from Gaza to Israel’s security areas, Dujarric said.
Israel says it intercepts rockets fired from Gaza
Two rockets were intercepted after crossing into Israeli territory from the northern Gaza Strip, setting off air raid sirens Wednesday evening, the Israeli military said. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Since Israel broke the ceasefire last month, a handful of rockets have been fired from Gaza as well as long-range missiles from Yemen.
Although Palestinian militants were once firing volleys of rockets each day out of Gaza, that dwindled to nearly zero over the course of the nearly 18-month war.
Top UN aid coordinator in Gaza says the war ‘is defying decency’
Jonathan Whittall, the U.N. aid coordination agency’s top official for Gaza, painted a disturbing image of the death and destruction taking place in Gaza since the recent ceasefire deal broke down, saying Israel is now waging a war “without limits.”
Whittall briefed reporters Wednesday that 64% of Gaza is inaccessible to Palestinians.
“Nowhere and no one is safe in Gaza,” he said. “My colleagues tell me that they just want to die with their families. Their worst fear is to die alone.”
Whittall said that humanitarian aid workers are “not magicians” and there are no longer humanitarian solutions to the problems in Gaza.
“The crisis needs political action. And I believe that this needs to start with accountability,” he added. “Aid will not and cannot compensate for the political failures that we’ve seen in Gaza.”
UN says Gaza is the world’s most dangerous place for humanitarian workers
That’s after more than 408 humanitarian aid workers have been killed in Gaza during Israel’s war against Hamas, according to U.N. deputy humanitarian chief Joyce Msuya.
She spoke Wednesday at the U.N. Security Council alongside U.N. security chief Gilles Michaud, with Msuya asking the council for answers, justice and an end to the killings.
Michaud lamented that, “Impunity for attacks on humanitarian personnel has become the new normal. A pervasive normal. An accepted normal.”
Both officials cited what they said were two recent Israeli attacks — a strike on a clearly marked U.N. building on March 19 that killed one U.N. staff member and injured six others, and an attack March 23 on ambulances and other marked vehicles that killed a U.N. staff member and eight Palestinian Red Crescent and six civil defense staff.
Netanyahu says Israel is establishing a new security corridor across Gaza
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described it as the Morag corridor, using the name of a Jewish settlement that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis. That suggests the military-controlled corridor would run between the two cities in southern Gaza.
“We are increasing the pressure step by step, so that they will give us our hostages. And the more they do not give, the more the pressure will increase until they do,” Netanyahu said in a statement issued Wednesday.
Last month, the Israeli military retook control of the Netzarim corridor, which bisects northern Gaza from the south. Israeli forces had withdrawn from the corridor as part of the ceasefire.
Netanyahu takes witness stand again in his trial for alleged corruption
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu testified again on Wednesday in his ongoing trial for alleged corruption.
Netanyahu is the first sitting Israeli leader to take the stand as a criminal defendant. He denies wrongdoing, saying the charges are a witch hunt orchestrated by a hostile media and a biased legal system out to topple his lengthy rule.
Israeli authorities are also conducting separate investigations into whether the Gulf state of Qatar — which has close ties with Hamas — hired Netanyahu advisers to launch an influence campaign in Israel.
The corruption trial testimony is another low point for Israel’s longest-serving leader, who also faces an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Gaza.
Netanyahu is expected to travel to Hungary later Wednesday for a meeting with the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, despite the international arrest warrant.
An Israeli strike on a UN building sheltering Palestinian families kills 15, Gaza hospital says
Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, said the building was previously a medical clinic but had been converted into a shelter with more 700 displaced people from 160 families living there.
Officials at the Indonesian Hospital said the Israeli strike killed 15 people, including nine children and two women, at the building for the U.N. agency known as UNRWA in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. The Palestinian Civil Defense rescue agency said the attack hit two rooms in the building, and that Civil Defense teams evacuated the bodies of seven dead and 12 wounded.
The Israeli military said it struck Hamas members in the area, adding that they were hiding inside “a command and control center that was being used for coordinating” armed activity and served as a central meeting point for the Palestinian group.
Despite UNRWA staff warning people about the dangers of remaining at the facility after Wednesday’s strike, many displaced families haven’t left “simply because they have absolutely nowhere else to go,” Touma said, adding that no UNRWA staff were killed or wounded in the strike.
Israeli hostages’ lives are in danger from intensified Gaza fighting, say their families
The Hostage Families Forum, which represents most captives’ families, said that it was “horrified to wake up this morning to the Defense Minister’s announcement about expanding military operations in Gaza.”
The group said the Israeli government “has an obligation to free all 59 hostages from Hamas captivity — to pursue every possible channel to advance a deal for their release.” They stressed that every passing day puts their loved ones’ lives at greater risk.
“Their lives hang in the balance as more and more disturbing details continue to emerge about the horrific conditions they’re being held in — chained, abused, and in desperate need of medical attention,” said the forum, which called on the Trump administration and other mediators to continue pressuring Hamas to release the hostages.
“Our highest priority must be an immediate deal to bring ALL hostages back home — the living for rehabilitation and those killed for proper burial — and end this war,” the group said.
Germany rejects Israel’s suggestion it was part of ‘voluntary departure’ of Palestinians from Gaza
Germany has rejected Israel’s suggestion that it took part in the “voluntary departure” of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to third countries.
The Israeli Interior Ministry said hundreds of Gaza residents, accompanied by German diplomats, were flown from southern Israel to the German city of Leipzig on Tuesday. It said Interior Minister Moshe Arbel visited Israel’s Ramon Airport “with the aim of examining the process of voluntary departure of Gazans to a third country.”
“This is wrong,” the German Foreign Office said on the social platform X in response to a post that summarized the Israeli statement.
In a statement, the German Foreign Office said it had worked with Israeli authorities to assist 19 German citizens and their close family members in traveling from Gaza to Germany, describing it as a routine wartime evacuation.
“Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, the German government has repeatedly and intensively advocated for the departure and safety of German citizens,” it said.
Israel has vowed to carry out President Donald Trump’s proposal to resettle large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza in other countries, referring to it as “voluntary emigration.”
Palestinians have universally rejected the plan, describing it as forced expulsion from their homeland.
Human rights experts say implementing the plan would likely violate international law, and the proposal drew widespread international opposition when Trump announced it in February.
Israeli airstrikes on Khan Younis kill 17 people, hospital officials say
Israeli airstrikes on the southern city of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip have killed 17 people, hospital officials say.
The bodies of 12 people killed in an overnight airstrike were brought to Nasser Hospital, officials said Wednesday, and the victims included five women, one of them pregnant, and two children. Three men from the same family were killed, as were the owners of the house that was bombed, officials said.
Gaza European Hospital received the bodies of five people who were killed in two separate airstrikes, officials there said.
Israel’s operations in Gaza expand to seize ‘large areas’
Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip is expanding to seize “large areas,” the defense minister said Wednesday.
Israel’s offensive in the Palestinian territory was “expanding to crush and clean the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure and seizing large areas that will be added to the security zones of the State of Israel,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a written statement.
The Israeli government has long maintained a buffer zone just inside Gaza along its security fence and has greatly expanded since the war against Hamas began in 2023.
Katz called on Gaza residents to “expel Hamas and return all hostages.” The militant group still holds 59 captives, of whom 24 are believed to still be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
United Nations calls Israeli claim that Gaza has food for a long time ‘ridiculous’
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the United Nations is “at the tail end of our supplies,” forcing the U.N. World Food Program to close all 25 of its bakeries in Gaza because of a lack of flour and cooking fuel.
“WFP doesn’t close its bakeries for fun,” Dujarric said.
He said the food situation remains “very critical” since Israel closed all crossings into Gaza a month ago, cutting off all humanitarian deliveries.
COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said Tuesday that nearly 450,000 tons of aid entered Gaza during the ceasefire. COGAT claimed at least some of the aid from the U.N. and its humanitarian partners was being diverted to Hamas.
Responding to that, Dujarric said, “The U.N. has kept a chain of custody, and a very good chain of custody, on all the aid.”
Suspected US airstrikes in Yemen kill at least 4 people
Suspected U.S. airstrikes battered rebel-controlled areas of Yemen into Wednesday, with the Houthis saying one strike killed at least four people near the Red Sea port city of Hodeida.
The intense campaign of airstrikes under President Donald Trump, targeting the rebels over their attacks on shipping in Mideast waters stemming from the Israel-Hamas war, has killed at least 65 people, according to casualty figures released by the Houthis.
The campaign appears to show no signs of stopping as the Trump administration again linked their airstrikes on the Iranian-backed Houthis to an effort to pressure Iran over its rapidly advancing nuclear program. While so far giving no specifics about the campaign and its targets, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt put the overall number of strikes on Tuesday at over 200.
By The Associated Press
