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The director of the Kamal Adwan hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip announced that five members of his staff, including a doctor, had been killed in a raid by the Israeli army, which made no immediate comment.
“An Israeli strike martyred five of the hospital's staff,” Dr. Hossam Abou Safiya said in a statement, adding that they included a pediatrician, a laboratory technician, two paramedics and a maintenance worker.
The Arab League has called on Iran not to stir up “discord” in Syria after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Tehran, reports AFP.
The Arab League, which reinstated Assad in 2023 after a decade of isolation, stressed the need to “respect Syria's sovereignty, territorial integrity and stability, limit arms in the hands of the state, disband all armed formations and reject all destabilizing foreign interventions.”
It also said it “rejects Iranian statements aimed at stirring up discord among the Syrian people,” without specifying which statements it was referring to.
“The aggression against Yemen targeted civilian and economic infrastructure and crucial facilities, in a flagrant violation of international and humanitarian laws,” Hezbollah said via its channel, Al-Manar.
“This aggression is the result of the enemy's [Israel's] failure to confront Yemen's military strikes, as well as Yemen's consistent stance of support for the cause of the Palestinian people,” the party added. “Our peoples have no choice but to redouble their strength and resistance.”
Hamas has condemned Israeli strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
“Hamas condemns the brutal terrorist aggression carried out by the Zionist enemy against our brothers in Yemen, targeting civilian sites including Sanaa airport and the port of Hodeida,” the movement denounced in a statement quoted by AFP. “This attack is an extension of the lawlessness and terrorism shown by the [Israeli] occupation government against the Palestinian people and other peoples of the region.”
A fourth child has died in Gaza as a result of extreme cold over the past 72 hours, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
Medical sources said the baby died after temperatures plummeted, while humanitarian conditions are dire in the enclave in which Israel has been waging war for over a year.
The security forces of Syria's new authorities have arrested a senior official of the deposed regime in Tartous, in the west of the country, in an operation marked by deadly clashes, reported the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) quoted by AFP.
General Mohammed Kanjo Hassan, head of military justice under Bashar al-Assad and “responsible for numerous death sentences” in the notorious Sednaya prison near Damascus, was arrested in the locality of Khirbet al-Ma'zah with 20 members of his close guard, according to the SOHR.

A woman reacts during the funeral of members of the press. (Credit: Eyad Baba/AFP)
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian will visit Moscow on Jan. 17, according to the Iranian ambassador to Russia quoted by Reuters. He will sign a “cooperation agreement” with Vladimir Putin, he adds without further details.
Iran has condemned Israeli strikes against targets of Tehran's allied Houthi rebels in Yemen, calling them a “crime,” reports AFP.
“These aggressions are a clear violation of international peace and security and a crime against the heroic people of Yemen, who have spared no effort to support the oppressed people of Palestine in the face of occupation and genocide,” Iranian foreign affairs spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei said in a statement.
“As we were about to board our flight out of Sanaa, about two hours ago, the airport came under aerial bombardment,” reports WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on his X account.
“One of the crew members of our plane was injured. At least two people are reported to have been killed at the airport. The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge, located a few meters from where we were, and the runway have been damaged,” he adds.
“We'll have to wait for the damage to the airport to be repaired before we can set off again. My UN and WHO teams and I are safe and sound,” he concluded.
The Israeli army has confirmed “that it has carried out strikes in Yemen against Houthi targets,” AFP and Haaretz report.
The Israeli army has begun a second wave of strikes against targets in Yemen, according to Sky News Arabia reports cited by Haaretz.

A Palestinian sits in the middle of a damaged road after an Israeli military raid on Tulkarem, in the occupied West Bank, Dec. 26, 2024. (Credit: Mohammed Torokman/Reuters)
Israel struck the international airport in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, Haaretz reports. AFP reported strikes on Sanaa and Hodeida.
The Israeli army "is preparing for the possibility of remaining in south Lebanon beyond the 60 days stipulated in the cease-fire agreement," by which time all its forces are supposed to withdraw from the region, Haaretz reported, citing sources within the Israeli army.
The report specified that "this deadline will be respected unless the Lebanese army does not fulfill the obligations provided for in the agreement and does not manage to regain full control of south Lebanon." In such a scenario, the Israeli army "should remain on site until the Lebanese army can fulfill its commitments."
The Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's armed wing, said in a statement posted on Telegram that its fighters hit an Israeli army Merkava tank with an explosive device near a mosque south of the besieged Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City.
They also said that Palestinian fighters engaged an Israeli military infantry force at close range and caused casualties among the soldiers.
The head of pediatrics at a hospital in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory ravaged by more than a year of war with Israel, said three babies under a month old died in 48 hours this week from the cold.
"The most recent case was that of an innocent three-week-old baby girl brought to the emergency room with a significant drop in body temperature, which led to her death," Dr. Ahmed al-Farra told AFP on Wednesday.
The Gazan Health Ministry said at least 38 people had been killed in the past 24 hours in the Palestinian territory, the scene of more than 14 months of war with Israel.
This brings the total death toll to 45,399, he said in a statement, adding that 107,940 people had also been injured in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war, triggered by an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Abou Bilal and Em Bilal at their daughter's house in Kfar Zabad, Bekaa, two months after their displacement from south Lebanon, Dec. 8, 2023. (Credit: Marguerita Sejaan/L'Orient Today)
Born in 1944, Riad Khalifeh was forced to flee his village during the major conflicts that have affected south Lebanon over the past 80 years – the Nakba, the 1967 war, the Israeli occupation, 2006 and 2023/2024.
But he has "never experienced anything like" this year. As the Israeli army continues to maneuver in the south of the country, he told his story to L'Orient Today.
Read Khalifeh's story here.
Footage sent by L'Orient Today's correspondent shows Israeli soldiers deployed in the Wadi Hujeir reserve, monitoring the area. In another video, tanks can be seen at the side of a road, erecting a mound of earth and closing off a road linking Wadi Hujeir to Wadi Slouqi.
The operation launched during the day by the new Syrian authorities against "militias" loyal to Bashar al-Assad in the region of Tartous left three dead according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). The victims came from the ranks of "fighters loyal to the former regime."
In a statement, the Lebanese army denounced an Israeli "infiltration" "in several points" in south Lebanon, notably in Qantara, Adaisset Sl-Qousseir and Wadi Hujeir. The army accused Israel of "continuing to violate the cease-fire agreement and undermining the sovereignty of Lebanon."
In response, the Lebanese army has "reinforced its deployment in these areas," the command "is monitoring the situation with UNIFIL and the international committee monitoring the terms of the truce agreement."
About 20 family members of Israeli hostages held in Gaza have written to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and government ministers, accusing them of "violating their legal obligation to rescue the hostages" by failing to sign an agreement to secure their release, Haaretz reported. In a letter, written by two lawyers on their behalf, they warned that they would appeal to the Supreme Court if no action is taken.
The visit of the far-right Israeli Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to al-Aqsa was denounced as a "provocation" by the Palestinian Authority and Jordan.
"I went up this morning to the place of our sanctuary to pray for the safety of our soldiers, for the speedy return of all the hostages [held in Gaza] and for a total victory, with the help of God," the Minister of National Security posted on X with a photo of himself near the mosque.
Since entering government at the end of 2022, Itamar Ben Gvir has visited this disputed site, located in the sector of the Old City occupied and annexed by Israel, several times.
After the Israeli army arrested a man from Tebnine, Houssam Fawaz, during his passage through Wadi Hujeir, where the Israeli army is advancing, the latter was handed over by the Israelis to UNIFIL and the Lebanese Red Cross. Fawaz, who had been shot in the head before being abducted by the Israeli army, was transferred to a hospital aboard a Lebanese army ambulance.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said it was "concerned" by "the continued destruction" carried out by the Israeli army in southern Lebanon, despite a truce that came into effect nearly a month ago, reports AFP.
"It is concerning that Israeli forces continue to destroy residential areas, agricultural lands and road networks in southern Lebanon, in violation of resolution 1701," UNIFIL said in a statement. UNIFIL on Thursday reiterated its call for "the rapid withdrawal" of the Israeli army, as well as the "full implementation" of resolution 1701. "Any action that jeopardizes the fragile ceasefire must cease," UNIFIL said.
Security forces in Syria launched an operation in the western province of Tartous to pursue pro-Assad "militias," the state-run SANA news agency announced, the day after deadly clashes with armed men affiliated with the former regime.
The operation made it possible to "neutralize a certain number" of members of these "militias" loyal to Bashar al-Assad, Sana said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported several "arrests" in connection with the deadly fighting that shook Khirbet al-Ma'zah on Wednesday, as well as unprecedented demonstrations by the Alawite community from which the deposed president comes.
According to a security source quoted by L'Orient Today's correspondent, a man who had been missing since this morning was arrested by the Israeli army, who shot him. He had left Tebnine in the morning and had taken Wadi Hujeir.
The Lebanese army is heading towards the Kaakaïyet al-Jisr roadblock, in the direction of Wadi Hujeir, a strategic valley in which the Israeli army is advancing.
Thousands of Syrians from the Alawite minority from which deposed President Bashar al-Assad hails demonstrated yesterday in several cities in Syria after a video showing an attack on one of their shrines, with an NGO reporting that one protester was shot dead.
Thousands of Syrians demonstrated in Tartous, Banias, Jableh and Latakia in the west of the country, where the Alawite community, a branch of Shiite Islam, is very well established, as well as in Homs.
Fourteen members of the security forces were killed yesterday in Syria, according to the Interior Ministry, in fighting with armed men who were trying to prevent the arrest of an official of Sednaya prison, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which counted 17 deaths in total.
"14 members of the Interior Ministry were killed and 10 others injured after ... a cunning ambush by the elders of the criminal regime" in the province of Tartous "while they were carrying out their tasks of maintaining security and safety," wrote the new Interior Minister Mohammed Abdel Rahman, in a statement.
A Palestinian channel affiliated with Islamic Jihad announced the death of five of its journalists, killed at dawn during an Israeli strike in the center of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army claiming for its part to have targeted a cell of the armed group.
In a statement, local television channel Al-Quds Today said it mourned its "five martyred journalists Faisal Abu Al-Qumsan, Ayman Al-Jadi, Ibrahim Al-Sheikh Khalil, Fadi Hassouna and Mohammed Al-Lada'a, who were killed in a Zionist attack targeting [an] external broadcasting vehicle." According to the outlet, its employees were killed in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nousseirat "while carrying out their journalistic and humanitarian duty."
The Israeli army blew up houses in Kfar Kila (Marjayoun) and fired a missile on the outskirts of Khiam. However, the missile did not explode.
At around 7:00 a.m., Israeli army vehicles advanced towards Qantara and Wadi Hujeir, several kilometers from the Blue Line. Wadi Hujeir is a strategic valley connecting several regions, which the Israeli army had not managed to enter before the cease-fire, as part of its ground offensive launched on Sept. 30. It has now advanced there unopposed, forcing residents of surrounding villages, including Qantara, to flee the area.
The Lebanese army closed the road to Wadi Hujeir, on the Kaakaïyet al-Jisr side, according to L'Orient Today's correspondent. At the same time, Israeli drones are flying over the area.
Several municipalities, including Majdal Selm and Touline, called on their residents not to use the road connecting the valleys of Wadi Hujeir and Wadi Slouqi as well as the secondary roads going to Qabrikha.
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