Israeli army carry out raid in Nablus
The Israeli military on Wednesday launched an operation involving dozens of soldiers and armoured vehicles in the old city of Nablus, in the northern occupied West Bank, witnesses and Palestinian officials told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The Israeli military confirmed to AFP that it was conducting an operation, without specifying its purpose.
The raid began at about 3.00am (0.00am UK time), residents said, with soldiers storming several neighbourhoods of the old city, which has a population of about 30,000 people.
A Palestinian kicks a teargas canister during an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Nablus on Wednesday, 27 August 2025. Photograph: Majdi Mohammed/AP
“The assault on Nablus is merely a show of force with no justification,” Nablus governor Ghassan Daghlas told AFP.
He said the army had informed Palestinian authorities that the raid would continue until 4.00 pm (1.00pm UK time).
One witness, who declined to give his name, reported that soldiers had expelled an elderly couple from their home.
Soldiers “are storming and searching houses and shops inside the old city, while some houses have been turned into military posts,” Ghassan Hamdan, head of the Palestinian Medical Relief organisation in Nablus, said.
AFP footage showed Israeli forces and military vehicles deployed on the streets of the city.
Local sources said clashes broke out at the eastern entrance to the old city, where young people threw stones at Israeli soldiers, who responded with teargas and live ammunition.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported several injuries as a result, but none from gunfire.
The old city of Nablus has been the focus several major Israeli raids, including in 2022 and 2023 during large-scale operations targeting a local grouping of armed fighters, as well as in 2002 during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising.
In early June 2025, the Israeli army carried out an operation there in which at least two Palestinians were killed.
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Israeli and US officials will meet in Washington on Wednesday to discuss post-war Gaza, even as Israel’s military calls the evacuation of Gaza City “inevitable” ahead of a military offensive and with no sign of a ceasefire in sight, AP reports.
The meeting comes as outrage mounts over this week’s deadly Israeli strikes on a southern Gaza hospital that killed 20, including journalists and emergency responders.
Israel’s military has said it will investigate the attack. It has offered no immediate explanation for striking twice and no evidence for an assertion that six of the dead were militants.
As a growing chorus of international leaders urge Israel to reconsider its offensive and commit to talks, Pope Leo XIV called for Israel to halt the “collective punishment” and forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza.
ShareA third of outpatients treated for wounds at MSF’s Gaza hospitals in 2024 were children, figures show
Jason Burke
Children under 15 years old made up almost a third of outpatients treated for wounds in field hospitals run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Gaza last year, statistics published in The Lancet reveal.
The figures were released by MSF in correspondence with the respected medical journal and come from six health facilities in Gaza supported by the international medical NGO. The facilities are predominantly in the south and centre of the devastated territory.
More than 90,000 outpatient consultations involving wounds were carried out at the facilities in 2024. Bombs, shelling or shooting was involved in just under half of these, MSF said.
The death toll in the Israeli offensive launched following the Hamas raid into Israel in October 2023 has risen to more than 62,000, according to a count by the ministry of health in Gaza that is used by much of the UN, and which the British government says is a “reasonable figure”. Of these, more than half are women or children.
The proportion could be higher. Figures from a classified Israeli military intelligence database indicate five out of six Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza have been civilians, the Guardian revealed last week.
Israeli officials say they take all “feasible” precautions to avoid civilian casualties and accuse Hamas of using civilians as human shields.
Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon said on Wednesday that there will be more information in the “next few days” on a strike on Nasser hospital in Gaza on Monday, that killed at least 20 people, including five journalists.
“We’re still looking into the details of that incident, and so that in the next few days we will have more information about that,” Danon told reporters.
“Our goal is to fight terrorists, not journalists, not anyone who is not involved in terrorism,” he said.
Updated at 10.21 EDT
Israeli military: Two new ‘humanitarian aid distribution centres’ to open in southern Gaza Strip
The Israeli military has said the country will add two “humanitarian aid distribution centres” in the southern Gaza Strip to receive Palestinians it expects to relocate there when the military carries out its planned takeover of Gaza City, Reuters reports.
It said in a statement that the work would be completed in coming days, replacing the centre in the Tel al-Sultan neighbourhood and bringing the number of distribution centres to a total of five.
Food in Gaza is now distributed by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), whose sites have been described by UN officials as “death traps”. Previous Guardian reporting described the dangers faced by Palestinians seeking food from GHF sites.
The Gaza health ministry said on Wednesday 10 more people had died of malnutrition and starvation, raising deaths from such causes to 313 people, including 119 children, since the Gaza war started nearly two years ago. Israel disputes fatality figures by the health ministry in the Hamas-run strip.
ShareTom Barrack cuts short visit to southern Lebanon, state media reports
Lebanese state media said US envoy Tom Barrack cut short a visit to the south on Wednesday amid protests in two planned stops against US pressure to disarm Hezbollah, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
The official National News Agency (NNA) reported that Barrack arrived by helicopter at a Lebanese army barracks in Marjayoun near the border, with soldiers deploying in the area.
The news agency later reported that the envoy had cancelled planned stops in nearby Khiam, which was pummelled by Israel during its latest hostilities with Hezbollah, and in the coastal city of Tyre.
A spokesperson told AFP the US embassy did not comment on officials’ schedules for security reasons.
An AFP correspondent in Khiam saw a group of residents, some waving Hezbollah flags or holding pictures of fighters killed in the conflict, demonstrating against Barrack.
Some were standing on a Star of David that had been drawn on the road in blue, near the words in Arabic “America is the great Satan”, and “Barak is animal” written in English.
The last was a reference to comments by the US envoy at a Beirut press conference on Tuesday which sparked an outcry in Lebanon.
Shia men hold up posters that read in Arabic: “America is the mother of terrorism”, during a protest against Tom Barrack, US president Donald Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, who was supposed to visit Tyre city in south Lebanon on Wednesday, 27 August 2025. Photograph: Mohammad Zaatari/AP
Barak told journalists to “act civilised”, adding: “The moment that this starts becoming chaotic, like animalistic, we’re gone.”
Bilal Kashmar, an official from the southern municipalities union, said dozens of people had demonstrated in Tyre on Wednesday against Barak’s expected visit and Washington’s “biased policies”.
France, Britain and Germany remain ready to trigger a snapback of UN sanctions against Iran, a German foreign ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday, Reuters reports.
The comments came after the trio of countries met with Iran on Tuesday to try to revive diplomacy over its nuclear programme.
A snapback remains an option after the talks ended without a conclusive result, but France, Britain and Germany will continue to seek a diplomatic solution, the spokesperson said during a press conference.
France, Britain and Germany – known as the E3 – have long threatened to trigger a snapback of sanctions at the UN security council before 18 October, when a largely defunct nuclear deal struck 10 years ago between Tehran and major powers expires.
Syria’s foreign ministry has updated the number of soldiers killed in southern Damascus on Tuesday to eight, the Associated Press (AP) reports.
The ministry said in a statement that drone strikes on Tuesday in the southern Damascus suburb of Kiswah killed eight soldiers. It called the attack “a grave violation of international law” and “clear breach of (Syria’s) sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
The statement said:
It also comes in the context of the repeated aggressive policies pursued by the Israeli occupation aimed at undermining security and stability in the region.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strikes.
Since the fall of Bashar Assad in December, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes on different parts of the country, destroying Syrian army assets, and its forces have seized a UN patrolled buffer zone in southern Syria.
SharePope Leo XIV says Israel must stop ‘collective punishment’ of Palestinian people in Gaza
In an update to earlier comments by Pope Leo XIV, he said that Israel must stop the “collective punishment” and forced displacement of Palestinian people in Gaza as he pleaded for an immediate and permanent ceasefire amid preparations by Israel for a new military offensive.
Leo was interrupted twice by applause as he read aloud his latest appeal for an end to the 22-month war during his weekly general audience attended by thousands of people in the Vatican’s auditorium.
History’s first American pope also called for the release of hostages taken by Hamas in southern Israel – 50 of them remain in Gaza – and for both sides and international powers to end the war “which has caused so much terror, destruction and death”.
“I beg for a permanent ceasefire to be reached, the safe entry of humanitarian aid to be facilitated and humanitarian law to be fully respected,” Leo said. He cited international law requiring the obligation to protect civilians and “the prohibition of collective punishment, indiscriminate use of force and the forced displacement of the population”.
Updated at 08.20 EDT
The day so far
US special envoy Steve Witkoff said on Tuesday that president Donald Trump would chair a meeting on Gaza at the White House on Wednesday and added that Washington expected Israel’s war in the Palestinian territory to be settled by the end of the year. The US state department separately said secretary of state Marco Rubio will meet Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar in Washington on Wednesday, which is expected to take place at 3.15pm ET (7.15pm UK time).
Israeli tanks pushed into a new area on the edge of Gaza City overnight, destroying houses and prompting residents to flee, witnesses told Reuters. Tanks late on Tuesday entered into the Ebad-Alrahman neighbourhood on the northern edge of Gaza City and shelled houses, wounding several people and forcing many others, who had been taken by surprise, to move deeper into Gaza’s largest city, residents said.
The Israeli military on Wednesday launched an operation involving dozens of soldiers and armoured vehicles in the old city of Nablus, in the northern occupied West Bank. The Israeli military confirmed to the agency that it was conducting an operation, without specifying its purpose.
Residents of the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City have spoken of heavy Israeli bombardment overnight. It comes after defence minister Israel Katz vowed on Friday to destroy Gaza City if Hamas does not agree to end the war on Israel’s terms.
Israeli police said on Wednesday that security forces seized roughly 1.5 million shekels ($447,000) of “terror funds” during a raid in the occupied West Bank a day earlier. Israeli forces targeted a currency exchange in Ramallah on Tuesday, leaving dozens of Palestinians wounded, according to the Red Crescent.
Pope Leo made a “strong appeal” to the global community on Wednesday to end the nearly two-year conflict between Israel and Hamas, calling for a permanent ceasefire, release of hostages and the provision of humanitarian aid.
Hamas on Tuesday rejected an Israeli statement saying a strike on a Gaza hospital that killed several journalists was aimed at a camera operated by the militant group, calling the accusation “baseless”. The Israeli military on Tuesday said its forces were targeting a camera operated by Hamas in two strikes that killed five journalists at a hospital a day earlier, triggering a wave of international condemnation. Monday’s strike in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis killed at least 20 people, including the five reporters who worked for Al Jazeera, the Associated Press and Reuters, among other outlets.
Hamas denied on Tuesday that any of the Palestinians killed in Israel’s attack on Gaza’s Nasser hospital on Monday were militants. Earlier, Israel said it had killed six militants in the attack but it was investigating how civilians, including five journalists, were killed. “We can confirm that the Reuters and AP journalists were not a target of the strike,” military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told Reuters on Tuesday.
The UN has demanded that Israel’s investigations into unlawful killings in Gaza, including its “double tap” bombing of Nasser hospital, yield results and ensure accountability. “There needs to be justice,” Thameen Al-Kheetan, the spokesperson for the UN’s human rights office, told reporters on Tuesday in Geneva. He added that the number of journalists killed in Gaza raised many questions about the targeting of media workers.
Tens of thousands of people took part in demonstrations across Israel on Tuesday, blocking highways on a “day of disruption” that aimed to push Benjamin Netanyahu into agreeing a deal to end the war and calling off plans to attack Gaza City. Relatives of hostages led the biggest march and rally in Tel Aviv, while in Jerusalem hundreds of people gathered outside the prime minister’s office as the security cabinet met to discuss the war. There were dozens of other protests around the country, including on the main highway to the northern city of Haifa and inside Ben Gurion airport.
Six Syrian soldiers were killed in Israeli drone strikes in the Damascus countryside, state-run El Ekhbariya TV reported early on Wednesday. Syria and Israel are engaged in US-mediated talks on easing tensions in southern Syria, with Damascus seeking a security deal that could open the door to wider political negotiations.
Updated at 08.46 EDT
Protesters against Israel’s invasion of Gaza held a banner saying “Free Palestine” and “Stop the Genocide” outside the Venice film festival’s main building on Wednesday, hours before stars were to walk its red carpet, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
About 20 people from a regional leftwing Italian political collective held up the hand-drawn banner and Palestinian flags before the opening ceremony later on Wednesday.
Giulia Cacopardo, 28, from the north-east Social Centres, told AFP:
We need to use the attention here during the film festival to shift the focus on to Palestine.
We hope that other people are going to join us to stop the genocide now.
The gathering was a prelude to a much larger demonstration planned at the weekend in Venice by hundreds of local groups, with many Italian film insiders also pushing for the festival to take a stronger stance on Gaza.
Israeli’s nearly two-year bombardment of the Palestinian territory overshadowed the Cannes festival in May where hundreds of movie figures signed a petition saying they were “ashamed” of their industry’s “passivity” about the war.
An open letter published on Saturday in Italy was signed by hundreds of Italian cinema professionals under the banner of the Venice4Palestine (V4P) group which called on the Venice festival to take “a clear and unambiguous position” against the war.
Festival director Alberto Barbera told AFP on Wednesday that festival “does not take direct political positions, it does not make political statements, as it is a cultural space for dialogue, discussion, and openness.”
He also ruled out censoring or boycotting artists.
ShareIsraeli army carry out raid in Nablus
The Israeli military on Wednesday launched an operation involving dozens of soldiers and armoured vehicles in the old city of Nablus, in the northern occupied West Bank, witnesses and Palestinian officials told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The Israeli military confirmed to AFP that it was conducting an operation, without specifying its purpose.
The raid began at about 3.00am (0.00am UK time), residents said, with soldiers storming several neighbourhoods of the old city, which has a population of about 30,000 people.
A Palestinian kicks a teargas canister during an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Nablus on Wednesday, 27 August 2025. Photograph: Majdi Mohammed/AP
“The assault on Nablus is merely a show of force with no justification,” Nablus governor Ghassan Daghlas told AFP.
He said the army had informed Palestinian authorities that the raid would continue until 4.00 pm (1.00pm UK time).
One witness, who declined to give his name, reported that soldiers had expelled an elderly couple from their home.
Soldiers “are storming and searching houses and shops inside the old city, while some houses have been turned into military posts,” Ghassan Hamdan, head of the Palestinian Medical Relief organisation in Nablus, said.
AFP footage showed Israeli forces and military vehicles deployed on the streets of the city.
Local sources said clashes broke out at the eastern entrance to the old city, where young people threw stones at Israeli soldiers, who responded with teargas and live ammunition.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported several injuries as a result, but none from gunfire.
The old city of Nablus has been the focus several major Israeli raids, including in 2022 and 2023 during large-scale operations targeting a local grouping of armed fighters, as well as in 2002 during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising.
In early June 2025, the Israeli army carried out an operation there in which at least two Palestinians were killed.
A spokesperson for the Israeli military said on Wednesday the evacuation of Gaza City was “inevitable” as the army prepares to conquer the Palestinian territory’s largest city.
The military’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted on X:
The evacuation of Gaza City is inevitable, and therefore, every family that relocates to the south will receive the most generous humanitarian aid, which is currently being worked on.
Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni said in a speech on Wednesday that her government condemned the “unjustifiable” killing of journalists in Gaza, Reuters reports.
The comments come after Israel struck Nasser hospital in the south of the Gaza Strip on Monday, killing at least 20 people, including five journalists who worked for Reuters, the Associated Press, Al Jazeera and others.
Inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog IAEA entered Iran with the consent of Iran’s Supreme national security council, Iran’s foreign minister said in comments carried by the parliament news agency ICANA, Reuters reports.
“There is no final agreement yet on cooperation with the IAEA,” Abbas Araqchi said, adding that “the changing of the fuel of Bushehr nuclear reactor has to be done under the supervision of inspectors of the international agency.”
Residents of the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City have spoken of heavy Israeli bombardment overnight, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.
Tala al-Khatib, 29, told the agency by telephone:
Warplanes struck several times, and drones fired throughout the night.
Several homes in Zeitoun were blown up. We are still in our house – some neighbours have fled, while others remain. But wherever you flee, death follows you.
Abdel Hamid al-Sayfi, 62, said he hadn’t gone outdoors since Tuesday afternoon.
He told AFP:
Whoever steps outside is fired upon by the drones
My phone battery is about to die, and once it does, we will lose all contact. Our fate is unknown.
Defence minister Israel Katz vowed on Friday to destroy Gaza City if Hamas does not agree to end the war on Israel’s terms.
It came after the defence ministry approved the military’s plan to seize the city and authorised the call-up of roughly 60,000 reservists.
It also came as the UN officially declared a famine in Gaza governorate, including Gaza City, that it blamed on “systematic obstruction of aid” by Israel.
ShareIsraeli forces advance into new area in Gaza, Reuters reports
Israeli tanks pushed into a new area on the edge of Gaza City overnight, destroying houses and prompting residents to flee, witnesses told Reuters.
Tanks late on Tuesday entered into the Ebad-Alrahman neighbourhood on the northern edge of Gaza City and shelled houses, wounding several people and forcing many others, who had been taken by surprise, to move deeper into Gaza’s largest city, residents said.
Saad Abed, 60, a former construction worker, said:
All of a sudden, we heard that the tanks pushed into Ebad-Alrahman, the sounds of explosions became louder, and louder, and we saw people escaping towards our area,
If no truce is reached, we will see the tanks outside our homes.
The local lives on Jala Street in Gaza City, around one kilometre (0.6 mile) from the Ebad-Alrahman neighbourhood.
Israel has said it is preparing to launch a new offensive in Gaza City, which it describes as Hamas’ last bastion. Around half of the territory’s 2 million people are now living there and Israel has said they will be told to evacuate.
Thousands have already left, but church leaders in the city said on Wednesday they were staying put, as leaving Gaza City and “trying to flee to the south would be nothing less than a death sentence”.
A joint statement by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate and the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said:
For this reason, the clergy and nuns have decided to remain and continue to care for all those who will be in the compounds.
Israeli tanks retreated from the edge of Gaza City later on Wednesday to the Jabaliya area, where they have been operating for months, although bombardments on three of the city’s eastern suburbs – Shejaia, Zeitoun and Sabra – continued.
Gaza health authorities said Israeli fire had killed at least 20 people, including a four-year-old girl, across the territory.
The Israeli military said in a statement that its forces were operating in Jabaliya and the outskirts of Gaza City to “dismantle terror infrastructure sites and eliminate terrorists”.
Updated at 06.04 EDT
The Israeli military has claimed to have carried out an airstrike last week that killed the commander in the western Gaza region of Hamas’ general security apparatus.
The army named the commander as Mahmoud al-Asud, describing him as a “significant” source of knowledge for Hamas.
It said that the commander was killed by an aircraft on 22 August.
The statement, which was posted on X, added that the military was continuing to operate in Khan Younis and Jabaliya.
My colleague Nour Haydar speaks with political correspondent Tom Mcilroy and senior reporter Ben Doherty in a recent episode of the Full Story podcast about why the Albanese government has taken the historic step to expel Tehran’s ambassador from Australia.
Iran directed at least two attacks against Australia’s Jewish community, the domestic spy agency has determined, prompting the Albanese government to expel the country’s ambassador from Australia.
The prime minister announced on Tuesday that Asio had ‘credible intelligence’ to determine the Iranian government was behind the attacks against the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne and Lewis’s Continental Kitchen in Bondi, Sydney.
Iranian diplomats posted to Australia were not involved, the Asio director general, Mike Burgess, said.
You can listen to the full podcast episode here: Iran blamed for antisemitic attacks in Australia – Full Story podcast
SharePope Leo makes ‘strong appeal’ to end conflict in Gaza
Pope Leo made a “strong appeal” to the global community on Wednesday to end the nearly two-year conflict between Israel and Hamas, calling for a permanent ceasefire, release of hostages and the provision of humanitarian aid, Reuters reports.
The pontiff said in his weekly audience at the Vatican:
I once again issue a strong appeal … so that an end may be put to the conflict in the Holy Land, which has caused so much terror, destruction, and death.
I implore that all hostages be freed, that a permanent ceasefire be reached, that the safe entry of humanitarian aid be facilitated, and that international humanitarian law be fully respected.
Pope Leo XIV puts his hands together in prayer during the weekly general audience in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican on Wednesday, 27 August 2025. Photograph: Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters
The pope last month condemned the “barbarity” of the war in Gaza and the “indiscriminate use of force”, while also expressing his anguish over the Israeli strike on Gaza’s only Catholic church, which killed three people and injured 10.