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 Friday 18 July 2025:
- The daily death toll in Gaza continues to mount, with Al Jazeera Arabic’s correspondent reporting that at least 56 more people were killed in Israeli attacks on the Palestinian enclave since dawn on Thursday.
- Condemnation grows over Israel’s deadly tank attack on Gaza’s only Catholic church, which has killed three people and left at least 10 injured.
- Syrian state media has reported an Israeli air strike in the vicinity of Suwayda in the country’s south despite efforts by Damascus to cement a ceasefire between warring Druze and Bedouin fighters.
- Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 58,667 people and wounded 139,974, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks, and more than 200 were taken captive.
Israeli forces shoot, arrest Palestinian during raid on Nablus
The Israeli military has shot and arrested a Palestinian man after storming the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, the Quds News Network reports.
The wounded man’s condition is not currently known.
We will bring you more information when we have it.
Under ‘immense pressure’, Israeli PM Netanyahu admits church in Gaza hit by shell fire
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put out a statement after the military’s deadly attack on the only Catholic church in the Gaza Strip.
This comes after immense pressure from the United States following a call between the Israeli prime minister and US President Donald Trump.
In that call, Netanyahu admitted that this strike was a mistake.
However, his statement falls short of calling it an error, saying: “Israel deeply regrets that stray ammunition hit Gaza’s Holy Family Church.”
He goes on to say that Israel is investigating the incident and does not target civilians or holy sites.
White House says it ‘did not support’ Israel’s Syria strikes
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce has said the US condemns violence in Syria and called on the Syrian government to lead the path forward.
“We are engaging diplomatically with Israel and Syria at the highest levels, both to address the present crisis and reach a lasting agreement between the two sovereign states,” she said on Thursday.
Bruce continued that “regarding Israel’s intervention and activity” in Syria, the US “did not support recent Israeli strikes”.
It was unclear if Bruce’s comments referred to just US logistical support for the Israeli military’s attacks against Syria. When asked to clarify, Bruce declined to say whether Washington supports Israel carrying out such military operations against its neighbour.
Israel’s deadly attack on Catholic church in Gaza ‘not an isolated incident’
New details are emerging about the congregation of Gaza’s only Catholic church that was targeted on Thursday by Israel.
More than 600, mostly women and children, were sheltering there. We now know at least three people have died and at least 10 have been injured.
We also are aware that the pope had been contacting members of the congregation on a nightly basis to check on the wellbeing of those sheltering there.
Asked about the incident, Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary, said the president was not happy when he heard about what had happened.
Still, this is not an isolated incident.
In fact, the Israeli military has targeted at least half a dozen churches in Gaza since just October 7, 2023, using precision-guided munitions.
Still, the Israeli military maintains this latest attack was purely accidental.
Israel bombs Gaza’s only Catholic church sheltering elderly, children
As we previously reported, Israeli forces bombed Gaza’s only Catholic church on Thursday, killing three people and wounding at least 10 others.
At least one person is also in critical condition following the strike on the Church of the Latin Monastery – known as the Holy Family Church – in northern Gaza City, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said in a statement.
Among those killed were the parish’s 60-year-old janitor and an 84-year-old woman who was receiving psychosocial support inside a Caritas tent in the church compound.
The church’s priest was also lightly wounded.
A recap of recent developments
- Israeli attacks across Gaza killed 56 people on Thursday, including several aid seekers, according to an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent in the Palestinian enclave.
- Israel said it “deeply regrets” bombing Gaza’s only Catholic church, which it said was the result of “stray ammunition”, after international condemnation of the deadly attack from world leaders and Pope Leo.
- The spokesperson for UN chief Antonio Guterres said Israel has refused to renew visas for the heads of three UN agencies working on Gaza – OCHA, OHCHR, and UNRWA.
- Israel has reportedly carried out a renewed air strike near Suwayda in southern Syria, state news agency SANA reports, threatening a fragile ceasefire between Druze and Bedouin and government forces in the area.
- Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt and Turkiye have jointly condemned Israel’s strikes on Syria as a “flagrant violation of international law”.
- The Israeli military has again violated its ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon, carrying out attacks on towns in the country’s south, killing four people.
UN expert calls for end of Israel’s ‘femi-genocide’ against Palestinian women, girls
The UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls says Palestinian women and girls in Gaza face “the intentional destruction of their lives and bodies, for being Palestinian and for being women”.
“There is more than one way to subject a people to genocide. Destroying them in whole or in part psychologically is one of them,” Reem Alsalem said.
“The horrors that Palestinian mothers, in particular, continue to endure – watching their children slowly starve, killed, maimed, and buried alive – is killing them repeatedly in a single day. The psychological trauma they, and all Palestinians in Gaza, are suffering knows no boundaries.”
Alsalem added that Israel is using reproductive violence in its bombardment and blockade of Gaza, including via the destruction of the enclave’s health system. She noted that 150,000 pregnant and lactating women do not have access to essential care.
“An estimated 17,000 of these women and 60,000 children under five now suffer from acute malnutrition. At least 60 children have died from starvation since March 2025, following Israel’s blockade on food, medical supplies, and humanitarian aid,” she said.
Syria’s president thanks Qatari, Saudi and Turkish leaders for support
Ahmed al-Sharaa has reiterated that his government “remains committed to protecting” Syrians of all sects amid recent sectarian violence.
In a readout of his talks with the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye today, Syria’s SANA news agency said the Syrian president also said this week’s violence is the result of “arms proliferation and foreign interference”.
Al-Sharaa said Syria is committed ” to hold accountable all those who break the law and refuse to submit to the authority of the state, in order to preserve the unity of the country and safeguard the dignity and security of citizens”, SANA said.
‘Is it making a difference? Absolutely’: UK celebrities rally for Gaza
Khalid Abdalla remembers sitting on his father’s shoulders as a three-year-old, peering over a sea of heads and waving flags as chants of “free Palestine” rose around him.
It was the early 1980s, a time when hearing “Palestine” was rare in the United Kingdom.
The details of those moments in Glasgow are faint, but he remembers how important the protest felt to his father and the crowds around them.
“I’ve had a relationship with protest for Palestinian liberation since then,” Abdalla told Al Jazeera.
Decades later, the Egyptian-British actor – most known for his roles in The Kite Runner and The Crown – is still marching. But now he carries the weight of his public platform.
“After October 7, my first act was at The Crown premiere in LA, with ‘Ceasefire Now’ written on my hand,” he said.
Read more here.
Khalid Abdalla shows a message on his palm as he poses on the red carpet at the 2024 BAFTA Television Awards in London, Britain, May 12, 2024
Photos: Mourners attend funeral of two Palestinians killed at Gaza church
Israeli forces kill one person in Tubas, occupied West Bank
One person was killed after receiving critical gunshot wounds by Israeli forces in the Wadi Far’a area, in the occupied West Bank district of Tubas, Wafa reported.
Earlier today, Israeli special forces raided the area and surrounded a house where 47-year-old Firas Ahmad Raja Soboh was shot inside and subsequently detained while severely wounded.
According to the Palestinian General Authority for Civil Affairs, the Health Ministry was officially informed of Soboh’s death.
Moreover, Wafa reported that Israeli forces were withholding his body.
‘Hard to believe’ Israeli probe into church attack will yield accountability
The brief statement from the Israeli prime minister [came] after pressure from US President Donald Trump for him to address the situation at hand.
Whenever there is pressure on the Israelis – whenever there is international pressure on Netanyahu specifically, that’s when the Israelis release some sort of statement about wrongdoing.
Just last week, when there were at least 10 Palestinians – mostly children – who were killed waiting in a queue at a water distribution site, after the international outcry, that’s when the Israelis said there was a malfunction with their munition.
What Netanyahu is saying here [about the church strike], he didn’t really admit that it was a mistake. He said Israel expresses sorrow and is investigating the situation, saying that it was “stray ammunition”.
But it’s a little bit hard to believe any sort of Israeli investigation that happens after 21 months of war because the military oftentimes absolves itself of any sort of wrongdoing, and there is no one held accountable.
Israeli army says shell fragments ‘mistakenly’ hit Gaza church
The military says an initial investigation into the deadly attack on the Holy Family Church in Gaza City “suggests that fragments from a shell fired during operational activity in the area hit the church mistakenly”.
“The cause of the incident is under review,” it said in a post on X.
As we’ve been reporting, Israel has routinely hit religious sites across Gaza in its war on the enclave, including churches and mosques.
Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, earlier told Vatican News that an Israeli tank hit the church “directly”.
Israel refuses to renew visas of at least three UN agency leaders in Gaza
Israel has refused to renew visas for the heads of at least three UN agencies working on Gaza, UN chief Antonio Guterres’s spokesman has confirmed.
Visas for the local leaders of the UN’s humanitarian office (OCHA), the human rights agency OHCHR, and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, have not been renewed in recent months, Stephane Dujarric confirmed.
Tom Fletcher, the UN’s humanitarian chief, told the UN Security Council this week that the United Nations’ humanitarian mandate is not just to provide aid to civilians in need and report what its staff witnesses, but to advocate for international humanitarian law.
“Each time we report on what we see, we face threats of further reduced access to the civilians we are trying to serve,” he said. “Nowhere today is the tension between our advocacy mandate and delivering aid greater than in Gaza.”
Fletcher added: “Visas are not renewed or reduced in duration by Israel, explicitly in response to our work on protection of civilians.”
Syrian leader pledges security for all, slams Israeli strikes on Damascus
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa says protecting the country’s Druze citizens and their rights is a priority as he announces that local leaders will take control of security in the city of Suwayda in a bid to end sectarian violence in the south and in the wake of deadly Israeli strikes in Damascus.
Al-Sharaa’s remarks came after the Syrian government and Druze leader Sheikh Yousef Jarbou announced a new ceasefire in the city and said the army had begun withdrawing from Suwayda.
Dozens of Syrian military vehicles were seen leaving the city overnight.
Welcome to our coverage
Hello, and welcome to our live coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and its attacks on Syria.
Stay with us for the latest news, reactions and analyses.
You can find all our updates from Thursday, July 17, here.
![A wounded Palestinian girl receives treatment at Nasser Hospital after being wounded in an Israeli strike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, July 17, 2025. [Hatem Khaled/Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/2025-07-17T102331Z_1264808739_RC27OFABBEXQ_RTRMADP_3_ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-GAZA-1752764748.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80)