Israel says it is conducting strikes in southern Syria
(LONDON) — Israel confirmed it is conducting strikes in southern Syria, as the new Syrian government calls for the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Syrian territory.
“We will not allow southern Syria to become southern Lebanon,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said regarding the strikes. “Any attempt by the Syrian regime forces and the country’s terrorist organizations to establish themselves in the security zone in southern Syria will be met with fire.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(LONDON) — When she left her home in Gaza City 16 months ago, Tala Herzallah didn’t think she was seeing it for the last time.
Now, walking in the rubble of what used to be her house, the 22-year-old Palestinian can barely recognize the place where she spent most of her life.
“It pains me to say it, but I only can recognize a wall from my home. Just one wall,” she told ABC News. “Otherwise, everything just disappeared as if it wasn’t there.”
Herzallah, an English student at the Islamic University of Gaza, packed her school bag and a few of her most treasured belongings as she evacuated after incessant bombing hit her neighborhood, Tel Al-Hawa.
The northern part of Gaza was the first target of Israel’s retaliatory strikes following the Hamas-led October 2023 terror attack and remained the scene of some of the fiercest fighting. Multiple ground operations and relentless airstrikes damaged or destroyed most of the buildings.
Its residents were forced to evacuate. The lack of aid, medical care and basic resources made life impossible for those who stayed behind.
Still, as soon as a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was announced in January, hundreds of thousands made their way back north.
Those that have returned have been shocked by the devastation: their houses and belongings were mostly reduced to rubble and the signs of a humanitarian crisis are apparent on every corner.
But when Herzallah looked behind from her car, as bombs fell across the road that was taking her and her parents to a safer place in the south, she still hoped to return to north Gaza as she always knew it: colorful, vibrant and full of life.
That hope never faded, but with every month of war that went by, Herzallah said she knew there would be nothing waiting for her in Tel Al-Hawa.
“I know that it was destroyed. But until the last moment, I had this tiny hope that no, it won’t be destroyed. The pictures they showed me, I didn’t trust them,” she told ABC News. “I told myself, when I will reach it, it will be good.”
But it was not. As for millions of Palestinians in Gaza, Israel’s war changed everything for Herzallah.
Her house was reduced to rubble. Her education was paused as her university was destroyed and her beloved professor, Dr. Refaat Alareer, killed in an Israeli airstrike.
She was separated from her family, with her brothers in different parts of Gaza and her nephews abroad. She lost all her privacy, having to share a bathroom with more than 20 people for months.
“I don’t want to remember these days. I don’t want to remember how much I suffered because each time I remember these details, I feel that we’re not human beings,” she said. “No human being can tolerate and bear this much of pain and suffering.”
More than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, the Hamas-run Health Ministry reported, and 1.9 million people have been displaced, according to the United Nations.
Unable to process her present, Herzallah said she sometimes struggles to envision her future. Especially when the future she thought she would have had, if the war had not happened, gets in the way of planning anything else.
Entering her school’s campus for the first time since the war began, Herzallah found it changed to a shocking degree.
The Islamic University of Gaza, where she studied English Literature and Translation for the past three years, was hit by an Israeli airstrike on Oct. 10, 2023, as seen in a video shared by the Israeli military. They claimed Hamas used it as a base.
“It was always colorful. Colored with smiles, laughs,” Herzallah said, surrounded by burnt seats and a damaged stage. “I’ve never imagined to enter this place and see it as black as darkness. Pain is everywhere.”
Holding a graduation hat covered in dust, Herzallah said she felt all her losses.
“The first time I came to university, I dreamed of graduation day, of taking photos here with my family, siblings and professors,” she said. “Now I am graduating with nothing.”
Still, Herzallah said her dreams are “stuck between and among this rubble,” in her education. She received a scholarship to pursue her master’s degree in the U.S., which she sees as a second chance to make up for lost time and opportunities.
But she needs to leave Gaza first. Ceasefire talks are ongoing, but a permanent end to the war has yet to be agreed and Gaza’s borders remain closed.
Surrounded by unpredictability and hardship, one certainty remains for Herzallah: that if help is given, Palestinians can rebuild.
“We are strong enough to build it again. But the point is that we need a lot of things to help us. We need a lot of machines and other stuff,” she said.
To President Donald Trump’s proposal that the U.S. take over Gaza, Herzallah has a clear answer: provide the tools and then leave Gaza to Palestinians. She added his comments felt like a slap on her face after everything her people experienced.
“The relationship between Palestinians and their land is like the relationship between any mother and her sons,” Herzallah said. “Even if they leave their mother for a period of time, they will return at last to her hug and her embrace.”
(LONDON) — The prime minister of Greenland warned President Donald Trump off his controversial ambition to acquire the territory, writing on social media Wednesday, “Greenland is ours.”
Trump again expressed his desire to take control of the Arctic island — which is a semiautonomous territory within Denmark — in his speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday. America, he said, would acquire the strategic territory “one way or the other.”
Prime Minister Mute Bourup Egede dismissed Trump’s remarks in a post to Facebook.
“Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders,” he wrote. “We are not Americans, we are not Danes because we are Greenlanders. This is what the Americans and their leaders need to understand, we cannot be bought and we cannot be ignored.”
“The future of the country will be determined by us in our country, of course,” Egede added. “Greenland is ours. We do not want to be Americans, nor Danes, we are Kalaallit. The Americans and their leaders must understand that.”
“We are not for sale and cannot be taken,” Egede said. “The future is decided by us in Greenland.”
Trump has expressed ambition to acquire Greenland since his first term. The mineral-rich island sits in the Arctic Circle along two potential shipping routes through the Arctic — the Northwest Passage and the Transpolar Sea Route — which are expected to become more navigable as climate change and warmer waters causes the retreat of Arctic sea ice.
During his address to Congress on Tuesday, Greenland was central to Trump’s foreign policy remarks.
“We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America,” Trump said. “We will keep you safe. We will make you rich. And together we will take Greenland to heights like you have never thought possible before.”
The president said his administration was “working with everybody involved to try to get it.”
“We need it really for international world security,” he said. “And I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it.”
Denmark has also dismissed any suggestion of transferring Greenland’s sovereignty to the U.S.
In February, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said, “Greenland is today a part of the kingdom of Denmark. It is part of our territory, and it’s not for sale.”
Frederiksen and officials in Greenland have suggested negotiations on an expanded U.S. military footprint on the island in response to Trump’s bid to acquire the territory outright.
ABC News’ Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.
Photo by Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images
(ROME) — Pope Francis’ prognosis was “lifted” on Monday, marking his 25th consecutive day in the hospital, according to the Vatican.
“The improvements recorded in previous days have further consolidated, as confirmed by both blood tests and clinical objectivity and the good response to pharmacological therapy. For these reasons, the doctors decided to lift the prognosis,” the Holy See, the Vatican’s press office, said in a statement Monday.
Vatican sources told ABC News that Francis’ prognosis being lifted means he’s no longer in imminent danger, but the clinical picture still remains complex.
Regardless of the improvements, the 88-year-old pontiff will continue “for additional days, the pharmacological medical therapy in a hospital environment” due to the “complexity of the clinical picture and the significant infectious picture presented at hospitalization,” the Vatican said.
Francis’ doctors said there are positive signs of the pontiff’s recovery, but caution remains, according to the Vatican sources.
The pope will move back to noninvasive mechanical ventilation and will continue an antibiotic treatment, the Vatican sources said.
On Monday morning, Francis was able to participate in spiritual exercises for Lent for the Roman curia, received the Eucharist and then “went to the Chapel of the private apartment for a moment of prayer,” the Vatican said.
He continued to participate in the spiritual exercises via a video link and spent the rest of the afternoon alternating between prayer and rest, the Vatican said.
Francis was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli Hospital on Feb. 14 and was diagnosed with bilateral pneumonia.
On Sunday, Francis released a text of his Angelus address — his weekly address — thanking the doctors and nurses who have been caring for him in the hospital.
“During my prolonged hospitalization here, I too experience the thoughtfulness of service and the tenderness of care, in particular from the doctors and health care workers, whom I thank from the bottom of my heart,” the pope said.
Thursday will mark the 12th anniversary of when Francis was voted to succeed Pope Benedict XVI, who previously resigned.
