Israeli Strikes Kill 10 at Gaza Shelter, Israel Says Targeted Gunmen

23 April 2025, Palestinian Territories, Gaza: Palestinian children inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on a school housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza City. Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
23 April 2025, Palestinian Territories, Gaza: Palestinian children inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on a school housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza City. Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
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Israeli Strikes Kill 10 at Gaza Shelter, Israel Says Targeted Gunmen

23 April 2025, Palestinian Territories, Gaza: Palestinian children inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on a school housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza City. Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
23 April 2025, Palestinian Territories, Gaza: Palestinian children inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on a school housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza City. Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa

An Israeli air strike on a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza killed 10 people on Wednesday, an attack that Israel said targeted fighters operating from within the complex.

Since a January ceasefire collapsed on March 18, Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,600 Palestinians, many of them civilians, according to the Gaza health authorities, and hundreds of thousands have been displaced as Israel seized what it calls a buffer zone of Gaza's land.

Israel has also imposed a blockade on all goods into Gaza, including fuel and electricity, since the beginning of March.

Medics said the air strike on the Yaffa School in the Tuffah area of Gaza City set fire to tents and classrooms.

The Israeli military said Hamas and allied group Islamic Jihad were operating within the school and that it took precautions to reduce harm to civilians before it struck there.

Some furniture was still in flames several hours after the strike as people sifted through blackened classrooms and the schoolyard in search of their belongings.

"We were sleeping and suddenly something exploded, we started looking and found the whole school on fire, the tents here and there were on fire, everything was on fire," said eyewitness, Um Mohammed al-Hwaiti.

"People were shouting and men were carrying people, charred (people), charred children, and were walking and saying: 'Dear God, dear God, we have no one but you.' What can we say? Dear God, only," she said.

On Wednesday, the foreign ministers of Germany, France, and Britain jointly called on Israel to adhere to international law and allow the unhindered passage of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

They also urged for the ceasefire to be restored and for remaining hostages held by Hamas to be released.

"Humanitarian aid must never be used as a political tool and Palestinian territory must not be reduced nor subjected to any demographic change," the ministers said in a statement.

Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein rejected the statement, asserting that there was no shortage of aid in Gaza, even though doctors and civilians say that medical supplies and food are running low.

INTENSIVE CARE UNIT, SOLAR POWER DAMAGED

Medics said at least 36 people had been killed in Israeli strikes across Gaza on Wednesday.

The Gaza Health Ministry said an Israeli missile hit the upper building of the Durra Children's Hospital in Gaza City, damaging the intensive care unit and destroying the solar panel system that feeds the facility with power. No one was killed.

Gaza's healthcare system is close to collapse due to Israel's blockade, which it says is aimed at pressuring the Hamas group that runs Gaza to release 59 remaining Israeli hostages captured in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that triggered the war.

The group says it is prepared to free them only as part of a deal that ends the war, but it has rejected demands to lay down its arms.

The group on Wednesday released an edited video of hostage Omri Miran, 48, pleading for a deal to be made. Throughout the war, Hamas has released similar videos of hostages, which Israeli officials dismiss as psychological warfare.

Hamas' 2023 attack killed 1,200 people and 251 hostages were taken to Gaza. Since then, more than 51,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive in Gaza, according to health officials.



Three Dead After Flooding Hits Northwest Syria

A child watches as civil defense teams open flooded roads in Idlib. (SANA)
A child watches as civil defense teams open flooded roads in Idlib. (SANA)
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Three Dead After Flooding Hits Northwest Syria

A child watches as civil defense teams open flooded roads in Idlib. (SANA)
A child watches as civil defense teams open flooded roads in Idlib. (SANA)

Two children and a Syrian Red Crescent volunteer have died as a result of flooding in the country's northwest, state media said on Sunday.

The heavy rains in Syria's Idlib region and the coastal province of Latakia have also wreaked havoc in displacement camps, according to authorities, who have launched rescue operations and set up shelters in the areas.

State news agency SANA reported "the death of a Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteer and the injury of four others as they carried out their humanitarian duties" in Latakia province.

The Syrian Red Crescent said in a statement that the "a mission vehicle veered into a valley", killing a female volunteer and injuring four others, as they went to rescue people stranded by flash floods.

"A fifth volunteer was injured while attempting to rescue a child trapped by the floodwaters," it added.

SANA said two children died on Saturday "due to heavy flooding that swept through the Ain Issa area" in the north of Latakia province.

Authorities said Sunday they were working to clear roads in displacement camps in flooded parts of Idlib province.

The emergencies and disaster management ministry said 14 displacement camps in part of Idlib province were affected, with tents swamped, belongings swept away and around 300 families directly impacted.

Around seven million people remain internally displaced in Syria, according to the United Nations refugee agency, some 1.4 million of them living in camps and sites in the country's northwest and northeast.

The December 2024 ouster of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad after more than 13 years of civil war revived hopes for many to return home, but the destruction of housing and a lack of basic infrastructure in heavily damaged areas has been a major barrier.


Hamas’s Meshal Rejects Disarmament or 'Foreign Rule'

Boys walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in the northern Gaza Strip on February 8, 2026. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
Boys walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in the northern Gaza Strip on February 8, 2026. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
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Hamas’s Meshal Rejects Disarmament or 'Foreign Rule'

Boys walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in the northern Gaza Strip on February 8, 2026. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
Boys walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in the northern Gaza Strip on February 8, 2026. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

A senior Hamas leader said Sunday that the Palestinian movement would not surrender its weapons nor accept foreign intervention in Gaza, pushing back against US and Israeli demands.

"Criminalizing the resistance, its weapons, and those who carried it out is something we should not accept," Khaled Meshal said at a conference in Doha.

"As long as there is occupation, there is resistance. Resistance is a right of peoples under occupation ... something nations take pride in," said Meshal, who previously headed the group.

A US-brokered ceasefire in Gaza is in its second phase, which foresees that demilitarization of the territory -- including the disarmament of Hamas -- along with a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces.

Hamas has repeatedly said that disarmament is a red line, although it has indicated it could consider handing over its weapons to a future Palestinian governing authority.

Israeli officials say that Hamas still has around 20,000 fighters and about 60,000 Kalashnikovs in Gaza.

A Palestinian technocratic committee has been set up with a goal of taking over the day-to-day governance in the battered Gaza Strip, but it remains unclear whether, or how, it will address the issue of demilitarization.

The committee operates under the so-called "Board of Peace," an initiative launched by US President Donald Trump.

Originally conceived to oversee the Gaza truce and post-war reconstruction, the board's mandate has since expanded, prompting concerns among critics that it could evolve into a rival to the United Nations.

Trump unveiled the board at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos last month, where leaders and officials from nearly two dozen countries joined him in signing its founding charter.

Alongside the Board of Peace, Trump also created a Gaza Executive Board - an advisory panel to the Palestinian technocratic committee - comprising international figures including US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, as well as former British prime minister Tony Blair.

On Sunday, Meshal urged the Board of Peace to adopt what he called a "balanced approach" that would allow for Gaza's reconstruction and the flow of aid to its roughly 2.2 million residents, while warning that Hamas would "not accept foreign rule" over Palestinian territory.

"We adhere to our national principles and reject the logic of guardianship, external intervention, or the return of a mandate in any form," Meshal said.
"Palestinians are to govern Palestinians. Gaza belongs to the people of Gaza and to Palestine. We will not accept foreign rule," he added.


Rescue Teams Search for Survivors in Building Collapse that Killed at Least 2 in Northern Lebanon

A Lebanese flag is pictured, in the aftermath of a massive explosion, in Beirut's damaged port area, Lebanon August 17, 2020. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
A Lebanese flag is pictured, in the aftermath of a massive explosion, in Beirut's damaged port area, Lebanon August 17, 2020. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
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Rescue Teams Search for Survivors in Building Collapse that Killed at Least 2 in Northern Lebanon

A Lebanese flag is pictured, in the aftermath of a massive explosion, in Beirut's damaged port area, Lebanon August 17, 2020. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
A Lebanese flag is pictured, in the aftermath of a massive explosion, in Beirut's damaged port area, Lebanon August 17, 2020. REUTERS/Hannah McKay

At least two people were killed and four rescued from the rubble of a multistory apartment building that collapsed Sunday in the city of Tripoli in northern Lebanon, state media reported.

Rescue teams were continuing to dig through the rubble. It was not immediately clear how many people were in the building when it fell.

The bodies pulled out were of a child and a woman, the state-run National News Agency reported.

Dozens of people crowded around the site of the crater left by the collapsed building, with some shooting in the air.

The building was in the neighborhood of Bab Tabbaneh, one of the poorest areas in Lebanon’s second largest city, where residents have long complained of government neglect and shoddy infrastructure. Building collapses are not uncommon in Tripoli due to poor building standards, according to The AP news.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry announced that those injured in the collapse would receive treatment at the state’s expense.

The national syndicate for property owners in a statement called the collapse the result of “blatant negligence and shortcomings of the Lebanese state toward the safety of citizens and their housing security,” and said it is “not an isolated incident.”

The syndicate called for the government to launch a comprehensive national survey of buildings at risk of collapse.