At least 100 Palestinians have been killed as a result of Israel’s most recent violation of the Gaza ceasefire. In a series of airstrikes that hit displaced families and hospitals, more than 35 children were killed. One of its soldiers’ bodies were shot in Rafah, prompting Israel to claim responsibility.
Published On 29 Oct 2025
During Israel’s war on Gaza, Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, was warned by Israeli soldiers for months in 2024 to take his family and leave his duties.
But Abu Safia refused to leave his patients behind, as his colleagues and family said in a documentary by Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines.
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Then in December as Israeli forces surrounded the hospital, an Israeli officer called Abu Safia and promised to relocate him and his staff to another hospital.
But the promise was a lie. Instead, the paediatrician and neonatologist was abducted by Israeli forces.
Ten months later, Abu Safia is still in detention as Israel has refused to include him in prisoner exchanges. His lawyer said he’s been subjected to torture and inhumane treatment, including long periods in solitary confinement.
Before his arrest, Abu Safia watched Israel’s war on Gaza unfold with increasing brutality.
During the earlier days of the war, Abu Safia would do his rounds daily and make videos, calling for international support and awareness over Israel’s war on his homeland.
Thousands of people were being killed, and Israel’s siege of Gaza meant that much-needed equipment and medicine were not getting in.
It became apparent that Israel’s war was not just against Hamas but against the Gaza Strip as a whole, including its medical infrastructure.
Despite increased attacks on healthcare workers, Abu Safia refused to abandon his patients, even after he went from doctor to patient when he was wounded in a drone strike on the hospital on November 25.
His family began to ask him if it might be better to leave Gaza altogether.
“He said: ‘If you want to travel, take the kids, but I’m going to stay here to work,’” his wife, Albina, said.
But she refused. “I said: ‘We need to stay together,’” she said of the “serious and dedicated” medical student she married about 30 years ago.
The two met in Kazakhstan in the 1990s when he was studying medicine there.
After the birth of their first son, Elias, Albina and Abu Safia moved back to Gaza in 1998 and lived in the Jabalia refugee camp. Over the coming years, Albina gave birth to three more sons and two daughters.
Elias was married in 2020 and had two children, and a few months before the war began, Albina and Abu Safia moved to a new house in Beit Lahiya.
But the war would upend their life and their family.
During the attack that wounded Abu Safia, his daughter was also wounded by a shard of glass that went into her neck.
His worst day, however, was when he lost his 20-year-old son Ibrahim.
“His whole life was still ahead of him,” Albina said.
“He wanted to become a doctor like his father. … He was registered to travel to Kazakhstan [where he was a citizen]. But that never happened.”
Ibrahim was out at the market when Kamal Adwan Hospital came under attack from quadcopters, Albina said. He told his mother he was at a house by the hospital and would come back when things calmed down.
An Israeli military operation on the hospital ensued and lasted about 30 hours. When it finished, Albina was told to come to the hospital’s reception area. It was the morning of October 25, 2024, and there were many deaths from the Israeli attacks. Among them, however, was one she hadn’t expected.
“I saw my husband crying,” she said. “I understood then that my son was killed. It was the hardest day of our lives, … for me, for my husband and for our children.”
Abu Safia still refused to give up his work, even as Israeli attacks on Kamal Adwan intensified and the army surrounded the hospital, but when soldiers arrived at its doors, Abu Safia realised it was time to leave.
An Israeli army officer named Wael allegedly gave Abu Safia assurances that the hospital’s staff would be relocated to the Indonesian Hospital, also in northern Gaza, to continue their crucial work.
Abu Safia told his family, including his remaining five children, who were living in the hospital with him at that point, to pack and that the Israeli army had said it would relocate them.
“The very last time I saw him was when I got onto the bus with all my daughters and sons,” Albina said. “It was December 27 around sunset. We haven’t seen him since.”
Albina and her children found out the next day from other doctors that the Israelis came, interrogated and mistreated the hospital staff and took Abu Safia.
“He said: ‘I won’t get in the car until all the doctors leave and I am the last one,’” Albina recalled the hospital staff telling her.
Abu Safia was taken by the Israeli soldiers, who continued attacking the hospital until they withdrew a few weeks later in January. When they finally pulled out, the hospital was inoperable.
“We went to the hospital, and it was burned and destroyed,” Albina said.
“They bombed and burned the emergency room, and they bombed the intensive care unit,” she said.
Since October 7, Israel has conducted arrests of thousands of Palestinians in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Many have been held without charge or trial and subjected to torture and abuse, according to released prisoners and human rights groups.
After he was arrested, Abu Safia was taken to the Sde Teiman military detention camp in Israel’s Negev desert, where claims of torture are prevalent, before being transferred to Ofer Prison.
In prison, Abu Safia’s fate would only worsen.
He was deprived of any visitors apart from his lawyer, Ghaid Kassem. Abu Safia was unable to receive his family, so when his mother died, it was Kassem who informed him of her death.
Kassem spoke to Fault Lines about her years of experience representing Palestinian prisoners in Israel, nearly all of whom have suffered torture or other inhumane treatment.
“I have covered almost all prisons in Israel,” Kassem told Al Jazeera.
“But of course, the experience after October 7 [2023] is the one that shocked us the most, and it is totally different from before October 7, in particular since we started to represent detainees from Gaza.”
Prisons in Israel have always been a dark place for Palestinians. But Kassem said the number of violations has skyrocketed since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7 two years ago and the start of the war on Gaza. Conditions have worsened to the point that many prisoners are contracting infections and skin diseases, she said.
“This huge number of violations, we had never encountered this many before,” she said.
Abu Safia himself endured torture and multiple beatings at Sde Teiman, Kassem said. He has also lost an alarming amount of weight.
“He has high blood pressure. He has tachycardia,” Kassem said. Tachycardia is an abnormal heartbeat.
“He is suffering from shrapnel [that is] still in his leg and his right thigh.”
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians and devastated the country’s medical infrastructure. Since a ceasefire came into effect on October 10, Israel has continued to launch attacks in Gaza and across the region.
As part of the ceasefire, Israel agreed to release about 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of the remaining living Israeli captives held in Gaza and the bodies of the deceased. Thousands of Palestinians, however, remain in custody, and among them is Abu Safia.
His family still hopes he will be released soon. They maintain he’s done nothing wrong and Abu Safia has dedicated his life to serving patients in Gaza. They also hope that if released, his mental and physical capacity doesn’t mirror the damage Israel has caused to healthcare in the Gaza Strip.
“They destroyed healthcare in Gaza,” Albina said.
Donald Trump, the president of the US, expressed optimism about reaching a trade agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit on Wednesday. On Thursday, the leaders are scheduled to meet on the APEC summit’s sidelines.
Published On 29 Oct 2025
Palestinians in Gaza have experienced the deadliest 24 hours since the start of the United States-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas went into effect almost three weeks ago.
Israel killed more than 100 people, including 46 children, in attacks late on Tuesday and on Wednesday. Medical sources told Al Jazeera the strikes hit all over Gaza.
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This adds to dozens of previous ceasefire violations with a rocky outlook ahead. Let’s take a look at where things stand:
The Israeli military said by noon on Wednesday that it was returning to the ceasefire in line with instructions from the political leadership but remained ready to attack again if necessary.
It said it hit more than 30 targets in the besieged enclave, claiming that the targets were “terrorists in command positions within terror organisations”.
But as more residential buildings were flattened by the Israeli bombs, at least 18 members of the same family in central Gaza, including children, parents and grandparents, were among the victims.
Civil Defence teams once again had to use small tools and their hands to dig in the rubble of bombed areas to search for survivors and the dead. Several tents belonging to displaced Palestinian families were also targeted.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, at least 68,643 people have been killed and 170,655 wounded since the start of Israel’s genocidal war in October 2023.
On Tuesday, Israel announced that the body of a captive transferred from Gaza by Hamas through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) did not match one of the 13 to be handed over as part of the ceasefire.
Israeli forensic analysts determined that the remains belonged to Ofir Tzarfati, who was taken to Gaza during the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and whose partial remains were recovered in November of the same year.
Israeli officials reacted furiously, especially far-right ministers in the coalition government who are against stopping the war on Gaza and want Hamas “destroyed”. An organisation run by the families of the captives also expressed outrage and demanded action.
A short time later, the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, said it would hand over the remains of an Israeli captive at 8pm (18:00 GMT), but it held off after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered “powerful strikes” on Gaza.
Heavy gunfire and explosions were also heard in the southern city of Rafah. Israel alleged this was an attack by Hamas fighters, something Hamas rejected.
Israel also accused the Palestinian group of “staging” the recovery of a captive’s remains after showing footage purportedly of Hamas fighters burying a body before calling in the ICRC.
The ICRC said its personnel “were not aware that a deceased person had been placed there prior to their arrival”.
As part of the agreement, which entered into force on October 10, Hamas handed over all remaining 20 living captives held in Gaza within several days.
The group has also handed over the remains of 15 deceased Israeli captives as part of the deal with 13 others remaining unrecovered or undelivered.
Israel has allowed some humanitarian aid into Gaza, but supplies have been well below the 600 trucks a day specified in the ceasefire, a level that is required to help the famine-stricken population.
Israel has also prevented tents and mobile homes from entering the enclave but has let some heavy machinery enter to search for the remains of its captives.
After all the remains are handed over, a second phase of the ceasefire could potentially enter into force, allowing the deployment of an international stabilisation force and the reconstruction of Gaza.
Israeli officials have repeatedly stressed that they will not allow the formation of a sovereign Palestinian state and have been advancing with a plan to illegally annex the occupied West Bank despite international criticism.
Hamas has accused Israel of fabricating “false pretexts” to renew aggression in Gaza.
Before the attacks over the past day, Hamas said Israel had carried out at least 125 violations.
Since October 10, the Health Ministry in Gaza said, at least 211 Palestinians have been killed and 597 wounded in Israeli attacks while 482 bodies have been recovered.
Hamas has also accused Israel of obstructing efforts to recover the bodies of the captives while using the same bodies as an excuse to claim noncompliance.
It pointed out that Israel has prevented enough heavy machinery from entering Gaza to recover the remains and has prevented search teams from accessing key areas.
The Qassam Brigades said its fighters have recovered the bodies of two more deceased captives, Amiram Cooper and Sahar Baruch, during search operations conducted on Tuesday.
Hamas and other Palestinian factions have said they are prepared to hand over administration of Gaza to a technocratic Palestinian body while maintaining that armed resistance is a result of decades-long occupation and apartheid by Israel.
Since the start of the war, civilians have been the main casualties of Israel’s war on Gaza.
They have been disproportionately targeted, as they were in the latest overnight attacks, and have also seen Gaza’s infrastructure and means of living destroyed by bombs and invading Israeli forces.
Because nowhere in Gaza is fully safe, Palestinians underwent another day of panic that the Israeli attacks could be extended.
Israeli warplanes and reconnaissance aircraft continued to hover over the enclave.
The US has repeatedly expressed support for Israel despite its ceasefire violations, emphasising Israel’s right to defend itself.
President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the ceasefire “is not in jeopardy” despite the strikes.
Published On 29 Oct 2025
Trump, who was traveling from Japan to South Korea, told reporters on Wednesday on Air Force One that “if you read it, it’s pretty clear. I’m not permitted to run, I say. It’s too bad”.
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The president made the remarks after declaring that he would “love to do it” and would not rule out a third term in office.
Presidents are only allowed to serve two terms under the US Constitution’s 22nd Amendment, and Trump just started his second in January.
A decade-long process that would require winning over states and congressional votes would be required to change that with a new amendment.
Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon announced last week that an “plan” was being developed to allow the 79-year-old president to run for re-election.
On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed to have discussed the issue with Trump and that staying in the White House would be impossible for him.
“It’s been a great run,” Johnson said, “but I think the president is aware of the limitations of the constitution, which he and I have discussed.”
Trump’s description of the third-term ban on third terms was less definite, and he avoided characterizing it in his conversation with Johnson.
He said on Wednesday, “I guess I’m not allowed to run, based on what I read.” We’ll see what happens, so hold on.
Trump, who ran for president from 2017 to 2021, recently adorned a desk with the slogan “Trump 2028” with red hats.
According to popular opinion, Vice President JD Vance and Trump could run for president in 2028.
When questioned about a plan to run for vice president and then work for himself in the presidency, he responded that it was “too cute.”
Published On 29 Oct 2025
The rain in Canberra caused the tourists to bat for less than half of their total overs, putting them up for 97 for one in the first Twenty20 match between Australia and India.
When the first of a five-match series was stopped for the second and final time on Wednesday after 9.4 overs, Shubman Gill was 37 not out and Suryakumar Yadav was 39.
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When the rain finally ended play for the first time, and India opener Abhishek Sharma was left 18 overs, the match was reduced to a toe-toe-end of a Nathan Ellis delivery to Tim David mid-off for 19 when drizzle brought the match to an end.
Before the rain reappears over the Australian capital once more, Gill and Yadav at least provided some entertainment for the Manuka Oval crowd by smashing 54 runs in 4.4 overs.
After posting a consolation win in the final game of the one-day international series on Saturday, India were hoping to keep the momentum going.
On Friday, Melbourne Cricket Ground will host the second T20 match of the series.
After recovering from a quadriceps injury sustained in the ODI series, all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy was forced out of the first three T20s after suffering neck spasms.