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US forces struck more than 70 Islamic State group targets in Syria on Friday in what President Donald Trump described as “very serious retaliation” for an attack that killed three Americans last weekend.Washington said a lone gunman from the militant group carried out the December 13 attack in Palmyra — home to UNESCO-listed ancient ruins and once controlled by jihadist fighters — that left two US soldiers and a US civilian dead.In response, the United States “struck more than 70 targets at multiple locations across central Syria with fighter jets, attack helicopters, and artillery,” US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement.”The operation employed more than 100 precision munitions targeting known ISIS infrastructure and weapons sites,” CENTCOM said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network that the United States is “inflicting very serious retaliation, just as I promised, on the murderous terrorists responsible,” and that those who attack Americans “WILL BE HIT HARDER THAN YOU HAVE EVER BEEN HIT BEFORE.”CENTCOM said that US and allied forces have “conducted 10 operations in Syria and Iraq resulting in the deaths or detention of 23 terrorist operatives” following the Palmyra attack, without specifying which groups the militants belonged to.- ‘No safe havens’ -Syria’s foreign ministry, while not directly commenting on the Friday strikes, said in a post on X that the country is committed to fighting the Islamic State (IS) group and “ensuring that it has no safe havens on Syrian territory, and will continue to intensify military operations against it wherever it poses a threat.”The Americans killed in the Palmyra attack last weekend were Iowa National Guard sergeants William Howard and Edgar Torres Tovar, and Ayad Mansoor Sakat, a civilian from Michigan who worked as an interpreter.Trump, Hegseth and top military officer General Dan Caine were among the US officials who attended a somber ceremony marking the return of the dead to the United States on Wednesday.The attack was the first such incident since the overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December last year, and Syrian interior ministry spokesman Noureddine al-Baba said the perpetrator was a security forces member who was due to be fired for his “extremist Islamist ideas.”The US personnel who were targeted were supporting Operation Inherent Resolve, the international effort to combat IS, which seized swaths of Syrian and Iraqi territory in 2014.The jihadists were ultimately defeated by local ground forces backed by international air strikes and other support, but IS still has a presence in Syria, especially in the country’s vast desert.Trump has long been skeptical of Washington’s presence in Syria, ordering the withdrawal of troops during his first term but ultimately leaving American forces in the country.The Pentagon announced in April that the United States would halve the number of US personnel in Syria in the following months, while US envoy for Syria Tom Barrack said in June that Washington would eventually reduce its bases in the country to one.US forces are currently deployed in Syria’s Kurdish-controlled northeast as well as at Al-Tanf near the border with Jordan.

A famine declared in Gaza in August is now over thanks to improved access for humanitarian aid, the United Nations said on Friday, but warned the food situation in the Palestinian territory remained dire.More than 70 percent of the population is living in makeshift shelters, it said, with hunger exacerbated by winter floods and an increasing risk of hypothermia as temperatures plummet.Although a ceasefire between Israel and militant group Hamas that took effect in October has partially eased restrictions on goods and aid, delivery fluctuates daily and is limited and uneven across the territory, it said.”No areas are classified in Famine,” said the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC), a coalition of monitors tasked by the UN to warn of impending crises.But it stressed that “the situation remains critical: the entire Gaza Strip is classified in Emergency”.The US-sponsored ceasefire halted two years of fighting, sparked by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.Yet the deal remains fragile as Israel and Hamas accuse each other almost daily of violations.”Following the ceasefire… the latest IPC analysis indicates notable improvements in food security and nutrition compared to the August 2025 analysis, which detected famine,” the IPC said.However, around 1.6 million people are still forecast to face “crisis” levels of food insecurity in the period running to April 15, it said.And under a worst-case scenario involving renewed hostilities and a halt in humanitarian aid and commercial goods, the territories of North Gaza, Gaza Governorate, Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis risk famine, it said.’Alarmingly high’ -The UN’s agencies said that despite the roll-back of famine, hunger, malnutrition, disease and the scale of agricultural destruction remains “alarmingly high”.”Humanitarian needs remain staggering, with current assistance addressing only the most basic survival requirements,” the food, agriculture, health, and childrens’ agencies said in a joint statement.”Only access, supplies and funding at scale can prevent famine from returning,” they said.The UN’s declaration of famine in August — the first time it has done so in the Middle East — infuriated Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slamming the IPC report as “an outright lie”.On Friday, foreign ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein said on X that faced with “overwhelming and unequivocal evidence, even the IPC had to admit that there is no famine in Gaza”.But he also accused the IPC of continuing to present a “distorted” picture by relying “primarily on data related to UN trucks, which account for only 20 percent of all aid trucks”.Oxfam said that despite the end of the famine, the levels of hunger in Gaza remain “appalling and preventable”, and accused Israel of blocking aid requests from dozens of well-established humanitarian agencies.”Oxfam alone has $2.5m worth of aid including 4,000 food parcels, sitting in warehouses just across the border. Israeli authorities refuse it all,” said Nicolas Vercken, Campaigns and Advocacy Director at Oxfam France.- ‘Rapidly deteriorating’ -The IPC said hunger was not the only challenge to those in the Palestinian territory.Access to water, sanitation and hygiene is severely limited, it said, with open defecation and overcrowded living conditions increasing the risk of disease outbreaks.Over 96 percent of cropland in the Gaza Strip is either damaged, inaccessible, or both, it said, while livestock has been decimated.”It breaks my heart to see the ongoing scale of human suffering in Gaza,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday.”We need more crossings, the lifting of restrictions on critical items, the removal of red tape, safe routes inside Gaza, sustained funding, and unimpeded access — including for NGOs,” he said.Guterres also urged the world “not lose sight of the rapidly deteriorating situation in the West Bank”, where Palestinians “face escalating Israeli settler violence, land seizures, demolitions and intensified movement restrictions.”

Earlier this month a group of Palestinian boys turned out to train at their local football pitch in the shadow of the wall separating Israel from the West Bank’s Aida refugee camp — and found a note at the gate.The children took the ominous message from Israeli authorities to Muhannad Abu Srour, sports director at the Aida Youth Centre in the camp near Bethlehem, and the news was not good. “We were shocked to discover that it was a decision to demolish Aida camp’s football field,” Abu Srour told AFP, adding that more than 500 children regularly train on the field roughly half the size of a regulation soccer pitch.”The football field is the only open space we have. If the field is taken away, the children’s dream is taken away,” Abu Srour said.The planned destruction of the Aida field is one of many points of contention in the occupied West Bank, but it is a particularly painful one for young Palestinians yearning for a better future. One of the older members, 18-year-old Abdallah al-Ansurur, hopes to make it into the national Palestinian team, and, like many other youth at Aida camp, took his first steps in the game on the pitch flanked by the eight-metre concrete Israeli wall.”I started when I was about 13 years old. This field gave me a real opportunity to train,” said Ansurur, who was born and raised in Aida camp, one of the smallest in the West Bank.- ‘The only open space’ -Ansurur, who trains to be a goalkeeper, calls the astroturf-covered piece of land a “lifeline”.”Without this field, I wouldn’t have had this chance. If it didn’t exist, we’d be playing in the streets — or not playing at all,” he said.Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and frequently demolishes Palestinian homes or infrastructure, arguing they were built without permits.AFP was shown the note from COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body in charge of Palestinian civilian affairs, which says the field was not authorised.But Anton Salman, who was mayor of adjacent Bethlehem when the field was built in 2021, told AFP the construction was legal.Salman said his municipality leased the land from the Armenian Church authorities to whom it belongs, before allowing Aida camp’s popular committee to manage it for the benefit of residents.Saeed al-Azzeh, head of the popular committee, confirmed the information, calling the space, “the only breathing space” for camp residents.”Today, more than 7,000 people live on the same piece of land. Streets are narrow, alleys are cramped — there is nowhere else,” Azzeh said, referring to the camp.Like other Palestinian refugee camps, Aida was built to accommodate some of the hundreds of thousands of people who either fled their homes or were forced out during the creation of Israel in 1948.With time, tents gave way to concrete buildings, with the football field representing one of the few open spaces in the camp’s dense patchwork.- Kept apart by checkpoints -Abu Srour is proud of what came out of the field, with youth sports delegations able to travel abroad to play, a welcome escape from the West Bank’s myriad restrictions.”Going to play in France is easier than going to play in Nablus,” he said, referring to the main city in the north of the West Bank.This is because checkpoints, a fixture of the West Bank since the start of Israel’s occupation, have multiplied since the start of the war in Gaza.Abu Srour mentioned that bringing a local team to Ramallah, a city 20 kilometres (12.5 miles) away as the crow flies, took six hours recently, instead of one hour in the past.- ‘Demolished dreams’ -Restricted mobility is a major issue for most Palestinian athletes as it makes it nearly impossible for athletes of similar levels from different cities to train together.Waseem Abu Sal, who was the first Palestinian boxer to participate in the Olympics, told AFP he frequently sparred with athletes of different levels or weight categories for lack of mobility.Taking a short break from running a practice for 50 excited five to 10 year old boys, coach Mahmud Jandia told AFP he hoped the field would remain.”Yes, the wall is there — it feels like a prison — but despite that, the most important thing is that the field remains and the children keep playing.””If the field is demolished, all the children’s dreams will be demolished with it.”