Israeli strikes early yesterday killed 18 people in Gaza, including four who were sheltering in a tented camp for displaced Palestinians inside a hospital complex, while a Palestinian militant fatally stabbed two people in a Tel Aviv suburb.
Tensions have soared following nearly 10 months of war in Gaza and the killing of two senior militants in separate strikes in Lebanon and Iran last week. Those killings brought threats of revenge from Iran and its allies and raised fears of an even more destructive regional war.
A woman in her 70s and an 80-year-old man were killed in the stabbing and two other men were wounded, Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service and a nearby hospital said.
Photo: AFP
The police said the attack was carried out by a Palestinian militant, who was “neutralized.”
The rescuers said the wounded were found in three different locations, each about 500m apart.
Police initially said they were searching for other suspects, but later ruled out the possibility of there having been more than one assailant.
Israel has been bracing for retaliation after the killing of a senior Hezbollah commander in a strike in Lebanon and Hamas’ top political leader in an attack in Iran’s capital last week.
In Gaza, an Israeli strike earlier yesterday hit a tented camp housing displaced Palestinians in the courtyard of al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, killing four people, including a woman, and injuring others, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said.
An Associated Press journalist filmed men rushing to the scene to help the wounded and retrieve bodies, while trying to extinguish a fire.
The Israeli military said it targeted a Palestinian militant in the strike, which it said caused secondary explosions, “indicating the presence of weaponry in the area.”
The hospital in Deir al-Balah is the main medical facility operating in central Gaza, and thousands of people have taken shelter there after fleeing their homes.
A separate strike on a home near Deir al-Balah killed a girl and her parents, the hospital said.
Another strike flattened a house in northern Gaza, killing at least eight people, including three children, their parents and their grandmother, the health ministry said.
Another three people were killed in a strike on a vehicle in Gaza City, said the Civil Defense — first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported