Israel OKs more settlements in West Bank as Gaza strikes kill at least 13

Israel announced on Thursday, 29 May, it will establish 22 Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, including the legalisation of outposts already built without government authorisation.

Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip, where Palestinians have become increasingly desperate for food after nearly three months of Israeli border closures, killed at least 13 people overnight, local health officials said.

Israel captured the West Bank, along with Gaza and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war and the Palestinians want all three territories for their future state. Most of the international community views settlements as illegal and an obstacle to resolving the decades-old conflict.

In 2005, Israel withdrew its settlements from the Gaza Strip, but leading figures in the current government have called for them to be re-established and for much of the Palestinian population of the territory to be resettled elsewhere through what they describe as voluntary emigration.

The war in Gaza began with Hamas' 7 October 2023 attack, in which militants stormed into Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251.

Hamas still holds 58 hostages, around a third of them alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements. Israeli forces have rescued eight and recovered dozens of bodies. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed over 54,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were civilians or combatants.

Here's the latest:

Israeli military says it demolished a long attack tunnel in southern Gaza

The Israeli military says troops recently located and destroyed an attack tunnel stretching several hundred metres (yards) in the southern Gaza Strip.

It said the tunnel was found in a self-declared security zone, apparently referring to the now mostly evacuated southern city of Rafah, which Israeli forces have severed from the rest of the territory.

The army said the tunnel had several exits, some rigged with explosives. It said militants emerged from one of the shafts during the operation and were killed.

Hamas built hundreds of kilometres of tunnels beneath Gaza in the years leading up to the 7 October 2023, attack that ignited the war. Its fighters use them to shelter from Israeli airstrikes and move around undetected. Hamas has also held hostages in the tunnels.

Israeli newborn dies after mother was killed in West Bank attack

An Israeli baby who was delivered after his mother was fatally shot in an attack in the West Bank has died.

A Palestinian militant opened fire on Tzeela Gez' car as her husband drove her through the Israeli-occupied West Bank on 14 May. The couple was heading to the hospital to give birth. She later died from her wounds, but doctors delivered the baby by emergency cesarean section.

Hamas praised the attack but did not claim it. The military announced days later that its forces had killed the suspected attacker.

“It is with great sadness and pain that we learned this morning of the death of baby Ravid Chaim, son of Tzeela and Hananel Gez,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “There are no words that can offer consolation for the murder of a newborn baby along with his mother.”