Israel vows to kill Yahya Sinwar as he’s named Hamas leader – latest

More than 39,677 Palestinians have been killed and 91,645 have been injured since the war began on 7 October, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry has said.

The UK will pledge £6m towards aid in Gaza, as a Foreign Office minister calls for peace in the Middle East during a visit to Jordan.

Anneliese Dodds, the international development minister, has pledged a package of food, water, health, education and wellbeing support for Gazans.She is visiting Jordan to meet ministers and discuss how the UK and its ally can work together on brokering a peace in the Israel-Hamas conflict.

As she embarked on her visit, Ms Dodds said: “Now is the time for calm, if we are to achieve lasting peace and stability in the Middle East. It is in no-one’s interests for tensions to escalate and spread across the wider region.”

Among the projects the UK funding will support is the vaccination and immunisation of more than 20,000 children, recreational activities for more than 8,000 school-aged children to boost their wellbeing and help for more than 55,000 people in Gaza to access clean water and sanitation.

The minister added: “We are seeing the humanitarian impact of conflict on Gazans. This new UK support will provide a lifeline for vulnerable families, giving them access to basic food and water during a desperate time.”

Rumours of a possible evacuation operation from Lebanon have given German citizens there a false sense of security, Germany’s foreign ministry has warned – urging them to leave the country immediately.

“The time now has come to leave Lebanon,” the spokesperson said, calling on citizens to organise their own exit even if this means travelling via Turkey or paying high prices for flights.

A spokesperson for the defence ministry declined to give details on preparations for possible evacuations in the event of an escalation in the Middle East conflict.

Hezbollah is expected to retaliate after Israel assassinated its commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut last Tuesday.

Protesters have disrupted an Israeli Supreme Court hearing about a shadowy military facility where Israel has held Palestinian detainees throughout the war in Gaza, after nine soldiers were detained for questioning over allegations of the “substantial abuse” and sexual assault of a detainee.

Those arrests prompted an outcry from right-wing government officials, and several hundred protesters swarmed the military base where the detained soldiers were held, calling the arrests an affront to their service.

The protesters on Wednesday yelled “Shame!” as the lawyer for a number of Israeli human rights groups argued that the Sde Teiman facility should be closed permanently over repeated allegations of detainee abuse.

Following the accusations, Israel said it was transferring the bulk of Palestinian detainees out of Sde Teiman and upgrading it. According to testimony during the hearing, there are currently around 30 Palestinians being held at Sde Teiman on a daily basis. Human rights groups are demanding it is shut down.

The US ambassador to Japan will skip this year’s memorial service of the American atomic bombing of Nagasaki because Israel was not invited.

Rahm Emanuel will not attend the event because it was “politicised” by Nagasaki’s decision not to invite Israel, the US embassy said. He will instead honor the victims of the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima on Friday at a ceremony at a Buddhist temple in Tokyo.

Nagasaki mayor Shiro Suzuki announced last week that Israel was not invited, noting concern for “possible unforeseen situations”. Nagasaki hoped to conduct the ceremony “in a peaceful and solemn atmosphere,” he said.

A US-led coalition carried out two airstrikes late on Tuesday in Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen, the Iran-backed group has said.

The Houthis’ military media office said the strikes occurred in the Taiz province without providing further detail. There was no immediate comment from the US military.

The Houthis have launched several long-range missile and drone attacks targeting Israel since the start of the war in Gaza and have attacked international shipping in the Red Sea, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians. A US-led coalition began launching airstrikes against the Houthis in January.

After a rare direct hit on Tel Aviv in July killed one person and wounded 10, Israel responded with airstrikes on Yemen which Houthi health authorities said killed six people and wounded more than 80. The Houthis paused their attacks for around two weeks but launched a missile at a container ship over the weekend.

Fighters backed by Iran and the Syrian government have attacked areas controlled by US-backed fighters in eastern Syria, killing at least two people and wounding others, officials have said.

The clashes in Syria’s eastern province of Deir el-Zour, which borders Iraq, are the most intense in nearly a year in areas where hundreds of US troops have been deployed since 2015, and come during high tensions in the region after the presumed Israeli killings of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders in Beirut and Tehran.

Syrian government forces and Iran-backed fighters are deployed on the west bank of the Euphrates River in Deir el-Zour, while members of the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces control the east banks of the river.

The SDF said “Syrian regime-backed mercenaries” attacked the villages of Dhiban, Latwa and Abu Hamam on the eastern bank, starting late on Tuesday. Fighting was ongoing Wednesday.

Dhiban is few kilometers from al-Omar oil field that houses a base housing SDF fighters and US troops, and Kurdish-led authorities imposed a curfew in areas they control on the east bank of the river, saying that anyone that violates the order will be referred to judicial authorities.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said that the SDF brought reinforcements to the area as the fighting continues, and that the clashes and shelling had left two people dead and five others wounded.

Israel has vowed to kill Yahya Sinwar after he was announced the new leader of Hamas, having also masterminded the 7 October attacks.

Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari told Al-Arabiya: “There is only one place for Yahya Sinwar, and it is beside Mohammed Deif and the rest of the October 7 terrorists.

“That is the only place we’re preparing and intending for him.”

Israel announced last week it had killed Deif, one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing, in an air raid in southern Gaza.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken has insisted that the newly announced leader of Hamas “has been and remains the primary decider” in securing a ceasefire deal in Gaza.

The Palestinian militant group chose Yahya Sinwar as its new leader on Tuesday, after political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed last week in Iran by a presumed Israeli strike. Mr Sinwar is the group’s top official in Gaza who masterminded the 7 October attacks in Israel.

Reacting to his appointment, Mr Blinken said Sinwar “has been and remains the primary decider when it comes to concluding the cease-fire”.

He added: “And so I think this only underscores the fact that it’s really on him to decide whether to move forward with a cease-fire that manifestly will help so many Palestinians in desperate need, women, children, men who are caught in a crossfire … It really is on him.”

Turkey will submit today a declaration of intervention in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague, Reuters reported citing a diplomatic source.

The declaration will happen at 1.30pm GMT, the source added, after foreign minister Hakan Fidan said this week that Turkey would make the declaration.

“Turkey’s intervention pushes the international community to recognise and address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” the source said.

In May, Turkey said it had decided to join the case launched by South Africa as it stepped up measures against Israel over the assault on Gaza, adding that its bid would follow the necessary legal preparations.