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The Israeli military announced Tuesday it had expanded its weeks-long offensive in the occupied West Bank to more areas of Jenin city, saying troops killed three militants although Palestinian officials reported two dead.On its 43rd day, Israeli forces “expanded the counterterrorism operation in northern Samaria to additional areas in Jenin”, the military said, using the Biblical name for that part of the West Bank.It said that a local Hamas leader and another Palestinian militant were killed in an exchange of fire with troops during an overnight raid in Jenin. Later, during an inspection of the premises where the militants had been, troops killed a third armed man “who posed an immediate threat” to them, the military said.Jenin governor Kamal Abu al-Rub told AFP that two Palestinians were killed during the raid in the eastern neighbourhood of the city.”Two citizens were martyred, and many young men were arrested”, he said.The military said troops had arrested three Palestinian suspects.The Palestinian health ministry identified one of the dead as Aser Saadi, matching the name of the Hamas leader in the Israeli army statement.The health ministry said the 21-year-old’s body was taken away by troops after he was shot.The head of the Jenin government hospital, Wisam Baker, told AFP that a man identified as Jihad Alawneh was declared dead on arrival at the facility early on Tuesday.Baker said that Alawneh, 25, had bled out after being shot in the thigh.Governor Abu al-Rub said the raid had caused “devastation and massive destruction” in Jenin’s eastern neighbourhood, “which has not experienced an Israeli assault like this before”.He said that the main electricity line was cut off, dozens of families were forced to leave, and army bulldozers had left behind a trail of damage.- ‘Massive destruction’ -The Israeli offensive in the northern West Bank began on January 21 around refugee camps regarded as bastions of Palestinian militancy, but has since expanded to more areas, displaced tens of thousands of people and saw the first deployment of Israeli tanks in the territory in 20 years.On Tuesday afternoon, an AFP journalist said Israeli troops and armoured personnel carriers were still in Jenin’s eastern neighbourhood.Firefighters worked to extinguish a fire in an apartment hit during the raid, its facade charred and some of its walls destroyed.Pools of blood had accumulated in several rooms of the apartment, the journalist said.Abu al-Rub said that “more than 50 families were forced to flee and evacuate their homes because the Israelis took over their houses and buildings, turning them into military barracks”.”All the streets in the eastern neighbourhood were bulldozed”, said the governor, including areas that before Tuesday did not see army bulldozers ripping through roads in what the military says aims to clear explosives.Bassem Hardan, a resident of the neighbourhood, told AFP that after initially ignoring army calls for his family to leave, “they called our neighbours and told them to get out within two minutes before they demolish the building”.Dubbed “Iron Wall” by the Israeli military, the operation in the northern West Bank began days after a ceasefire took effect in Gaza, a separate Palestinian territory.Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and its troops carry out regular raids there.The ongoing operation has involved raids in multiple refugee camps near the cities of Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas, where Palestinian armed groups have a strong presence.

The United States on Tuesday designated Yemen’s Huthi militant group a foreign terrorist organization, conforming with an order by President Donald Trump in January.The Iran-backed rebels control much of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, and have launched missile and drone attacks at Israel since the war in Gaza broke out in October 2023. They have also repeatedly targeted merchant vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden — waterways vital to global trade.”Today’s action taken by the State Department demonstrates the Trump Administration’s commitment to protecting our national security interests, the safety of the American people, and the security of the United States,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.Trump signed an executive order in late January to return the Huthis to the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO), where he placed them during his first term. The redesignation means that anyone who engages or works with the Huthis, whose territory is home to most of Yemen’s population, will risk being prosecuted by the United States. Former president Joe Biden removed the Huthis from the list after humanitarian groups protested that they could not get aid to Yemen’s needy without dealing with the rebels.Already the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country before the war broke out a decade ago, Yemen is now suffering one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with about two-thirds of its 34 million people in need of aid.

Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa was in Cairo Tuesday for an Arab League summit on Gaza, his first such meeting since ousting longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad nearly three months ago.Sharaa arrived “to attend the extraordinary Arab summit in Cairo on developments on the Palestinian issue”, state news agency SANA reported.The Syrian presidency published images of Sharaa meeting with senior officials including United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and European Union chief Antonio Costa on the sidelines of the summit.Guterres and Sharaa “exchanged views about the historic opportunity to chart a new course for Syria as well as the challenges facing the country”, said a UN statement.”The Secretary-General took note of the important steps taken on the path of a political transition in Syria,” it added, stressing the need for an “inclusive transition”.Sharaa’s Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which has its roots in Al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, led a lightning rebel offensive that ousted Assad on December 8, ending more than half a century of the family’s rule.Sharaa was appointed interim president for an unspecified transitional period the following month.Under Assad, Syria was suspended from the Arab League over his brutal 2011 crackdown on pro-democracy protests which spiralled into a devastating civil war.Damascus, then still under Assad, was allowed to return to the bloc in 2023 after years of regional isolation.A UN Security Council committee approved a travel ban exemption for Sharaa, enabling him to visit Egypt for Tuesday’s summit despite his inclusion on a sanctions list.The meeting was called in response to a widely criticised proposal by President Donald Trump for the United States to take over war-battered Gaza and redevelop it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”, forcing its Palestinian inhabitants to relocate to Egypt or Jordan.Sharaa has called Trump’s proposal “a very huge crime that cannot happen”.

At a bustling Shanghai trade fair, exporters of goods ranging from plush toys to chainmail bikinis expressed growing unease at the escalating US-China trade war as new US tariffs took hold on Tuesday.President Donald Trump on Monday doubled previously imposed tariffs to 20 percent, which themselves pile atop existing levies on various Chinese goods.The fair …

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