Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” in the Gaza Strip in a report documenting the 14-month conflict published on Thursday.

The report documents 41 attacks on MSF staff including airstrikes on health facilities and direct fire on humanitarian convoys, AFP reported. The NGO said it was forced to evacuate hospitals and health centres on 17 occasions.

“We are seeing clear signs of ethnic cleansing as Palestinians are forcibly displaced, trapped and bombed,” said Christopher Lockyear, MSF’s secretary general. Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations that its campaign in Gaza amounts to genocide.

MSF’s report, entitled “Gaza: Life in a Death Trap”, said the siege of the Palestinian territory has drastically reduced humanitarian aid, with only 37 trucks authorised daily in October 2024, compared with 500 before the conflict.

The north of the territory, particularly the Jabalia camp, has been undergoing an “extremely violent” offensive since early October, MSF said.

The NGOs medical teams have carried out more than 27,500 consultations and 7,500 surgical operations in one year. They note a rapid spread of disease in a population that had been 90 percent displaced and living in wretched conditions.

The organisation also denounced the blocking of medical evacuations, with Israel having authorised only 1.6 percent of requests between May and September 2024.

“What our medical teams have witnessed on the ground throughout this conflict is consistent with the descriptions provided by an increasing number of legal experts and organisations concluding that genocide is taking place in Gaza,” said Lockyear.

The report calls for an immediate ceasefire and the lifting of the siege to allow the massive delivery of humanitarian aid.

MSF also called on “states, particularly Israel’s closest allies, to end their unconditional support for Israel and fulfil their obligation to prevent genocide in Gaza”.

Israel launches deadly air raids against Yemen after missile attack

Peter Beaumont

Israeli jets have launched widespread air raids against Houthi targets in Yemen, killing at least nine people in the port city of Hodeidah.

According to Israeli media, dozens of combat jets along with fuelling and intelligence aircraft took part in the raids, which came after reports that Israel was planning to hit Yemen with force following a recent increase in Houthi attacks against Israel, including twice in the past week.

The raids were launched after an overnight missile launch from Yemen towards Israel. The Israeli military said it was investigating whether an incomplete interception by its aerial defences had led to parts of the missile hitting a school in the area of Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv.

The airstrikes, the third time during the current war in the region that Israel has hit the country, came amid warnings that Israel intended to act after more than a year of intermittent drone and missile attacks from the Iranian-backed Houthis.

Houthi forces began regularly firing long-range missiles at Israel a year ago in what they said was solidarity for Palestinians killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza.

Al-Masirah, a Houthi media channel, said a series of “aggressive raids” were launched in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a and Hodeidah.

Houthi spokesperson Yahya Saree said the rebels had targeted “two specific and sensitive military targets” in the occupied Jaffa region near Tel Aviv, with “hypersonic ballistic missiles”, although the claim regarding the type of missile was unverified.

Israel’s military said it “conducted precise strikes on Houthi military targets in Yemen, including ports and energy infrastructure in Sana’a, which the Houthis have been using in ways that effectively contributed to their military actions”.

There is no ceasefire deal between Turkey and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria, contrary to a US announcement on the issue, a Turkish defence ministry official said on Thursday.

Turkey believes that the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) forces will “liberate” areas occupied by the Kurdish PKK/YPG militia in northern Syria, the official also said.

The SDF is an ally in the U.S. coalition against Islamic State militants. It is spearheaded by the YPG, a group that Ankara sees as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), whose militant fighters have battled the Turkish state for 40 years.

Israel accused of act of genocide over restriction of Gaza water supply

Julian Borger

Israel’s restriction of Gaza’s water supply to levels below minimum needs amounts to an act of genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity, a human rights report has alleged.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) investigated Israeli attacks on the water supply infrastructure in Gaza over the course of its 14-month war there.

It has accused Israeli forces of deliberate actions intended to cut the availability of clean water so drastically that the population has been forced to resort to contaminated sources, leading to the outbreak of lethal diseases, especially among children.

Israel’s actions have killed many thousands of Palestinians and constitute an act of genocide, HRW argues, citing declarations by ministers in the country’s ruling coalition that Gaza’s water supply would be cut off as evidence of intent.

Hello and welcome to the Middle East crisis live blog. My name is Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news and developments from the region.

We start with the news that Israel’s “long hand” will reach the leaders of Yemen’s Houthi movement, its defence minister, Israel Katz, vowed on Thursday, after unleashing airstrikes on several areas of the country overnight.

The Israeli airstrikes killed nine people, said Al Masirah TV, the main television news outlet run by the Iran-aligned Houthis, who control much of the country, seven in the port of Salif and two in the Ras Issa oil facility, both located in the western province of Hodeidah. The strikes also targeted two central power stations south and north of the capital, Sana’a, it added.

“I warn the leaders of the Houthi terrorist organisation: Israel’s long hand will reach you as well,” Katz said in a post on X. “Whoever raises a hand against the state of Israel, his hand will be cut off; whoever harms, will be harmed sevenfold.”

In a statement, Israel’s military said it “conducted precise strikes on Houthi military targets in Yemen, including ports and energy infrastructure in Sana’a”, adding that the targets struck were used by Houthi forces for military purposes.

Earlier on Thursday, the Israeli military said it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen. Houthi militants have launched attacks on international shipping near Yemen since last November, in solidarity with Palestinians in Israel’s war with Hamas.

We will be bringing you more on this shortly but in other developments today:

• The visiting UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told Agence France-Presse that there is a need for a significant aid boost across Syria after the ousting of Bashar al-Assad. “Across the country, the needs are huge. Seven in 10 people are needing support right now,” Fletcher said, adding, “I want to scale up massively international support, but that now depends on donors. The Syria fund has been historically, shamefully underfunded and now there is this opportunity.”

• Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said his country and Lebanon would work together on Syria after the overthrow of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad earlier this month. “A new era has now begun in Syria. We agree that we must act together as two important neighbours of Syria,” Erdoğan told a news conference, alongside Lebanese caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati.

• The Israeli military has ordered another evacuation in central Gaza, even as Israel and Hamas appear to inch closer to a ceasefire agreement. “This is an advance warning ahead of an offensive,” Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted on X. The order included four residential block areas in the urban refugee camp of Bureij, where Adraee claimed that Palestinian militants fired rockets toward Israel.

• UN special envoy Geir Pedersen has called for “free and fair elections” in Syria and urged humanitarian assistance, AFP reports. Addressing reporters at the end of a visit to Damascus, Pedersen said “there is a lot of hope that we can now see the beginning of a new Syria”, which he expressed hope would also include a “political solution” in the Kurdish-held northeast.

• The US, joined by Arab mediators, is seeking to conclude a long-negotiated ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. A Palestinian official told Reuters earlier today that mediators had narrowed gaps on most of the agreement’s clauses. He said Israel, however, had introduced conditions which Hamas rejected but would not elaborate.

• At least 45,097 Palestinian people have been killed and 107,244 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said. Of those, 38 Palestinians were killed and 203 injured in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the ministry said.