The Times of Israel is liveblogging Friday’s events as they unfold.
Syria says several troops, civilians killed in alleged Israeli strike
Syria’s army says an unspecified number of soldiers and civilians were killed in an Israeli attack on several points around the north of the country early Friday, according to Damascus state-run media.
The attacks were centered around the town Ithiriya, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Aleppo, SANA says.
“The aggression resulted in the martyrdom and injury of a number of civilians and military personnel and caused material losses to public and private property,” the statement says.
The report says the attacks occurred at 1:45 a.m., just as a drone assault by rebels from Idlib on the city of Aleppo and areas west of the city was also taking place.
There is no comment from the Israel Defense Forces.
Alleged Israeli airstrike reported at Aleppo airport in northern Syria
Large explosions are being reported in Aleppo in northern Syria, in what is being described as an Israeli attack.
According to reports, the attack has targeted the city’s main airport, which has been blown up in alleged Israeli strikes several times in the past few years.
Unverified videos show a large fireball rising over the city. One video also appears to show anti-aircraft fire streaking into the sky.
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BREAKING:As expected, one of the significant targets that was hit is a strategic weapons depot.
Video from Aleppo after the recent Israeli airstrikes.#حموم_منصوری#باجناق#Kotlet pic.twitter.com/NCSPPIXZ5c
— Omar Abu Layla (@OALD24) March 28, 2024
There is no comment from official Syrian sources, nor from the Israel Defense Forces.
By policy, Israel’s military does not normally comment on individual strikes.
Video coming in of strikes by #Israel around Aleppo, #Syria tonight. Some reports suggest Aleppo Int’l Airport and Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center facilities were a target. #IRGCterrorists pic.twitter.com/Xjx222b4WT
— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) March 28, 2024
The alleged strike comes hours after Syria’s state-run SANA news agency said Israel struck a residential building in Damascus, injuring two civilians and causing “material losses.”
US blasts four Houthi drones threatening warships in Red Sea
The US military said it has destroyed four unmanned drones launched by Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen.
The US Central Command says on the social media site X that the drones “presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and US Navy ships in the region.”
The drones “were aimed at a coalition vessel and a US warship and were engaged in self defense over the Red Sea,” the statement from the US Central Command says, adding there were no injuries or damage reported to the US or coalition ships.
March 28 Red Sea
Between 6:00 and 10:56 p.m. (Sanaa time) on March 28, and for the second day in a row, United States Central Command successfully engaged and destroyed four unmanned aerial systems (UAS) launched by Iranian backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen. These UAS were aimed… pic.twitter.com/H50Br2wH37
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 28, 2024
‘I have to dissociate’: Freed hostage hints at sexual abuse in Gaza captivity
Moran Stela Yanai, a former hostage in Gaza who was freed in late November, hints at having been subject to sexual abuse during her time in captivity but says she is not yet ready to talk about it in detail.
“There was this constant fear of being raped at any moment. And then a day passes, and another one passes. So you prepare yourself — you neglect yourself,” she says. “I’m not especially beautiful, I don’t smell very good at all. You know, so that you repel them. I’m old, I’m 40, I’m ‘hatiar,'” she tells Channel 12’s “Uvda” investigative program, using an Arab slang term that means old person.
Yanai, 40, was taken from the Supernova festival at Kibbutz Re’im on October 7. It was the scene of a bloody massacre of some 360 people and widespread abductions by Hamas terrorists. She returned with 104 others over the course of a weeklong truce in late November, after some 50 days as a hostage in Gaza.
Her testimony offers a window into the hesitancy of some sexual assault survivors to open up publicly about their deeply personal suffering, amid attempts by some anti-Israel activists and international media outlets to cast doubt on claims of rape and other sexual abuses by Hamas terrorists on October 7 and in captivity in Gaza.
Yanai says their captors would make them “go through ‘necessary’ [bodily] inspection when we’d arrive at certain places,” declining to elaborate.
“From my point of view, the sexual harassment I suffered doesn’t quite fit the definition of the term,” she says, becoming emotional. “When [the hostages] come back, I will deal with the accurate definition of it.”
“For me, right now, I have to dissociate myself from it. Because however you look at it, they took away your freedom, they took everything, you have nothing, nothing is really yours, you don’t belong to yourself. The only thing that belongs to you is what you have up here,” she gestures to her head.
Yanai reveals that she was held with Noa Argamani, 26, who was also taken from the music festival on October 7. Argamani was seen in one of the first Hamas videos released during the massacre at the Supernova desert rave, seated on the back of a motorcycle behind her Hamas captor, screaming, “Don’t kill me!”
Yanai says she left thinking that Argamani would also be released in the coming days and feels immense guilt for being the one to go free.
The moment in November when the captors told them that one of them would be freed was “absolutely terrible,” she says. “It was like a reality show. They sat us down. A terrorist comes in and says ‘One of you is going home,'” she gestures with her finger from one person to the other to demonstrate a selection process.
She also reveals that she was held at least part of the time with Itay Svirsky, 38, who was killed in captivity.
“I’m not [really] here,” she says. Everything I do…[drinking coffee, shopping, strolling] for a moment it [may] bring a smile to my face because it’s pleasant…but then it falls after a second because I remember that there’s someone [a female hostage] who is sitting on the same mattress you sat on until just a moment ago.”
Foreign Ministry says it is working to up aid into Gaza after ICJ order
Israel’s Foreign Ministry says the country will continue looking for new ways to facilitate the entry of increased aid into Gaza, after the International Court of Justice ordered it to increase the provision of basic humanitarian goods to the Gaza Strip, including food, water, fuel and shelter, due to what it said are worsening living conditions for Palestinians in the war-torn territory.
“Israel will continue to promote new initiatives, and to expand existing ones, in order to enable and facilitate the flow of aid to the Gaza Strip in a continuous and extensive manner, by land, air, and sea, together with UN bodies and other partners in the international community,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Hayat says in a statement posted on X. “This includes ongoing efforts to increase the scale, and means of access for such aid despite the operational challenges on the ground and Hamas׳s active and abhorrent efforts to commandeer, hoard, and steal aid.”
“Israel is committed to meeting its legal obligations, including with respect to humanitarian assistance,” it adds.
At the same time, the Foreign Ministry appears to reject the premise for South Africa’s application to the ICJ for measures aimed at stopping what Pretoria contends in a genocide taking place in Gaza.
“South Africa has failed yet again in its cynical attempts to exploit the ICJ in order to undermine Israel’s inherent right and obligation to defend its citizens from the ongoing Hamas attacks and to secure the release of hostages still held in Gaza in brutal captivity,” Hayat writes.
The statement blames Hamas for dire conditions in the Strip, noting that it triggered the war with the October 7 onslaught and continued abduction of people kidnapped from Israel.
“Israel goes to great lengths in order to mitigate the harm to the civilian population while fighting Hamas, in the complicated circumstances that Hamas created. To this day, Hamas terrorists continue to attack the citizens of Israel and are using the civilian population of Gaza as human shields. Hamas displays utter disdain for international law and the lives of civilians, Israelis and Palestinians alike, and deliberately harms the humanitarian efforts aimed at helping the population of Gaza,” the statement reads.