Israel-Gaza war live updates: U.S. destroys three Houthi anti-ship missiles

Israel-Gaza war live updates: U.S. destroys three Houthi anti-ship missiles

U.S. forces destroyed three Houthi anti-ship missiles that were aimed at targets in the Red Sea and were ready to be launched, U.S. Central Command said in a statement. The U.S. strikes were conducted in self-defense, it added. Mohammed Abdulsalam, a spokesman for the Houthis, told Reuters that their attacks would remain focused on blockading Israel and retaliating for U.S.-led airstrikes, and wouldn’t expand into a new fight against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Here’s what to know

• The Israel Defense Forces confirmed reports that it had removed bodies from gravesites in Gaza in the ongoing search for hostages. “The hostage identification process, conducted at a secure and alternative location, ensures optimal professional conditions and respect for the deceased,” the IDF said in a statement. “Bodies determined not be those of hostages are returned with dignity and respect.”
• President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone Friday about efforts to release hostages held by Hamas, according to a White House readout. Biden emphasized Israel’s responsibility to “reduce civilian harm and protect the innocent,” the White House said.
• At least 24,762 people have been killed in Gaza and 62,108 wounded since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack.
• The number of Palestinians killed since Oct. 7 last year is now more than triple the number of those killed in hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians during the previous 15 years combined, according to a U.N. report. Between 2008 and Oct. 7, 2023, more than 6,500 Palestinians and 300 Israelis had been killed.

12:11 AM: Analysis from Andrew Jeong, Reporter at the Seoul hub

The U.S. State Department confirmed that an American civilian in the West Bank died Friday, adding that it was trying to learn more about the circumstances of the death. Hours earlier, spokesman for the National Security Council John Kirby said he was “seriously concerned” about reports of the death of a Palestinian American teenager in the West Bank.

12:10 AM: Communication restored in Gaza after week-long outage

Internet and cellphone communications were gradually restored in Gaza on Friday night, ending a week-long outage that kept most of Gaza’s 2.2 million people cut off, amid a war and humanitarian crises.

The near-total blackout was Gaza’s longest since Oct. 7, though rolling outages continue to plague the Palestinian territory due to infrastructural damage from Israel’s war in Gaza.

“Despite the dangerous conditions, our teams have restored these essential services, bringing them back to their state before the last blackout,” Paltel, the main Palestinian Telecommunications company based in Ramallah, said in a statement.

“Regrettably, two of our technical team members lost their lives during the recent repair operation as a result of direct shelling,” the statement said, adding that in total 14 employees had been killed during more than three months of war.

Mamoon Fares, head of corporate support for the Palestinian cellular company Jawwal, which is part of Paltel, told The Washington Post that workers spent about four days trying to fix repeated damage to underground fiber-optic cables and then had to repair damage to the generator to the main routing system in Khan Younis.

Each time workers went to fix a cut, Paltel had to go through a time-consuming process of coordinating the movement with Israel through international organizations. The main generator is in an area of Khan Younis that’s especially dangerous for Palestinians to reach, he said.

Fares said it appeared that the generator “probably sustained a direct hit.”

“Unfortunately, there is no way to guarantee that what we have done today will improve communications,” he said. “There is always a chance it will get hit another time. Most probably it will happen. Fighting is still there.”

This month’s outage was up to the ninth near-total blackout since the war began, according to Fares.

After the first outage in late October, connection was restored without any repairs, leading Paltel to conclude the outage “was intentional” by Israel, who has ultimate control over all communication infrastructure in the Palestinian territories. Fares said another cutoff appeared intentional, but that the rest of the outages were “because generators ran out of fuel or because our switches were damaged or main cyber routes cut off.”

“We still don’t know the full extent [of damage], as we need to do a field survey,” which is not possible as fighting rages, he said. In the immediate term Paltel needs to bring in spare parts to address some of the damage, he said, but “it will take years to get back to where we were before the war.”

By: Miriam Berger