Hawkish foreign policy advisers from Trump’s first term as president have faced alleged assassination threats from Iran.
United States President Donald Trump has cancelled security protections for Mike Pompeo, Brian Hook and John Bolton, hawkish foreign policy advisers who served during his first term in office.
The New York Times broke the story on Thursday about Trump revoking protection for Pompeo, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
According to anonymous sources familiar with the matter, Trump’s order took effect on Wednesday at 11pm Eastern Time (04:00 GMT, Thursday), stripping both Pompeo and Hook, a former top aide, of their security details.
That follows an earlier report that Trump did the same for Bolton, his former national security adviser. Bolton confirmed the news to CNN with a statement on Tuesday: “I am disappointed but not surprised.”
Trump has since defended that decision, calling Bolton a “very dumb person”.
“We’re not going to have security on people for the rest of their lives. Why should we?” Trump said.
But critics point out that Bolton, Pompeo and Hook have all faced alleged assassination threats from Iran.
The three leaders had taken a hardline stance against Iran throughout their foreign policy careers. Some analysts have speculated whether Trump’s decision to revoke their security details could be a form of retribution for perceived disloyalty.
One official from the administration of former President Joe Biden confirmed to The Associated Press, on condition of anonymity, that Trump’s team was well aware of the threats to the three men.
That person called Trump’s decision “highly irresponsible”.
Bolton had irked Trump with his public criticism after being ejected as national security adviser in 2019. He had served under previous Republican presidents including George W Bush and Ronald Reagan.
In his memoir, Bolton wrote harshly of Trump’s leadership. “A mountain of facts demonstrates that Trump is unfit to be president,” Bolton said.
Pompeo, meanwhile, has been less vocal in his criticisms, but he briefly flirted with a possible run in the 2024 presidential election, before low polling numbers sank his hopes. He went on to campaign on Trump’s behalf in 2024.
During Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2021, Pompeo and Hook were architects of the US’s stance of “maximum pressure” towards Iran.
That period was marked by the US withdrawing from a detail to limit Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons in exchange for relief from devastating US sanctions.
It is unclear whether Trump will pursue a similar strategy during his second term.
But some experts have speculated that members of Trump’s inner circle have become more critical of the interventionist, assertive stance advocated by figures like Bolton and Pompeo.
Trump had said that Pompeo would play no role in his administration. This week, he also announced on social media that Hook had been fired from his presidentially appointed position at the Wilson Center, a think tank.
Dozens of former intelligence officials who had signed a letter in 2020 saying that the Hunter Biden laptop scandal had signs of a “Russian information operation” also had their security clearances revoked in recent days.
The Trump administration emailed thousands of federal employees on Wednesday, ordering them to report any efforts to “disguise” diversity initiatives in their agencies or face “adverse consequences”.
The request came after President Donald Trump banned diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices and programmes throughout the government.
Emails seen by the BBC directed workers to “report all facts and circumstances” to a new government email address within 10 days.
Some employees interpreted it as a demand to sell out their colleagues to the White House.
“We’re really freaked out and overwhelmed,” said one employee at the Department Health and Human Services (HHS).
The Office of Personnel Management, which manages the federal workforce, issued guidance requiring agency heads to send a notice to their staff by 17:00 eastern time on Wednesday. It included an email template that many federal staffers ultimately received that night.
Some employees, like those at the Treasury Department, got slightly different versions of the email.
The Treasury Department email excluded the warning about “adverse consequences” for not reporting DEI initiatives, according to a copy shared with the BBC.
In one of his first actions as president, Trump signed two executive orders ending “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or “DEI” programmes within the federal government and announced any employees working in those roles would immediately be placed on paid administrative leave.
Such programmes are designed to increase minority participation in the workforce and educate employees about discrimination.
But critics of DEI, like Trump, argue that the practice itself is discriminatory because it takes race, gender, sexual identity or other characteristics into consideration.
Trump and his allies attacked the practice frequently during the campaign.
In a speech Thursday at the World Economic Conference in Davos, Switzerland, Trump declared he was making America a “merit-based country”.
Critics of DEI have praised Trump’s decision.
“President Trump’s executive orders rescinding affirmative action and banning DEI programs are a major milestone in American civil rights progress and a critical step towards building a colour-blind society,” Yukong Mike Zhao, president of the Asian American Coalition for Education, said in a statement.
The group had supported a successful effort at the US Supreme Court to overturn affirmative action programmes at US universities.
But current federal employees, who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation, said that the email they received felt more like an attempt to intimidate staff than to make the government more fair.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
President Trump has signed a torrent of executive orders since he took office, including a hiring freeze in the federal government, an order for workers to return to the office and an attempt to reclassify thousands of government employees in order to make them easier to fire.
The HHS employee who spoke to the BBC criticised the government’s DEI practices, believing that while it was important to build a diverse staff and create opportunities in health and medical fields, “identity politics have played into how we function normally and that’s not beneficial to the workforce”.
“But that doesn’t mean I want my colleagues to get fired,” the employee added.
He described the impact the email and the DEI orders had on his agency as “very calculated chaos”.
The employee’s division had been thrown into confusion, he said, with questions about hiring practices going forward, as well as what programmes and directives were allowed to continue, given Trump’s broad definition of DEI.
A second HHS employee said that hiring and research grants had been frozen and the entire department staff was waiting to see what they could do next.
The HHS, and one of its subsidiary agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), issue millions of dollars in federal grants to universities and researchers across the globe to advance scientific research.
Agency employees feared that the DEI order could have an impact outside the government as well. One questioned if grants that allowed laboratories to create more opportunities for hiring minority scientists and medical professionals would now get the axe.
An employee who worked at the Food and Drug Administration told the BBC that she had not received the email, but all DEI-related activities had been paused.
“We have been told by seniors to keep doing our jobs,” she said. “But there is a sense of fear about how it’s going to have an impact on our work in general.”
American security contractors have been enlisted to help handle the return of displaced Palestinians to the Gaza Strip’s devastated north, the next step in the cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, according to four officials familiar with the matter.
The contractors are poised to help secure a key zone that splits Gaza in two and is known as the Netzarim corridor, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The contractors are intended to screen vehicles ferrying Palestinians from the enclave’s south for weapons, the officials said.
In the early days of the war, the Israeli military ordered a mass evacuation of northern Gaza, forcing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee south. For months, Israeli soldiers have patrolled the Netzarim corridor in part to prevent Palestinians from heading back north.
But under the terms of a 42-day cease-fire now in its fifth day, Israeli troops are set to partially withdraw over the weekend and allow Gazans to head north. The truce, which went into effect on Sunday, was mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has said for months that Israel will not allow armed fighters to return to northern Gaza. Mediators sought to craft a compromise between Israel’s security demands and Hamas’s conditions for an Israeli withdrawal.
Gazans traveling on foot will be allowed to go back without inspection, according to a copy of one of the cease-fire’s annexes shared with The New York Times. Under the deal, the private contractors are set to begin checking Gazan vehicles heading north as soon as Saturday.
But it was far from clear when the mechanism would be put into effect, and two of the officials said it might take a couple of weeks.
One of the firms assigned to the corridor is Safe Reach Solutions, which conducts logistics and planning, according to a company spokesperson, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive operations. The precise role that the company and other parties would have in overseeing the inspections was unclear, as was who would fund their deployment.
The company’s website, which appears to have been registered in 2024 and created in 2025, contains almost no specific information on the organization’s activities, funding or staff members. The company also appears to have social media accounts on Instagram and Threads, but both are empty of content.
U.S. officials have not visited the Gaza Strip for years, both because of security concerns and the official no-contact policy with Hamas, the enclave’s de facto rulers.
Many of Gaza’s well over a million displaced people have crowded into an Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone” along the southern coast in Al-Mawasi. Most there have been living in squalid tent camps where finding enough food, clean water and protection from the elements is a daily struggle.
For months, they have hoped to return to their homes in the north — although it is far from clear how many of those homes are still standing in the wake of Israel’s relentless campaign against Hamas.
“At the very least, I’ll pitch a tent in the rubble,” said Bilal Kuheil, a resident of Gaza City who said his home had been destroyed in the early days of the war.
Israel hopes that the private security contractors will eventually form the nucleus of a larger international force, backed by Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, that will run Gaza in the future, two of the officials said. The Emiratis and the Saudis are not currently involved, they added.
But in the wake of the cease-fire, Hamas, which led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that set off the war, has reasserted itself, sending its fighters to parade through the streets of Gaza in a show of strength. The images have dampened Israel’s hopes of toppling the militant group, despite 15 months of war in Gaza that killed over 45,000 people, according to Gazan health officials.
Aric Toler and Riley Mellen contributed reporting.
Ms. Heer recounted how he had traveled by taxi to Hart Space, where a sold-out Taylor Swift-themed dance class for children ages 6 to 11 was underway during the summer break from school. Visual evidence shown in court, taken from CCTV footage and police-worn body cameras, showed Mr. Rudakubana arriving outside the dance studio.
He entered the building and stabbed several children as well as Leanne Lucas, one of the teachers who had organized the class. Moments later, screams could be heard on the footage, before children were seen running from the building.
Some were covered in blood and collapsed before bystanders helped them.
Several people wept in the courtroom as the footage was shown, and some chose to leave, overcome by emotion. The injuries suffered by Bebe King, 6, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, were so severe that they died inside the building. Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, ran outside but soon collapsed. She was taken to the hospital and died the next day. Eight other children and two adults, including Ms. Lucas, were wounded.
In a statement read out in court, Ms. Lucas said that her injuries had affected her physically and mentally.
“I, as do the girls, have scars we cannot unsee, scars we cannot move on from,” she said, adding, “To discover that he had always set out to hurt the vulnerable is beyond comprehensible. For Alice, Elsie, Bebe, Heidi and the surviving girls, I’m surviving for you.”
United States President Donald Trump has delivered the first international speech of his second term, appearing via livestream before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Thursday’s remarks, however, took a combative approach to international diplomacy, as he once again threatened tariffs against foreign competitors — and even allies like the European Union (EU) and Canada.
“My message to every business in the world is very simple. Come make your product in America, and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on earth,” Trump said.
“But if you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then very simply you will have to pay a tariff. Differing amounts, but a tariff.”
Trump, a real estate magnate and former reality TV star, faced a largely friendly audience at the Davos forum, known for bringing together some of the biggest business leaders in the world.
Many of those who raised questions after his speech were introduced as people Trump knew well — or even self-identified as his friend.
The Republican’s speech came a mere three days after he was inaugurated in Washington, DC, and his remarks echoed many of the points he raised in his inaugural address, once again promising to bring a “golden age” to the US.
He also repeated his usual list of grievances, including against his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, and members of his administration.
“They’ve allowed other nations to take advantage of the US. We can’t allow that to happen anymore,” Trump said.
Here are five key takeaways from Trump’s speech.
Donald Trump revisited familiar themes in his speech to the Davos conference in Switzerland [Yves Herman/Reuters]
Trump uses carrot-and-stick approach
The Republican leader led his speech with a broad appeal to business leaders across the world, calling on them to move their industries to the US.
He touted plans to slash corporate taxes and lower interest rates to create a climate favourable to business growth.
“My administration has also begun the largest deregulation campaign in history, far exceeding even the record-setting efforts of my last term,” Trump said.
He offered a trickle-down vision of US prosperity as benefitting the whole world.
“They say that there’s light shining all over the world since the election. And even countries that we aren’t particularly friendly with are happy because they understand there is a future, how great the future will be,” he said.
“Under our leadership, America is back and open for business.”
But, he warned, there would be tariffs imposed on business that refused to invest in this vision of American success.
Already, in recent months, Trump has threatened to impose tariffs of up to 60 percent on Chinese goods and 25-percent tariffs on items from Mexico and Canada.
Trump criticises European Union
The Republican leader, however, reserved special ire for the European Union, which he accused of imposing cumbersome regulations and attacking US businesses.
He cited recent antitrust cases against US-based tech titans as examples.
“ They took court cases with Apple, and they supposedly won a case that most people didn’t think was much of a case,” Trump said. “They won billions from Google. I think they’re after Facebook for billions and billions.”
He implied that the cases were motivated, in part, on the companies’ country of origin.
“These are American companies,” Trump said. “They shouldn’t be doing that. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a form of taxation.”
The US is the European Union’s top trading partner, and as of 2022, the US had a $131bn trade deficit with the group, composed of 27 member states. According to US government statistics, the US exported $592bn to the EU and imported $723bn.
Most economists believe deficits are not necessarily a sign of trouble: The imbalance in trade can be the result of numerous factors, including differences in currency value and consumer spending habits.
But Trump has zeroed in on trade deficits as a sign of economic weakness, and he has once again pledged to eliminate them, as he vowed in his first term, from 2017 to 2021.
He also compared Europe’s value-added taxes, or VAT taxes, of being a “non-economic or non-monetary tariff”.
“ From the standpoint of America, the EU treats us very, very unfairly. Very badly,” Trump said. “They essentially don’t take our farm products, and they don’t take our cars. Yet, they send cars to us by the millions. They put tariffs on things that we want to do.”
Canada: Become a state or face tariffs
In the weeks ahead of the Davos conference, Trump made clear he hopes to expand the US’s borders in the coming years, bringing the Panama Canal and Greenland under its control.
At a news conference earlier this month, Trump even refused to rule out “military or economic coercion” in his pursuit of those two territories.
But at Davos on Wednesday, Trump spoke briefly about another country he has in his crosshairs: Canada.
Trump has repeatedly said he would like to see Canada become the “51st state”, provoking anger from its northern neighbour.
“We’re going to be demanding respect from other nations,” Trump said at Davos, immediately pivoting to Canada. “We have a tremendous deficit with Canada. We’re not going to have that anymore. We can’t do it.”
According to the US government, Canada was the largest buyer of the country’s goods in 2022, accounting for $356.5bn in purchases. An estimated $2.7bn worth of goods and services crossed the US-Canada border each day in 2023.
But Trump has pledged to slap high tariffs on Canada, as a means of forcing the country to address drug-trafficking and irregular migration across the border.
At Davos, however, Trump teased another way to avoid the tariffs.
“As you probably know, I say: ‘You can always become a state. And then, if you are a state, we won’t have a deficit. We won’t have to tariff you,’” Trump said.
Economists, however, have warned tariffs can backfire, as other countries may respond to the US with tariffs of their own — the cost of which would likely be borne by consumers.
Trump decries Ukraine ‘killing fields’
Despite his aggressive posture towards tariffs and trade deficits, Trump once again touted his self-described role as a peacemaker, pointing to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The war broke out in 2022, and at Davos, Trump once again took the opportunity to blame his predecessor, Biden, for allowing the invasion to unfold.
But he also pointed a finger at another target: oil prices.
“If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately,” Trump said. “Right now, the price is high enough that that war will continue. You’ve got to bring down the oil price. You’re going to end that war.”
While the war has driven up energy prices, it is unclear how Trump envisioned the oil market ending the war in Ukraine. Sanctions due to the war have already placed significant strain on Russia’s economy.
Trump himself has threatened further sanctions and “high levels” of tariffs against Russia, if it does not end its war on Ukraine swiftly.
At Davos, he bemoaned the hundreds of thousands of lives lost on the battlefield there.
“That is an absolute killing field. Millions of soldiers are being killed,” Trump said. “Nobody’s seen anything like it since World War II. They’re laying dead all over the flat fields.”
But, he added, efforts to secure a peace settlement “are now hopefully underway”. He also teased a possible deal with Russia to dismantle all or part of its nuclear arsenal.
“We’d like to see denuclearisation,” Trump said, citing conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin during his first term.
“I will tell you that President Putin really liked the idea of cutting way back on nuclear. And I think the rest of the world, we would have gotten them to follow. And China would’ve come along.”
Trump mocks climate-change policies
As part of his push for deregulation, Trump once again lashed out against environmental policies designed to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate the climate crisis.
The US is estimated to be the world’s second largest source of carbon emissions, behind China. Those emissions, largely from fossil fuels, enter the atmosphere as greenhouse gases that capture heat and cause temperatures to rise.
Still, on Monday, Trump once again withdrew from the Paris Agreement, an international climate-change accord designed to reduce emissions. He had previously pulled the US out of the deal in 2019, during his first term.
At Davos, he once again described the Paris climate accord as “one-sided”. And he repeated his pledge to “unlock” the US’s fossil fuel reservoirs.
“The United States has the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on earth. And we’re going to use it,” Trump said, promising “rapid approvals” for energy ventures.
Trump also mocked his political adversaries for advancing a “Green New Deal”, a slate of policy proposals in the US designed to bring down carbon emissions.
“It was conceived of by people that were average students, less-than-average students,” Trump said.
He accused the architects of carbon-cutting policies of peddling sensationalism.
“Remember the world was going to end in 12 years? Remember that? Well, the 12 years has come and gone. It was going to end. It was going to all foam into earth.”
Still, climate-change experts have noted that 2024 was the hottest year on record — and if current trends continue, weather events could intensify, leading to deadlier natural disasters.
Already, the US is grappling with devastating wildfires in southern California that have killed 27 people, likely heightened by unseasonably dry weather.
A French woman who stopped having sex with her husband has won a ruling from Europe’s highest human rights court, which has stated she should not have been blamed for their divorce.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) sided with the 69-year-old on Thursday, saying courts should not consider a refusal to engage in sexual relations as grounds for fault in divorce.
The unanimous decision found that France had violated her right to respect for private and family life under European human rights law – ending a legal dispute which has dragged on for almost a decade.
The French woman, identified as Ms H.W, celebrated the decision as a step forward in ending “rape culture” and promoting consent within marriage.
The case has sparked a debate about attitudes toward marital consent and women’s rights in France. Lilia Mhissen, H.W.’s lawyer, said the decision dismantled the outdated concept of “marital duty” and called for French courts to align with modern views on consent and equality.
Women’s rights groups supporting H.W. said French judges continue to impose an “archaic vision of marriage,” which perpetuates harmful stereotypes.
H.W., who lives in Le Chesnay near Paris, married her husband, JC, in 1984. They had four children, including a daughter with a disability who required constant care, a responsibility H.W. took on.
Their marital relations deteriorated after the birth of their first child and by 1992, H.W. began experiencing health problems. In 2002, her husband started physically and verbally abusing her. Two years later, she stopped having sex with him and petitioned for divorce in 2012.
The woman did not dispute the divorce, which she had also requested, but objected to the grounds on which it was granted.
In 2019, an appeals court in Versailles rejected her complaints and ruled in favour of her husband. The Court of Cassation, France’s highest court, later dismissed her appeal without explanation. She then brought her case to the ECHR in 2021.
The ECHR ruled that governments should only intervene in matters like sexuality for very serious reasons. It stated that the idea of “marital duties” in French law ignored the importance of consent in sexual relations.
The court emphasised that agreeing to marry does not mean agreeing to have sex in the future. Suggesting otherwise, the ruling said, would effectively deny that marital rape is a serious crime.
The ruling comes amid growing attention to consent in France, following the high-profile trial of Dominique Pélicot, who drugged his wife and invited men to rape her. Pélicot and the 50 men involved were convicted last month, and the case raised concerns about how French law addresses consent.
Feminist groups argue that the ECHR decision reinforces the need to update French laws and cultural attitudes.
A recent report by French MPs has recommended including the concept of non-consent in the legal definition of rape, stating that consent must be freely given and can be withdrawn at any time.
President Donald Trump has issued an executive order to redesignate Yemen’s Houthi rebels as a “foreign terrorist organization,” calling the group a threat to regional security, the White House said. Critics argued the move will worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis in the country.
The order restores a designation given to the group, which is backed by Iran and formally known as Ansar Allah, late in the first Trump administration. The Biden administration lifted the designation shortly after taking office, partly to facilitate peace talks in Yemen’s civil war.
Last year, however, the Biden team reversed course, labeling the Houthis a “specially designated global terrorist” organization — a less severe category — in response to attacks against U.S. warships in the Red Sea.
“The Houthis’ activities threaten the security of American civilians and personnel in the Middle East, the safety of our closest regional partners and the stability of global maritime trade,” the White House said in a statement on Wednesday.
Mr. Trump’s executive order said U.S. policy would seek to “eliminate Ansar Allah’s capabilities and operations,” in cooperation with regional partners. It also called for the U.S. Agency for International Development to review the operations of United Nations partners, private aid agencies and contractors working in Yemen and to sever ties with any entities that have made payments to the Houthis or opposed international efforts to counter the group.
Yemen is home to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with more than 18 million people — over half the population — requiring assistance, according to the United Nations.
“The designation will also impact the vital lifeline of remittances to Yemenis living in Houthi-controlled areas which accounts for a vast majority of the country’s population,” said Abdulwasea Mohammed, Oxfam in Yemen’s policy, advocacy and media manager. “A designation would push the entire country’s economy from crisis into free fall.”
During its first term, the Trump administration cited the Houthis’ missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as evidence of their threat to regional stability. U.S. officials also hoped the designation would pressure the Houthis to engage in peace talks.
The Biden administration’s initial reversal of the terrorist designation drew criticism from regional allies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023, the Houthis, who act as the de facto government in much of northern Yemen, have fired hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel in solidarity with Hamas.
Israel on Thursday welcomed the redesignation of the Houthis.
“The Houthis have repeatedly attacked Israel without any provocation on its part,” the Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Saar, said on X. “This is an important step in fighting terror and combating the destabilizing elements in our region.”
The rebels have also attacked commercial vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, disrupted global shipping trade through key marine routes for traffic for Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
On Sunday, the group announced it would scale back its attacks, given a cease-fire in the conflict in Gaza that went into effect over the weekend.
Israel’s military pressed ahead with its offensive in the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank on Thursday and said it had killed two men in a siege who had been wanted for the murder of three Israelis earlier this month.
The men, identified on Thursday by the Israeli military as Mohamad Nazzal and Katiba Shalabi, were affiliated with a militant group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and had carried out the shooting in the village of Al-Funduq on Jan. 6, it said.
“The terrorists were wanted for the murder of three Israelis,” the military said in a statement, adding that an Israeli soldier had been moderately injured in the operation on Wednesday, which took place in the village of Burqin, just west of Jenin. “After an exchange of fire, they were eliminated by the forces,” it said.
It was not possible to confirm independently that the men had been responsible for the attack in Al-Funduq, in which Palestinian gunmen opened fire on a civilian bus and cars. Israeli settlers attacked the village this week along with other towns in the West Bank.
At least 10 people have been killed in the raids this week, and more than 40 others have been wounded, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Wednesday. Officials have also told the Palestinian news agency Wafa that dozens of people have been arrested.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said this week that the raids were aimed at “eradicating terrorism” and would be “extensive and significant.” They are the latest in a series in recent months.
Last month, Palestinian security forces carried out an assault of their own in Jenin against Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, the militant group that attacked Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, triggering the war in Gaza.
During a 10-day raid into the West Bank in August and September, Israeli forces killed 39 people, most of whom died in Jenin, according to Palestinian officials. They also demolished homes, shops and roads.
Palestinian officials say that Israeli security forces and settlers have killed more than 800 Palestinians in the West Bank in the 15 months since the war in Gaza began.
The United Nations has condemned the violence, and the world’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, issued an advisory opinion in August saying that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and its settlements there, violated international law. Mr. Netanyahu criticized the opinion and said the settlements were legal.
Jenin is a center for Palestinian resistance in the West Bank — to both Israel’s occupation and the Palestinian Authority — and many young men there have joined Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other armed groups.
The level of conflict in the West Bank has risen since the start of the war in Gaza. The Israeli operation has coincided with a cease-fire in Gaza, which came into effect on Sunday.
Initial investigation suggests that contaminated food and water may have caused the deaths
Officials are investigating the “mysterious” deaths of 17 people – most of them children – in the same village in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.
The deaths, including those of 12 children, have occurred in the remote village of Badhal in Jammu’s Rajouri district since 7 December.
The victims initially displayed symptoms similar to food poisoning but suddenly lost consciousness, health officials said.
The village has been declared a containment zone, but officials have said that the disease does not appear to be infectious, and there is no fear of an epidemic.
Dr AS Bhatia, the chief of a local hospital, said that the first five patients – including four children – who were admitted had symptoms similar to food poisoning, including vomiting and diarrhoea. Others complained of sore throats and breathing problems.
But then, all of them would abruptly lose consciousness, he added.
The federal government has ordered an investigation. A special investigation team set up by the local administration, comprising police officers, pathologists and other specialists, has questioned dozens of people so far.
According to initial investigations, consumption of contaminated food and water may have been the cause. Residents of the village have been asked not to drink water from a local spring after a test sample showed it contained traces of pesticides.
The deaths occurred between 7 December and 19 January and the victims were members of three related families. Six of the children who died were siblings, with ages ranging from seven to 15 years. Their houses have been sealed.
At least 17 people, including 12 children, have died in Badhal village between 7 December and 19 January
Though doctors have ruled out the possibility of an infection, an administrative order says that people identified as close contacts of the three families are being moved to a government hospital in Rajouri, where their condition will be monitored. The order also asks all other residents of Badhal to only consume food and water provided by the administration.
“All edible materials in the infected households shall be seized by the authorities,” the order said.
At least 10 people have been admitted for treatment in hospitals in Rajouri, Jammu and Chandigarh city.
Dr Shuja Quadri, an epidemiologist at the Government Medical College in Rajouri, said that the disease is localised and that they have ruled out the possibility of viral, bacterial, protozoal and zoonotic infections.
Among the second cluster of patients who were admitted on 12 December, five people, including a one-year-old child, have recovered.
