Israel

JERUSALEM (AP) — Iran said Saturday it had conducted a successful satellite launch into its highest orbit yet, the latest for a program the West fears improves Tehran’s ballistic missiles.

The announcement comes as heightened tensions grip the wider Middle East over Israel’s continued war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and just days after Iran and Pakistan engaged in tit-for-tat airstrikes in each others’ countries.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Relatives of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza protested Saturday outside the home of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, expressing frustration over his government’s seeming lack of progress in getting the more than 100 captives released as the war in Gaza drags on.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Rifts are emerging among top Israeli officials over the handling of the war against Hamas in Gaza. A member of the country’s War Cabinet cast doubt over the strategy for releasing hostages, while the prime minister rejected the United States’ calls to scale back its offensive.

KIBBUTZ NIR OZ, Israel (AP) — Standing in the ruins of her home in the Nir Oz farming village on the Gaza border, Sharon Alony Cunio gazed at the distant skyline of Khan Younis, the Palestinian city where Hamas militants dragged her more than three months ago. Her husband, David, remains captive in Gaza.

He’s kilometers away but completely out of reach.

JERUSALEM, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- An Israeli woman was killed and at least 17 others injured in car-ramming and stabbing incidents in central Israel on Monday that the police said was "a serious terror attack."

Commander of the Central District of the Israeli Police Avi Bitton said that two Palestinian suspects had been arrested after the attack at the scene and were under investigation. He identified them as cousins from the Hebron area in the occupied West Bank.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Missile fire struck a ship Monday just off the coast of Yemen in the Gulf of Aden, less than a day after Yemen’s Houthi rebels fired an anti-ship cruise missile toward an American destroyer in the Red Sea, officials said.

Details remained scarce on the missile strike, though it marked the latest attack roiling global shipping amid Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Suspicion immediately fell on the Houthis.

JERUSALEM, Jan 14 (Reuters) - A guided missile launched from Lebanon killed a 76-year-old woman and her son in a village in northern Israel on Sunday, medical officials said, hours after the Israeli military said it killed four heavily armed militants trying to enter from Lebanon.

Fighting between Israel and Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement has surged in parallel with Israel's more than three-month-old Gaza war against Palestinian Hamas, another ally of Tehran.

TEL AVIV (AP) — The families of hostages held in the Gaza Strip kicked off a 24-hour rally in Tel Aviv Saturday night, calling on the government to bring their loved ones home after 100 days spent in Hamas captivity.

Thousands of people poured into “Hostages Ssquare” in Tel Aviv — a central plaza opposite Israel’s Defense Ministry that has served as a gathering point for the campaigners.

Hamas and other Gaza militants captured some 250 people during its deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, while killing some 1,200 other people, most of them civilians.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Now 100 days old, the latest Israel-Hamas war is by far the longest, bloodiest, and most destructive conflict between the bitter enemies.

JERUSALEM, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Israel accused Hamas on Saturday of planning to attack its embassy in Sweden as part of an expansion by the Palestinian Islamist militant group into Europe, where authorities announced the arrests of several suspects last month.

In a statement following up on the arrests announced by Danish, German and Swedish authorities, Israel's Mossad intelligence agency named an alleged Hamas network member in Sweden, without specifying whether he was also in custody.