Benjamin Netanyahu has to go under the knife again. Israel arrests 240 Hamas terrorists in hospital. All developments in the news blog.
11:10 p.m.: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will undergo prostate surgery, according to his office. During an examination, the 75-year-old was found to have benign prostate enlargement, which had caused inflammation of the urinary tract, Netanyahu’s office said on Saturday. Netanyahu will therefore have his prostate removed during an operation on Sunday.
Netanyahu has had a number of recent health problems. Last year he had a pacemaker inserted and in March he had to undergo surgery for a hernia.
10:45 p.m: Israel’s army says it captured 240 suspected Hamas fighters when it stormed a hospital in the north of the Gaza Strip. The army said the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, Hussam Abu Safeia, was among those arrested. He was suspected of being a Hamas “terrorist cadre,” it said.
Israeli forces attacked the hospital on Friday morning. According to the army’s statement on Saturday evening, the operation has now ended.
3:10 a.m.: A car bomb exploded in the center of the Kurdish-controlled city of Manbij in northern Syria on Friday evening. There was damage to property – there were initially no victims, as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights explained. Accordingly, no one initially claimed responsibility for the attack. The White Helmets rescue service also reported the explosion: “A car bomb exploded in front of the large mosque in the center of Manbij,” the organization said on Telegram.
According to the London-based Observatory, this is the second attack of its kind in just a few days. According to the activists, two people were killed by bombs in a car in Manbij on Tuesday.
12:10 a.m.: According to the military, Israeli air defense intercepted another rocket fired from Yemen during the night. The military said on Telegram that it was shot down outside its own borders. Warning sirens sounded again in dozens of cities across the country, including in the Jerusalem area and the Dead Sea. Previously, military facilities of the pro-Iranian Houthi militia in Yemen had again been the target of air strikes. The TV station Al-Masirah, which is considered the militia’s mouthpiece, spoke of attacks by the USA and Great Britain.
2:01 p.m.: According to Israeli and Palestinian sources, Israel’s army has been in action at a clinic in the Gaza Strip since this morning. “The Kamal Adwan Hospital serves as a stronghold for Hamas terrorists in northern Gaza,” the army said in a statement. Israeli forces took action against the organization there and in the surrounding area. They use the hospital for military activities and as a hideout.
A senior official in Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health authority said Israel had asked medical staff and patients to leave the hospital in Beit Lahia. The army gathered around 170 people in the courtyard of the clinic and arrested dozens. Communication with the other affected people was broken off. Her fate is unknown. Palestinian reports spoke of 350 people, including 170 clinic employees, who had to gather in the courtyard. The information could not be independently verified.
11:56 a.m.: Israel’s air force said it attacked early this morning in Lebanon near a border crossing with Syria. The target was Hezbollah infrastructure, which, according to the military, was used by the Shiite militia to smuggle weapons. The air force attacked near the border crossing at Janta in the Bekaa Valley. The military accuses Hezbollah of using civilian infrastructure for “terrorist activities.”
The Lebanese news agency NNA reports that Israeli warplanes attacked several targets in the Bekaa Valley near the Syrian border in the east of the country. Lebanese security sources confirmed the attacks.
10:41 a.m.: A Palestinian killed a woman in a knife attack in Israel. The elderly woman was initially brought to a hospital unconscious and with stab wounds after resuscitation measures, said the Israeli emergency service Magen David Adom. According to its own information, the clinic discovered the woman’s death upon arrival.