Israel’s military said it struck multiple targets linked to the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen on Thursday, including Sana’a International Airport and three ports along the western coast.
Gaza authorities said an Israeli airstrike killed five Palestinian journalists in a vehicle outside a hospital on Thursday but the Israeli army said the victims were Islamic Jihad combatants posing as media workers.
The Israeli military loosened its rules of engagement at the start of the Gaza war to enable commanders to order attacks on targets despite a heightened risk of civilian casualties, The New York Times reported on Thursday.
Israel strikes Yemen airport, ports and power stations
Israel's military said it struck multiple targets linked to the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen on Thursday, including Sanaa International Airport and three ports along the western coast.
Al Masirah TV, the main television news outlet run by the Houthis, said two people were killed in strikes on the airport, one person was killed in the port strikes and 11 others were wounded in the attacks.
There was no immediate comment from the Houthis, who have repeatedly fired drones and missiles towards Israel in what they describe as acts of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
In addition to striking military infrastructure in the Yemeni ports of Hodeidah, Salif and Ras Kanatib, Israel’s military said it also hit the country’s Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said following the attacks that Israel would continue its mission until it was complete: “We are determined to sever this terror arm of Iran’s axis.”
The prime minister has been strengthened at home by the Israeli military’s campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon and by its destruction of most of the Syrian army’s strategic weapons.
The Israeli attacks on the airport, Hodeidah and on one power station, were reported by Al Masirah TV.
More than a year of Houthi attacks have disrupted international shipping routes, forcing firms to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys that have in turn stoked fears over global inflation.
On Saturday, Israel's military failed to intercept a missile from Yemen that fell in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa area, injuring 14 people.
Israeli strike in Gaza ‘kills five journalists’
Gaza authorities said an Israeli airstrike killed five Palestinian journalists in a vehicle outside a hospital on Thursday, but the Israeli army said the victims were Islamic Jihad combatants posing as media workers.
Medics said the five were among at least 26 people killed in Israeli air assaults across the Palestinian enclave before dawn as Hamas and Israel traded blame over delays in reaching a ceasefire deal after more than 14 months of fighting.
The Palestinian Journalists Union said one strike killed five journalists from the Al-Quds Today channel who were in a broadcast vehicle in front of Al-Awda Hospital in the Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
The union said more than 190 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli fire since the war began in October 2023.
The Gaza-based channel called the strike a massacre and said in a statement on Telegram the five “were killed as they carried out their media and humanitarian duty”. It has regularly featured Islamic Jihad leaders and provided day-to-day coverage of the war in Gaza.
The Israeli military said it “conducted a precise strike on a vehicle with an Islamic Jihad terrorist cell inside in the area of Nuseirat”.
Later, it issued a statement listing the names of the five TV crewmen and saying: “Intelligence from multiple sources confirmed that these individuals were Islamic Jihad operatives posing as journalists.”
Israel has regularly denied targeting journalists and says it takes steps to avoid hitting civilians.
The Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad group, an ally of Hamas, has fought several times against Israel in the past two decades, and fighters of the group have joined the fighting against Israel since October 2023. It said it had hostages in its custody too.
The group condemned Israel’s killing of the five men in a statement but it did not claim any of them as a member.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 45,300 Palestinians, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.
The war was triggered by Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Video from the scene of Thursday’s attack showed the twisted wreckage of a white van with what appeared to be the remnants of the word “PRESS” in red on the back doors.
Later on Thursday, dozens of relatives and fellow journalists took part in the funerals of the five journalists, whose bodies were wrapped in white shrouds. Blue flak jackets bearing the word “PRESS” were placed on top of the shrouded bodies.
“The Israeli army justifies or excuses this targeting by claiming it is aimed at individuals involved in Palestinian organizations and cells. However, on the ground, these individuals were on journalistic assignments, residing in press vehicles and covering events,” said Abed Meqdad, a correspondent for Al-Araby TV channel during the funerals.
In its end-of-year report, the Reporters Without Borders organisation said Gaza was the world’s most dangerous region for journalists due to killings by the Israeli army.
Medics in the enclave said 13 other people were killed and 25 wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood. The death toll could rise as many people were trapped under the rubble, they said.
In Gaza City, an Israeli strike on a house in the suburb of Sabra killed eight more people, said medics, bringing Thursday’s death toll to 26.
Israeli military ‘loosened rules of engagement at start of war’
The Israeli military loosened its rules of engagement at the start of the Gaza war to enable commanders to order attacks on targets despite a heightened risk of civilian casualties, The New York Times reported on Thursday.
Immediately after the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel by groups of Hamas-led gunmen, the military granted mid-ranking officers the authority to strike a wide range of military targets where up to 20 civilians risked being killed, said the newspaper.
The order meant for example that the military could target rank-and-file militants while they were at home surrounded by relatives and neighbours, instead of only when they were alone outside, said the newspaper.
It said the report was based on interviews with more than 100 soldiers and officials, including more than 25 people who helped select and vet targets.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The New York Times said the military acknowledged that the rules of engagement had changed after 7 October but said its forces had “consistently been employing means and methods that adhere to the rules of law”.
In addition to raising the number of civilian casualties that could be risked in a single attack, The New York Times said the military removed a limit on the cumulative number of civilians that its strikes could put at risk each day.
On a few occasions, the military high command approved strikes that they knew would put as many as 100 civilian lives at risk, said the newspaper.
It said the military “often relied on a crude statistical model to assess the risk of civilian harm”, mainly depending on estimates of cellphone usage rather than extensive surveillance of a single building.
From November 2023 onward, the rules were tightened, including by halving the number of civilian casualties that could be risked in attacks on low-level targets, said the newspaper. It added that the rules remained far more permissive than before the war.
Israeli security minister enters Al-Aqsa mosque compound ‘in prayer’ for hostages
Israel’s ultranationalist security minister ascended to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem on Thursday for what he said was a “prayer” for hostages in Gaza, freshly challenging rules over one of the most sensitive sites in the Middle East.
Israel’s official position accepts decades-old rules restricting non-Muslim prayer at the compound, Islam’s third holiest site and known as Temple Mount to Jews, who revere it as the site of two ancient temples.
Under a delicate decades-old “status quo” arrangement with Muslim authorities, the Al-Aqsa compound is administered by a Jordanian religious foundation and, under rules dating back decades, Jews can visit but may not pray there.
In a post on X, hardline Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said: “I ascended today to our holy place, in prayer for the welfare of our soldiers, to swiftly return all the hostages and total victory with God’s help.”
The post included a picture of Ben-Gvir walking in the compound, situated on an elevated plaza in Jerusalem’s walled Old City, but no images or video of him praying.
Netanyahu’s office immediately released a statement restating the official Israeli position.
Suggestions from Israeli ultranationalists that Israel would alter rules about religious observance at the Al-Aqsa compound have sparked violence with Palestinians in the past.
In August, Ben-Gvir repeated a call for Jews to be allowed to pray at the Al-Aqsa mosque, drawing sharp criticism, and he has visited the mosque compound in the past.
Ben-Gvir, head of one of two religious-nationalist parties in Netanyahu’s coalition, has a long record of making inflammatory statements appreciated by his supporters, but conflicting with the government’s official line.
Israeli police in the past have prevented ministers from ascending to the compound on the grounds that it endangers national security. Ben-Gvir’s ministerial file gives him oversight over Israel’s national police force.
Syria’s new rulers declare crackdown as tensions flare
Syria’s new authorities on Thursday launched a security crackdown in a coastal region where 14 policemen were killed a day before, vowing to pursue “remnants” of the ousted Bashar al-Assad government accused of the attack, state media reported.
The violence in Tartous province, part of the coastal region that is home to many members of Assad’s Alawite sect, has marked the deadliest challenge yet to the Sunni Islamist-led authorities which swept him from power on 8 December.
The new administration’s security forces launched the operation to “control security, stability, and civil peace, and to pursue the remnants of Assad’s militias in the woods and hills” in Tartous’ rural areas, state news agency Sana reported.
Members of the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, wielded huge sway in Assad-led Syria, dominating security forces he used against his opponents during the 13-year-long civil war and to crush dissent during decades of bloody oppression by his police state.
Reflecting tensions with a sectarian edge, protesters chanted “Oh Ali!” during a rally outside local government headquarters in Tartous, images posted on social media on Wednesday showed. Reuters verified the location of the images.
The chant was a reference to Ali ibn Abi Talib, a cousin of the Prophet Mohammed who is revered by Muslims but held in especially high regard by Alawites and Shi’ites, who believe Ali and his descendants should have led the Islamic community.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the former al-Qaeda affiliate which led the rebel campaign that toppled Assad, has repeatedly vowed to protect minority religious groups, who fear the new rulers could seek to impose a conservative form of Islamist government.
Sana reported that Mohammed Othman, the newly appointed governor of the coastal Latakia region that adjoins the Tartous area, met Alawite sheikhs to “encourage community cohesion and civil peace on the Syrian coast”.
The Syrian information ministry declared a ban on what it described as “the circulation or publication of any media content or news with a sectarian tone aimed at spreading division” among Syrians.
The Syrian civil war took on sectarian dimensions as Assad drew on Shi’ite militias from across the Middle East, mobilised by his ally Iran, to battle the insurgency dominated by members of the Sunni Muslim majority, many of them Islamist.
Dissent has also surfaced in the city of Homs, 150km north of Damascus. State media reported that police imposed an overnight curfew on Wednesday night, following unrest linked to demonstrations that residents said were led by members of the Alawite and Shi’ite religious communities.
Footage posted on social media on Wednesday from Homs showed a crowd of people scattering, and some of them running, as gunfire was heard. Reuters verified the location. It was not clear who was opening fire.
Unifil urges timely Israeli pullout from south Lebanon
The United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon (Unifil) called on Thursday for a timely Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon, citing what it called Israeli violations of a 27 November ceasefire agreement with the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.
Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a US-brokered 60-day ceasefire that calls for a phased Israeli military pullout after more than a year of war, in keeping with a 2006 UN Security Council resolution that ended their last major conflict.
Under the agreement, Hezbollah fighters must leave positions in south Lebanon and move north of the Litani River, which runs about 30km north of the border with Israel, along with a full Israeli withdrawal from the south.
In a statement, Unifil voiced concern over what it said was the continued destruction by Israeli forces of residential areas, farmland and infrastructure in south Lebanon, deeming this a violation of UN Resolution 1701.
“Unifil continues to urge the timely withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces and the deployment of the Lebanese Armed Forces (in place of Hezbollah) in southern Lebanon, alongside the full implementation of Resolution 1701 as a comprehensive path toward peace,” said the statement.
The Israeli military said it was looking into Unifil’s criticism and declined further comment for the time being.
Under the terms of its truce with Hezbollah, Israeli forces can take up to 60 days to withdraw from south Lebanon but neither side can launch offensive operations.
Lebanon’s army said it was following up with Unifil and the committee supervising the agreement regarding what it said was a deepened incursion of Israeli forces into some areas of southern Lebanese areas.
Unifil reiterated its readiness to monitor the area south of the Litani River to ensure it remained free of armed personnel and weapons, except those of Lebanon’s government and Unifil.
The ceasefire marked the end of the deadliest confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah since their six-week war in 2006. However, Israel has continued military operations against Palestinian militants in Gaza.
Hamas and Israel blame each other for ceasefire delay
Hamas and Israel have traded blame over their failure to conclude a ceasefire agreement despite progress reported by both sides in the past days.
Hamas said that Israel had laid down further conditions, while Netanyahu accused the group of going back on understandings already reached.
“The occupation has set new conditions related to withdrawal, ceasefire, prisoners and the return of the displaced, which has delayed reaching the agreement that was available,” said Hamas.
It added that it was showing flexibility and that the talks, mediated by Qatar and Egypt, were serious.
Netanyahu countered in a statement: “The Hamas terrorist organisation continues to lie, is reneging on understandings that have already been reached, and is continuing to create difficulties in the negotiations.”
Israel would, however, continue relentless efforts to return hostages, he added.
Israeli negotiators returned to Israel from Qatar on Tuesday evening for consultations about a hostage deal after a significant week of talks, said Netanyahu’s office on Tuesday.
The US and Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt have stepped up efforts to conclude a phased deal in the past two weeks. One of the challenges has been agreements on Israeli troop deployments.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, speaking with commanders in southern Gaza, said on Wednesday that Israel would retain security control of the enclave, including using buffer zones and controlling posts.
Hamas is demanding an end to the war, while Israel says it wants to end Hamas’ rule of the enclave first, to ensure it will no longer pose a threat to Israelis. DM
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