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Death Toll Reaches 33 in Some of the Deadliest Israeli Strikes in Gaza Since Ceasefire Began

Palestinians inspect the site of Wednesday's Israeli strike in Gaza City, November 20, 2025. REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Palestinians inspect the site of Wednesday's Israeli strike in Gaza City, November 20, 2025. REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
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Death Toll Reaches 33 in Some of the Deadliest Israeli Strikes in Gaza Since Ceasefire Began

Palestinians inspect the site of Wednesday's Israeli strike in Gaza City, November 20, 2025. REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Palestinians inspect the site of Wednesday's Israeli strike in Gaza City, November 20, 2025. REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

 A pair of Israeli strikes in Gaza's southern city of Khan Younis early Thursday killed five people, hospital officials said, bringing the death toll from airstrikes in the Palestinian territory over a roughly 12-hour period to 33. The strikes have been some of the deadliest since Oct. 10 when a US-brokered ceasefire took effect.
The renewed escalation came after Israel said that its soldiers had come under fire in Khan Younis on Wednesday. Israel said that no soldiers were killed and that the military responded with strikes, The AP news reported. 
Four Israeli airstrikes on tents sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis late Wednesday and early Thursday killed 17 people, including five women and five children, according to officials at Nasser Hospital.
In Gaza City, two airstrikes on a building killed 16 people, including seven children and three women, according to officials at the Al-Shifa hospital in the northern part of the city where the bodies were taken.
The Hamas militant group condemned the Israeli strikes as a “shocking massacre.” In a statement, Hamas denied firing toward Israeli troops.

Palestinians mourn loved ones

At Nasser Hospital, scores of people gathered to offer funeral prayers for those who were killed in the Israeli strikes. Women wailed in mourning over the bodies of loved ones wrapped in white burial shrouds.
Among the mourners was Abir Abu Moustapha, who lost her three children, ages 1, 11 and 12, and her husband in an Israeli strike on Wednesday that hit their tent. She squatted beside their bodies as they were prepared for burial.
“My children are gone. What can I say? And my husband, my most precious. May God have mercy on them,” Abu Moustapha said. “How was it my children’s fault that they had to die? Why was it their fault that they died in front of my eyes?”
Ceasefire again under pressure Hospital officials said that the bodies came from both sides of a line established in last month’s ceasefire. The boundary splits Gaza in two, leaving the border zone under Israeli military control while the area beyond it is meant to serve as a safe zone.
The strikes came shortly after the UN Security Council gave its backing to US President Donald Trump’s blueprint to secure and govern Gaza. The plan empowers an international force to provide security in Gaza, approves a transitional authority and envisions a possible future path to an independent Palestinian state.
But there are still questions over how the plan will be implemented, especially after Hamas rejected it. The militant group said that the force's mandate. which includes disarmament, “strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favor of the occupation.”
Israeli strikes have decreased since the ceasefire agreement took effect, though they haven't stopped entirely.
Gaza's Health Ministry, which doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants, reported more than 300 deaths since the truce began. Each side has accused the other of violating its terms, which include increasing the flow of aid into Gaza and returning hostages — dead or alive — to Israel.
 

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Arab World

New Battlefronts in Yemen Leave Houthis in Disarray

Armed forces celebrate their advances in al-Jawf. (X)
Armed forces celebrate their advances in al-Jawf. (X)
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New Battlefronts in Yemen Leave Houthis in Disarray

Armed forces celebrate their advances in al-Jawf. (X)
Armed forces celebrate their advances in al-Jawf. (X)

The Yemeni army and the National Resistance made progress on the ground on Monday across fronts in the Taiz, al-Bayda, and al-Jawf governorates, amid successive collapses and retreats among the Houthis. Al-Jawf is witnessing tribal mobilization in support of government forces following their field advances.

Yemeni army media announced that government forces secured a tactical breakthrough on the al-Bayda front, successfully liberating the Hayd al-Khazzan and al-Falhan areas up to the al-Nasifa region. The development allows the forces an advantage to sever Houthi supply lines between the central and southern governorates.

The advance coincided with the establishment of control over all hills and plateaus overlooking the al-Zaher district.

The director of media for the al-Bayda governorate, Aref Al-Amari, confirmed that the armed forces have tightened their control over the strategic highlands overlooking al-Zaher.

He noted that forces are currently combing al-Nasifa in preparation for an advance toward the Dhi Naem area, a development that strengthens the position of government forces in the governorate.

Spokesman for the Yemeni armed forces Colonel Maeen al-Nuzaili said the forces are achieving progress and victories on the al-Jawf and al-Bayda fronts as part of operations "aimed at restoring state institutions and ending the Houthi coup."

He called on the group's operatives to abandon their positions with their light weapons to save their lives.

On the western front, the Joint Forces managed to secure a vital artery in al-Kadha connecting Taiz city to the western coast, following the defeat of Houthis stationed in the controlling highlands.

Government forces targeted massive Houthi military reinforcements west of Taiz city, leaving heavy losses in lives and equipment.

Comprising more than 21 military vehicles, they were heading to support the al-Barh and Maqbanah fronts.

Meanwhile, tribes were mobilizing in al-Jawf to support the armed forces against the Houthis. According to local sources, the tribes moved toward the al-Yatma district.

Arab World

Assad-era Syrian Reactor was Configured for Nuclear Weapons, IAEA Chief Says

The logo of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the organization's headquarters in Vienna, Austria, March 6, 2023 (Reuters)
The logo of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the organization's headquarters in Vienna, Austria, March 6, 2023 (Reuters)
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Assad-era Syrian Reactor was Configured for Nuclear Weapons, IAEA Chief Says

The logo of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the organization's headquarters in Vienna, Austria, March 6, 2023 (Reuters)
The logo of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the organization's headquarters in Vienna, Austria, March 6, 2023 (Reuters)

The Assad-era government in Syria was constructing a nuclear reactor that was configured to produce fissile material for possible use in nuclear weapons, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Monday.

The “configuration” and the “technical features” of the nuclear reactor under construction in Syria during the leadership of ousted former President Bashar Assad were “very efficient in the production of fissile material that could be directly used for the fabrication of nuclear weapons,” IAEA director general Rafael Grossi said.

“Of course, that was never declared, that was always denied, so, and again, intentions cannot be judged, but that was a very serious proliferation concern that we had, and this has been difficult work,” he told reporters on the first day of a regular meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors, in Vienna.

Syria was believed to have operated an extensive undeclared nuclear program under Assad that included a nuclear reactor built by North Korea in eastern Deir Ezzor province.

Following Assad’s ouster, the new government agreed to give IAEA inspectors access to suspected former nuclear sites.

During a visit to Syria in August, IAEA inspectors confirmed that “the cooling infrastructure which has now been uncovered is consistent with that of a nuclear reactor.” Grossi and a team of senior inspectors also visited a previously undeclared site in the country.

Syria notified the agency of the site’s existence in a July 17 letter and invited the IAEA “to cooperate with the Syrian authorities in the inspection and verification of the site and of any nuclear material to be potentially found.”

The IAEA said in its confidential report circulated to member states last Tuesday and seen by The Associated Press that this new site contained “natural uranium metal in the form of fuel rods with cladding.” The agency verified the material and confirmed “the presence of around 73 tonnes of natural uranium metal.”

Grossi said when the inspectors visited the site in August they had to “tear down walls” and go through “very difficult and narrow passages” to reach the nuclear material that had been hidden. The site had “boxes scattered all over the place,” he said.

Grossi said that “the important thing is that this material now is under safeguards” of the IAEA, adding that agency inspectors had managed to install cameras at the location, The AP reported.

Asked if the nuclear material will remain in Syria or be removed, Grossi said that this is “a matter that the Syrian government will have to decide.” He added: “We are not requesting them to do this or to do that. For us what’s important is that we know all the time where this (material) is until the last gram.”

Logan Mintz, a director for nuclear materials security at the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, said that natural uranium metal is not directly usable for a nuclear weapon but it could be “diverted to a covert weapons program that further processes it into plutonium for a nuclear weapon.”

She said that once deemed safe to move, the material could be “transported in certified containers” to a third country that can “safely and securely disposition it into a more chemically stable and more widely used form” for possible use in nuclear power plants.

“As with any transport of nuclear material, this movement would require robust security from theft or sabotage,” she said.

Arab World

Syria Arrests Assad-era General Accused of Deadly Repression

A large Syrian flag flutters above Tishreen Park in Damascus, June 4, 2025. (AFP)
A large Syrian flag flutters above Tishreen Park in Damascus, June 4, 2025. (AFP)
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Syria Arrests Assad-era General Accused of Deadly Repression

A large Syrian flag flutters above Tishreen Park in Damascus, June 4, 2025. (AFP)
A large Syrian flag flutters above Tishreen Park in Damascus, June 4, 2025. (AFP)

Syrian authorities on Monday said they had arrested a former general accused of involvement in the bloody repression of protests in 2011 that sparked the country's civil war and the 1982 Hama massacre.

In a statement, security forces said they "arrested former Major General Mohammed Ali Durgham, a prominent officer in the military establishment during the era of the former regime" of Bashar al-Assad, who was ousted in 2024.

They accused him of "issuing direct orders to his units to fire on unarmed demonstrators in the Damascus countryside" after anti-Assad protests had erupted in 2011.

Durgham was a field commander in the army's feared Fourth Division, commanded by Assad's brother Maher al-Assad, between 2009 and 2013.

Human Rights Watch in 2011 quoted a Syrian army defector who said that Durgham was one of the generals who "ordered the troops to shoot at protesters when his unit was deployed to areas in and just outside of Damascus".

He has been under European Union sanctions since 2012.

Bashar al-Assad's crackdown turned the nationwide movement into a 13-year-long civil war that killed more than half a million people.

Authorities said Durgham had started "as a squad commander in the Defense Brigades during the events in Hama Governorate in 1982".

On February 2, 1982, amid an information blackout, Assad's father and then-Syrian president Hafez al-Assad launched a brutal crackdown in the central Syrian city of Hama against an armed Muslim Brotherhood revolt.

Survivors who witnessed extrajudicial executions told AFP that the authorities spared no one, with government forces killing men, women and children.

The death toll of the 27 days of violence has never been formally established, though estimates usually range from 10,000 to 40,000, with some going higher still.

Since Bashar al-Assad's overthrow in December 2024, Syria's new authorities have arrested dozens of former security officials, and trials began in April.

In August, Syria sentenced Bashar al-Assad, his brother Maher al-Assad and five other security officials to death in absentia for atrocities committed during the civil war, the first such ruling under the new authorities.

The former president fled Syria as his government was falling and is believed to be living in Russia.