The Israeli army is to demolish 25 residential buildings in the north West Bank’s Nur Shams refugee camp later this week, local authorities told AFP yesterday.

Hamas’ chief negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya said yesterday that a targeted assassination by Israel on Saturday of one of the group’s senior commanders threatens the “viability of the truce” in the enclave.

International troops could be deployed in the Gaza Strip as early as next month to form a UN-authorised stabilisation force, two US officials told Reuters, but it remains unclear how Palestinian militant group Hamas will be disarmed.

The expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is at its highest level since at least 2017, when the United Nations began tracking such data, according to a report by the UN chief seen by AFP on Friday.

Plans for nearly 47,390 housing units were advanced, approved, or tendered, the report said

A top Hamas leader told Qatari news channel Al Jazeera that the group is open to a weapons “freeze”, but rejects the demand for disarmament put forward in the US-sponsored peace plan for Gaza.

Israel launched a series of strikes on southern Lebanon yesterday, Lebanese state media reported, with the Israeli army saying it hit a Hezbollah training centre and other targets.

Israeli forces account for 43 percent of the total

The nearly two-month-old ceasefire in the Gaza Strip will not be complete until Israeli troops withdraw from the Palestinian territory under a peace plan backed by Washington and the UN, mediator Qatar’s prime minister said yesterday.

Israeli warplanes launched a series of raids targeting the eastern areas of Gaza City yesterday, as settlers cut water pipelines in Khirbet ad-Dir in the Jordan Valley of the occupied West Bank.

Israeli forces yesterday carried out demolition and destruction on residential buildings behind the so-called yellow line in the eastern areas of Gaza City.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said that 10 Palestinians were injured on Saturday in clashes with Israeli settlers near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza on Saturday said more than 70,000 people have been killed since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted more than two years ago.

At least 13 Syrians were killed and 25 others wounded yesterday in Israeli artillery and missile attacks on the town of Beit Jinn, southwest of Syria’s capital, Damascus.

Israeli forces launched airstrikes in southern and central Gaza, hitting areas beyond the yellow line despite ceasefire terms.

Israel’s war in Gaza has ravaged the Palestinian territory’s economy and is threatening its very survival, the United Nations warned yesterday, calling for “immediate and substantial” international intervention.

Israeli drone strikes in Gaza’s Khan Younis killed at least four Palestinians yesterday morning, hospital sources said.

Israel has violated the United States-brokered Gaza ceasefire at least 497 times in 44 days, killing hundreds of Palestinians since the ceasefire came into effect on October 10, according to the Gaza Government Media Office.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said 21 people were killed and dozens more wounded in multiple Israeli air strikes on the Palestinian territory yesterday, further straining the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas.

Israel’s military yesterday carried out a wave of attacks across central and southern Gaza, including in eastern Khan Younis, central Gaza’s Bureij and Maghazi camps and the southern city of Rafah.