Palestinian hospital officials said Israeli airstrikes on the southern city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip killed at least five people.
More than half of the territory’s population of 2.3 million have sought refuge in Rafah, where Israel has conducted near-daily raids as it prepares for an offensive in the city. In central Gaza, four people were killed in Israeli tank shelling.
A ship traveling in the Gulf of Aden came under attack Thursday, officials said, the latest assault likely carried out by Yemen’s Houthi rebels over the Israel-Hamas war.
Meanwhile, a top Hamas political official told The Associated Press that the Islamic militant group is willing to agree to a truce of five years or more with Israel.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Joe Biden and other leaders issued a joint statement Thursday calling for Hamas to release hostages held in Gaza, the latest attempt at public pressure to advance negotiations over a potential cease-fire with Israel.
The other countries are Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Spain, Thailand, and the United Kingdom.
The president, before leaving Thursday on a two-day trip to New York, recalled Wednesday’s tender visit to reporters, saying “it went really well.” He said Abigail did a lot of playing around on the swing set on the White House lawn, as well as in the Oval Office.
A U.S. official who earlier Thursday described the meeting said Abigail also crawled through a small door at the bottom of the president’s desk, a spot that was made famous decades ago in a photo of John F. Kennedy and his son.
Austrian Gen. Robert Brieger, who is chair of the EU’s military committee, said that it would be crucial for the bloc to “conserve resources” over the long haul because the threat posed by Houthi attacks “will not disappear” due to its connection to the Israel-Hamas war.
Columbia continued to negotiate with students after several failed attempts — and more than 100 arrests — to clear the encampment, but several universities ousted demonstrators Wednesday, swiftly turning to law enforcement when protests bubbled up on their campuses.
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