Middle-East
Netanyahu says no one can halt Israel's war to crush Hamas, including the world court
Israel will pursue its war against Hamas until victory and will not be stopped by anyone, including the world court, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a defiant speech Saturday, as the fighting in Gaza approached the 100-day mark.
Netanyahu spoke after the International Court of Justice at The Hague held two days of hearings on South Africa's allegations that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, a charge Israel has rejected as libelous and hypocritical. South Africa asked the court to order Israel to halt its blistering air and ground offensive in an interim step.
“No one will stop us, not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anyone else," Netanyahu said in televised remarks Saturday evening, referring to Iran and its allied militias.
The case before the world court is expected to go on for years, but a ruling on interim steps could come within weeks. Court rulings are binding but difficult to enforce. Netanyahu made clear that Israel would ignore orders to halt the fighting, potentially deepening its isolation.
Israel has been under growing international pressure to end the war, which has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians in Gaza and led to widespread suffering in the besieged enclave, but has so far been shielded by U.S. diplomatic and military support.
Thousands took to the streets of Washington, London, Paris, Rome, Milan and Dublin on Saturday to demand an end to the war. Protesters converging on the White House held aloft signs questioning President Joe Biden’s viability as a presidential candidate because of his staunch support for Israel during the war.
Israel argues that ending the war means victory for Hamas, the Islamic militant group that has ruled Gaza since 2007 and is bent on Israel's destruction.
The war was triggered by a deadly Oct. 7 attack in which Hamas and other militants killed some 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians. About 250 more were taken hostage, and while some have been released or confirmed dead, more than half are believed to still be in captivity. Sunday marks 100 days of fighting.
Fears of a wider conflagration have been palpable since the start of the war. New fronts quickly opened, with Iran-backed groups — Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria — carrying out a range of attacks. From the start, the U.S. increased its military presence in the region to deter an escalation.
Following a Houthi campaign of drone and missile attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea, the U.S. and Britain launched multiple airstrikes against the rebels Friday, and the U.S. hit another site Saturday.
In more fallout from the war, the world court this week heard arguments on South Africa's complaint against Israel. South Africa cited the soaring death toll and hardships among Gaza civilians, along with inflammatory comments from Israeli leaders presented, as proof of what it called genocidal intent.
In counter arguments Friday, Israel asked for the case to be dismissed as meritless. Israel's defense argued that the country has the right to fight back against a ruthless enemy, that South Africa had barely mentioned Hamas, and that it ignored what Israel considers attempts to mitigate civilian harm.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu and his army chief, Herzl Halevi, said they have no immediate plans to allow the return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza, the initial focus of Israel's offensive. Fighting in the northern half has been scaled back, with forces now focusing on the southern city of Khan Younis, though combat continues in parts of the north.
Netanyahu said the issue had been raised by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his visit earlier this week. The Israeli leader said he told Blinken that “we will not return residents (to their homes) when there is fighting.”
At the same time, Netanyahu said Israel would eventually need to close what he said were breaches along Gaza's border with Egypt. Over the years of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade, smuggling tunnels under Egypt-Gaza border had constituted a major supply line for Gaza.
However, the border area, particularly the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, is packed with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had fled northern Gaza, and their presence would complicate any plans to widen Israel's ground offensive.
“We will not end the war until we close this breach,” Netanyahu said Saturday, adding that the government has not yet decided how to do that.
In Gaza, where Hamas has put up stiff resistance to Israel's blistering air and ground campaign, the war continued unabated.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday that 135 Palestinians had been killed in the last 24 hours, bringing the overall toll of the war to 23,843. The count does not differentiate between combatants and civilians, but the ministry has said about two-thirds of the dead are women and children. The ministry said the total number of war-wounded surpassed 60,000.
Following an Israeli airstrike before dawn Saturday, video provided by Gaza's Civil Defense department showed rescue workers searching through the twisted rubble of a building in Gaza City by flashlight.
Footage showed them carrying a young girl wrapped in blankets with injuries to her face, and at least two other children who appeared dead. A boy, covered in dust, winced as he was loaded into an ambulance.
The attack on the home in the Daraj neighborhood killed at least 20 people, according to Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal.
Another strike late Friday near the southern city of Rafah on the Egyptian border killed at least 13 people, including two children. The bodies of those killed, primarily from a family displaced from central Gaza, were taken to the city's Abu Youssef al-Najjar hospital where they were seen by an Associated Press reporter.
The Palestinian telecommunications company Jawwal said two of its employees were killed Saturday as they tried to repair the network in Khan Younis. They company said the two were hit by shelling. Jawwal said it has lost 13 employees since the start of the war.
Israel has argued that Hamas is responsible for the high civilian casualties, saying its fighters make use of civilian buildings and launch attacks from densely populated urban areas.
The Israeli military released a video Saturday that it said showed the destruction of two ready-to-use rocket launching compounds in Al-Muharraqa in central Gaza. A large grove of palm trees and some homes are seen in the frame. In the video, a rocket is being thrown into the air by the blast. The military said there had been dozens of launchers ready to be used.
Since the start of Israel’s ground operation in late October, 187 Israeli soldiers have been killed and another 1,099 injured in Gaza, according to the military.
More than 85% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has been displaced as a result of Israel’s air and ground offensive, and vast swaths of the territory have been leveled.
Fewer than half of the territory's 36 hospitals are still partially functional, according to OCHA, the United Nations' humanitarian affairs agency.
Amid already severe shortages of food, clean water and fuel in Gaza, OCHA said in its daily report that Israel's severe constraints on humanitarian missions and outright denials had increased since the start of the year.
The agency said only 21% of planned deliveries of food, medicine, water and other supplies have been successfully reaching northern Gaza.
American and other international efforts pushing Israel to do more to alleviate the suffering of Palestinian civilians have met with little success.
During 100 days of war, a Gaza doctor pushes through horror and loss in his struggle to save lives
For a few hours every day or night, Dr. Suhaib Alhamss tries to sleep on a thin mattress in an operating room. He swings in and out of half-consciousness, both too tired to open his eyes and too tense to let go. Thunderous shellfire often rattles the windows of the hospital he directs in the southern Gaza Strip.
But the worst sounds, Alhamss said, come from inside Kuwaiti Hospital: the cries of tiny children with no parents and enormous wounds. The panicked screams of patients jolted awake to the realization that they've lost a limb.
The Israel-Hamas war, which started 100 days ago Sunday, has exposed him, his staff and the people of Gaza to a scale of violence and horror unlike anything they had seen before. It has rendered his hometown unrecognizable.
“This is a disaster that's bigger than all of us,” Alhamss, 35, said by phone between surgeries.
His hospital, donated and funded by Kuwait's government, is one of two in the city of Rafah. With just four intensive care beds before the war, it now receives some 1,500 wounded patients each day and at least 50 people dead on arrival — adults and children with shrapnel-shattered limbs and pulped bodies, bone-exposing wounds and tattered flesh.
Over 23,400 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in the war, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. The count does not distinguish between civilians and militants.
Israel, which mounted its blistering air and ground campaign in response to Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that saw 1,200 people killed and 250 others abducted, holds the group responsible for civilian deaths by embedding militants in buildings used by non-combatants.
To make room for the daily rush of war-wounded, Alhamss has crammed a few dozen extra beds into the intensive care unit. He cleared out the pharmacy, which was largely empty anyway since Israel's siege has deprived the hospital of IV lines and most medicines. Still, patients sprawl on the floors.
“The situation is completely out of control,” he said.
A urologist by training and a father of three, Alhamss has watched aghast as his city and hospital have transformed over the course of the war.
With its low-rise concrete buildings and trash-strewn alleys teeming with unemployed men, Rafah, the strip's southernmost city, long has been a squalid place straddling the Egyptian frontier. Notorious as a smuggling capital during the Israeli-Egyptian blockade, it contains Gaza's only border crossing that doesn’t lead into Israel.
Now it's the flashpoint in one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. Apartment towers have been blasted into flat, smoldering ruins. Israel's evacuation orders and expanding offensive have swelled Rafah's population from 280,000 to 1.4 million, leaving hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians jammed into flimsy tents smothering the streets.
Most people spend hours each day in search of food, waiting in motionless lines outside aid distribution centers and sometimes plodding kilometers (miles) on foot to carry back canned beans and rice.
The faces he sees around the city have changed, too, as Israel presses on with its goal of destroying Hamas. Fear and strain crease the features of his colleagues, Alhamss says. Blood and dust smear the faces of the incoming wounded, while waxy gray skin and eyes circled by darkening rings are marks of the dying.
“You can see the exhaustion, the nervousness, the hunger on everyone's faces,” Alhamss said. “It’s a strange place now. It’s not the city I know."
Aid trucks have trickled through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. But it's nowhere near enough to meet the besieged enclave's surging needs, humanitarian officials say. In the absence of vital equipment, medical staff have applied their ingenuity to new ends. Alhamss dresses patients' wounds with burial shrouds.
“Each day I have people who die before my eyes because I don’t have medicine or burn ointment or supplies to help them,” he said.
He is too overwhelmed to dwell on all that he's seen, but some images spring up unbidden: the vacuous stare of a young boy who survived a strike that killed his entire family, a newborn rescued from his dead mother's womb.
“I think, how will they go on? They have no one left in this world,” Alhamss said. His thoughts turn to his own children — 12-year-old Jenna, 8-year-old Hala and 7-year-old Hudhayfa — sheltering at their grandmother's Rafah apartment. He sees them once a week, on Thursdays, when they come to the hospital to give him a hug.
“I am terrified for them,” he said.
Alhamss knows fellow doctors and nurses who were killed in their homes or on the way to work by artillery, missiles, exploding drones — so many kinds of incoming fire. He has lost dozens of his medical students at the Islamic University of Gaza where he teaches, ambitious men and women “with so much life left to live," he said.
But grief is a luxury he cannot afford. When asked how he felt, he answered with a simple “It's God's will.”
“We all will die in the end, why be afraid of it?" Alhamss asked. “We have no choice but to try to live in dignity, to help those we can.”
A global day of protests draws thousands in Washington and other cities in pro-Palestinian marches
Thousands of demonstrators converged opposite the White House on Saturday to call for an end to Israeli military action in Gaza, while children joined a pro-Palestinian march through central London as part of a global day of action against the longest and deadliest war between Israel and Palestinians in 75 years.
People in the U.S. capital held aloft signs questioning President Joe Biden's viability as a presidential candidate because of his staunch support for Israel in the nearly 100-day war against Hamas. Some of the signs read: “No votes for Genocide Joe,” “Biden has blood on his hands" and “Let Gaza live.”
Vendors were also selling South African flags as protesters chanted slogans in support of the country whose accusations of genocide against Israel prompted the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands, to take up the case.
Dan Devries, a New York resident said he attended the protest because he wants to see a free Gaza, but that he wouldn't vote for either Biden or possible Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
“I see this war as part of the U.S.'s drive to offset its economic decline by engaging in continual war,” said Devries.
Washington resident Phil Kline held up a sign calling for Pope Francis to excommunicate Biden.
“I know he’s a devout Catholic. Maybe he will take this issue seriously when the pope removes him from the church. There’s no justification for bombing civilians,” Kline said, though he added he still intends to vote for Biden in the November elections.
Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of anti-war group CodePink, told The Associated Press that the moniker “Genocide Joe” will stick with Biden for a certain segment of the community because of his handling of the war in Gaza.
“I think the Democrats are playing with fire in many ways — playing with fire in that they’re supporting a genocide in Gaza but also playing with fire in terms of their own future,” Benjamin said.
Jake and Ida Braford, a young couple from Richmond, Virginia, who brought their two small children to the protest, said they were unsure of whether to vote for Biden in November.
“We’re pretty disheartened,” Ida Braford said. “Seeing what is happening in Gaza, and the government’s actions makes me wonder what is our vote worth?”
The plight of children in the Gaza Strip was the focus of the latest London march, symbolized by the appearance of Little Amal, a 3.5-meter (11.5-foot) puppet originally meant to highlight the suffering of Syrian refugees.
The puppet had become a human rights emblem during an 8,000-kilometer (4,970-mile) journey from the Turkish-Syrian border to Manchester in July 2001.
Nearly two-thirds of the 23,843 people killed during Israel’s campaign in Gaza have been women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
Israel declared war in response to Hamas’ unprecedented cross-border attack on Oct. 7 in which the Islamic militant group killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 250 others hostage. It was the deadliest attack in Israel’s history and the deadliest for Jews since the Holocaust.
March organizers had said the Palestinian children would accompany Little Amal through the streets of central London.
“On Saturday Amal walks for those most vulnerable and for their bravery and resilience,“ said Amir Nizar Zuabi, artistic director of The Walk Productions. “Amal is a child and a refugee and today in Gaza childhood is under attack, with an unfathomable number of children killed. Childhood itself is being targeted. That’s why we walk.”
London’s Metropolitan Police force said some 1,700 officers would be on duty for the march, including many from outside the capital.
Home Secretary James Cleverly said he had been briefed by police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley on plans to “ensure order and safety” during the protest.
“I back them to use their powers to manage the protest and crack down on any criminality,” Cleverly said.
A number of conditions were placed for the march, including a directive that no participant in the protest shall venture near the Israeli Embassy.
A pro-Israel rally was set to take place in London on Sunday.
The London march was one of several others being held in European cities including Paris, Rome, Milan and Dublin, where thousands also marched along the Irish capital's main thoroughfare to protest Israel’s military operations in the Palestinian enclave.
Protesters waved Palestinian flags, held placards critical of the Irish, U.S. and Israeli governments and chanted, “Free, free Palestine.″
In Rome, hundreds of demonstrators descended on a boulevard near the famous Colosseum, with some carrying signs reading, “Stop Genocide.”
At one point during the protest, amid the din of sound effects mimicking exploding bombs, a number of demonstrators lied down in the street and pulled white sheets over themselves as if they were corpses, while others knelt beside them, their palms daubed in red paint.
Many hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Paris’ Republic square to set off on a march calling for an immediate cease-fire, an end to the war, a lifting of the blockade on Gaza and to impose sanctions on Israel. Marching protesters waved the Palestinian flag and held aloft placards and banners reading, “From Gaza to Paris. Resistance."
Israel-Hamas war has transformed the region in 100 days
Sunday marks 100 days that Israel and Hamas have been at war.
The war already is the longest and deadliest between Israel and the Palestinians since Israel’s establishment in 1948, and the fighting shows no signs of ending.
Israel declared war in response to Hamas’ unprecedented cross-border attack on Oct. 7 in which the Islamic militant group killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 250 others hostage. It was the deadliest attack in Israel’s history and the deadliest for Jews since the Holocaust.
Israel responded with weeks of intense airstrikes in Gaza before expanding the operation into a ground offensive. It says its goal is to crush Hamas and win the release of the more than 100 hostages still held by the group.
Read: An Al Jazeera journalist is the fifth member of his family killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza
The offensive has wrought unprecedented destruction upon Gaza. But more than three months later, Hamas remains largely intact and hostages remain in captivity. The Israeli military says the war will stretch on throughout 2024.
Here are five takeaways from the first 100 days of a conflict that has upended the region.
ISRAEL WILL NEVER BE THE SAMEThe Oct. 7 attack blindsided Israel and shattered the nation’s faith in its leaders.
While the public has rallied behind the military’s war effort, it remains deeply traumatized. The country seems to be reliving Oct. 7 — when families were killed in their homes, partygoers gunned down at a music festival and children and older people abducted on motorcycles — every day.
Posters of the hostages who remain in Hamas captivity line public streets, and people wear T-shirts calling on leaders to “Bring Them Home.”
Israeli news channels devote their broadcasts to round-the-clock coverage of the war. They broadcast nonstop tales of tragedy and heroism from Oct. 7, stories about hostages and their families, tearful funerals of soldiers killed in action and reports from Gaza by correspondents smiling alongside the troops.
There is little discussion or sympathy over the skyrocketing death toll and deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza. Plans for postwar Gaza are rarely mentioned.
One thing has remained constant. While chastened Israeli security officials have apologized and signaled that they will resign after the war, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains firmly entrenched.
Despite a sharp drop in his public approval ratings, Netanyahu has resisted calls to apologize, step down or investigate his government’s failings. Netanyahu, who has led the country for almost all of the past 15 years, says there will be a time for investigations after the war.
Historian Tom Segev said the war will shake the country for years, and perhaps generations, to come. He said the failures of Oct. 7 and the inability to bring the hostages home have fomented a widespread feeling of betrayal and lack of faith in the government.
“Israelis like their wars to go well. This war doesn’t go so well,” he said. “Lots of people have the feeling that something very, very deep is wrong here.”
GAZA WILL NEVER BE THE SAMEConditions before Oct. 7 were already difficult in Gaza after a stifling blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt following Hamas’ takeover in 2007. Today, the territory is unrecognizable.
Experts say the Israeli bombing is among the most intense in modern history. Gaza health authorities say the death toll already has eclipsed 23,000 people, roughly 1% of the Palestinian territory’s population. Thousands more remain missing or badly wounded. Over 80% of the population has been displaced, and tens of thousands of people are now crammed into sprawling tent camps on small slivers of space in southern Gaza that also come under Israeli fire.
Jamon Van Den Hoek, an Oregon State University mapping expert, and colleague Corey Scher of the City University of New York's Graduate Center, estimate that roughly half of Gaza’s buildings have likely been damaged or destroyed, based on satellite analysis.
“The scale of likely damage or destruction across Gaza is remarkable,” Van Den Hoek wrote on LinkedIn.
The human cost is equally mind-boggling. The United Nations estimates that about one-quarter of Gaza’s population is starving. Just 15 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are partially operational, according to the U.N., leaving the medical system close to collapse. Children have missed months of school and have no prospects for returning to their studies.
Read: Apparent Israeli strike kills senior Hamas figure in Beirut and raises fears conflict could expand
“Gaza has simply become uninhabitable,” wrote Martin Griffiths, the U.N.’s humanitarian chief.
IT’S ALL CONNECTEDThe war has rippled across the entire Middle East, threatening to escalate into a broader conflict pitting a U.S.-led alliance against Iranian-backed militant groups.
Almost immediately after the Hamas attack, Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon began striking Israel, triggering Israeli retaliatory attacks.
The back-and-forth fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has not erupted into a full-blown war. But it has come perilously close, most recently after a Jan. 2 airstrike blamed on Israel that killed a top Hamas official in Beirut. Hezbollah responded with heavy barrages on Israeli military bases, while Israel has assassinated several Hezbollah commanders in targeted airstrikes.
At the same time, Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have carried out a series of attacks on civilian cargo ships in the Red Sea. Meanwhile, Iranian-backed militias have attacked U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.
The United States has dispatched warships to the Mediterranean and Red Seas to contain the violence.
Late Thursday, the U.S. and British militaries bombed more than a dozen Houthi targets in Yemen. The Houthis vowed to retaliate, raising the prospect of an even wider conflict.
ISRAEL CAN'T IGNORE THE PALESTINIANSThroughout his time in office, Netanyahu has repeatedly attempted to sideline the Palestinian issue.
He has rejected various peace initiatives, dismissed the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority as weak or irrelevant, and promoted policies that left Palestinians divided between rival governments in Gaza and the West Bank.
Instead, he has tried to normalize relations with other Arab countries in hopes of isolating the Palestinians and pressuring them to accept an arrangement that falls short of their dreams of independence. Just before Oct. 7, Netanyahu was boasting of efforts to forge ties with Saudi Arabia.
The Hamas attack, along with a spike in violence in the West Bank, have put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict back on center stage. The war now tops the newscasts worldwide, has prompted four visits by Blinken to the region and resulted in a genocide case against Israel in the U.N. world court.
The Saudis have revived the possibility of establishing ties with Israel, but only if this included the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
“The painful developments of the last 100 days have proven beyond doubt that the Palestinian issue and the Palestinian people cannot be ignored,” said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
THERE’S NO POSTWAR PLANAs the war drags on and the death toll mounts, there is no clear path for when the fighting will end or what will follow.
Israel says Hamas can play no part in Gaza’s future. Hamas says that’s an illusion.
The U.S. and the international community want a revitalized Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza, and steps toward a two-state solution. Israel objects.
Read: Top Hamas official Saleh Arouri, who headed West Bank operations, killed in Beirut blast
Israel wants to maintain a long-term military presence in Gaza. The U.S. does not want Israel to reoccupy the territory.
Reconstruction will take years. It is unclear who will pay for it or how the required materials will enter the territory through its limited crossings. And with so many homes destroyed, where will people stay during this lengthy process?
“Our lives 100 days ago was excellent. We had cars and houses,” said Halima Abu Daqa, a Palestinian woman who was displaced from her home in southern Gaza and is now living in a tent camp.
“We have been deprived of everything,” she said. “Everything has changed and nothing remains.”
Who are the Houthis and why did the US and UK retaliate for their attacks on ships in the Red Sea?
When U.S. and U.K. warships and aircraft launched waves of missiles at Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen early Friday in Sanaa, it capped weeks of warnings to the militant group to cease their drone and missile attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea or face severe consequences.
Previously the U.S. had withheld striking back, reflecting larger U.S. concerns about upending the shaky truce in Yemen and triggering a wider conflict in the region. But on Tuesday the Houthis launched their largest-ever barrage of 18 one-way attack drones, anti-ship cruise missiles and an anti-ship ballistic missile at a host of international ships and warships in the Red Sea.
While the U.S. and partner military ships and aircraft protecting the waterways were able to deflect the attack, the scope and severity of the launch drew international condemnation and left few options other than to carry through with international warnings that any further attacks would draw a substantial response.
In response to the attacks Friday, which struck in Yemen just before 3 a.m. local time, the militant group has already pledged to retaliate.
Here's a look at the Houthis and their increasing attacks, and why the U.S. believes it is more acceptable to bomb some Iranian-linked targets than others.
WHO ARE THE HOUTHIS?
Houthi rebels swept down from their northern stronghold in Yemen and seized the capital, Sanaa, in 2014, launching a grinding war. A Saudi-led coalition intervened in 2015 to try to restore Yemen's exiled, internationally recognized government to power.
Years of bloody, inconclusive fighting against the Saudi-led coalition settled into a stalemated proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, causing widespread hunger and misery in Yemen, the Arab world's poorest country. The war has killed more than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, and created one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters, killing tens of thousands more.
A cease-fire that technically ended more than a year ago is still largely being honored. Saudi Arabia and the rebels have done some prisoner swaps, and a Houthi delegation was invited to high-level peace talks in Riyadh in September as part of a wider détente the kingdom has reached with Iran. While they reported "positive results," there is still no permanent peace.
ATTACKS ON SHIPS
The Houthis have sporadically targeted ships in the region over time, but the attacks have increased since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas and spiked after an explosion Oct. 17 at a hospital in Gaza killed and injured many. That hospital blast marked the beginning of an intense militant campaign against U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, and on many commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea. The attacks have damaged commercial ships and forced international shipping companies to divert their vessels around the Cape of Good Hope.
As of Thursday the Houthis had launched 27 different attacks on vessels transiting the Southern Red Sea, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said at a Pentagon press conference.
Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree has said the group wants to "prevent Israeli ships from navigating the Red Sea (and Gulf of Aden) until the Israeli aggression against our steadfast brothers in the Gaza Strip stops."
But few of the ships targeted have had direct links to Israel. In a recent attack, one of the commercial ships hit — the Unity Explorer — had a tenuous Israeli link. It is owned by a British firm that includes Dan David Ungar, who lives in Israel, as one of its officers. Israeli media identified Ungar as being the son of Israeli shipping billionaire Abraham "Rami" Ungar. But any Israel connections to other ships are unclear.
U.S. officials have argued that the Houthis haven't technically targeted U.S. military vessels or forces — a subtlety that Navy ship captains watching the incoming drones may question.
In response to the attacks, last month Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced Operation Prosperity Guardian, where the U.S. and more than 20 other countries have created a protective umbrella for the commercial vessels that have not rerouted.
If that operation had not been escorting the commercial vessels and intercepting the incoming fire, "we have no doubt that ships would have been struck, perhaps even sunk, including in one case a commercial ship full of jet fuel," a senior administration official told reporters late Thursday, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the strikes. "We've had extremely close calls."
THE U.S. CALCULUS
While the U.S. has carried out airstrikes on Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria that have targeted American troops in 130 different attacks since Oct. 17, until Thursday the military had not yet retaliated against the Houthis.
That reluctance reflects political sensitivities and stems largely from broader Biden administration concerns about upending the shaky truce in Yemen and triggering a wider conflict in the region. The White House wants to preserve the truce and is wary of taking action that could open up another war front.
Iran-backed militias have launched one-way attack drones, rockets or close-range ballistic missiles at bases in Iraq 53 times and in Syria 77 times. Dozens of troops have suffered injuries as a result of the attacks, in many cases traumatic brain injuries.
In response, the U.S. has retaliated with airstrikes multiple times in Syria since Oct. 17, targeting weapons depots and other facilities linked directly to Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps and the militias. And it struck multiple sites in Iraq late last month after a militia group for the first time fired short-range ballistic missiles at U.S. forces at Al-Asad air base.
But until Thursday, striking the Houthis had been a different calculus.
In one breath, Pentagon officials had said Navy ships shot down Houthi drones heading toward them because they were deemed "a threat." But in the next breath officials said the U.S. had assessed that the ships were not the target. That determination often comes later after intelligence assessments review telemetry and other data.
That, however, is certainly no comfort to sailors on the ships who watch the radar track of incoming drones and must make rapid decisions about whether they represent threats to the ship.
At the same time, the U.S. has consistently said it wants to protect free navigation of the seas. But the Houthi actions have prompted the International Maritime Security Construct to issue a warning for ships transiting the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb. It says ships should choose routes as far from Yemeni waters as possible, travel at night and not stop, because that makes them an easier target.
The Biden administration has talked persistently about the need to avoid escalating the Israel-Hamas war into a broader regional conflict. So far, strikes on the Iranian-backed groups in Iraq and Syria have not broadened the conflict, said Ryder.
It's not clear if targeted strikes against Houthi weapons depots or similar sites — which also have Iranian support — would cross a line and trigger a wider war.
"We will continue to consult with international allies and partners on an appropriate way to protect commercial shipping going through that region, and at the same time ensuring we do what we need to do to protect our forces," said Ryder.
US, British militaries launch massive retaliatory strike against Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen
The U.S. and British militaries bombed more than a dozen sites used by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen on Thursday, in a massive retaliatory strike using warship- and submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles and fighter jets, U.S. officials said.
The military targets included logistical hubs, air defense systems and weapons storage and launching locations, they said.
President Joe Biden said the strikes were meant to demonstrate that the U.S. and its allies "will not tolerate" the militant group's ceaseless attacks on the Red Sea. And he said they only made the move after attempts at diplomatic negotiations and careful deliberation.
"These strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea — including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history," Biden said in a statement. He noted the attacks endangered U.S. personnel, civilian mariners and jeopardized trade, and he added, "I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary."
Associated Press journalists in Yemen's capital, Sanaa, heard four explosions early Friday local time. Two residents of Hodieda, Amin Ali Saleh and Hani Ahmed, said they heard five strong explosions hitting the western port area of the city, which lies on the Red Sea and is the largest port city controlled by the Houthis. Explosions also were heard by residents of Taiz, a southwestern city near the Red Sea.
The strikes marked the first U.S. military response to what has been a persistent campaign of drone and missile attacks on commercial ships since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. And the coordinated military assault comes just a week after the White House and a host of partner nations issued a final warning to the Houthis to cease the attacks or face potential military action. The officials described the strikes on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations. Members of Congress were briefed earlier Thursday on the strike plans.
The warning appeared to have had at least some short-lived impact, as attacks stopped for several days. On Tuesday, however, the Houthi rebels fired their largest-ever barrage of drones and missiles targeting shipping in the Red Sea, with U.S. and British ships and American fighter jets responding by shooting down 18 drones, two cruise missiles and an anti-ship missile. And on Thursday, the Houthis fired an anti-ship ballistic missile into the Gulf of Aden, which was seen by a commercial ship but did not hit the ship.
In a call with reporters, senior administration and military officials said that after the Tuesday attacks, Biden convened his national security team and was presented with military options for a response. He then directed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to carry out the retaliatory strikes.
In a separate statement, U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the Royal Air Force carried out targeted strikes against military facilities used by the Houthis. The Defense Ministry said four fighter jets based in Cyprus took part in the strikes.
Noting the militants have carried out a series of dangerous attacks on shipping, he added, "This cannot stand. He said the U.K. took "limited, necessary and proportionate action in self-defense, alongside the United States with non-operational support from the Netherlands, Canada and Bahrain against targets tied to these attacks, to degrade Houthi military capabilities and protect global shipping."
And the governments of Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand and South Korea joined the U.S. and U.K. in issuing a statement saying that while the aim is to de-escalate tensions and restore stability in the Red Sea, the allies won't hesitate to defend lives and protect commerce in the critical waterway.
The rebels, who have carried out 27 attacks involving dozens of drones and missiles just since Nov. 19, had warned that any attack by American forces on its sites in Yemen will spark a fierce military response.
A high-ranking Houthi official, Ali al-Qahoum, vowed there would be retaliation. "The battle will be bigger…. and beyond the imagination and expectation of the Americans and the British," he said in a post on X.
Al-Masirah, a Houthi-run satellite news channel, described strikes hitting the Al-Dailami Air Base north of Sanaa, the airport in the port city of the Hodeida, a camp east of Saada, the airport in the city of Taiz and an airport near Hajjah. And eyewitnesses who spoke with The Associated Press said they saw strikes in four areas, including Dhamar, Hodeida, Sanaa and Taiz.
The Houthis did not immediately offer any damage or casualty information.
A senior administration official said that while the U.S. expects the strikes will degrade the Houthi's capabilities, "we would not be surprised to see some sort of response," although they haven't seen anything yet.
The Houthis say their assaults are aimed at stopping Israel's war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But their targets increasingly have little or no connection to Israel and imperil a crucial trade route linking Asia and the Middle East with Europe.
Meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution Wednesday that demanded the Houthis immediately cease the attacks and implicitly condemned their weapons supplier, Iran. It was approved by a vote of 11-0 with four abstentions — by Russia, China, Algeria and Mozambique.
Britain's participation in the strikes underscored the Biden administration's effort to use a broad international coalition to battle the Houthis, rather than appear to be going it alone. More than 20 nations are already participating in a U.S.-led maritime mission to increase ship protection in the Red Sea.
U.S. officials for weeks had declined to signal when international patience would run out and they would strike back at the Houthis, even as multiple commercial vessels were struck by missiles and drones, prompting companies to look at rerouting their ships.
On Wednesday, however, U.S. officials again warned of consequences.
"I'm not going to telegraph or preview anything that might happen," Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters during a stop in Bahrain. He said the U.S. has made clear "that if this continues as it did yesterday, there will be consequences. And I'm going to leave it at that."
The Biden administration's reluctance over the past several months to retaliate reflected political sensitivities and stemmed largely from broader worries about upending the shaky truce in Yemen and triggering a wider conflict in the region. The White House wants to preserve the truce and has been wary of taking action in Yemen that could open up another war front.
The impact on international shipping and the escalating attacks, however, triggered the coalition warning, which was signed by the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore and the United Kingdom. Separately, the U.S. called on the United Nations Security Council to take action against the Houthis and warned their financier Iran that it has a choice to make about continuing to provide support to the rebels.
Transit through the Red Sea, from the Suez Canal to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, is a crucial shipping lane for global commerce. About 12% of the world's trade typically passes through the waterway that separates Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, including oil, natural gas, grain and everything from toys to electronics.
In response to the attacks, the U.S. created a new maritime security mission, dubbed Operation Prosperity Guardian, to increase security in the Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden, with about 22 countries are participating. U.S. warships, and those from other nations, have been routinely sailing back and forth through the narrow strait to provide protection for ships and to deter attacks. The coalition has also ramped up airborne surveillance.
The decision to set up the expanded patrol operation came after three commercial vessels were struck by missiles fired by Houthis in Yemen on Dec. 3.
The Pentagon increased its military presence in the region after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel to deter Iran from widening the war into a regional conflict, including by the Houthis and Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria.
Four premature babies die in hospital fire in Iraq
A fire erupted Monday evening at a hospital in southern Iraq, sending smoke through a maternity ward and killing four babies who had been born prematurely, health officials said.
The fire started at a pile of debris belonging to a construction company working on renovations at Women and Children’s Hospital in Diwaniyiah, Iraqi Health Minister Saleh al-Hasnawi told journalists at the scene.
The hospital building did not burn but it was filled with smoke, and the four infants died of chest problems as a result of smoke inhalation, Al-Hasnawi said. Some other patients suffered minor injuries.
Read: An Al Jazeera journalist is the fifth member of his family killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza
Iraq’s Red Crescent Society said in a statement that its teams successfully evacuated 150 children and 190 relatives from the hospital. The Red Crescent said the fire might have been triggered by an electrical problem.
Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani's office directed local authorities and the health ministry to open an investigation into the circumstances of the fire, the state-run Iraqi News Agency reported. Officials overseeing the hospital were suspended pending the outcome of the investigation.
Electrical fires, often due to inadequate maintenance and substandard wiring, pose a recurrent threat in Iraq, with the absence of proper fire escapes further compounding the risk. Construction companies and providers of building materials often neglect safety standards, contributing to the hazards.
Read: Blasts kill 103 people at ceremony honouring slain Iranian general Qassim Soleimani
In 2016, a fire ripped through a maternity ward at a Baghdad hospital overnight, killing 12 newborn babies.
More recently, in September, more than 100 people died in a blaze ignited by fireworks during a wedding ceremony in the northern Iraqi town of Qaraqosh.
An Al Jazeera journalist is the fifth member of his family killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza
An apparent Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinian journalists in southern Gaza on Sunday, including an Al Jazeera journalist who lost four close relatives earlier in the war.
Hamza Dahdouh is the son of veteran Al Jazeera correspondent Wael Dahdouh, whose wife, two other children and a grandson were killed by a previous Israeli strike.
Dahdouh has continued to report on the fighting between Israel and Hamas even as it has taken a devastating toll on his own family, becoming a symbol for many of the perils faced by Palestinian journalists, dozens of whom have been killed while covering the conflict.
Hamza Dahdouh, who was also working for Al Jazeera, and Mustafa Tharaya, a freelance journalist, were killed when a strike hit their car while they were driving to an assignment in southern Gaza, according to Al Jazeera. A third journalist, Hazem Rajab, was seriously wounded, it said.
Amer Abu Amr, a photojournalist, said in a Facebook post that he and another journalist, Ahmed al-Bursh, survived the strike.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Wael Dahdouh, 53, has been the face of Al Jazeera's 24-hour coverage of this war and previous rounds of fighting for millions of Arabic-speaking viewers across the region, nearly always appearing on air in the blue helmet and flak jacket worn to identify journalists in the Palestinian territories.
Read: Apparent Israeli strike kills senior Hamas figure in Beirut and raises fears conflict could expand
Speaking to Al Jazeera after his son's burial, Dahdouh vowed to continue reporting on the war.
“The whole world must look at what is happening here in the Gaza Strip," he said. "What is happening is a great injustice to defenseless people, civilian people. It is also unfair for us as journalists.”
In a statement, Al Jazeera accused Israel of deliberately targeting the reporters and condemned the “ongoing crimes committed by the Israeli occupation forces against journalists and media professionals in Gaza.” It also vowed to take “all legal measures to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes.”
Dahdouh was reporting on the offensive in late October when he received word that his wife, daughter and another son had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. His grandson, wounded in the same strike, died hours later. The Qatar-based broadcaster later aired footage of him weeping over the body of his son while still wearing his blue press vest.
In December, an Israeli strike on a school in Khan Younis wounded Dahdouh and Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa. Dahdouh was able to run for help, but Abu Daqqa bled to death hours later as ambulances were unable to reach him because of blocked roads, according to Al Jazeera.
Read: Top Hamas official Saleh Arouri, who headed West Bank operations, killed in Beirut blast
Earlier in December, a strike killed the father, mother and 20 other family members of another Al Jazeera correspondent, Momen Al Sharafi.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is shuttling between Mideast countries this week, said he was “deeply, deeply sorry” for Dahdouh’s loss.
“I am a parent myself, I can’t begin to imagine the horror that he has experienced, not once, but now twice. This is an unimaginable tragedy and that’s also been the case for far too many innocent Palestinian men, women, children,” Blinken said during a stop in Qatar. Blinken heads to Israel on Monday.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 70 Palestinian reporters, as well as four Israeli and three Lebanese reporters, have been killed since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack triggered the war in Gaza and an escalation in fighting along Israel's border with Lebanon.
Over 22,800 Palestinians have been killed in the war, mostly women and minors, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in Israel during the initial Hamas attack.
Israel denies targeting journalists and says it makes every effort to avoid harming civilians, blaming the high death toll on the fact that Hamas fights in densely populated urban areas.
Some 85% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million have fled their homes, with most seeking shelter in Israeli-designated safe zones in southern Gaza. But Israel also regularly carries out strikes in those areas, leading many Palestinians to feel that nowhere in the besieged territory is safe.
Palestinian journalists have played an essential role in reporting on the conflict for local and international media outlets, even as many have lost loved ones and been forced to flee their own homes because of the fighting.
Israel and Egypt, which maintain a blockade on Gaza, have largely barred foreign reporters from entering Gaza since the war began.
Turkish justice minister says 15 suspects jailed ahead of trial for spying for Israel
A court in Istanbul has ordered 15 of 34 people detained on suspicion of spying for Israel be held in prison awaiting trial, Turkey’s justice minister said late Friday.
The suspects were arrested Tuesday for allegedly planning to carry out activities that included “reconnaissance” and “pursuing, assaulting and kidnapping” foreign nationals living in Turkey.
Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said in a social media post that 26 suspects were referred to the court on a charge of committing “political or military espionage” on behalf of Israeli intelligence. Eleven were released under judicial control conditions and eight were awaiting deportation.
Israel’s foreign intelligence agency Mossad is said to have recruited Palestinians and Syrian nationals inside Turkey as part of the operation against foreigners living in Turkey, state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
Read: Apparent Israeli strike kills senior Hamas figure in Beirut and raises fears conflict could expand
The agency cited a prosecution document as saying the operation targeted “Palestinian nationals and their families … within the scope of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
One suspect allegedly collected information about Palestinian patients recently transferred to Turkey for health care. Turkey has accepted dozens of Palestinian patients from Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The suspects were detained in raids on 57 addresses in Istanbul and seven other provinces. Weeks earlier, the head of Israel’s domestic Shin Bet security agency said his organization was prepared to target Hamas anywhere, including in Lebanon, Turkey and Qatar.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Israel of “serious consequences” if it pressed ahead with its threat to attack Hamas officials on Turkish soil.
Turkey and Israel had normalized ties in 2022 by reappointing ambassadors following years of tensions. But those ties quickly deteriorated after the Israel-Hamas war, with Ankara becoming one of the strongest critics of Israel’s military actions in Gaza.
Read: Israel is pulling thousands of troops from Gaza in a possible precursor to a scaled-back offensive
Israel initially withdrew its diplomats from Turkey over security concerns and later announced it was recalling its diplomats for political reasons, citing “increasingly harsh statements” from Turkish officials. Turkey also pulled out its ambassador from Israel.
Erdogan’s reaction to the Israel-Hamas war was initially fairly muted. But the Turkish leader has since intensified his criticism of Israel, describing its actions in Gaza as verging on “genocide.” He has called for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be prosecuted for “war crimes” and compared him to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Erdogan, whose government has hosted several Hamas officials in the past, has also said the militant group — considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and the European Union — is fighting for the liberation of its lands and people.
Blasts kill 103 people at ceremony honouring slain Iranian general Qassim Soleimani
Two explosions minutes apart Wednesday in Iran targeted a commemoration for a prominent general slain in a U.S. drone strike in 2020, killing at least 103 people and wounding at least 141 others as the Middle East remains on edge over Israel's war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for what Iranian state media called a "terroristic" attack shortly after the blasts in Kerman, about 820 kilometers (510 miles) southeast of the capital, Tehran.
While Israel has carried out attacks in Iran over its nuclear program, it has conducted targeted assassinations, not mass-casualty bombings. Sunni extremist groups including the Islamic State group have conducted large-scale attacks in the past that killed civilians in Shiite-majority Iran, though not in relatively peaceful Kerman.
Also read: Suicide bomber attacks police station in northwest Pakistan, killing 22 officers and wounding 32
Iran also has seen mass protests in recent years, including those over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in 2022. The country also has been targeted by exile groups in attacks dating back to the turmoil surrounding its 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The blasts struck an event marking the the fourth anniversary of the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force. who died in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq in January 2020. The explosions occurred near his grave site in Kerman,
Iranian state television quoted Babak Yektaparast, a spokesman for the country's emergency services, for the casualty figure. Authorities said some people were injured while fleeing afterward.
Footage suggested that the second blast occurred some 15 minutes after the first. A delayed second explosion is often used by militants to target emergency personnel responding to the scene and inflict more casualties.
Also read: At least 20 dead in gas station explosion as Nagorno-Karabakh residents flee to Armenia
People could be heard screaming in state TV footage.
Kerman's deputy governor, Rahman Jalali, called the attack "terroristic," without elaborating. Iran has multiple foes who could be behind the assault, including exile groups, militant organizations and state actors. Iran has supported Hamas as well as the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and Yemen's Houthi rebels.
Soleimani was the architect of Iran's regional military activities and is hailed as a national icon among supporters of Iran's theocracy. He also helped secure Syrian President Bashar Assad's government after the 2011 Arab Spring protests against him turned into a civil, and later a regional, war that still rages today.
Relatively unknown in Iran until the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Soleimani's popularity and mystique grew after American officials called for his killing over his help arming militants with penetrating roadside bombs that killed and maimed U.S. troops.
A decade and a half later, Soleimani had become Iran's most recognizable battlefield commander, ignoring calls to enter politics but growing as powerful, if not more, than its civilian leadership.
Ultimately, a drone strike launched by the Trump administration killed the general, part of escalating incidents that followed America's 2018 unilateral withdrawal from Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers.
Soleimani's death has drawn large processions in the past. At his funeral in 2020, a stampede broke out in Kerman and at least 56 people were killed and more than 200 were injured as thousands thronged the procession. Otherwise, Kerman largely has been untouched in the recent unrest and attacks that have struck Iran. The city and province of the same name sits in Iran's central desert plateau.