Summary Closed
It is almost 2:30 PM in Tel Aviv and Gaza City. The Guardian's coverage of the Middle East crisis has come to an end. Here is a summary of today's events:
The Israeli military said it failed to intercept a missile from Yemen that fell in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa area. Paramedics treated 14 people with minor shrapnel wounds and some were taken to hospital, the ambulance service said in a statement.
The US has withdrawn the reward for Ahmed Al-Sharaa, the leader of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) which seized power in Syria. The decision follows talks between the new Syrian authorities and a US delegation, after HTS said in a statement that it wanted Syria to contribute to "regional peace".
Pope Francis condemned the bombing of children in Gaza as an "atrocity", a day after an Israeli air strike killed 12 members of a family, including seven children. "Children were bombed yesterday. This is cruelty, this is not war. I want to say this because it touches my heart," he told an audience of members of the Holy See government. The death toll in Gaza is 45,227, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. The number includes 21 deaths in the last 24 hours, according to the ministry, which also said that 107,573 people have been injured in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war.
Israeli security forces have carried out raids in the West Bank, according to the Wafa news agency. Palestinian news agencies also reported that Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian farmers in the village of Burqa in the West Bank, east of Ramallah.
The Israeli army said its forces fired on a protester during a demonstration against army activities in a village in southern Syria on Friday, wounding him in the leg. Since Islamist rebels overthrew Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on December 8, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian military installations, aiming, it says, to prevent them from falling into enemy hands.
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