Nearly 300 arrests of Assad regime supporters since Thursday in several regions of Syria | LIVE

That concludes our live coverage of events in the region for today. Thanks for joining us and goodnight.

Gaza

The Government Media Office in Gaza shared dozens of data points that illustrate the devastating toll Israel has exacted on the Gaza Strip and the people who live there.

Al Jazeera shared a selection of the numbers released by the government:

• 1,413 Palestinian families wiped out with all family members – numbering 5,455 people – killed

• 17,818 children killed

• 238 newborns killed in Israeli attacks

• 853 infants killed

• 44 people dead of malnutrition and starvation

• Six people dead due to extreme cold in displacement tents, including five babies

• 12,287 women killed by Israeli attacks

• 1,068 medical staff killed

• 94 Civil Defence personnel killed by Israeli attacks

• 520 bodies retrieved from seven mass graves dug by the Israeli army inside hospitals

• 216 shelter and displacement centres targeted by Israel

• 35,060 children living without one or both parents

Israel

The Israeli government approved the extension of assistance for displaced residents of communities in northern Israel along the border with Lebanon and in southern Israel along the Gaza border until Feb. 28, 2025. Haaretz reports. Following the implementation of a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, tens of thousands of residents from southern Lebanon immediately returned home, while in Israel, there were reports of many people wary of going back north, untrusting of the truce, and demonstrations held to demand a stronger guarantee of security before residents would return.

Lebanon

Our correspondent in southern Lebanon reports that the Israeli army is continuing to rig homes and building in the village of Mais al-Jabal, Marjayoun district, with explosives and detonate them. A violent explosion was also heard in Maroun al-Rass, Bint Jbeil district among several explosions also heard in other villages in both districts.

Lebanon

Civil Defense has pulled the remains of five victims of Israeli bombardment from the rubble of the village of Khiam, in Marjayoun, our correspondent in the region reports. Four of the victims were found in the eastern quarter, and one in the old prison area. They were all taken to the morgue at the Marjayoun government hospital. Two bodies were also recovered on Friday.

Civil Defense search operations are set to continue tomorrow, Monday, for the third week running. Dozens of people have been missing in the southern Lebanese village since the Israeli ground offensive launched in late October. Khiam was the site of particularly fierce battles between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli soldiers who were unable to take the town during the fighting but advanced into its outer neighborhoods during the cease-fire. The Lebanese Army was finally able to move in in mid-December allowing for the facilitation of search and rescue operations.

Gaza

The Israeli army has announced that it will not allow the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip — recently besieged, severely damaged and emptied of its patients and staff — to resume its activities, Haaretz reports. The army said that it has "better oversight" of activities within the nearby Indonesian Hospital, to where almost all medical operations at the Kamal Adwan Hospital have been transferred.

On Friday, Israeli forces stormed the hospital and arrested over 240 people, including the hospital’s director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiyeh, with whom contact has been lost since the raid and reportedly remains in detention. Al Jazeera reported, citing medical sources, that several hospital staff members were burned to death in the fires set by Israel's military in the facility.

With the closure of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia has effectively become the only major functioning hospital north of Gaza City. The Indonesian Hospital also sustained damage from Israeli military operations last week, but continues to function.

Gaza

The Israeli army says approximately "five projectiles" were fired from northern Gaza into Israeli territory earlier today, amid an ongoing Israeli offensive in the largely destroyed north of the besieged Strip, Haaretz reports.

"Following the sirens that sounded at 4:26 p.m. [local time] in the area of communities near the Gaza Strip, approximately five projectiles were identified crossing from the northern Gaza Strip into Israeli territory," the military said in a statement, cited by AFP. "Two projectiles were intercepted" and the rest likely fell in unpopulated areas, it said.

Syria

Eleven people, mostly civilians, were killed in an explosion at an arms depot near Adra in the Damascus countryside, in a strike blamed on Israel, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. 

Gaza

Health authorities in the Gaza Strip have announced the death of a baby less than three weeks old due to the “intense cold” currently being experienced in the Palestinian territory, devastated by more than a year of war. Gaza's Health Ministry said in a statement that Joumaa al-Batran, who was just 20 days old, “died due to the intense cold,” while his twin brother Ali remains in intensive care in a local hospital.

Marwan al-Hamas, head of Gaza's field hospitals, confirmed the death and said that five infants had now died in recent weeks in the Palestinian coastal strip “due to the cold.”

Gaza

The Israeli army has announced that its planes have struck the al-Wafa hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip, reports Haaretz, claiming to have targeted Hamas operatives there. The army also bombed the top floor of al-Ahli hospital in the north of the enclave.

The Israeli army informed the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) “that the safety of peacekeepers could not be guaranteed in the vicinity of Taybeh and that patrols should avoid this area,” said Kandice Ardiel, deputy director of the UNIFIL press office, in a statement to the National News Agency. UNIFIL has a base east of Taybeh.

“The safety of peacekeepers is an absolute priority and we will do nothing to expose them to unnecessary risks,” the official stressed. She also reminded the Israeli army of its obligation under Resolution 1701 to ensure the security and freedom of movement of U.N. troops throughout the area of operations in southern Lebanon.

Gaza

The Health Ministry in Gaza announced that at least 30 people had been killed in the last 24 hours in this Palestinian territory, the scene of more than 14 months of war with Israel.

This brings the total death toll to 45,514, it said in a statement, adding that 108,189 people had also been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war, triggered by an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Gaza

Seven people were killed and others seriously injured in an Israeli strike on the upper floor of al-Wafa hospital in central Gaza City, Reuters reported, citing Palestinian civil defense.

Syria

Nearly 300 people have been arrested in just a few days in Syria by the security forces of the new authorities, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), as part of security operations against Bashar al-Assad's “militias.”

Without giving figures, the official Sana news agency reported, on Thursday and yesterday, “arrests” targeting “members of Assad's militias,” in the province of Hama and in Latakia, on the west coast, where an operation resulted in the seizure of “weapons and ammunition.”

Among those arrested were “informers from the regime's former security services, armed men loyal to the regime and pro-Iranian, soldiers and lower-ranking officers, who have been found to have committed murder and torture,” said the director of the SOHR.

A former Israeli hostage, Kaid Farhan al-Qadi, rescued last August from a tunnel in Tel al-Sultan near Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, had told his rescuers that a few weeks before he was rescued he had heard a woman speaking Hebrew, Haaretz reported. But the armed forces continued to operate in the area, Channel 12 reported last night.

Qadi had repeated his testimony to investigators from the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence service, but was ignored. Two days later, six hostages, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Almog Sarusi, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi and Ori Danino, were killed a few 100 meters from where he had been rescued, Haaretz continues, adding that the Israeli army did not react.

Israel's Health Ministry claims in a report to the U.N. that hostages freed last year from the Gaza Strip, including children, suffered physical and sexual violence during their captivity.

The document is based on testimonies from former hostages who claim to have been burned, beaten, deprived of food and water, or sexually abused by their captors. It is due to be handed over later this week to Alice Jill Edwards, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, the Israeli Health Ministry said in a statement.

Occupied West Bank

A Palestinian journalist was killed in clashes between Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces and gunmen in the Jenin camp in the occupied West Bank on Saturday night. The family of the journalist, identified as Shada al-Sabaj, claims she was killed by sniper fire from PA security forces.

A spokesperson for the security forces said that, according to an initial investigation, PA security forces were not present at the scene at the time of the incident. The Palestinian Journalists' Union has called for an independent investigation into the circumstances of his death.

Gaza

Israel claimed yesterday to have arrested the director of a hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip, which has now been emptied of patients and staff, according to the World Health Organization, which said it was “appalled.”

The Kamal Adwan hospital was the last major hospital still operating in the north of the Palestinian territory, devastated by more than a year of war between Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas. It is now “empty” and “out of service,” said the WHO, following a major offensive by the Israeli army.

Emmanuel Macron, who also spoke in calls with the Egyptian and Jordanian leaders about the presidential elections in Lebanon, also stressed that the “fall of Bashar al-Assad was an opportunity for Syria and for the whole region,” citing in particular the “protection of minorities” and “continuing the fight against terrorism.”

The French president also expressed France's “readiness” to pursue “joint humanitarian actions” with Jordan to deliver “aid directly to the Gaza Strip.”

The two countries have already carried out several humanitarian operations by air. Emmanuel Macron also “expressed his willingness to work with all regional partners for the day after [the end of the conflict] and for the effective implementation of the two-state solution, notably in the context of the summit co-organized with Saudi Arabia next June.”

Gaza

French President Emmanuel Macron has stressed the “urgent need” for “massive humanitarian aid” to Gaza, which is facing a “catastrophic situation” and “intolerable human losses,” the Elysée Palace said in a press release.

It is “more urgent than ever after 15 months of conflict to obtain the release of all hostages held by Hamas, to establish a permanent cease-fire and to allow humanitarian aid to reach Gazans on a massive scale,” he said during the phone calls.

South Lebanon

The Lebanese Army evacuated the few families still in Qantara, in the Marjayoun district, fearing that the Israeli army would again advance on this village, following a deployment on Thursday which extended as far as the strategic Wadi Hujeir valley.

This decision came after the destruction by explosives of buildings in the nearby villages of Rabb Thalathin and Markaba, and as five Israeli tanks advanced from Markaba towards Tallousseh, in the same region. Qantara lies almost nine kilometers west of the Blue Line, opposite Metoula, while Tallousseh is less than five kilometers away, opposite Kiryat Shmona.

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of events in the Middle East, including the war in Gaza, which has entered its 450th day, and its repercussions in the region, notably in Lebanon and Yemen. We'll also be following the latest developments in Syria, three weeks after the fall of the Assad regime.