By Abdul Adil
(AA, Al Jazeera, Wafa, NNA, The Muslim News):
GAZA
Seven more Palestinians were killed by Israeli army fire on Wednesday in Gaza, pushing up the overall death toll from Israel’s destructive war since October 2023 to 48,515, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday. Six were killed on Tuesday.
At least six Palestinians were killed and others injured in new Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, in the latest violation of a ceasefire agreement.
Five people lost their lives and several others were injured in an Israeli airstrike targeting a civilian gathering east of Gaza City, medics told Anadolu.
According to witnesses, an Israeli drone struck a group of Palestinians in the Netzarim area near Gaza City’s southeastern border as they gathered near a destroyed home.
A Palestinian woman was also killed in another drone strike in the Shouka village, east of Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip, a medical source said.
A ministry statement said that the toll included five people, whose bodies were recovered from the rubble in the last 24 hours.
The ministry said 14 more injured Palestinians were transferred to hospitals, taking the number of injuries to 111,941 in the Israeli onslaught.
“Many victims are still trapped under the rubble and on the roads as rescuers are unable to reach them,” the ministry added.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said Wednesday that no Palestinians will be expelled from the besieged Gaza Strip even as he continues to pursue his plan to take over the coastal enclave.
“Nobody is expelling any Palestinians,” Trump said in response to a reporter’s question as he hosted Irish leader Micheal Martin in the Oval Office.
The UN special rapporteur on the right to food on Wednesday warned that Israel is carrying out an unprecedentedly rapid campaign of starvation in Gaza, calling it “the fastest in modern history.”
“How is Israel able to starve 2.3 million people so quickly and so completely?” Michael Fakhri asked in a joint press briefing alongside other UN special rapporteurs in Geneva.
“This is the fastest starvation campaign in modern history,” Fakhri said.
As the entry of all humanitarian aid into Gaza is stopped by Israel, he said: “This is not a ceasefire by any definition. This is a slowing down of military violence, but … unfolding of death through starvation.”
Three more Palestinians were wounded by Israeli artillery shelling in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday despite a ceasefire agreement, medics said.
Witnesses said Israeli tanks fired more than 10 shells on the Shabura refugee camp in central Rafah.
Medics said three people were injured in the attack and were transferred to a hospital for medical attention.
Israeli shelling was also reported in the southeastern parts of Deir al-Balah city in central Gaza, but no information was yet available about injuries.
According to witnesses, scores of Palestinians were displaced from eastern Khan Younis by Israeli army fire toward their tents in the area.
Despite the ceasefire, the Gaza local authorities reported almost daily ceasefire violations by the Israeli army.
Palestinian authorities said that at least 137 people have been killed in Israeli attacks since the ceasefire came into force in November.
Witnesses said Israeli army forces stationed in the eastern areas of Khan Younis in southern Gaza also opened fire toward Palestinian homes in the area.
No information was yet available about injuries
Gaza’s death toll from Israel’s destructive war since October 2023 has reached 48,503, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday.
A ministry statement said the toll included the bodies of 32 Palestinians recovered from the rubble and four people killed by Israeli army fire in the last 24 hours.
The ministry said 14 more injured Palestinians were transferred to hospitals, taking the number of injuries to 111,927 in the Israeli onslaught.
“Many victims are still trapped under the rubble and on the roads as rescuers are unable to reach them,” the ministry said.
WEST BANK
Four Palestinians were killed in an ongoing Israeli military raid in the northern West Bank on Tuesday, the Health Ministry said.
A ministry statement said that three people were shot dead by Israeli forces at dawn in Jenin city.
A 58-year-old woman was also killed in Israeli fire in the same city.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said early Tuesday that its teams had received the body of a Palestinian woman from the Israeli army at the Jalameh checkpoint, north of Jenin city.
Palestinian activists published footage of Israeli soldiers transferring the woman’s body in a black bag from one of Jenin’s neighborhoods.
Witnesses earlier said that Israeli forces besieged a house near the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank and blew up another in Haifa Street in the city.
The new deaths came as the Israeli army has continued a deadly military offensive in the northern West Bank since Jan. 21, killing at least 69 Palestinians and displacing thousands.
The Israeli army detained at least 30 Palestinians in fresh military raids in the occupied West Bank, according to prisoners’ affairs groups on Tuesday.
Former prisoners were among the Palestinians arrested from different areas across the West Bank, the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner Society said in a joint statement.
Israeli army forces held over 200 people in the town of Azzun, east of Qalqilya in the northern West Bank, for field interrogation before setting them free, the statement said.
The arrests came amid Israeli military escalation in the northern West Bank, where at least 68 people have been killed and thousands displaced since Jan. 21.
The new arrests brought the number of Palestinians detained by the Israeli army in the West Bank since October 2023 to over 14,500, including those who were released after being arrested, according to Palestinian figures.
The figure does not include those arrested from the Gaza Strip whose numbers are estimated to be in the thousands.
Palestine rejected on Tuesday an Israeli request to roof the courtyard of the Ibrahimi Mosque in the West Bank city of Hebron.
“We reject the occupation’s request to roof the mosque courtyard as it harms its historical and heritage status and infringes on the exclusive Palestinian powers on the site,” Minister of Endowments and Religious Affairs Mohammad Najm said in a statement.
Najm said his ministry’s authority includes carrying out “restoration and repair works at the mosque, including its occupied section.”
The minister stressed that his ministry “will not accept, in any form, any diminishing of its authority” over the mosque.
After the massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers in 1994 inside the mosque by Jewish extremist settler, Baruch Goldstein, Israeli authorities divided the mosque complex between Muslim and Jewish worshippers.
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee decided in July 2017 to include the Ibrahimi Mosque and the old city of Hebron on its World Heritage List.
Hebron is home to roughly 160,000 Palestinian Muslims and about 500 Jewish settlers. The latter live in a series of Jewish-only enclaves heavily guarded by Israeli troops.
LEBANON
Israeli drones violated Lebanese airspace on Wednesday, in the latest violation of a ceasefire agreement.
Drones flew at low altitude over the capital Beirut and its southern suburbs and Hermel town and its surrounding villages in eastern Lebanon, the state news agency NNA reported.
Israeli forces also conducted a sweeping operation using machine guns on Hamamis Hill in Marjeyoun in southern Lebanon, NNA said.
The violations came a day after Israel handed over four Lebanese citizens held by Tel Aviv to the Red Cross on Tuesday. A fifth Lebanese prisoner is expected to be released later on Wednesday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the release “a goodwill gesture” toward Lebanon’s newly elected President Joseph Aoun, according to a statement from his office.
There is no information available regarding the total number of Lebanese prisoners currently held by Israel.
Lebanon continues to demand Israeli withdrawal from five border outposts and the release of Lebanese prisoners who were taken during the recent conflict with Hezbollah.
One Lebanese was killed in an Israeli drone strike in southern Lebanon on Tuesday despite a ceasefire agreement, the Health Ministry said.
A ministry statement said the fatality was reported in the strike that targeted a civilian car on Deir El-Zahrani road in Sidon.
The state news agency NNA confirmed the attack but did not provide any details about the person inside the car.
A fragile ceasefire has been in place in Lebanon since Nov. 27, ending months of cross-border warfare between Israel and Hezbollah that escalated into a full-scale conflict last September.
Lebanese authorities have reported nearly 1,100 Israeli violations of the ceasefire, including the deaths of at least 85 people and injuries to more than 280 others.
Under the ceasefire deal, Israel was supposed to fully withdraw from southern Lebanon by Jan. 26, but the deadline was extended to Feb. 18 after Israel refused to comply. It still maintains a military presence at five border outposts.
SYRIA
The Israeli army has established two illegal military posts on the top of Mount Hermon (Jabal al-Sheikh) in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, Israeli media said on Wednesday.
According to Israeli Army Radio, one of the posts was an abandoned Syrian site that Israel had occupied.
“Israel will not leave the Syrian Mount Hermon until further notice,” the radio said.
A United Nations post manned by a force from Nepal is erected near the two Israeli military posts, but the UN force does not engage with the Israeli army, the broadcaster said.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz who toured the area said that the army is prepared “to stay in Syria for an unlimited amount of time.”
“We will hold the security area in Hermon and make sure that all the security zone in southern Syria is demilitarized and clear of weapons and threats,” Katz said, claiming “to protect the Druze” community in southwestern Syria.
[Photo: A Palestinian family in Sheikh Ajlin neighborhood in the south of Gaza City break their fast on the rubble of their house demolished by Israeli forces, on March 12, 2025 in Gaza City, Gaza. In the midst of the devastation caused by the war, family members show solidarity by breaking their fast together amidst crumbling walls and debris as they try to survive under difficult conditions. Photojournalist: Ali Jadallah\AA]
