Hundreds of thousands of fleeing Gazans sought shelter on Thursday in one of the biggest mass displacements of the war, as Israeli forces advanced into the ruins of the city of Rafah, part of a newly announced ’security zone’ they intend to seize.
The Pentagon’s inspector general’s office announced on Thursday it was opening a probe into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of an unclassified commercial texting application to coordinate on the highly sensitive 15 March launch of US strikes on Yemen’s Houthis.
US trading partners threatened to ratchet up a trade war with the United States on Thursday as President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs ignited fears of steep price hikes in the world’s largest consumer market.
Hundreds of thousands flee as Israel advances into Rafah
Hundreds of thousands of fleeing Gazans sought shelter on Thursday in one of the biggest mass displacements of the war, as Israeli forces advanced into the ruins of the city of Rafah, part of a newly announced “security zone” they intend to seize.
A day after declaring their intention to capture large swathes of the crowded enclave, Israeli forces pushed into the city on Gaza’s southern edge, which had served as a last refuge for people fleeing other areas for much of the war.
Gaza’s health ministry reported at least 97 people killed in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours, including at least 20 killed in an airstrike around dawn in Shejaia, a suburb of Gaza City in the north.
Later on Thursday, an Israeli airstrike killed at least 27 Palestinians, including women and children, inside a school building that served as a shelter for displaced families in Gaza City, said local health authorities. The Israeli military said the attack hit key Palestinian “terrorists”.
Medics said three missiles slammed into the Dar Al-Arqam school building in the Tuffah neighbourhood in Gaza City, and the Israeli military said it struck a command centre that had been used by militants to plan and execute attacks against Israeli civilians and army troops.
Rafah “is gone, it is being wiped out”, a father of seven among the hundreds of thousands who had fled from Rafah to neighbouring Khan Younis, told Reuters via a chat app.
“They are knocking down what is left standing of houses and property,” said the man, who declined to be identified for fear of repercussions.
The assault to capture Rafah is a major escalation in the war, which Israel restarted last month after effectively abandoning a ceasefire in place since January.
In Shejaia in the north, one of the districts where Israel has ordered the population to leave, hundreds of residents streamed out on Thursday, some carrying their belongings as they walked, others on donkey carts and bikes or in vans.
“I want to die. Let them kill us and free us from this life. We’re not living, we’re dead,” said Umm Aaed Bardaa.
In Khan Younis, where several people were killed by a strike, Adel Abu Fakher was checking the damage to his tent: “There’s nothing left for us. We’re being killed while asleep,” he said.
Israel has not spelled out its long-term aims for the security zone its troops are now seizing. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said troops were taking an area he called the “Morag Axis”, a reference to an abandoned former Israeli settlement between Rafah and Khan Younis.
Gazans who had returned to homes in the ruins during the ceasefire have now been ordered to flee communities on the northern and southern edges of the strip.
They fear Israel intends to depopulate those areas indefinitely, leaving many hundreds of thousands of people permanently homeless while Israel seizes some of Gaza’s last agricultural land and critical water infrastructure.
Since the first phase of the ceasefire expired at the start of March with no agreement to prolong it, Israel has imposed a total blockade on all goods for Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, recreating what international organisations call a humanitarian catastrophe.
Israel’s military said on Thursday it was conducting an investigation into the deaths of 15 Palestinian aid workers found buried in a shallow grave in March near Red Crescent vehicles, an incident that caused global alarm. The military said troops fired on the cars believing they carried fighters.
Israel’s stated goal since the start of the war has been the destruction of the Hamas militant group, which ran Gaza for nearly two decades.
However, with no effort made to establish an alternative administration, Hamas returned to control during the ceasefire. Fighters still hold 59 dead and living hostages Israel says must be handed over to extend the truce temporarily; Hamas says it will free them only under a deal that permanently ends the war.
Israeli leaders say they have been encouraged by signs of protest in Gaza against Hamas, with hundreds of people demonstrating in north Gaza’s Beit Lahiya on Wednesday. Hamas calls the protesters collaborators and says Israel is behind them.
The war began with a Hamas attack on Israeli communities on 7 October 2023, with gunmen killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s campaign has so far killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, say Gaza health authorities.
Rafah residents said most of the local population had followed Israel’s order to leave as Israeli strikes toppled buildings there. However, a strike on the main road between Khan Younis and Rafah stopped most movement between the two cities.
The movement of people and traffic along the western coastal road near Morag was also limited by bombardment.
Pentagon watchdog opens probe into Signalgate
The Pentagon’s inspector general’s office announced on Thursday that it was opening a probe into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of an unclassified commercial texting application to coordinate on the highly sensitive 15 March launch of US strikes on Yemen’s Houthis.
In a memorandum addressed to Hegseth, the inspector general’s office said it would examine whether Hegseth’s use of Signal met Defense Department guidelines, including those related to classified information.
Hegseth has repeatedly said no classified information was revealed in the chat, even though it included precise times for the launch of US airstrikes and some targeting details that are regarded as closely guarded secrets ahead of a surprise military operation like the one in Yemen.
The details of the chat were revealed last week by The Atlantic magazine after its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was included in the chat by mistake, in an embarrassing incident involving all of President Donald Trump’s most senior national security officials.
The case has also renewed scrutiny of Hegseth, who only narrowly won Senate confirmation after a bruising review that raised serious questions about his experience, temperament and views about women in combat.
“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business,” wrote Steven Stebbins, the acting inspector general.
“Additionally, we will review compliance with classification and records retention requirements.”
Hegseth texted about plans to kill a Houthi militant leader in Yemen two hours before a military operation started and included precise details about when F-18 fighter jets, as well as sea-based cruise missiles, would launch.
Stebbins said the review would take place in Washington, DC, as well as at Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida.
“We request that you designate two points of contact for this evaluation within 5 days,” he wrote in the memo, which was also addressed to Hegseth’s deputy, Steve Feinberg.
Stebbins became the acting inspector general in January after Trump fired the previous head of the Defense Department’s independent watchdog and other agency watchdogs across the government during his first week in office.
Trump’s tariffs spur trade war threats, fears of pricier iPhones
US trading partners threatened to ratchet up a trade war with the United States on Thursday as President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs ignited fears of steep price hikes in the world’s largest consumer market.
The penalties announced on Wednesday spurred a plunge in world markets and drew condemnation from other leaders reckoning with the end of a decades-long era of trade liberalisation.
Trump’s tariffs would amount to the highest trade barriers in more than a century: a 10% baseline tariff on all imports and higher targeted duties on some of the country’s biggest trading partners.
That could jack up the price of everything from cannabis to running shoes to Apple’s iPhone for US shoppers.
Businesses raced to adjust. Automaker Stellantis said it would temporarily lay off US workers and close plants in Canada and Mexico, while General Motors said it would increase US production.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the US had abandoned its historic role as a champion of international economic cooperation.
“The global economy is fundamentally different today than it was yesterday,” he said as he announced a limited set of countermeasures.
Elsewhere, China vowed retaliation for Trump’s 54% tariffs on imports from the world’s No 2 economy, as did the European Union, which faces a 20% duty.
French President Emmanuel Macron called for European countries to suspend investment in the US.
Other trading partners, including South Korea, Mexico and India, said they would hold off for now as they seek concessions.
Washington’s allies and rivals alike warned of a devastating blow to global trade. The burden could fall heaviest on poor countries like Madagascar, which would face a 47% tariff on vanilla exports.
“The consequences will be dire for millions of people around the globe,” said EU chief Ursula von der Leyen.
Stocks suffered a global meltdown, as analysts warned the tariffs could upend global supply chains and hurt corporate profits. Tech and retail stocks were especially hard hit.
Trump says the “reciprocal” tariffs are a response to barriers put on US goods, though his list of targets includes uninhabited Antarctic islands and some of the world’s poorest countries, which now face tariffs approaching 50%.
Administration officials said the tariffs would create manufacturing jobs at home and open up export markets abroad, though they cautioned it would take time to see results.
“We know a lot of Americans are worried,” Vice-President JD Vance told Fox News. “What I’d ask folks to appreciate here is that we are not going to fix things overnight.”
Economists say the tariffs could reignite inflation, raise the risk of a US recession and boost costs for the average US family by thousands of dollars — a potential liability for a president who campaigned on a promise to bring down the cost of living. Regions that backed Trump in the last election could be among the most exposed, according to the Federal Reserve.
Trump himself had no public events scheduled before he departed Washington for a golf tournament at one of his Florida resorts.
“THE OPERATION IS OVER! THE PATIENT LIVED, AND IS HEALING," he wrote on social media.
US is committed to Nato, says Rubio
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Nato allies on Thursday that Washington remained committed to the alliance but expected them to spend far more on defence and would give them some time to do so.
Rubio spoke as he met fellow Nato foreign ministers gathered in Brussels, with some European officials saying they were reassured by the renewed commitment to the alliance at a time of rising tensions over Trump’s new trade tariffs.
The Trump administration’s words and actions over the past months have raised questions about the future of Nato, the transatlantic alliance that has been the bedrock of European security for the past 75 years.
Rubio dismissed doubts about US commitment to the alliance as “hysteria”.
“The United States is in Nato ... The United States is as active in Nato as it has ever been,” he told reporters.
“He is not against Nato,” Rubio said of Trump. “He is against a Nato that does not have the capabilities that it needs to fulfil the obligations that the treaty imposes upon each and every member state.”
Trump has said the military alliance should spend 5% of gross domestic product on defence — a huge increase from the current 2% goal and a level that no Nato country, including the US, currently reaches.
Washington has also bluntly told European countries that it can no longer be primarily focused on the continent’s security.
European allies have been anxiously seeking details on the time frame and extent to which the US aims to reduce its engagement in Nato for weeks, to coordinate the process of a European defence ramp-up to avoid security gaps in Europe.
In Brussels, Rubio brought some element of response on that.
“We do want to leave here with an understanding that we are on a pathway, a realistic pathway, to every single one of the members committing and fulfilling a promise to reach up to 5% of spending,” he said, adding that this included the US.
“No one expects that you’re going to be able to do this in one year or two. But the pathway has to be real.”
China urges US to immediately lift tariffs, vows retaliation
China on Thursday urged the US to immediately cancel its latest tariffs and vowed countermeasures to safeguard its interests, after Trump declared sweeping levies on US trading partners around the world.
The US move disregarded the balance of interests reached in multilateral trade negotiations over the years and the fact that it had long benefited greatly from international trade, said China’s Commerce Ministry.
“China firmly opposes this and will take countermeasures to safeguard its own rights and interests,” said the ministry, as the world’s largest economies look set to spiral deeper into a trade war that stands to upend global supply chains.
Trump on Wednesday announced China would be hit with a 34% tariff, on top of the 20% he previously imposed earlier this year, bringing the total new levies to 54% and close to the 60% figure he had threatened while on the campaign trail.
Chinese exporters, like those from other economies around the world, will face a 10% baseline tariff, as part of the new 34% levy, on almost all goods shipped to the world’s largest consumer economy from Saturday before the remaining, higher “reciprocal tariffs” take effect from 9 April.
The average US tariff on Chinese goods will be 76%, according to Chad Brown, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and chief economist at the State Department for the last year of the Biden administration.
Netanyahu applauds Hungary’s ICC exit on Budapest visit
Netanyahu applauded Hungary for its “bold and principled” decision to leave the International Criminal Court (ICC) as he visited Budapest on Thursday, a rare trip abroad in defiance of an ICC arrest warrant.
Netanyahu, invited by Hungary’s right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, faces the ICC arrest warrant over allegations of war crimes in Gaza as Israel has expanded its military operation in the Palestinian enclave.
Hungary has rejected the idea of arresting the Israeli prime minister and has called the warrant “brazen”.
In an announcement timed with Netanyahu’s visit on Thursday, Orbán said Hungary would withdraw completely from the ICC, an organisation set up more than two decades ago to prosecute those accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
“This is no longer an impartial court, a rule-of-law court, but rather a political court. This has become the clearest in light of its decisions on Israel,” said Orban at a news conference with Netanyahu, where they did not take questions.
Orbán invited his Israeli counterpart to Budapest in November, a day after the arrest warrant was issued over Israel’s offensive in Gaza, launched after an attack by the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas on southern Israel.
The visit to Hungary was Netanyahu’s second trip abroad since the ICC announced the warrants, following a visit to Washington in February.
As a founding member of the ICC, Hungary is obliged to arrest and hand over anyone subject to a warrant from the court. Hungary ratified the ICC’s founding document in 2001, but the law has not been promulgated.
Musk team issued inaccurate USAID firing notices, say sources
Termination notices sent by billionaire Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team to US Agency for International Development (USAID) staff were so rife with errors that corrected versions are being issued to avoid affecting pensions and pay, according to five sources familiar with the issue.
The Department of Government Efficiency “did this so quickly that they screwed lots of stuff up”, said a US official, who requested anonymity, as did all of those who spoke to Reuters.
The State Department, which is assuming some of USAID’s functions under the Trump administration’s plan to cut US foreign aid, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
USAID’s human resources staff, most of whom have been on paid administrative leave and face termination, have been brought back to the office to send out accurate notices, said the US official and a person familiar with the matter.
“My letter was completely wrong,” one USAID worker told Reuters on condition of anonymity. “The only thing correct was my name.”
It is not the first time that inaccurate termination notices have upended the lives of USAID workers since Trump and Musk began in February to dismember America’s main conduit of foreign aid.
A first round set 21 April as the final employment day for most personnel and 30 May for those tapped to help shutter the agency. Those dates were reset to 1 July or 2 September in the notices sent to some 3,500 USAID workers last Friday, said two sources and workers.
Other errors included inaccurate start dates, lengths of service and salaries, according to the person familiar with the matter, the US official, two former senior USAID officials, a congressional aide and four workers who received notices.
Unless fixed, those mistakes could result in reduced or cancelled pensions or inaccurate severance pay, said the sources.
Several of the sources pointed to the US Office of Personnel Management’s retirement website that says federal workers’ annual pension annuity is based on their lengths of service and three highest average annual salaries.
Reuters could not learn how many USAID personnel were issued faulty notices last Friday.
Several workers told Reuters that they and other colleagues received a third termination letter on Monday night still containing inaccurate information on promotions, tenure and other data.
One worker said the total federal service listed in their notice on Friday was short by three years and by six years in the notice they received on Monday.
“We’ve got people who have served for 25 years and their notices are showing they served for only three,” said the US official. “It affects their severance. It affects their future ability to retire.”
Since February, most USAID staff have been put on administrative leave, hundreds of contractors were fired and more than 5,000 programmes terminated, disrupting global humanitarian aid operations on which millions depend.
UK pins hopes on US trade talks after Trump tariff blitz
Britain said it believed a trade deal with the US was close as it sought to soften the impact of Trump’s sweeping tariffs, which threaten an escalating global trade war that would hurt its open economy.
Britain was spared the most punitive treatment in Trump’s tariff announcement on Wednesday when it was hit with the lowest import duty rate of 10%.
London said that decision vindicated its approach of trying to strike a new economic partnership with the US rather than meeting fire with fire. It also reflected the relatively balanced trade flows between the two countries on goods.
But Britain’s economy, which has been sluggish largely since the 2007-08 global financial crisis, is vulnerable to a global economic slowdown. Weaker growth could force the government to cut spending or increase taxes to meet its own fiscal rules.
Business minister Jonathan Reynolds said Britain, as an outward-facing economy, was “exposed not just to decisions between ourselves and the United States, but that wider global environment”.
He told the BBC it was “not inaccurate” to say the two sides had agreed on the broad outline of a deal, which might secure a carve-out on tariffs, but that it had not yet crossed Trump’s desk.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer told business leaders on Thursday that trade talks were continuing.
“Nonetheless, I do want to be clear I will only strike a deal if it is in our national interest,” he said at a meeting in Downing Street.
Britain had argued that it should not be punished by Trump’s tariffs because trade flows between the two countries were broadly in balance and its exports were mostly in services, which, unlike goods, do not typically incur tariffs.
India studies impact of 27% US tariff, vows to push trade deal
India said on Thursday it was studying the impact of the 27% tariff slapped by the US on its imports and vowed to push for a trade deal this year, signalling a conciliatory tone despite failing to get relief from Trump’s trade policy.
New Delhi’s response came hours after Trump announced the drastic tariffs that piled more stress on an ailing global economy and sent world stock markets and oil prices tumbling.
While Trump said Indian goods would face a 26% tariff, the White House executive order put the rate at 27%. India’s trade ministry also put the rate at 27%, citing the executive order.
A 10% baseline tariff starts on Saturday before the remaining, higher reciprocal tariff takes effect from 9 April.
India’s trade department was “carefully examining the implications” of the US announcement and also holding talks with Indian industry and exporters on their assessment of the tariffs, said a trade ministry statement.
Indian officials would hold virtual meetings this month with their US peers to discuss a trade deal, said an Indian trade ministry source.
Thousands of Haitians take to streets to protest gang violence
Thousands of Haitians took to the streets in Port-au-Prince on Wednesday to express their anger against armed gangs that control nearly all of the capital and surrounding areas and the government’s failure to hold them off.
Violent armed groups have united behind a coalition known as Viv Ansanm and forced more than a million people from their homes, which has contributed to a freezing of the economy and fuelled mass hunger. They are also accused of extortion, mass rapes and killings.
The transitional government, a rotating body of presidential council members appointed nearly a year ago, alongside a long undermanned and underfunded UN-backed security mission, have done little to hold off the gangs’ advances.
“Do you see what is happening?” protester Joseph Mackendy told Reuters at the demonstration. “Today, Haitian people will fight to be free already. We are free. Those men today cannot frighten me.”
Residents filled the streets of Port-au-Prince carrying banners and palm fronds, while some carried machetes and firearms. The protest began peacefully, but gunfire erupted later in the day, causing a panic that caused crowds to flee.
Separately on Wednesday, Haiti was among the countries slapped with 10% tariffs by the US, a hard blow for the poor Caribbean nation that counts the US as its top trade partner, exporting hundreds of millions of dollars in goods such as textiles, spirits and cosmetics.
“One more problem for a suffering country,” said economist Enomy Germain, who heads consultancy ProEco Haiti, on social media. The US recorded a $598-million surplus on trade with Haiti last year. DM