Israel-Hamas war: Some U.S. personnel evaluated for brain injury after Iraqi base attack

LONDON — Two British warships collided in a harbor in Bahrain, causing damage to the vessels but no injuries, the Royal Navy said.

The HMS Chiddingfold appeared to reverse into the HMS Bangor as it was at a dock, according to video posted on social media.

“Why this happened is still to be established,” said Rear Adm. Edward Ahlgren. “We train our people to the highest standards and rigorously enforce machinery safety standards, but unfortunately incidents of this nature can still happen.”

Ahlgren said an investigation is under way into what went wrong.

The two minehunters have been based in the Middle East to help protect merchant vessels.

The British military last week joined the U.S. in bombing more than a dozen sites used by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, whose relentless attacks on cargo vessels and warships in the Red Sea have disrupted global shipping.

A number of U.S. personnel were evaluated for possible traumatic brain injury following a missile and rocket attack on a military base in western Iraq, U.S. Central Command said in a statement Saturday.

The attack was reported at 6:30 p.m. local time at Al-Assad Airbase, where some American personnel are based, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command. The exact conditions of those affected were unavailable; at least one Iraqi service member was injured, Central Command said.

U.S. coalition and Iraqi partners were trying to verify reports of several minor injuries among U.S. personnel and one seriously injured Iraqi Security Force personnel, three defense officials said.

Iraqi military officials said the headquarters of the country's 29th Brigade, 7th Division were damaged in the attack.

Central Command blamed Iranian-backed militants for the attack that included multiple ballistic missiles and rockets. "Most of the missiles were intercepted by the base’s air defense systems while others impacted on the base," Central Command said.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed credit for the attack, saying the munitions were launched "in continuation of our approach to resist the American occupation forces in Iraq and the region, and in response to the Zionist entity’s massacres against our people in Gaza."

Protesters attempted to block a street in Tel Aviv this evening as they held signs demanding the release of the hostages taken by Hamas militants into the Gaza Strip during the Oct. 7 attack.

"I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over the entire area from the west of Jordan — and this is contrary to a Palestinian state," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on X Saturday.

Israeli Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Eli Cohen and Chairman of the Religious Zionist Party Bezalel Yoel Smotrich issued their own statements, echoing Netanyahu's sentiments.

"The establishment of a Palestinian state is a reward for terrorism and a danger to the State of Israel." Cohen wrote Saturday on X. "This will encourage the murder of Jews and give support to Iran’s axis of evil. We will not give a hand to it!”

Hundreds of mourners gathered on the streets of the West Bank Saturday for the funeral of 17-year-old Palestinian American Tawfiq Ajaq, who was fatally shot and killed on Friday.

The circumstances surrounding Ajaq's death remain unclear, including who the shooter was. The Israeli police are investigating reports of a shooting involving an off-duty police officer, a civilian and an Israeli soldier.

"Born and raised in the U.S., he's been here for one year," Hafez Ajaq, Tawfiq's father, told NBC News. "He does not know anything. I'm teaching him what's life. I'm teaching him what's the land. What's the cost of the land. And here he is. He's playing for it, for freedom."

When asked about the shooting, U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, "We're seriously concerned about it."

JERUSALEM — The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he opposes any form of Palestinian sovereignty in postwar Gaza. The statement issued on Saturday appeared to rebuff U.S. President Joe Biden’s suggestion that creative solutions could bridge wide gaps between him and the Israeli leader on Palestinian statehood.

A statement from the prime minister’s office said Netanyahu made clear Friday in his first conversation with Biden in nearly a month that his position on a postwar Gaza hasn’t changed. Netanyahu reiterated that Israel must retain security control over the territory after Hamas is destroyed — “a requirement that contradicts the demand for Palestinian sovereignty,” the statement said.

UNITED NATIONS — Women and children are the main victims in the Israel-Hamas war, with some 16,000 killed and an estimated two mothers losing their lives every hour since Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel, the United Nations agency promoting gender equality said Friday.

As a result of the more than 100-day conflict, U.N. Women added, at least 3,000 women may have become widows and heads of households and at least 10,000 children may have lost their fathers.

In a report released Friday, the agency pointed to gender inequality and the burden on women fleeing the fighting with children and being displaced again and again. Of the territory’s 2.3 million population, it said, 1.9 million are displaced and “close to one million are women and girls” seeking shelter and safety.

U.N. Women’s executive director, Sima Bahous, said this is “a cruel inversion” of fighting during the 15 years before the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. Previously, she said, 67% of all civilians killed in Gaza and the West Bank were men and less than 14% were women.

She echoed U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ calls for a humanitarian cease-fire and the immediate release of all hostages taken captive in Israel on Oct. 7.

Nearly 25,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Saturday. An additional 60,000 people have been wounded as of Friday.

The grim milestone comes a month after the Palestinian Health Ministry announced that 20,000 people had been killed in Gaza since the Hamas terror attack.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society has warned of strikes in the vicinity of Al Amal hospital in Khan Younis using "airstrikes and artillery shelling" in a post on X.

"Intense gunfire" also targeted the hospital yesterday, the medical and humanitarian aid organization said in a separate post on X.

Every one of Gaza's 36 hospitals, which are also being used as temporary shelters for internally displaced refugees, has faced some level of damage during Israel's war in the strip so far.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates considers Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rejection of a two-state solution "hostile to peace."

The ministry says the repeated demand for Israeli control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip is a "blatant challenge" to the Biden administration's efforts to resolve the conflict and achieve stability in the region.

Raids on homes were carried out overnight across the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, resulting in the arrests of 22 people including children and one woman.

The arrests were distributed across Hebron, Nablus, Tubas, Bethlehem, Jenin and Jerusalem, the Commission for the Affairs of Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said in a post on Telegram, and were accompanied by “widespread raids and abuse,” confiscation of cash and vehicles and the “destruction of citizens’ homes” and infrastructure.

NBC News was unable to independently verify this report. Palestinians living in the West Bank have reported a sharp increase in arrests and violence by settlers and military and police forces since the outbreak of Israel's latest war with Hamas on Oct. 7.

Dozens of Palestinians including women and children were killed and others wounded in Israeli aerial and artillery shelling across both the north and the south of the Gaza Strip, Gaza's Ministry of Information said in a post on Telegram.

In the town of Al-Qarara, in Gaza's south, "multiple homes" were blown up, while medical sources said one person was directly targeted and killed by a reconnaissance plane in the neighboring city of Khan Younis.

Warplanes also launched airstrikes in the north, east and south of the region, including on the Jabalia refugee camp, according to the ministry.

Displaced people line up to receive food cooked in large pots and distributed at a refugee camp in Rafah, southern Gaza, today.

JERUSALEM — 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.

A group representing families of the hostages said they had “begged for 105 days” and now demanded the government show leadership and take bold steps to free the hostages. A member of Israel’s war Cabinet has called a cease-fire the only way to secure their release, a comment that implied criticism of Israel’s current strategy.

The protest outside the prime minister’s home and the remark by former Israeli army chief Gadi Eisenkot were among several signs of growing strife in Israel over the direction of the war, which is in its fourth month.

WASHINGTON — Pro-Israel hawks in both parties on Capitol Hill are sounding the alarm that they are losing confidence in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his handling of the war against Hamas.

While progressive lawmakers have consistently been critical of Netanyahu and Israel’s counterassault in the Gaza Strip that has leveled buildings and killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, it’s significant that pro-Israel lawmakers who serve on key national security panels are now voicing frustration about Netanyahu’s leadership, albeit quietly.

Three of the lawmakers who spoke to NBC News said they are even questioning whether the 74-year-old prime minister has a strategy to end the bloody war in Gaza and have suggested that the unpopular Netanyahu may be deliberately trying to prolong it in order to remain in power.

“It’s really hard to defend Bibi or to justify his political strategy in all of this,” said one House Republican who deals with national security issues and requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. “From a personal level, I think it’s to his political benefit to stay engaged in conflict, whether that’s with Hezbollah or whether that’s in Gaza. Any type of cease-fire or peace agreement, rebuilding effort or off-ramp is detrimental for him politically, and I think that factors in on what he’s doing.”

Read the full story here.

TEL AVIV — It was a moment of elation amid tragedy in December as baby Tala Rouqa was pulled from the rubble, unconscious but miraculously alive, after an airstrike crushed the home in Rafah where she and her family had hoped to find refuge from the war.

But more than two weeks later, in the early hours of Jan. 15, Tala died too, plunging the grieving father into a new depth of despair.

The exact cause of Tala’s death is not clear, but she’s believed to have succumbed to her injuries, for which she was still receiving treatment.

“I hoped that she would remain with me in this life, as a memory of her mother and her siblings, her aunts and her uncles,” Rouqa said. “But praise Allah, she died. She is with God; it’s better than anything.”

Read here for full story.

Israel has dropped thousands of leaflets over Rafah printed with the faces of hostages believed to still be held by Hamas.

"Want to go home? Please report if you discover one of them," the leaflets read.

About 100 hostages are believed to still be in Gaza after being taken by Hamas during its attacks on Israel on Oct. 7.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again rejected calls for Palestinian statehood during a meeting with President Joe Biden yesterday, building on previous statements that the country will not support a Palestinian state at the end of Israel's ongoing war on Gaza.

Speaking during the pair's first conversation since December, Netanyahu reiterated his position that "Israel must retain security control over Gaza to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel, a requirement that contradicts the demand for Palestinian sovereignty," the prime minister's office told NBC News.

The comments contradict the initial reaction from Biden on Friday, who told reporters that there was still a pathway toward a two-state solution after Israel's withdrawal from the strip.

Gazans are grappling with a "severe scarcity" of essential supplies, disease-causing pollution, and a life-threatening lack of clean water, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, an aid organization operating in the Gaza Strip.

Residents queue "for hours with containers" for water, said Mohammed Abu Msbeh, the director of the PRCS's ambulance and emergency centers in Gaza, in a post on X, as the "daily struggle for water" becomes a "torment" in the enclave.

More than 800,000 people are facing a scarcity of supplies, the organization added, and were being forced to use “primitive” methods of hygiene and food preparation to survive.

Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza, said in a statement today that President Joe Biden is trying to “deceive our people” with discussions of a possible two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.

The group was seemingly responding to comments made Friday by Biden, who said that a two-state solution “could work” despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated rejection of the idea.

“These people think that they are the guardians of the Palestinian people, and they want to choose for them the type of state that suits them,” Hamas said on Telegram, adding that Biden was a “full partner” in Israel’s war in Gaza and that Palestinians did “not expect anything good from him.”

Biden spoke with Netanyahu by phone for the first time in a month yesterday, amid reports in a breakdown of communications between the pair over differences about the future of Gaza.

In their first conversation since December, President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday discussed a "shift to targeted operations" in Gaza and action to ensure the widening of humanitarian access to civilians in the strip.

Speaking by phone to Netanyahu, Biden "welcomed the decision from the government of Israel to permit the shipment of flour for the Palestinian people directly through Ashdod port," according to a statement from the White House.

The two leaders also discussed a move to "targeted operations" in the Gaza, an increase in humanitarian aid and "ongoing efforts to secure the release of all remaining hostages held by Hamas" and "Israel's responsibility" to "reduce civilian harm and protect the innocent."

Biden also discussed his vision for "a two-state solution with Israel's security guaranteed," the White House said. In a press conference in Israel on Friday, Netanyahu rejected the idea of a two-state solution at the end of the Gaza war.

At least five members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC), a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces, were killed in an attack on a residential building in the Mazzeh neighborhood of Damascus, according to Iranian state media.

At least two of those killed were high-ranking advisers in the Quds Force, the IGRC's intelligence branch said.

Explosions were reported across Syria’s capital this morning, according to Reuters. The attack on the building was first reported by Syrian state news agency SANA and blamed on Israel.

NBC News was not able to independently verify this report and Israel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Israeli ground troops operating in Gaza face danger not only from Hamas militants but from lethal rates of friendly fire.

Seventeen percent of Israeli deaths in Gaza occurred as a result of friendly fire or battlefield accidents, according to new data released by the IDF.

In a single incident last week, a controlled explosion of a facility described by the IDF as a Hamas weapons factory was mistimed, killing six Israeli soldiers at the scene.

The IDF is facing scrutiny within Israel and throughout the world over the seemingly indiscriminate nature of its tactics. In December, soldiers mistakenly killed three Israeli hostages, at least one of whom was carrying a white flag, during an operation in Gaza City.

Israeli airstrikes on Gaza over the past 24 hours have killed 165 people, according to the health ministry there, bringing the death toll to an estimated 24,927.

More than 62,000 people have been wounded.

TEL AVIV — The State Department has confirmed the death of a U.S. citizen in the occupied West Bank yesterday, following reports of a Palestinian American teen fatally shot in the territory.

“We extend our deepest condolences to the family,” a department spokesperson said in a statement. They said U.S. officials were still working to understand the circumstances around the incident and had asked the Israeli government for more information.

Paramedics told NBC News yesterday that a Palestinian American teenager had been fatally shot in the area of Al-Mazra’a Al-Sharqiya. Muhamad Malash, a paramedic with the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, said the 17-year-old boy had been driving with friends when he was shot in the head.

It was not immediately clear who shot him, but the Israel Defense Forces said it had received a report of an “off-duty police officer and a civilian who fired toward a Palestinian individual suspected of hurling rocks” in the area. They said an IDF soldier was also in the area at the time of the incident and said they were investigating claims the soldier had fired at the teen.

The Israel Police said they were also investigating a report of a shooting “ostensibly involving an off-duty law enforcement officer, a soldier, and a civilian.” They said a firearm was believed to have been discharged toward a “perceived threat” — people allegedly “engaged in rock-throwing activities” along a highway.

National security spokesman John Kirby said in a White House briefing yesterday that U.S. officials didn't “have perfect context about exactly what happened,” but he said, “We’re seriously concerned about it.”

Dozens of President Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats signed a letter today urging his administration to reaffirm that the United States strongly opposes “the forced and permanent displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza.

The letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, led by U.S. Representatives Ayanna Pressley and Jamie Raskin, was signed by 60 Democratic House of Representatives members, reflecting concern, especially on the left, over the steep toll on Palestinian civilians from Israel’s campaign against Hamas.

“We urge you to continue to reiterate the United States’ firm commitment to this position and ask that you provide clarification regarding certain provisions of the administration’s supplemental humanitarian and security funding request,” the letter said.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mexico and Chile expressed “growing worry” yesterday over “an escalation of violence” after several months of war between Israel and Hamas in a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) over possible crimes.

In a statement, Mexico’s foreign ministry argued that the ICC was the proper forum to establish potential criminal responsibility, “whether committed by agents of the occupying power or the occupied power.” The Palestinian Foreign Ministry welcomed the referral to the ICC.

Israel is not a member of the Hague-based court and does not recognize its jurisdiction. But the ICC’s prosecutor has stressed his court has jurisdiction over potential war crimes carried out by Hamas militants in Israel and by Israelis in Gaza.

Mexico said it was closely following the case presented last week before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in which South Africa accused Israel of carrying out genocide in Gaza and demanded that the court order an emergency suspension of Israel’s military campaign. Israel has rejected the accusation.

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