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.
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.
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 said its fighters pulled out from areas along the Bab el-Mandeb Strait amid relentless attacks by the Houthis.
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 rebels 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.
In Aden, an Associated Press journalist heard sounds of explosions Sunday evening. Local media reported that the Houthis fired two ballistic missiles on the district of Buraiqeh on Aden’s western coast.
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.
Israel arrests freelance journalist on suspicion of terror ties
Israel’s military said it apprehended a stringer for Agence France-Presse in the occupied West Bank very early on Sunday on suspicion of “terror ties,” adding that he was transferred to the security forces for more questioning.
The French news agency called for Israel to provide evidence in the detention of Mohammad Ateeq, a video journalist who has contributed to AFP for three years.
His wife said that Israeli forces blindfolded him and took him away from his home in a town near Jenin, according to AFP.
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.
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