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Israel launches strikes on two Yemen ports
Israel says it has launched strikes on the Yemeni ports of Hodeidah and as-Salif in response to the Houthi rebels firing missiles towards Israel, days after the Yemeni group agreed a truce with the United States.
The Israeli military said it carried out strikes on “terrorist infrastructure” on Friday, saying on X that the two ports had been used by the Houthi rebel group to “transfer weapons”.
Al Masirah TV, a Houthi-affiliated outlet, also reported Israeli strikes on the two ports. The extent of any damage was not clear, and there no immediate reports of casualties.
The Houthis have carried out a campaign of attacks against Israel in self-proclaimed solidarity with Palestinians after Israel launched its assault on Gaza in October 2023.
Israel has carried out strikes in response, including one on May 6 that damaged Yemen’s main airport in Sanaa and killed several people.
Friday’s attacks were the first since US President Donald Trump agreed to a ceasefire deal with the Houthis earlier this month, with the US halting its attacks on Yemen and the group agreeing to end its attacks on shipping lanes in the Red Sea.
Israel was not included in that agreement, and its military said it intercepted several missiles fired from Yemen towards Israeli airspace this week.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that the attacks are “just the beginning”, describing the Houthis as “just a tool”, alleging that Iran was “behind them”.
“We will not stand idly by and allow the Houthis to harm us. We will strike them with greater force, including at their leadership and all the infrastructure that enables them to attack us,” he said in a statement posted on the government’s social media account.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz pledged to “hunt down and eliminate” Houthi leader Abdel-Malik al-Houthi if the rebel group continued “to fire missiles at the State of Israel”.
Alluding to recent Houthi attacks on Israel, Katz indicated leader al-Houthi would meet the same fate as Hamas commanders Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar in Gaza, Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Iran, and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon – all killed in Israeli attacks over the last year.
Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Jordan’s capital Amman, said that since Israel broke a ceasefire agreement with Hamas back in March – killing almost 3,000 since then, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry – the Houthis had launched “at least 34 different projectiles” towards Israel.
She said that Israel’s policy “moving forward” would be to strike back. “For every missile that’s fired, they’re going to be conducting these types of air strikes,” she said.
Breaking down a deadly week in Gaza as Israel kills hundreds
More than 19 months into its war on Gaza, Israel shows few signs that it is relenting. The last week has shown the opposite, an intensification of violence across the besieged Palestinian territory, leaving hundreds dead, and hundreds of thousands terrified of what comes next.
This was a week where United States President Donald Trump toured the Middle East, visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. There had been hope that some kind of ceasefire deal would be announced, or that the US would put more pressure on Israel to seriously come to the negotiating table. That was particularly the case after Hamas released a US-Israeli captive on Monday without demanding anything in exchange.
Ultimately, none of that happened, with Trump returning to his idea of US involvement in the future administration of whatever is left of Gaza, while acknowledging that Palestinians there were starving.
Israel also intercepted a number of missiles fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, before attacking Yemen itself on Friday.
Lets take a closer look at a week that has devastated Gaza, and left Palestinians there feeling even more abandoned.
How many Palestinians were killed in Gaza this week?
According to figures compiled by Al Jazeera, at least 370 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since Sunday. The violence has been particularly deadly in the second half of the week, with medical sources reporting the killing of at least 100 Palestinians on Friday, and 143 on Thursday. Many of those killed have been women and children.
These are some of the worst single-day death tolls since the beginning of the war in October 2023.
The killings put the total death toll reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health more than 53,000, although the territory’s Government Media Office’s death toll now sits at more than 61,700, as it includes thousands of Palestinians still under the rubble who are presumed dead.
Israeli attacks have targeted the whole Gaza Strip, with a particular focus on the north. Hospitals have also repeatedly been bombed by Israel.
What is being done to alleviate the hunger crisis in Gaza?
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has been caused by Israel’s complete blockade of the entry of all food and medication to the Strip since March 2, a decision it made when the ceasefire was still ongoing, and one that goes against international law.
A report released on Monday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) initiative said that the Gaza Strip was “still confronted with a critical risk of famine”, with half a million people facing starvation and 93 percent of its more than 2 million population at severe risk.
People are already starving to death – Gaza authorities last week said that 57 people had died as a result of starvation.
Trump acknowledged that “a lot of people are starving” in Gaza and said that the US was “going to get that taken care of”, but provided few details. The US has backed a new body called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that it says will start work in Gaza by the end of the month.
But the plan has been rejected by the United Nations and other humanitarian groups, who say that the plan would lead to more displacement for Palestinians in Gaza, as it would only disperse aid in some areas of Gaza, and set a dangerous precedent for the delivery of aid in warzones.
The UN has reiterated that it has the capacity to deliver aid across Gaza, but is being prevented from doing so by Israel. It says it has enough aid ready to deliver to feed all of the Palestinians in Gaza for four months, if Israel allows its trucks in.
What are Palestinians calling for?
Palestinians in Gaza have been recounting the horrors of the past week, desperately calling for the world to act and stop Israel’s bombing.
In northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, one of the worst hit areas, one civilian had a simple message – “either kill us or let us live.”
“All of [the strikes] were targeting civilians. All the houses are being bombed – everything is gone,” Ahmed Mansour told Al Jazeera. “What is a person supposed to do? They’re all making a joke out of us. I’m heading to the coast now. We’ve been displaced more than 50 times – either kill us or let us live.”
Taher al-Nunu, a senior Hamas official, also called on Friday for the US to put more pressure on Israel to open the crossings into Gaza and “allow the immediate entry of humanitarian aid – food, medicine and fuel – to the hospitals in the Gaza Strip”.
What does Israel want?
The Israeli government has made it clear that it is unwilling to agree to a deal that would end the war in return for the release of all the Israeli captives still held in Gaza, despite widespread domestic support for such a deal.
Instead, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks of total victory against Hamas, although it is difficult to see what that would entail.
Instead, the war drags on, and Netanyahu said on Monday that preparations were continuing for “an intensification of the fighting”. Last week, he said that Israel was planning for the “total conquest” of Gaza.
Trump left the Middle East this week with no ceasefire deal agreed, only saying, “We’re going to find out pretty soon” when asked whether a deal was in place for the return of Israel’s captives.
Meanwhile, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that Israel’s position was “rigid” and that the US had “lost interest”. A source told the newspaper that US envoy Steve Witkoff was “no longer involved”.
NJ Transit workers go on strike after wage increase talks stall
New Jersey’s commuter rail engineers are on strike after negotiations for higher wages failed to materialise, leaving trains idle for commuters in the third-largest transit system in the United States for the first time in more than 40 years.
The strike began on Friday after The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, which represents 450 NJ Transit engineers who drive the agency’s commuter trains and agency management, broke off talks late Thursday after an unsuccessful 15-hour bargaining session.
The labour clash came weeks after negotiators had agreed on a potential deal in March, but the union’s members voted overwhelmingly to reject it.
NJ Transit has said it cannot afford the pay rises that the engineers are seeking because 14 other unions that negotiate separate labour contracts with the agency would demand the same, higher wage rates for their members.
The union pushed back on the gripe and has said that “NJT claims it doesn’t have the money to pay engineers a salary in line with industry standards, but somehow found a half-billion dollars for a new and unnecessary headquarters.”
New Jersey Transit opened a new headquarters earlier this year.
The union has said it is simply aiming to raise the engineers’ salaries to match those at other commuter railroads in the region.
“They [rail engineers] have gone without a raise for six years and have been seeking a new contract since October 2019,” the union said in a statement.
NJ Transit says the engineers currently make $135,000 on average and that management had offered a deal that would yield an average salary of $172,000. But the union has disputed those figures, saying the current average salary is actually $113,000.
The parties have exchanged accusations of bad-faith bargaining.
The strike means that hundreds of thousands of daily passengers in New Jersey and New York are without service. NJ Transit said its rail system began its shutdown at 12:01am local time Friday.
In a news conference, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and NJ Transit’s Chief Executive Officer Kris Kolluri told reporters talks had paused but that management remained willing to resume negotiations at any time.
“We must reach a final deal that is both fair to employees and affordable,” Murphy, a Democrat, told reporters. “Let’s get back to the table and seal a deal.”
Murphy and Kolluri said the US National Mediation Board had reached out to both sides to propose reopening talks on Sunday morning, or sooner if the parties wished.
The union statement made no mention of when talks might be restarted. Protests began at several locations across the rail system, including NJ Transit’s headquarters in Newark, Penn Station in New York City, and the Atlantic City rail terminal.
The governor and the NJ Transit CEO also outlined contingency plans for dealing with the work stoppage, the first transit strike to hit New Jersey since a three-week walkout in 1983.
Workers urged to stay home
The looming strike had already prompted the agency to cancel trains and buses to MetLife Stadium for pop star Shakira’s concert last night and again for this evening.
In an advisory, NJ Transit encouraged commuters to work from home starting on Friday if possible.
The agency said it would increase bus services on existing lines and charter private buses to operate from several satellite lots in the event of a rail strike but warned buses would only be able to handle about 20 percent of rail customers.
Kolluri said last week that the union was “playing a game of chicken with the lives of 350,000 riders”.
Slain Mexican TikTok influencer remembered at funeral
Mourners gathered to celebrate the life of 23-year-old beauty influencer Valeria Marquez, who was shot dead during a TikTok livestream at her salon in Jalisco, Mexico. Her killing is being investigated as a possible femicide.
Suspect in attack on author Salman Rushdie sentenced to 25 years in prison
The man who stabbed author Salman Rushdie, leaving him blind in one eye, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison, the maximum term possible in the case.
Friday’s sentencing hearing was the culmination of a relatively swift trial that began on February 4.
There was little ambiguity about the central events underlying the case: In August 2022, a 24-year-old named Hadi Matar rushed the stage of an amphitheatre where Rushdie was delivering a public lecture for New York’s Chautauqua Institution.
Matar stabbed Rushdie approximately 15 times, delivering cuts to his neck, body and head. After being airlifted to a hospital, Rushdie eventually lost sight in one eye. Another speaker — Henry Reese, who runs a nonprofit for writers in exile — also received injuries, including a stab wound.
Rushdie, now 77, testified in the state-level trial against Matar. “He was hitting me repeatedly. Hitting and slashing,” the novelist said.
He added that he thought at first he was being struck by fists, not a knife. It was only later that he realised the severity of his situation: “I saw a large quantity of blood pouring onto my clothes.”
The injuries resulted in Rushdie undergoing painful surgeries, including to seal his blinded eye. He spent months in recovery. “I’m not as energetic as I used to be. I’m not as physically strong as I used to be,” he told the court.
On February 21, after less than two hours of deliberation, a jury in western New York found Matar both guilty of attempted murder for his attack on Rushdie and of assault for the injuries to Reese.
In Friday’s hearing, Matar received 25 years for the attempted murder sentence and seven for the assault on Reese, to be served at the same time since the attacks happened at the same time.
Rushdie, a British American novelist, was born in India to a Muslim family. His books have won wide acclaim: His novel Midnight’s Children earned the Booker Prize, a top literary honour awarded each year to a work of English-language fiction.
But it was his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, in 1988 that stirred up lasting controversy, specifically for passages deemed blasphemous to Muslims. By 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s death.
The announcement sent Rushdie into hiding, and the British government assigned him round-the-clock protection. Deadly protests accompanied the novel’s publication, and bookstores, along with those close to Rushdie, faced violent attacks.
Before Friday’s sentencing, Matar also delivered a statement to the court voicing his opposition to Rushdie and his work.
“Salman Rushdie wants to disrespect other people,” said Matar. “He wants to be a bully, he wants to bully other people. I don’t agree with that.”
Later, outside the courtroom, defence lawyer Nathaniel Barone took questions about whether his client felt regret or remorse about his actions.
“ I think that’s a fair question, and I can’t answer that,” he responded. “All I can tell you is that I think that, unfortunately, people make bad decisions, and it’s something that certainly they regret or they’re remorseful about, but they may have a difficult time expressing that for whatever reasons.”
Barone added that he felt Matar would have acted differently in hindsight. “ I know, if he had the opportunity, he would not be sitting where he is sitting today. And if he could change things, he would.”
Matar’s defence team had sought a lesser sentence of 12 years in prison and plans to appeal the verdict, arguing that the prosecution did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt an intent to kill Rushdie.
Barone also questioned the intense level of scrutiny on the case, calling it a “publicity sponge”. He argued that his client was denied the presumption of innocence due to any suspect.
The prosecution, however, praised the sentencing hearing’s outcome as justice for the pain Rushdie continues to endure.
“He’s traumatised. He has nightmares about what he experienced,” Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said after the hearing.
“Obviously, this is a major setback for an individual that was starting to emerge in his very later years of life into society after going into hiding after the fatwa.”
In explaining to the judge why he was pushing for the maximum sentence, Schmidt said that Matar “designed this attack so that he could inflict the most amount of damage, not just upon Mr. Rushdie, but upon this community, upon the 1,400 people who were there to watch it”.
Separately, Matar, now 27, faces three counts of federal terrorism-related charges in the US, including providing material support to terrorists and committing terrorism that transcends national boundaries.
“We allege that, in attempting to murder Salman Rushdie in New York in 2022, Hadi Matar committed an act of terrorism in the name of Hezbollah, a designated terrorist organization aligned with the Iranian regime,” former US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. Iran, however, has denied involvement in Matar’s attack on Rushdie.