Mazzaltov World News provides you with the latest live coverage of Current Affairs, Sports, Health, Weather, Entertainment, Business and Travel News from around the world.
Here’s where things stand on Wednesday 16 July 2025:
- The United Nations agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, says one in 10 children screened in its clinics in Gaza are malnourished as Israel’s siege of the enclave triggers a man-made starvation crisis.
- Israeli forces pound Gaza after killing at least 61 Palestinians on Tuesday, including 23 people in the Shati refugee camp and two others near the notorious US-backed GHF site in Rafah.
- The Israeli military has also bombed eastern Lebanon, killing 12 people, and carried out air attacks on the predominantly Druze town of Suwayda in southern Syria, where armed groups are clashing with the Syrian security forces.
- Leaders and delegates from 30 countries are meeting in Colombia’s capital, Bogota, to discuss how to stop Israel’s assault on Gaza and its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.
- Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 58,479 people and wounded 139,355, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7, 2023, attacks, and more than 200 were taken captive.
Israeli forces arrest Palestinians in West Bank raids, demolish home
Israeli forces have arrested at least 10 Palestinians in early morning raids in the occupied West Bank, the Wafa news agency reports.
This includes seven Palestinians from the Ramallah and el-Bireh governorate, including three young men from the village of Burqa aged between 17 and 20 years.
It also includes three Palestinians from the town of Azzun, in Qalqilya, Wafa reported.
Meanwhile, Israeli authorities demolished a three-storey house in the Palestinian-majority Israeli town of Kafr Qasim, Wafa also reported.
Photos: Israeli settlers burn cars in occupied West Bank village
At least 20 Palestinians killed at GHF site in southern Gaza
The controversial US- and Israel-backed GHF says at least 20 Palestinians have been killed at its food distribution point in Khan Younis, the latest people to lose their lives at the sites described by the UN as “death traps”.
“At least 19 of the victims were trampled and one was stabbed “amid a chaotic and dangerous surge, driven by agitators in the crowd,” the GHF said in a statement.
“We have credible reason to believe that elements within the crowd – armed and affiliated with Hamas – deliberately fomented the unrest,” it said, without providing any evidence.
GHF personnel identified multiple firearms in the crowd, the organisation said, adding that a US worker was threatened with a firearm by someone in the crowd.
The GHF has faced intense criticism since its establishment in late May, with the UN condemning its operations. More than 870 Palestinians have been killed near or at its distribution sites since then.
Israeli army says it opens new corridor splitting Khan Younis area
The Israeli army has announced the opening of a new corridor in southern Gaza that splits the Khan Younis area.
The Magen Oz Corridor runs between eastern and western Khan Younis, stretching about 15km (9.3 miles), the military said, adding that it would apply pressure on Hamas and help dismantle the group’s brigade operating in what remains of the southern city.
In an illustration published by the Israeli army, the new corridor connects to the Morag Corridor, which was established in April to separate Khan Younis from Rafah.
Israeli Defence Ministry presents cheaper, quicker plan for Gaza ‘concentration camp’: Report
The Israeli Ministry of Defense presented Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with an updated estimate of the cost of establishing the so-called “humanitarian city” for Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip, the Israeli Army Radio has reported.
The latest plan is estimated to cost 4 billion shekels (about $1.2bn) and the construction of the site – which would provide tents, electricity, water, and food – would take about two months, it said.
The report comes amid widespread criticism of the Israeli scheme that would move 600,000 already uprooted Palestinians into a small piece of land in southern Gaza – a scheme that critics say amounts to the establishment of a “concentration camp” and ethnic cleansing.
The first iteration of the idea, floated by Defence Minister Israel Katz earlier this month, was estimated to cost between $2.7bn and $4bn, senior officials told Israeli media.
According to two officials who spoke to Reuters, Netanyahu dismissed the first proposition, saying it was far too costly and complicated, and ordered the military to propose something cheaper and quicker.
Mystery buildings in Rafah raise concerns
Al Jazeera’s Sanad team examined satellite data to understand the full scope of devastation in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza.
Instead, they found some unusual patterns. Some schools and medical centres remain standing. Were they left intentionally, and if so, why?
Columbia University adopts controversial IHRA definition of anti-Semitism
The embattled US university says it has formally adopted the definition of anti-Semitism promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which classifies criticism of the state of Israel as anti-Semitic.
The move comes as Columbia carries out negotiations with the Trump administration to restore $400m in federal funds.
The IHRA, on its website, says manifestations of anti-Semitism “include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity”. Examples of this, according to the IHRA, include “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg,, by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour” or “applying double standards by requiring of it [Israel] a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”.
Experts and human rights groups say the IHRA definition is problematic because it conflates legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
In April 2023, more than 100 civil society organisations wrote to the UN urging it not to adopt the IHRA definition.
The group, which included Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Israeli groups such as B’Tselem and Gisha, said the definition could be used to label as anti-Semitic “documentation showing that Israel’s founding involved dispossessing many Palestinians; or arguments, also made by some Members of the Israeli Knesset, to transform Israel from a Jewish state into a multiethnic state that equally belongs to all of its citizens – that is, a state based on civic identity, rather than ethnic identity”.
The group also noted that the example on “applying double standards” opens the door to labelling as anti-Semitic anyone who focuses on Israeli abuses, as long as worse abuses are deemed to be occurring elsewhere.
Even the author of the IHRA definition, Kenneth Stern, has expressed concern over right-wing Jewish groups “weaponising” it to silence critics of Israel.
Death toll in Israeli attacks on Gaza rises to 20
Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic are reporting that at least 20 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza since the early hours of this morning.
We’ll bring you more soon.
Israeli forces claim to have killed dozens of Palestinian fighters in Gaza
The Israeli army has released a statement recapping some of its latest military action in the Beit Hanoon area of northern Gaza. Here’s a summary of its claims:
- The army eliminated “dozens of terrorists at short range in rapid engagements” and destroyed “terrorist infrastructure, including weapons and underground routes”.
- It destroyed a launcher used by Hamas to fire into Israeli territory.
- It destroyed a site where soldiers had detected explosives.
- It killed a fighter carrying weapons in Beit Hanoon.
Israeli forces shoot, injure Palestinian near Bethlehem
The Wafa news agency is reporting that a young man was injured last night by Israeli forces near the Mazmuriya military checkpoint, east of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.
Security sources told Wafa that Israeli forces stationed at the checkpoint near the villages of al-Numan and al-Khas shot a 23-year-old Palestinian man with live ammunition, wounding him in the right leg.
He was transferred to a hospital.
UN says 10 children per day lose their legs in Gaza
The UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) has said that “10 children per day lose one or both of their legs,” in Gaza.
In total, “134,105 people including over 40,500 children have new war-related injuries,” OHCHR said in a post on X.
This includes more than 35,000 people “believed to have significant hearing damage due to explosions”.
Thousands in northern Gaza flee as Israel issues evacuation threats
Israeli forces issued forced displacement orders for residents of Jabalia and the surrounding areas in northern Gaza, warning Palestinians not to return.
At least 61 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks on Tuesday. Many were children.
Some of the most intense attacks happened in Gaza City and the Shati refugee camp, where at least 23 people were killed.
Israeli forces kill 11 Palestinians in overnight attacks
Israeli forces have continued to bombard Gaza overnight, killing at least 11 Palestinians in the early hours of the morning.
Four of the victims, including two children, were killed in an Israeli attack on tents in al-Mawasi camp in southern Gaza.
Israel hits the camp on an almost daily basis, despite it having been declared one of the only safe zones for civilians in the Gaza Strip.
A recap of recent developments
- The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, says one in 10 children screened in its clinics in Gaza are malnourished as Israel’s siege of the enclave triggers a man-made starvation crisis.
- Israeli forces continue bombarding Gaza after killing at least 61 Palestinians, including 23 people in the Shati refugee camp and two others near the notorious US-backed GHF site in Rafah.
- Israel’s military has also attacked the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, killing 12 people, and bombed the predominantly Druze town of Suwayda in southern Syria, where armed groups are clashing with the Syrian security forces.
- The US has called on Israel to launch an inquiry into the killing of 20-year-old US citizen Sayfollah Musallet, who was beaten to death by settlers in the occupied West Bank, calling the incident a “terrorist act”.
- The ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party in Israel has announced it is quitting the government, dealing a blow to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and leaving him with a razor-thin majority in the Israeli parliament.
- Leaders and delegates from 30 countries are meeting in Colombia’s capital, Bogota, to discuss how to stop Israel’s assault on Gaza and its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.