Author: Steven Sahiounie

Penny Wong has visited the occupied West Bank, meeting with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh and Palestinians affected by settler violence. “Australia is deeply concerned by ongoing settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank,” Wong said in a post on X. The UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA says that it has recorded 431 Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians since October 7. “In nearly half of all recorded incidents after 7 October, Israeli forces were either accompanying or reported to be supporting the attackers,” OCHA said. Source: AlJazeera

An ongoing telecommunications blackout has limited the latest update from the UN’s humanitarian agency (OCHA), with information from northern Gaza even further limited by highly restricted access. The report says that a missile reportedly struck the UNRWA health clinic in Daraj, in Gaza City on Wednesday, but that “further details on the impact of the projectile are yet to be established”. In Southern Gaza, OCHA reported heavy bombardment in the Khan Younis area for the last two days targeting residential buildings, a cemetery and hospitals. “Initial reports and video footage show that much of the al-Namsawi cemetery was destroyed and graves empty…

Some $15bn will be required to rebuild Gaza’s homes alone, the head of the Palestine Investment Fund Mohammed Mustafa has said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Citing international reports, Mustafa said some 350,000 housing units have been completely or partially damaged in Gaza since Israel’s bombardment began on October 7. “We still didn’t talk about infrastructure, we didn’t talk about the hospitals that were damaged, the grids,” he added. Nearly 25,000 people have been killed and almost all of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced since Israel’s war on the Palestinian territory began. Source: AlJazeera

GAZA, TULKAREM: A top Hamas official announced new conditions on Wednesday for delivering medicines to hostages held by the group in Gaza, insisting trucks carrying the drugs must not be inspected by Israel.

JERUSALEM: Israel’s army chief said Wednesday the likelihood of war breaking out on the country’s northern border with Lebanon has become “much higher.”

BEIRUT: Iran-backed Hezbollah has rebuffed Washington’s initial ideas for cooling tit-for-tat fighting with neighboring Israel, such as pulling its fighters further from the border, but remains open to US diplomacy to avoid a ruinous war, Lebanese officials said.

AL-MUKALLA: Twenty-six international aid groups working in Yemen have expressed deep worry about the effect of the military escalation in the Red Sea on the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the war-ravaged country. Tensions in the Red Sea have risen since November, when the Houthis captured a commercial ship and launched over 20 drone and missile strikes on commercial and navy ships, attempting to block the key passage to Israel-bound vessels. The US formed a coalition to protect the Red Sea from Houthi assaults, and on Friday unleashed dozens of strikes on military targets in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen. The aid…

On Wednesday, Hezbollah mourned one of its members, Rashid Mohammed Shaglil, from the town of Tamnin in the Bekaa

The strikes followed the official announcement that the US has put the Houthis back on its list of specially designated global terrorists

United Nations human rights experts have warned that “every single person” in the war-torn Gaza Strip is facing hunger amid Israel’s war and blockade against the besieged enclave, calling for sustained delivery of aid to prevent starvation.