Rafah is a "pressure cooker of despair" as Palestinians flee south, says UN agency The UN humanitarian office on Friday voiced concern about the hostilities in Khan Younis that have forced more people to flee to Rafah in the south of Gaza, describing the border town as a “pressure cooker of despair”, reports Reuters. “I want to emphasise our deep concern about the escalation of hostilities in Khan Younis, which has resulted in an increase in the number of internally displaced people seeking refuge in Rafah in recent days,” said Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs. “Thousands of Palestinians have continued to flee to the south, which is already hosting over half the population of about 2.3 million people … Rafah is a pressure cooker of despair, and we fear for what comes next.” Israeli forces will continue their Gaza military campaign to Rafah, the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant has said, despite the huge numbers of Palestinian civilians there. Summary of the day It is 5.18pm in Gaza and Tel Aviv and 6.18pm in Sana’a. Here are the latest developments from today: Rafah is a “pressure cooker of despair”, said the UN humanitarian office, as Palestinians flee south today. It said hostilities in Khan Younis had forced more people to flee to Rafah in the south of Gaza. “Thousands of Palestinians have continued to flee to the south, which is already hosting over half the population of about 2.3 million people … Rafah is a pressure cooker of despair, and we fear for what comes next,” said Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN agency. Israeli forces will continue their Gaza military campaign to Rafah, the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant has said, despite the huge numbers of Palestinian civilians there. Israel and Hamas appear to be inching closer towards a deal for a ceasefire and a release of some of the hostages still being held by the militant group in Gaza. Qatar, which has been mediating between Israel and Hamas, indicated that the militant group had given its initial support for a deal after weeks of delicate and secretive negotiations. However, while an aide to Hamas’s political leader said the group had received details of the proposed deal, it had yet to deliver a reply. Fighting in Gaza raged on Friday with scores of people reportedly killed overnight. The Hamas press office reported Israeli air and artillery bombardment around Khan Younis – southern Gaza’s main city and the focus of recent fighting. AFP said that Israeli aircraft had again dropped leaflets calling on civilians to leave the area around al-Shifa hospital’s compound. Nearly four months of fighting has left Gaza “uninhabitable”, the UN said, while the Israeli siege had resulted in dire shortages of food, water, fuel and medicines. UNRWA said vital supplies of fuel and bread flour for Gaza risked running dry, while schools, clinics and rubbish collections in the West Bank and three countries across the Middle East could cease operating by the end of the month if funding cuts for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees were not restored. A Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) employee was killed due to Israeli gunfire towards the organisation’s building in Khan Younis. Hidaya Hamad, who was the director of the youth and volunteers department in Gaza for the PRCS, was at the organisation’s headquarters when she was killed. More than 1 million children in Gaza are in need of mental health support, says Unicef. Jonathan Crickx, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef in the Palestinian territories told a media briefing in Geneva, via video link from Jerusalem on Friday: “Children don’t have anything to do with this conflict. Yet they are suffering like no child should ever suffer.” At least 17,000 children in the Gaza Strip have been left unaccompanied or separated, according to estimates from the UN. Crickx called for a ceasefire so that Unicef could conduct a proper count of children who are unaccompanied or separated, trace relatives, and deliver mental health support. The UK could officially recognise a Palestinian state after a ceasefire in Gaza without waiting for the outcome of what could be years of talks between Israel and the Palestinians on a two-state solution, the UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, has said. Speaking during a visit on Thursday to Lebanon intended to tamp down regional tensions, the foreign secretary said no recognition could come while Hamas remained in Gaza, but that it could take place while Israeli negotiations with Palestinian leaders were continuing. Catherine Russell, Unicef’s executive director, has said that “the situation for children in Gaza grows bleaker every day”. In a post on X, Russell said: “The world cannot abandon them.” The latest figures from the Gaza health ministry, which is run by Hamas, said 112 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes and 148 were injured in the past 24 hours. Belgium’s ministry of foreign affairs has summoned the Israeli ambassador to Belgium and strongly condemned the bombing of the Belgian development agency Enable. Idit Rosenzweig-Abu, the Israeli ambassador to Belgium, said: “Israel has been notified by the Belgian MFA on this incident yesterday at 22.00 [23.00 Israeli time]. We are currently investigating the circumstances around the alleged incident and will update the authorities once we receive more information.” President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran said in a televised speech: “We will not start any war, but if anyone wants to bully us they will receive a strong response.” Israeli security forces continued to limit the number of people able to worship at the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem for Friday prayers. It is the 17th consecutive week that restrictions on worship have been imposed. An Iranian Revolutionary Guards adviser in Damascus has allegedly been killed in an Israeli missile attack that targeted a southern district of the Syrian capital, according to semi-official Iranian news sites, reported Al Jazeera. The news organisation said Iranian news sites had identified the adviser as Saeid Alidadi without sharing his rank. The towns of Tayr Harfa and the outskirts of Wadi Hassan and Majdel Zoun in Lebanon were targeted by Israeli aerial and artillery strikes, reported Al Jazeera citing Lebanon’s NNA news agency. It added that Israeli warplanes also targeted the outskirts of the southern towns of Marwahin, Zibqin, and Jabal Balat. The Syrian military says it downed a number of Israeli missiles launched from the Golan Heights that it said were targeting south Damascus on Friday, state news agency Sana reported citing a military source. Attacks against US forces will continue, said Iraq’s armed group al-Nujaba. The Iran-backed Iraqi armed group said on Friday it will continue launching attacks on US forces until they withdraw from Iraq and the Gaza war ends. “Any [US] strike will result in an appropriate response,” al-Nujaba’s leader, Akram al-Kaabi, said in a statement. A US federal court has dismissed a case accusing President Joe Biden and other senior US officials of being complicit in Israel’s alleged genocide in Gaza, reports Al Jazeera. Despite the dismissal, the court’s decision urged Biden and his colleagues to examine “the results of their unflagging support” for Israel, including its human rights implications, says the Qatar-funded media organisation. Turkish police arrested seven people on Friday on suspicion of selling information to the Israeli intelligence service the Mossad, reports Associated Press, citing the state-run Anadolu news agency. Joe and Jill Biden will join families at Dover air force base in Delaware on Friday to honour three US service members killed in a drone attack in Jordan. The deaths were the first US fatalities blamed on Iran-backed militia groups in the Middle East since the Israel-Hamas war began. Biden vowed on Thursday to never forget their sacrifice to the nation and said they “risked it all”. Large crowds of Houthi supporters took to the streets in Sana’a, Yemen on Friday to protest against US-led strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen and to show support to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Saudi Arabia would be willing to accept a political commitment from Israel to create a Palestinian state, rather than anything more binding, in a bid to get a defence pact with Washington approved before the US presidential election, three sources have told Reuters. Half of US adults believe Israel’s war in Gaza has “gone too far”, a finding driven mainly by growing disapproval among Republicans and political independents, according to a poll by the Associated Press (AP) and the Norc centre for public affairs research. Sweden’s intelligence service said on Friday that the investigation into a foiled attack on the Israeli embassy in Stockholm this week was being treated as a potential terrorist crime. A far-right Israeli minister has been disinvited from a German-Israeli conference due to be opened by the German justice minister, Marco Buschmann, Germany’s Taz newspaper has reported. Israel has accused the Australian government of forgetting “Hamas’s culpability” for the war in Gaza, in a sign of growing tensions as ministers consider reinstating funding to UNRWA. Turkish authorities have formally arrested 25 suspects in connection with the shooting of a man during a service at a church in Istanbul last weekend, justice minister Yılmaz Tunç said on Friday. Several members of the Palestinian-American community have refused to meet the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in Washington, the Huffington Post has reported. The latest pro-Palestine march of hundreds of thousands of protesters through central London will end with a rally near Downing Street after a climbdown from the Metropolitan police. After a meeting on Thursday afternoon, organisers of the march said they had been given permission for the end stage of Saturday’s demonstration to take place on Whitehall. Thousands of Houthi supporters took to the streets in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital city, on Friday to protest against US-led strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen and to show support to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Here are a couple of images from the news wires: The towns of Tayr Harfa and the outskirts of Wadi Hassan and Majdel Zoun in Lebanon have been targeted by Israeli aerial and artillery strikes, reports Al Jazeera citing Lebanon’s NNA news agency. It adds that Israeli warplanes also targeted the outskirts of the southern towns of Marwahin, Zibqin, and Jabal Balat. Al Jazeera also cited a Times of Israel report that said sirens had sounded in four towns close to the Lebanon border: Kiryat Shmona, Tel Hai, Kfar Yuval and Ma’ayan Baruch. It added that the sirens were warnings of two waves of incoming rocket fire. The news organisations said the communities have been largely evacuated of civilians since 8 October, when Lebanon’s Hezbollah group and the Israeli military began trading fire. More than 1 million children in Gaza in need of mental health support, says Unicef Jonathan Crickx, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef in the Palestinian territories also said the mental health of children in Gaza was being severely affected by the war. Crickx was speaking at a media briefing in Geneva, via video link from Jerusalem on Friday, reports AFP, during which he also spoke about the number of children in Gaza separated from their parents. “They present symptoms like extremely high levels of persistent anxiety, loss of appetite, they can’t sleep, they have emotional outbursts or panic every time they hear the bombings,” he said. Before the conflict erupted, Unicef estimated that more than 500,000 children in the Gaza Strip needed mental health and psycho-social support. Now it believes that “almost all children are in need” of such help – more than one million children, said Crickx. “Children don’t have anything to do with this conflict. Yet they are suffering like no child should ever suffer,” said Crickx. “No child should ever be exposed to the level of violence seen on 7 October – or to the level of violence that we have witnessed since then.” He called for a ceasefire so that Unicef could conduct a proper count of children who are unaccompanied or separated, trace relatives, and deliver mental health support. UN estimates at least 17,000 Gaza children separated from parents At least 17,000 children in the Gaza Strip have been left unaccompanied or separated, according to estimates from the UN. “Each one has a heartbreaking story of loss and grief,” said Jonathan Crickx, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency Unicef in the Palestinian territories. Each one “is a child who is coming to terms with a horrible new reality”. “This figure corresponds to 1% of the overall displaced population – 1.7 million people,” he told a media briefing in Geneva, via video link from Jerusalem on Friday, reports AFP. Crickx said that tracing who the children were was proving “extremely difficult”, as sometimes they were brought to a hospital and “they simply can’t even say their names” due to shock or being injured. He said that during conflicts, it was common for extended families to take care of children who lost their parents. However, in Gaza, “due to the sheer lack of food, water or shelter, extended families are themselves distressed and face challenges to immediately take care of another child as they themselves are struggling to cater for their own children and family”, said Crickx. Broadly, Unicef terms separated children as those who are without their parents, while unaccompanied children are those who are separated and also without other relatives. Palestinian Red Crescent Society employee killed by Israeli gunfire in Khan Younis, says organisation A female Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) employee has been killed due to Israeli gunfire towards the organisation’s building in Khan Younis, says the humanitarian organisation. According to Al Jazeera, the Palestinian news agency Wafa had earlier reported that three civilians were killed and three others injured on Friday, including a PRCS employee. The death of the PRCS employee, Hidaya Hamad, has now been confirmed by the organisation. In a post on X, the PRCS said Hamad, who was the director of the youth and volunteers department in Gaza, had been at the organisation’s headquarters in Khan Younis when she was killed. Al Jazeera said that the PRCS had reported that Israeli snipers continued to fire at the building, which shelters thousands of displaced individuals. PRCS said its teams are unable to transfer the wounded to the nearby al-Amal hospital due to the ongoing gunfire. US president Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will join families at Dover air force base in Delaware on Friday to honour three US service members killed in a drone attack in Jordan, reports AP. The deaths were the first US fatalities blamed on Iran-backed militia groups in the Middle East since the Israel-Hamas war began. Biden vowed on Thursday to never forget their sacrifice to the nation and said they “risked it all”. Defence secretary Lloyd Austin and CQ Brown, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, will join the Bidens for the transfer in Dover, where such events take place when US service members are killed in action. They will also meet with the families privately ahead of the dignified transfer. The service members killed Sunday were all from Georgia – Sgt William Jerome Rivers of Carrollton, Sgt Kennedy Sanders of Waycross and Sgt Breonna Moffett of Savannah. Sanders and Moffett were posthumously promoted to sergeant rank. Israel and Hamas appear to be inching closer towards a deal for a ceasefire and a release of some of the hostages still being held by the militant group in Gaza, while the UN children’s agency has warned that 17,000 children have been left without families or been separated from them by the conflict. Qatar, which has been mediating between Israel and Hamas, indicated that the militant group had given its initial support for a deal after weeks of delicate and secretive negotiations. However, while an aide to Hamas’s political leader said the group had received details of the proposed deal, it had yet to deliver a reply. A Qatari official later clarified to Reuters that there was “no deal yet” and that although “Hamas has received the proposal positively”, Qatar was “waiting for their response”. Taher al-Nono, an adviser to the Qatar-based Hamas politburo chief, Ismail Haniyeh, said: “We cannot say the current stage of negotiation is zero and at the same time we cannot say that we have reached an agreement.” Haniyeh was expected to travel to Cairo for talks with Egyptian officials on the issue of a ceasefire. Read more of Peter Beaumont’s report here: Israel and Hamas closer to ceasefire deal amid warning over Gaza children. Vital supplies of fuel and bread flour for Gaza risk running dry, while schools, clinics and even rubbish collections in the West Bank and three countries across the Middle East could cease operating by the end of the month if funding cuts for UNRWA are not restored, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees has warned. In Gaza, where the UN has warned of an imminent famine affecting 2 million people, UNRWA delivers flour to make bread, and fuel for desalination plants, and runs networks of warehouses and lorries for aid. UNWRA-run schools have transformed into shelters housing tens of thousands of people. UNRWA also runs hundreds of schools in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. If the agency completely stops operating, these schools would close, leaving an estimated 500,000 children without education. Other aid agencies in Gaza that are dependent on UNRWA for coordinating aid supplies would struggle to cope if it stopped functioning. “They all rely in one way or another on UNRWA,” said Juliette Touma, head of communications for UNRWA. “For example, Unicef brings in children’s vaccines, but the people who administer them, who put the jab in kids’ arms, are UNRWA nurses.” Twelve donor states suspended funding after accusations that 12 of its staff took part in the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel. The agency currently estimates that the donor suspensions have cost it at least $440m. This diagram shows the extent of damage inflicted on the Gaza Strip by Israeli military forces between 7 October and 29 January. Images from today show that the bombardment of the Gaza Strip continues. Reuters has spoken to displaced Palestinians in Rafah about their struggles to communicate with loved ones due to the unreliable communications in the Gaza Strip since Israel began its military campaign. Gaza’s phone network, run by local provider Paltel, has reported more than ten total collapses in service provision since 7 October which it has attributed to Israel’s offensive. Even when its network has been partly working, it has said, it has struggled to maintain service in many areas because of the fighting. Ahmed Abu Daka had walked a long way from his tent in Rafah to a rise where an Egyptian network connection was reachable. “The internet is really weak. Sometimes you wait hours to send only one message,” he said. “I wait for a long time, sometimes an hour, waiting for a message from family and relatives trapped in Nasser hospital, to be reassured about them. We wait for hours to be reassured about them, check on them and know about the danger surrounding them,” he said. Mariam Odeh said she had been separated from parts of her family who stayed in Khan Younis. “We want to communicate with our relatives, reassure them and tell them we are still alive. What shall I say? I cry for this situation we’re facing,” she said. “Every day we come to the Egyptian border to call our relatives because when they call there is no service, even in Rafah. When they call us they can’t connect,” she said. “We call them to reassure them about us, that we are alive. That we are not martyred like the others.” Israeli security forces have continued to limit the number of people able to worship at the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem for Friday prayers. Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that Israeli forces “searched many worshippers, restricting their access to the Old City and preventing them from reaching al-Aqsa mosque … military checkpoints were erected … [and] a significant number of worshippers had to perform Friday prayers near the Asbat Gate, one of the main gates of the holy site, and in the Ras al-Amoud neighbourhood, having been denied access.” It is the 17th consecutive week that restrictions on worship have been imposed. 112 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours, says health ministry The latest figures from the Gaza health ministry, which is run by Hamas, said 112 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes and 148 were injured in the past 24 hours. According to the statement, at least 27,131 Palestinians have been killed and 66,287 have been injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. Belgian foreign ministry summons Israeli ambassador and condemns bombing of development agency Belgium’s ministry of foreign affairs has summoned the Israeli ambassador to Belgium and strongly condemned the bombing of the Belgian development agency Enable. Idit Rosenzweig-Abu, the Israeli ambassador to Belgium, told the Guardian: Israel have been notified by the Belgian MFA on this incident yesterday at 22:00 (23:00 Israel time). We are currently investigating the circumstances around the alleged incident and will update the authorities once we receive more information.” Pro-Palestine march in London will end near Downing Street, say police The latest pro-Palestine march of hundreds of thousands of protesters through central London will end with a rally near Downing Street after a climbdown from the Metropolitan police. Following a meeting late on Thursday afternoon, organisers of the march said they had been given permission for the end stage of Saturday’s demonstration to take place on Whitehall. Just hours earlier the Met had insisted that the “scale and frequency of marches” was causing serious disruption and that they did not support a request to extend the march into Whitehall. The UK could officially recognise a Palestinian state after a ceasefire in Gaza without waiting for the outcome of what could be years of talks between Israel and the Palestinians on a two-state solution, the UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, has said. Speaking during a visit on Thursday to Lebanon intended to tamp down regional tensions, the foreign secretary said no recognition could come while Hamas remained in Gaza, but that it could take place while Israeli negotiations with Palestinian leaders were continuing. Foiled attack on Israeli embassy in Stockholm being treated as potential "terrorist crime", says security service Sweden’s intelligence service said on Friday that the investigation into a foiled attack on the Israeli embassy in Stockholm this week was being treated as a potential “terrorist crime”, reports AFP. Police were called to the embassy on Wednesday after a “dangerous object” was discovered on its grounds, which the national bomb squad destroyed after determining it was “live”. Police declined to comment on what the object was but media have reported it was a hand grenade. “The preliminary investigation launched by the Swedish police authority on 31 January, following the discovery of a dangerous object at the Israeli embassy in Stockholm, has been taken over by the Swedish Security Service,” the service said in a statement. “In connection with this, the criminal classification has been changed to a terrorist crime,” it added. The Israeli ambassador to Sweden, Ziv Nevo Kulman, said in a post to X that the embassy had been “subject to an attempted attack”. “We will not be intimidated by terror,” Kulman added. 105 killed in Gaza overnight, says health ministry The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said 105 people were killed overnight, while the Hamas press office reported Israeli air and artillery bombardment around Khan Younis – southern Gaza’s main city and the focus of recent fighting. AFP reports that leaflets calling on civilians to leave had again been dropped by Israeli aircraft over al-Shifa hospital’s compound. Nearly four months of fighting had left Gaza “uninhabitable”, the UN said, while the Israeli siege had resulted in dire shortages of food, water, fuel and medicines. Hamas gives ‘initial’ support to Gaza truce plan as fighting rages - reports Fighting in Gaza raged on Friday with scores reported killed overnight, after Qatar said Hamas had given its “initial” support to a hostage-prisoner exchange deal that would pause its war with Israel, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). After a truce proposal agreed with Israeli negotiators was presented to Hamas on Thursday, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said there were hopes of “good news” about a fresh pause to the fighting “in the next couple of weeks”. Ansari said a truce plan thrashed out with Israeli negotiators by Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators in Paris earlier this week had received a “positive” initial response from Hamas. “That proposal has been approved by the Israeli side and now we have an initial positive confirmation from the Hamas side,” he said. But a source close to Hamas told AFP: “There is no agreement on the framework of the agreement yet – the factions have important observations – and the Qatari statement is rushed and not true.” A Hamas source told AFP that the group had been presented with a three-stage plan which would start with an initial six-week halt to the fighting to allow more aid deliveries into Gaza. “Women, children and sick men over 60” among the Israeli hostages would also be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israel, the source told AFP, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks. There would also be “negotiations around the withdrawal of Israeli forces”, with possible additional phases involving more prisoner exchanges. Iranian Revolutionary Guards adviser allegedly killed in Israeli attack in Damascus, says Al Jazeera An Iranian Revolutionary Guards adviser in Damascus has been killed in an Israeli missile attack that targeted a southern district of the Syrian capital, according to semi-official Iranian news sites, reports Al Jazeera. The news organisation said Iranian news sites had identified the adviser as Saeid Alidadi without sharing his rank. As reported earlier, Syria’s state news agency Sana, citing a Syrian military source, said the country’s military had downed a number of Israeli missiles launched from the Golan Heights at southern Damascus. Rafah is a "pressure cooker of despair" as Palestinians flee south, says UN agency The UN humanitarian office on Friday voiced concern about the hostilities in Khan Younis that have forced more people to flee to Rafah in the south of Gaza, describing the border town as a “pressure cooker of despair”, reports Reuters. “I want to emphasise our deep concern about the escalation of hostilities in Khan Younis, which has resulted in an increase in the number of internally displaced people seeking refuge in Rafah in recent days,” said Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs. “Thousands of Palestinians have continued to flee to the south, which is already hosting over half the population of about 2.3 million people … Rafah is a pressure cooker of despair, and we fear for what comes next.” Israeli forces will continue their Gaza military campaign to Rafah, the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant has said, despite the huge numbers of Palestinian civilians there. Here are some of the latest images from Israel and Gaza on the news wires: Attacks against US forces will continue, says Iraq"s armed group al-Nujaba The Iran-backed Iraqi armed group al-Nujaba said on Friday it will continue launching attacks on US forces until they withdraw from Iraq and the Gaza war ends, reports Reuters. “Any [US] strike will result in an appropriate response,” al-Nujaba’s leader, Akram al-Kaabi, said in a statement, according to Al Jazeera. A US federal court has dismissed a case accusing President Joe Biden and other senior US officials of being complicit in Israel’s alleged genocide in Gaza, reports Al Jazeera. Despite the dismissal, the court’s decision urged Biden and his colleagues to examine “the results of their unflagging support” for Israel, including its human rights implications, says the Qatar-funded media organisation. Al Jazeera said the case was filed last year by human rights groups and individual Palestinians affected by the war, with the complaint accusing Biden, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, of failing to fulfil their responsibilities under international and domestic law to prevent genocide. The verdict came late on Wednesday, reports Al Jazeera, stating that the US district court judge Jeffrey White dismissed the case on procedural grounds, citing the division of powers under the US constitution. He said in his decision that “disputes over foreign policy are considered non-justiciable political questions” and fall outside his jurisdiction. “There are rare cases in which the preferred outcome is inaccessible to the court. This is one of those cases. The court is bound by precedent and the division of our coordinate branches of government to abstain from exercising jurisdiction in this matter,” he wrote. But White added that, as the international court of justice said in a provisional ruling last week, “it is plausible that Israel’s conduct amounts to genocide. This court implores defendants to examine the results of their unflagging support of the military siege against the Palestinians in Gaza.” Seven detained in Turkey for allegedly selling information to the Mossad spy agency Turkish police arrested seven people on Friday on suspicion of selling information to the Israeli intelligence service the Mossad, reports Associated Press (AP), citing the state-run Anadolu news agency. The suspects, who allegedly passed details to the Mossad via private detectives, were detained in a joint operation with Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization, or MIT. Acting on warrants issued by the Istanbul chief public prosecutor’s office, police anti-terror and intelligence branch officers carried out raids in Istanbul and the west coast city of Izmir, Anadolu reported. Two other suspects in the investigation are thought to have been detained earlier. After the arrests on Friday, Anadolu cited a prosecution document as saying the operation targeted “Palestinian nationals and their families … within the scope of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict”. Last month, 34 people were detained by Turkish police on suspicion of spying for Israel, reports AP. They were accused of planning to carry out activities that included reconnaissance and “pursuing, assaulting and kidnapping” foreign nationals living in Turkey. At the time, the justice minister, Yilmaz Tunc, said most of the suspects were charged with committing “political or military espionage” on behalf of Israeli intelligence. The Mossad is said to have recruited Palestinians and Syrian nationals in Turkey as part of an operation against foreigners living in Turkey. "We will not start a war" but will respond strongly if anyone bullies us, says Iran"s president Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi said on Friday that his country will not start a war, but it will “respond strongly” to anyone who bullies it, reports Reuters. “We will not start any war, but if anyone wants to bully us they will receive a strong response,” Raisi said in a televised speech. Raisi’s comments came after days of speculation about how Washington might retaliate after three US soldiers were killed last Saturday in a strike on their base in Jordan by an Iranian-backed group. CBS News, citing US officials, reported on Thursday that the US had approved plans for multi day strikes in Iraq and Syria against multiple targets, including Iranian personnel and facilities in those countries. “Before, w