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ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR
🔴 Live: Houthis vow response to US, UK strikes on Yemen targets
Yemen’s Houthis said on Sunday that US and British air strikes “will not deter us” and vowed a response after dozens of targets were hit in retaliation for the Iran-backed rebels’ repeated Red Sea attacks. Scores were reported killed in overnight Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip, after the Palestinian militant group Hamas said that it needed more time to consider a proposal that would halt its war with Israel in the besieged Palestinian territory. Follow our liveblog for all the latest developments.
Issued on: 04/02/2024 – 07:06
Modified: 04/02/2024 – 11:50
2 min
Armed Yemeni demonstrators take to the streets of the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa to show their support to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on February 2, 2024.
Armed Yemeni demonstrators take to the streets of the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa to show their support to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on February 2, 2024, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the militant Hamas group. © Mohammed Huwais, AFP
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FRANCE 24
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Summary:
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to the Middle East on Sunday for a fifth time since the October 7 Hamas attacks to support talks on a new truce between Israel and the Palestinian militant group. He is due to visit Qatar, Egypt, Israel, the occupied West Bank and Saudi Arabia.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said at least 27,365 people have been killed and 66,630 wounded in Israeli strikes on the enclave since October 7. Israeli officials say about 1,140 people were killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks in southern Israel. Militant fighters took some 250 hostages during the attack and 132 are still in Gaza, according to Israeli figures.
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Hashed chief demands withdrawal of US-led coalition from Iraq
The head of Iraq’s pro-Iran Hashed al-Shaabi alliance on Sunday demanded the withdrawal of US-led coalition forces from the country following deadly strikes.
“They targeted administration offices, a (Hashed) hospital, they struck forces tasked with protecting the borders,” Faleh al-Fayyad said at a funeral ceremony for members of the group killed in the US strikes.
“Targeting the Hashed al-Shaabi is playing with fire,” he warned.
The Hashed al-Shaabi, mainly pro-Iran paramilitaries now integrated into Iraq’s regular security forces, said 16 of its fighters were killed in Friday’s strikes and 36 people wounded.
“We urge the prime minister to do everything in his power to defend the sovereignty and dignity of Iraq. And this can only be done with the departure of all coalition forces from Iraq,” Fayyad said.
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25 minutes ago
‘The Houthi attacks must stop’, says UK Foreign Minister David Cameron
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2 hours ago
Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says war death toll at 27,365
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Sunday that at least 27,365 people have been killed in the territory during the war between Palestinian militants and Israel.
The latest toll includes 127 deaths over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, while a total of 66,630 people have been wounded in Gaza since the war broke out on October 7.
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2 hours ago
Iran says Yemen strikes ‘contradict’ US, UK policy
Iran on Sunday denounced the latest US and UK strikes on targets in Yemen saying they “contradict” their declared intention of avoiding a wider Middle East conflict.
These attacks are “in clear contradiction with the repeated claims of Washington and London that they do not want the expansion of war and conflict in the region,” Nasser Kanani, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, said in a statement.
He accused the United States and Britain of “fuelling chaos, disorder, insecurity and instability” by supporting Israel in its war against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
Further strikes on Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels in response to the group’s attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea is “a threat to international peace and security”, Kanani said.
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3 hours ago
Australian PM says government ‘examining’ claims against UN Palestinian agency
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Sunday that his government was probing claims that some staff of the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) were involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, after Australia paused funding to the aid agency last month.
Australia is one of several countries to have halted funding for UNRWA, a critical source of support in Gaza, after Israeli claims of UN employees’ complicity with Hamas.
“We’re examining it, along with other like-minded countries like Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. We want that to be resolved,” Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corp regarding the allegations, according to a transcript.
Albanese said his government wanted to make sure the accusations were “fully examined” so that all funding was “going to the purpose for which it is given”.
The prime minister added that he did not want people “literally starving” in Gaza and “the only organisation that can provide that support there is UNRWA”.
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3 hours ago
Houthis vow response after US, UK strike dozens of Yemen targets
Yemen’s Houthis said on Sunday that US and British air strikes “will not deter us” and vowed a response after dozens of targets were hit in retaliation for the Iran-backed rebels’ repeated Red Sea attacks.
The joint air raids in Yemen late on Saturday followed a separate wave of unilateral US strikes against Iran-linked targets in Iraq and Syria in response to a drone attack that killed three US soldiers in Jordan.
It is the third time that British and US forces have jointly targeted the Houthis, whose attacks in solidarity with Palestinians in war-battered Gaza have disrupted global trade.
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5 hours ago
Blinken to make fifth visit to Middle East since October 7 Hamas attacks
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to the Middle East from Sunday to Thursday for a fifth time since the October 7 Hamas attacks to support talks on a new truce between Israel and the Palestinian militant group. He is due to visit Qatar, Egypt, Israel, the occupied West Bank and Saudi Arabia.
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5 hours ago
US, UK strike dozens of Houthi targets in Yemen
The United States and Britain struck dozens of targets in Yemen on Saturday in response to repeated attacks on shipping by Iran-backed Houthi rebels that have disrupted global trade and put lives at risk.
The joint air raids in Yemen come a day after a separate wave of unilateral US strikes against Iran-linked targets in Iraq and Syria that were carried out in response to the killing of three US soldiers in Jordan on January 28.
It is the third time that British and American forces have jointly targeted the Huthis and the United States has also carried out a series of air raids against them on its own, but the rebels’ attacks have persisted.
Saturday’s strikes hit “36 Huthi targets across 13 locations in Yemen in response to the Huthis’ continued attacks against international and commercial shipping as well as naval vessels transiting the Red Sea,” the United States, Britain and other countries that provided support for the operation said in a statement.
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5 hours ago
Scores killed in overnight Israeli strikes as Hamas considers Gaza truce proposal
Scores were reported killed in overnight strikes across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, after Hamas said it needed more time to consider a proposal that would halt its war with Israel in the besieged Palestinian territory.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said early Sunday that at least 92 people had been killed overnight, including in what the group’s media office said was an Israeli bombardment of a kindergarten in Rafah where displaced people were sheltering.
International mediators are making a full-court press to seal a proposed truce deal thrashed out last week in Paris.
But a top Hamas official in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, said on Saturday that the proposed framework was missing some details.
Hamas needed more time to “announce our position”, Hamdan said, “based on… our desire to put an end as quickly as possible to the aggression that our people suffer”.
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Welcome to our liveblog on the Israel-Hamas war.
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Yesterday’s key developments:
Syria’s foreign ministry on Saturday condemned overnight retaliatory US air strikes against more than 85 targets in Syria and Iraq linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the militias it backs. “What (the US) committed has served to fuel conflict in the Middle East in a very dangerous way,” Damascus’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Hamas has begun to resurface in areas where Israel withdrew the bulk of its forces a month ago, deploying police officers and making partial salary payments to some of its civil servants in Gaza City in recent days, four residents and a senior official in the militant group said Saturday.
Israel said it attacked “over 3,400 targets of Hezbollah in all of southern Lebanon”, since the war against Hamas in Gaza began in October, Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said Saturday, adding that more than 200 “terrorists and commanders” had been killed.
About casualty figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry:
Gaza’s health ministry collects data from the enclave’s hospitals and the Palestinian Red Crescent.
The health ministry does not report how Palestinians were killed, whether from Israeli airstrikes and artillery barrages or errant Palestinian rocket fire. It describes all casualties as victims of “Israeli aggression”.
The ministry also does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Throughout four wars and numerous skirmishes between Israel and Hamas, UN agencies have cited the Hamas-run health ministry’s death tolls in regular reports. The International Committee of the Red Cross and Palestinian Red Crescent also use the numbers.
In the aftermath of war, the UN humanitarian office has published final death tolls based on its own research into medical records. The UN’s counts have largely been consistent with the Gaza health ministry’s, with small discrepancies.
For more on the Gaza health ministry’s tolls, click here.
(FRANCE 24 with AP)
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP & Reuters)
