Israeli forces killed a top commander of the militant Hamas group in an overnight airstrike on southern Gaza, Israel said Sunday.
In Jordan, three men were sentenced to death for a deadly shooting last month at a Greek Orthodox Church. In Yemen, the Houthis said they freed around 600 detainees captured in the latest escalation of fighting, even as they consolidated their grip on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
And Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claimed that it struck a radar system at an American helicopter base in Bahrain. The U.S. military command did not immediately comment.
Here is the latest news from the Middle East on Sunday. Read our full coverage here.
Israel says it killed a top Hamas commander in Gaza
Israel said it killed a top Hamas commander in an airstrike on southern Gaza just after midnight. A Hamas statement confirmed the killing of Samir Mahmoud Hassan Abu Younis and said a funeral would be held for him later Sunday.
The Israeli military said Abu Younis had been directing plans “to advance and carry out terror attacks.” Two months earlier, an Israeli strike killed his predecessor.
The military said it targeted other Hamas militants in Sunday’s strike but provided no details.
Jordan sentences 3 men to death over deadly church attack
Jordan's State Security Court on Sunday sentenced three men to death for a deadly shooting at a Greek Orthodox Church last month, state-run Al Mamlaka TV said. The men were charged with "carrying out terrorist acts."
The Oct. 23 attack was one of the deadliest on Jordan’s Christian minority in decades, with nine people killed and dozens wounded. The attackers targeted mourners attending a funeral at St. George’s Church in Hamoud, a village south of the capital, Amman.
The three defendants — two brothers and their brother-in-law — were arrested three days after the attack following a shootout with security forces. Jordanian authorities described the men as followers of an extremist ideology but said they were not affiliated with an organized group. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.
Yemen's Houthis release hundreds of detainees
The Iran-backed Houthis on Sunday freed some 600 detainees captured in the latest escalation of fighting, the largest unilateral release of detainees in the country's 12-year civil war, said Abdul-Qader al-Murtaza, a Houthi official on prisoners' affairs.
Also Sunday, a group allied with the Saudi-backed Yemeni government that is fighting the Houthis said its fighters pulled out from areas along the Bab el-Mandeb Strait amid relentless attacks by the rebel group.
The Southern Armed Forces said they would now focus on securing Yemen's southern city of Aden, held by the internationally recognized government, as well as trying to break the Houthi siege of the crucial city of Taiz.
The move has allowed the Houthis to consolidate their grip on the strait, in a setback to the Saudi-backed efforts to dislodge them from the strategic coastal territories on the Red Sea.
Earlier in the day, Houthi health officials said an airstrike on Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, wounded two women and two children. A Houthi spokesman, Anees al-Asbahi, blamed Saudi Arabia for the strike. There was no immediate comment from the kingdom.
Meanwhile, Saudi military spokesman Maj. Gen. Turki al-Malki said air defense systems intercepted and destroyed two ballistic missiles fired by the Houthis early on Sunday toward Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
UN agency raises alarm about refugees in Yemen
Clashes were reported between the Houthis and government forces in an area in Yemen's southwestern province of Lahj, which has key supply routes close to the Bab el-Mandeb strait.
The Houthis said they fired ballistic missiles on government forces’ positions in the Kharaz area, which is home to a refugee camp sheltering thousands of African refugees.
The U.N. refugee agency warned Sunday that the clashes hindered its efforts to offer protection and aid to about 9,600 refugees.
Iran says it hit an American radar system in Bahrain
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard claimed early on Sunday that it struck a radar system at an American helicopter base in Bahrain, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.
The U.S. military’s Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, did not immediately comment. On Friday, CENTCOM had said it intercepted two Iranian drones headed toward Bahrain and denied an Iranian claim at the time that it had struck a U.S. early-warning radar system there.
Bahrain’s military said Sunday its air defense systems intercepted a number of Iranian projectiles before they reached their targets.
Iran rejects a German demand to halt uranium enrichment
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, on Sunday rejected Germany’s demand that Tehran halt uranium enrichment, saying the country has a right to enrich uranium as a member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Baghaei also criticized the U.N. nuclear watchdog — the International Atomic Energy Agency — for what he described as “nontechnical speculation” about a possible new uranium enrichment facility in the central Iranian city of Isfahan. He claimed Iran had not suspended its safeguards obligations.
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This report will be updated throughout the day as new developments emerge.
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This story was corrected earlier to say that the shooting in Jordan took place in the village of Hamoud in the Karak governorate, not in the city of Karak.