A Palestinian health official says Israel has released 55 Palestinians it detained from Gaza, including the director of the territory’s main hospital.

Mohammed Abu Selmia was detained in November when Israeli forces raided Shifa Hospital. The army said Hamas was using the facility for military purposes and uncovered a tunnel within the medical complex. Abu Selmia and other staff denied the allegations.

Israeli troops have carried out an airstrike in the northern West Bank, killing a Palestinian militant and wounding five other people, Palestinian health officials said.

The strike took place Sunday in Nour Shams, an urban refugee camp that has been a frequent target of the Israeli military and is known as a stronghold of Palestinian militants. The state-run Palestinian news agency Wafa said an Israeli drone fired three missiles and struck a house.

Heavy battles and bombardment hit Gaza City's Shujaiya district for a fourth day on Sunday, months after the Israeli army declared Hamas' command structure dismantled in the northern area.

A senior Palestinian Hamas official said that negotiations for an agreement with Israel on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal had not made any progress.

The European Union has imposed asset freezes and visa bans on several firms and individuals accused of helping to finance Palestinian militant Islamist group Hamas, Brussels said.

The sanctions were the second round to be imposed by the EU on the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad groups after their attack on Israel on October 7.

Palestinians in northern Gaza said intense bombardments have forced many people to flee the Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City, as the Israeli military confirmed it had launched a new offensive into areas that were heavily bombed and largely emptied early in the war.

Residents described fierce battles in Shijaiyah for a second day in row, driving people to seek safety in western parts of Gaza City.

American forces destroyed seven drones and a control station vehicle in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen over the past 24 hours, the U.S. military said.

The strikes were carried out because the drones and the vehicle "presented an imminent threat to U.S. coalition forces, and merchant vessels in the region," the U.S. Central Command said in a statement on social media platform X.

A ship traveling through the Red Sea came under repeated missile fire Friday in a likely attack launched by Yemen's Houthi rebels, authorities said, the latest targeting the crucial maritime route.

Five missiles landed near the vessel as it traveled off the coast of the rebel-held port city of Hodeida in Yemen, the British military's United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said.

The amphibious assault ship USS Wasp entered the eastern Mediterranean Sea this week as the U.S. positions warships to try to keep fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon from escalating into a wider war in the Middle East.

While the Wasp has the capability to assist in the evacuation of civilians if full-scale war breaks out between Israel and the Iranian-backed group along the Lebanon border, that’s not the primary reason it was rotated in, a U.S. official said. “It’s about deterrence,” the official said.

Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men blocked a major highway in central Israel for two hours on Thursday to protest a recent Supreme Court decision ordering young religious men to enlist for military service.

Military service is compulsory for most Jewish men and women in Israel. But politically powerful ultra-Orthodox parties have won draft exemptions for their followers that allow them instead to study in religious seminaries.