Middle East latest: Israel prepares to move deeper into Gaza and orders Rafah evacuated

Here's the latest:

At least 140,000 people were affected by the Israeli evacuation order for Rafah on Monday, according to Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees.

“People are treated like pinballs with constant military orders playing with their fate and lives,” Lazzarini wrote on the social platform X.

“This is causing panic, anxiety & uncertainty on the first day of Eid, a time to be with family & loved ones,” he added. Eid al-Fitr is normally a festive Muslim holiday marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

People fled Gaza’s southernmost city on Monday with their belongings loaded onto donkeys and stacked on car roofs. Families traveled by foot carrying luggage as children held adults’ hands.

“We are dying. There is no food, no drink, no electricity, no medicine,” said Hanadi Dahoud, who was displaced from the southern city of Khan Younis. “We want to live. We just want to live. We are tired.”

Israel's sweeping evacuation orders cover Rafah and nearby areas. Palestinians are being told to head to Muwasi, a sprawl of squalid tent camps along the coast.

U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher made the demands, saying, “They were killed by Israeli forces while trying to save lives.”

Jonathan Whittall, the U.N. aid coordination agency’s top official for Gaza, said the clearly identified humanitarian workers from the Palestine Red Crescent Society, Palestine Civil Defense and the U.N. had been sent to collect injured people on March 23 in the Rafah area of southern Gaza when they came under fire from advancing Israeli forces.

Fifteen emergency responders were killed including eight Red Crescent staff members. Israel’s military has said its forces opened fire on several vehicles that raised suspicions by advancing without headlights or emergency signals. The military said a Hamas operative and eight other militants were among those killed.

The Israeli military only granted access to the area five days later, and Whittall said the buried bodies were recovered on Sunday.

“They were killed in their uniforms, driving their clearly marked vehicles, wearing their gloves, on their way to save lives,” he said. “This never should have happened.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was summoned by police Monday to give testimony in an investigation into ties between his office and the Gulf Arab state of Qatar.

Police confirmed the summons but declined to comment further, citing a gag order on the case. Israeli media said Netanyahu testified for approximately an hour and said he was not currently a suspect in the case.

Earlier Monday, police said they arrested two suspects in connection with the investigation. One of the suspects was later identified by Netanyahu’s Likud party as Jonatan Urich, a top aide to the Israeli leader.

The investigation is looking into accusations that Qatar, which is a key mediator between Israel and Hamas, hired people in Netanyahu’s orbit to manage public relations campaigns.

Dozens of people gathered Monday as the bodies of eight Palestinian Red Crescent Society paramedics killed by Israel arrived at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. Grieving family members and mourners bid them a final farewell, many overcome with tears.

Saleh Muammar’s mother Asmahan said she waited for days to hear from her son, and was later told he was either killed or wounded. The first responders' bodies were pulled from beneath a mound of sand on Sunday after they'd been missing for over a week.

“The fact is that they (Israel) killed them from the very first moment,” she told The Associated Press, adding that she believes the Israeli military buried the bodies to “cover their awful actions so that no one knows what the Israelis are doing.”

Israel has said its forces opened fire on several vehicles that raised suspicions by advancing without headlights or emergency signals. The military said a Hamas operative and eight other militants were among those killed.

Funeral prayers for the eight paramedics were held outside the hospital, their corpses wrapped in white body bags with their pictures on them, before they were loaded to ambulances to be taken for a dignified burial.

Raed al-Nems, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent, said the paramedics were “killed in cold blood” despite wearing uniforms and operating in clearly labeled ambulances.

Lebanese security officials said they have arrested two Lebanese and one Syrian in connection with rocket attacks from southern Lebanon into Israel.

At least eight rockets were launched into Israel on March 22 and 28. The militant group Hezbollah denied involvement, and no group claimed responsibility. In response, Israel carried out strikes in southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as in Beirut’s southern suburbs. They were first strikes there since ae ceasefire took effect between Israel and Hezbollah in late November.

The security officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

— By Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party has slammed the arrest of a top aide to the Israeli leader, saying it is part of a civil servant-driven effort to topple Netanyahu’s rule.

The Likud named the adviser arrested as Jonatan Urich, a longtime aide to Netanyahu. It said in a statement that his arrest was “a new low in the political witch hunt” against the Israeli leader.

Police said earlier Monday it had arrested two suspects in connection with an investigation looking into ties between the Gulf state of Qatar and people in Netanyahu’s close orbit.

Israeli police say they have arrested two suspects in connection with an investigation into ties between the Gulf Arab state of Qatar and the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The case is under a sweeping gag order and police did not name the suspects in their announcement on Monday.

The investigation is looking into accusations that Qatar, which is a key mediator between Israel and Hamas, hired people in Netanyahu’s orbit to manage public relations campaigns.

The alleged Qatar links are also being investigated by the country’s internal security agency.

Netanyahu moved to dismiss the agency’s head earlier this month, saying he had lost confidence in the official in part because of the security failures leading up to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack.

Critics accuse Netanyahu of trying to derail the Qatar probe and undermine state institutions that check his authority.

The Israeli military on Monday issued sweeping evacuation orders covering most of the southern city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip.

Israel ended a ceasefire and renewed its air and ground war against the Hamas militant group earlier this month.

Israel launched a major operation in Rafah, on the border with Egypt, last May, leaving large parts of it in ruins.

Israeli forces seized a strategic buffer zone along the border and did not withdraw from it as called for in the ceasefire agreement. Israel said it needed to maintain a presence there to prevent weapons smuggling.

A former Israeli hostage who learned upon his release that his wife and two young children were killed in captivity in Gaza called on U.S. President Donald Trump to bring an end to the war in Gaza.

In his first media interview since being freed in a ceasefire last month, Yarden Bibas told CBS’ 60 Minutes on Sunday that Trump was “the only one” who can convince Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas to halt the renewed fighting.

He said as a hostage, as he was held in Hamas’ underground tunnels, Israeli strikes were terrifying. “You’re afraid for your life,” he said. “Everything could collapse at any moment.” He said his captors, who had taunted him over his family’s fate, told him “you’ll get a new wife. New kids. Better wife. Better kids.”

“Please stop the war and help bring all the hostages back,” Bibas called on Trump.

The United Nations has released footage from the operation to recover 15 first responders killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip.

The footage released Sunday showed members of the Civil Defense, first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government, exhuming a body from a mound of sand. The body was wearing the same orange vest as the rescuers.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies called it the deadliest attack on its workers since 2017.

Israel said its forces opened fire on several vehicles that raised suspicions by advancing without headlights or emergency signals. The military said a Hamas operative and eight other militants were among those killed.

The United Nations humanitarian office said eight Red Crescent workers, six members of the Civil Defense and a U.N. worker were killed.

The shooting occurred when Israeli forces launched a surprise ground incursion into the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood of Rafah on March 23.