Israel-Hamas war: Forces neutralise Palestinian teens in West Bank; bomb Hezbollah targets in Lebanon

Three Palestinians, including two teenagers, were killed by Israeli forces in separate incidents.

In the occupied West Bank early on Thursday, Palestinian official news agency WAFA said, while the military said it attacked Hezbollah targets in the border area with Lebanon.

Protesters staged anti-Israel rallies around the Middle East on Wednesday, some of them turning violent, to voice rage at an explosion that killed hundreds of Palestinians at a hospital in the deadliest incident inside Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war.

US President Joe Biden said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has agreed to open the Rafah crossing into Gaza to allow a first batch of around 20 humanitarian aid trucks through.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will travel to Israel on Thursday before heading to other countries in the region in an effort to deescalate the Israel-Gaza conflict, his office has said.

Palestinian officials blamed an Israeli air strike for Tuesday’s explosion in northern Gaza. Israel said the blast was caused by a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group, which denied blame.

Dozens of Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank in the latest flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence. Israel is preparing a ground assault in the Gaza Strip in response to a deadly attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas that killed at least 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians, on October 7.

Israeli forces have carried out their fiercest bombardment of Gaza in response, killing more than 3,000 Palestinians and imposing a total siege on the blockaded enclave that Hamas controls, fuelling anger among Palestinians in the West Bank.