Israeli forces raided a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, killing at least six Palestinians, Palestinian health authorities said Wednesday. The Israeli military also expanded its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip to the densely populated urban refugee camps in the central part of the territory.
Residents reported shelling and airstrikes in the tiny, cramped enclave, including the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, the southern city of Khan Younis and the southern town of Rafah, where tens of thousands have sought refuge in recent weeks. Much of northern Gaza was pounded to rubble weeks ago.
More than 20,900 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, have been killed since the start of the war, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, which doesn't differentiate between civilians and combatants among the dead.
About 1,200 people were killed after Hamas raided southern Israel on Oct. 7, with around 240 people taken hostage. Israel says it aims to free the more than 100 hostages who remain in captivity in Gaza.
Currently:
-- The UN appoints a former Dutch deputy premier and Mideast expert as its Gaza humanitarian coordinator.
-- An Israeli airstrike in Syria kills a high-ranking Iranian general.
-- Biden orders strikes on an Iranian-aligned group after three U.S. troops are wounded in drone attack in Iraq.
Here's what's happening in the war:
JERUSALEM -- Israel's foreign minister says the head of Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group could be Israel's next target.
Eli Cohen spoke a day after a Hezbollah strike wounded 11 people in northern Israel. The Iranian-backed group has fired missiles and rockets into Israel throughout the two-and-a-half month war between Israel and Hamas. Israel has responded dozens of airstrikes and artillery barrages.
The daily battles have forced tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate their homes from border communities and raised fears that they could escalate into a region-wide war.
Touring Israel's border with foreign ambassadors. Cohen said Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, "must understand that he's next."
He said Hezbollah must respect a 2006 UN ceasefire that calls on the group to withdraw from the border area.
"We will operate to make the most of the diplomatic option," Cohen said. "If it doesn't work, all options are on the table."
Also Wednesday, Israel's army chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said the military is in a state of high readiness and has approved a number of plans for the northern front. "We need to be prepared to strike if required."
TEL AVIV, Israel -- Dozens of friends and relatives of a 23-year-old Israeli-American man held hostage by Hamas gathered Wednesday at Israel's international airport to draw attention to his plight.
Hersh Goldberg-Polin had been scheduled to fly out on Wednesday for a long-planned backpacking trip.
"Today, Dec. 27, Hersh Hersh has a one-way ticket to go travelling around the world. It's a trip that he's been planning for a long time. He's been dreaming about it for a long time," said his father, Jonathan Polin. "He's unfortunately not going to be taking off on a trip today, but we are hoping and praying that he's going to take off on this trip soon."
Goldberg-Polin was attending a music party near the Gaza border that was targeted by Hamas in the Oct. 7 cross-border attack that triggered the Israel-Hamas war. Over 300 people were killed while several dozen were taken hostage.
About 50 people joined the gathering at Ben-Gurion airport, many holding posters of Goldberg-Polin's picture with the slogan "Bring Hersh Home."
His father brought a backpack that he said he had bought as a present for his son's trip.
"The bag was not supposed to be here today on my back. It's supposed to be on Hersh's back," he said. "We hope it's going to be, soon."
BEIRUT -- A spokesman for Iran's Revolutionary Guard claimed Wednesday that the deadly Hamas-led attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7 was launched in retaliation for the 2020 killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran's elite Quds Force, in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq. Hamas promptly denied the claim, in a rare public spat between the Palestinian militant group and its main sponsor.
The paramilitary guard's spokesman Ramezan Sharif made the comments at a news conference where he threatened retaliation for the killing of another top Iranian military figure, Gen. Razi Mousavi, who was killed in an alleged Israeli airstrike in Syria on Monday.
On Wednesday, hundreds of mourners processed through the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala with Mousavi's body. It is an Iranian tradition to take the bodies of prominent figures to the shrines of Shiite saints before being repatriated for burial.
Sharif said that the Oct. 7 attack -- in which some 1,200 people were killed in Israel and 240 taken hostage -- was "one of the acts of revenge by the resistance front against the U.S. and the Zionists for the assassination of the martyr Soleimani."
Hamas in a statement denied Sharif's characterization and said the Oct. 7 operation was launched in response to threats to the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, and to the "Zionist occupation and its ongoing aggression against our people and our holy sites."
Iranian and Hamas officials have previously denied that Iran ordered or played a role in planning the incursion. Hamas officials have pushed -- sometimes publicly -- for Iran and affiliated militant groups, including the Lebanese Hezbollah, to intervene more forcefully against Israel in the ensuing war, which has killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, in the Gaza enclave.
ANKARA, Turkiye -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan intensified his criticism of Israel on Wednesday, comparing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.
In a speech at an award ceremony, Erdogan also suggested that the United States was complicit in the deaths of 20,000 people in Gaza, for "supporting" Israel.
"We watched Israel's Nazi camps in the stadiums, right?" Erdogan said in reference to a video aired on Turkish televisions that appeared to show Israeli soldiers rounding up half-naked men in a stadium in Gaza. "What is this? Remember they used to talk about Hitler in a weird way? How are you different than Hitler?"
Erdogan continued: "They will make us long for Hitler. Is there anything different in Netanyahu's actions compared to Hitler's?"
The Turkish leader went on to say that Netanyahu was receiving "all kinds of support" from the United States.
"And with all this support, what did they do to more than 20,000 Gazans? They killed them," he said.
One of Israel's most vocal critics, Erdogan has previously referred to Netanyahu as "the butcher of Gaza," accused him of actions amounting to "genocide" and called for him to be prosecuted by an international war crimes tribunal.
BINT JBEIL, Lebanon -- One Hezbollah fighter and two civilians, a newlywed couple, were killed in an overnight Israeli strike on a family-owned residential building in south Lebanon, residents and state media said Wednesday.
Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported that an Israeli airstrike hit the building in the center of Bint Jbeil, about 3 kilometres (1.8 miles) from the border, late Tuesday night. Rescue teams pulled the bodies of Ibrahim Bazzi, his wife, Shorouk Hammoud, and Ibrahim's brother, Ali Bazzi, from the rubble, the agency reported. Another member of the family was wounded.
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which has been clashing with Israeli forces on the border near-daily since Oct. 8, announced Ali Bazzi's death as a "martyr on the road to Jerusalem," as it typically does when one of its fighters is killed. The group did not claim Ibrahim Bazzi. Family members in the village told The Associated Press that he was a civilian.
A cousin of the brothers, Hashem Bazzi, said Ibrahim had been living in Australia for the past three years and had returned to Lebanon a few days earlier to bring Shorouk back with him. The couple married a year ago, he said. Afaf Bazzi, the mother of the brothers, said Ibrahim had come after his wife received the visa allowing her to travel to Australia with him.
The Israeli military did not have immediate comment on the incident. Chief military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Wednersday Hezbollah is "trying to drag" Lebanon and the entire region into an "unneccessary" war, and the Israeli military is responding to attacks by targeting Hezbollah infrastructure.
More than 150 people have been killed on the Lebanese side in the clashes, most of them fighters with Hezbollah and allied groups, but also including at least 19 civilians, according to a tally by The Associated Press.
RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Israel's forces raided a refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank, killing at least six Palestinians, Palestinian health authorities said early Wednesday.
According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, an Israeli drone strike hit a group of Palestinians in the Nur Shams refugee camp next to the town of Tulkarem.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said six bodies have been brought to the Thabet Thabet hospital. The Palestinian Red Crescent accused Israeli forces of disrupting ambulances transporting the dead and wounded.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Violence has surged in the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war started Oct. 7. At least 310 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7, according to the health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths.
An investigation into unsolved historical homicides from the 1970s has linked the deaths of two girls and two young women in and around Calgary to a now-deceased serial offender.
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Scottie Scheffler's arrest hours before his second-round tee time at the PGA Championship in Louisville, Kentucky, will go down as one of the most shocking in professional golf history. It certainly wasn't the first, though.
The man convicted of attempting to kidnap then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and attacking her husband with a hammer was sentenced Friday to 30 years in prison.
An investigation into unsolved historical homicides from the 1970s has linked the deaths of two girls and two young women in and around Calgary to a now-deceased serial offender.
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The Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation (STF) and province announced that a tentative agreement had been reached on Friday afternoon, with the STF recommending and endorsing the potential deal to teachers.
The Winnipeg police bomb unit removed a 'volatile substance' from a Winnipeg hospital research centre Friday afternoon, prompting an evacuation.
A B.C. man is recovering from multiple injuries after he was "attacked suddenly" by an adult grizzly bear near Elkford Thursday afternoon.
Officials will provide an update on the 20,000-hectare fire burning southwest of Fort McMurray on Friday.
Yemen's Houthi rebels on Friday claimed to have shot down an American drone, hours after footage circulated online of what appeared to be the wreckage of an MQ-9 Reaper drone. The U.S. military did not immediately acknowledge the incident.
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Trucks carrying badly needed aid for the Gaza Strip rolled across a newly built U.S. pier and into the besieged enclave for the first time Friday as Israeli restrictions on border crossings and heavy fighting hindered the delivery of food and other supplies.
Iranian police have arrested more than 260 people, including three European citizens, on suspicion of spreading satanism, the state-run IRNA news agency reported Friday.
The U.S. State Department on Friday issued a worldwide caution security alert, saying it is aware of increased potential for foreign terrorist organization-inspired violence against LGBTQ+ people and events.
A group of fishers said it took roughly 20 minutes to reel in this 3.5-metre-long tiger shark off the coast of Florida.
A parliamentary committee has summoned Canada's big five bank CEOs to talk about the environmental and climate impacts of the financial system.
To give Canadians a break on their summer road trips, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to suspend all gas and diesel taxes from Victoria Day to Labour Day.
Eight in 10 Canadians back a woman's right to an abortion and two in three don't want the notwithstanding clause used to restrict access to abortions, a new poll suggests.
A young child has died of measles in Ontario, marking the first death in the province from the highly contagious virus in more than 10 years, a Public Health Ontario report confirms.
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The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.3 per cent to close above 40,000 points for the first time on Friday.
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Jaye Robinson – a four-term city councillor who represented Ward 15 – Don Valley West for almost 14 years and also served for a time as chair of the TTC – has died.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford is asking that the federal government put the brakes on any approvals for new safe supply sites for drug users in Ontario and conduct a review of existing sites.
A young child has died of measles in Ontario, marking the first death in the province from the highly contagious virus in more than 10 years, a Public Health Ontario report confirms.
An investigation into unsolved historical homicides from the 1970s has linked the deaths of two girls and two young women in and around Calgary to a now-deceased serial offender.
The Alberta Medical Association is expressing deep concerns to the provincial government over a lack of oncologists needed to provide cancer care to keep up with population growth.
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Air Canada is boosting service out of the Ottawa International Airport with up to 30 additional weekly flights for the winter season, and increasing service to Chicago, Washington and Halifax and adding more capacity on flights to Vancouver.
The Ottawa Police Service says four people from Quebec are facing charges related to auto thefts involving a tow truck in Centertown.
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An investigation into unsolved historical homicides from the 1970s has linked the deaths of two girls and two young women in and around Calgary to a now-deceased serial offender.
The Edmonton Police Service is set to speak publicly about its response during the teardown of a protest camp at the University of Alberta.
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The Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation (STF) and province announced that a tentative agreement had been reached on Friday afternoon, with the STF recommending and endorsing the potential deal to teachers.
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A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has sentenced the mother and stepfather of a six-year-old boy who died from blunt-force trauma in 2018 to 15 years in prison.
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A new study shows an Atlantic salmon population in southern Newfoundland is disappearing, and it says nearby aquaculture operations are a likely contributor to the decline.
Police in Newfoundland say patrol officers were assaulted Thursday by a "very irate male" wielding a block of cheese.
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