The United States is raising its voice. Joe Biden demanded, Friday February 16, “a temporary ceasefire” in Gaza “to get the hostages out”. Until then, the American president had rather called for a “truce” or a “break” in the fights. A semantic debate that matters for the United States. Follow our live stream.
Hezbollah leader attacks Israel. Hassan Nasrallah swore on Friday February 16 that he would make Israel pay “by blood” the price of civilians killed in Lebanon during the week, ensuring that his party’s precision missiles could reach the southern tip of the enemy country. “Our women and our children who were killed (…), the enemy will pay the price for their blood shed”, declared the leader of the Lebanese Islamist movement in a televised address. He warned that his training “had an enormous precision missile capability” which can cover Israeli territory “from Kiryat Shmona to Eilat”.
A “terrorist attack” in southern Israel. At least two people were killed on Friday following a “terrorist attack” suspected at a small bus station in Kiryat Malakhi, a town in southern Israel, a hospital and police said. According to rescuers, six people were injured and transferred to two hospitals. A spokeswoman for one of them, Kaplan Hospital, said two of the injured people transferred to the facility had died.
Emmanuel Macron opposed to an offensive in Rafah. “The recognition of a Palestinian state is not a taboo for France”, declared Emmanuel Macron for the first time on Friday while receiving King Abdullah II of Jordan in Paris. The French president also warned that an Israeli military offensive in Rafah would succeed “to an unprecedented humanitarian disaster and would be a turning point” in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza.
Arrests of “terrorists”. The Israeli army claimed to have arrested “more than 20 terrorists who participated” to the Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7, among “dozens of suspects” arrested at the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes, in the Gaza Strip. Less than two hours earlier, the Hamas Ministry of Health announced that four patients at the hospital had died due to power outages that stopped oxygen distribution following the takeover of the hospitals. buildings by Israeli forces, and fear at least nine more deaths.