Palestinian territories:
Gaza's Hamas-led Health Ministry said on Sunday that the number of deaths in the war-torn Palestinian territory had surpassed 25,000, as Israel continued its offensive south and renewed its bombing campaign in the north.
Israel continues its pressure on Hamas in southern Gaza as it tries to destroy the Islamist group responsible for the deadliest attack in the country's history.
In early January, the Israeli military said Hamas' command structure in northern Gaza had been dismantled, leaving only isolated fighters.
But witnesses told AFP that Israeli boats bombarded Gaza City and other areas in the north early Sunday. Hamas has also reported heavy fighting in the north.
“Dozens still lie under the rubble,” the Hamas government media office said, adding that the dead and wounded “could not be transferred to hospitals due to the continued artillery shelling of… Khan Yunis and the Tal al-Hawa area in Gaza City and the north”.
The Israeli army said it “eliminated a number of terrorists” in the main southern town of Khan Yunis and killed 15 police officers in northern Gaza in the past day.
Thick plumes of smoke billowed over Khan Yunis on Sunday morning, AFP journalists saw.
Hamas's October 7 attacks resulted in the deaths of about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
Israel's brutal bombing and ground offensive in Gaza have killed at least 25,105 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-led Health Ministry.
'Difficult conditions' in tunnel
Agents also seized about 250 hostages during the October attacks.
Israel says about 132 remain in Gaza, of whom at least 27 prisoners are believed to have been killed, according to an AFP count based on Israeli figures.
In a briefing on Saturday evening, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said troops had found a tunnel in Khan Yunis where some hostages had previously been held.
Evidence of their presence included paintings, including of a five-year-old prisoner, he said.
“About twenty hostages” had been held there at various times “in difficult conditions without daylight…with little oxygen and terrible humidity.”
Soldiers entered the tunnel and fought a battle with officers in which “the terrorists were eliminated,” Hagari said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under intense pressure to return the hostages and take accountability for security failures surrounding the October attacks.
Thousands protested across Israel on Saturday evening to demand the release of the hostages and early elections to oust Netanyahu.
Avi Lulu Shamriz, the father of Alon Shamriz, a hostage accidentally killed by Israeli forces earlier in the war, told AFP in Tel Aviv that Netanyahu's war cabinet was heading for disaster.
“The way we're going, all the hostages will die. It's not too late to free them.'
Devastating attack on the West Bank
The U.N. Agency for Palestinian Refugees says about 1.7 million people have been displaced in Gaza, including about a million in the Rafah area.
UN agencies have warned that better access to aid is urgently needed as famine and disease loom.
Diplomatic efforts have sought to secure increased aid supplies to Gaza and a ceasefire after Hamas released dozens of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel in November after a week-long cessation of hostilities.
Qatar-based Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh was in Turkey on Saturday for talks with the foreign minister, diplomatic sources said, renewing ties with the top regional power that asked the group's leaders to leave the country after the attacks in October.
Since October 7, violence has increased in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The Israeli army said it demolished two houses in Hebron belonging to two Palestinian gunmen who attacked the road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem in November.
An AFP journalist saw a fireball erupt and smoke rise from a house on Sunday as Israeli armored vehicles maneuvered through Hebron's roads during the raid.
Palestinians gathered outside the crumpled remains of one of the houses on Sunday, as young boys picked their way through a thicket of tangled metal and rubble.
One man removed a banner that Israeli forces had attached to a destroyed house that read: “Terrorism has no home.”
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters in a village south of Jenin and the towns of Arura and Qalqilya.
Rising tensions and violence in the Middle East have also fueled fears of a broader conflagration involving Iranian-backed groups in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Iranian media said an Israeli strike on Damascus on Saturday killed the spy chief of Syria's Revolutionary Guards and four other Guard members, prompting a threat of retaliation.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)