Trump says US should ‘take’ Gaza and turn it into ‘freedom zone’
President Donald Trump said on Thursday he wanted the United States to “take” Gaza and turn it into a “freedom zone”, as the Israel-Hamas war rages on in the Palestinian territory, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“I have concepts for Gaza that I think are very good, make it a freedom zone, let the United States get involved and make it just a freedom zone,” the US leader said in Qatar, adding:
I’d be proud to have the United States have it, take it, make it a freedom zone.
Key events
Israel summon Spanish ambassador after PM Sánchez describes it as a ‘genocidal state’
Ashifa Kassam
Israel’s foreign ministry has said it has summoned the Spanish ambassador for a formal reprimand after the country’s prime minister described Israel as a “genocidal state”.
Pedro Sánchez made the remarks on Wednesday during an exchange in Spanish parliament in which his government was accused of continuing to trade with Israel. “I want to clarify one thing,” Sánchez said. “We don’t trade with a genocidal state. We don’t.”
The Spanish government has repeatedly said that it has halted the sale or purchase of weapons with Israel since the conflict erupted in 2023. Several reports, however, appear to contradict this.
Israel’s reaction to Sánchez’s comments was swift. “Following the serious remarks made by Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish ambassador to Israel has been summoned for a reprimand meeting,” the foreign ministry said in a statement late on Wednesday. The meeting would take place Thursday in Jerusalem at the foreign ministry, it added.
While Spain has long ranked as one of the EU’s most outspoken critics of Israel’s war in Gaza, this week’s comments marked the first time the prime minister had used such strong language. He made the remarks nearly a year after Spain joined Ireland and Norway in officially recognising a Palestinian state.
Sánchez and his government have frequently clashed with Israel over their view of the war; in 2023 the Israeli government recalled its ambassador to Madrid after Sánchez said he had “genuine doubts” about whether Israel was complying with international humanitarian law in its offensive in Gaza.
Ashifa Kassam, the Guardian’s European community affairs correspondent, reporting from Madrid, Spain.
And some more of Donald Trump speaking to US troops during a visit to al-Udeid airbase in Doha, Qatar, today:
Here are some of the latest images coming in today via the newswires:
Donald Trump has said that the US’s air campaign against the Houthi rebels was “very successful, but maybe tomorrow, an attack will be made, in which case we go back on the offensive”, reports CBS News senior White House reporter, Jennifer Jacobs.
Jacobs wrote on X that Trump had made the comments in Doha, Qatar, where the US president is on a visit to the Middle East.
Germany’s Lufthansa airline group said Thursday its suspension of flights to and from Tel Aviv would last until at least 25 May amid ongoing regional conflict.
Lufthansa said in a statement the decision to extend the suspension was made “due to the current situation”, without giving further details, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The group – whose carriers include Eurowings, Swiss, Austrian and Brussels airlines – initially suspended its flights to Israel’s main airport after a 4 May rocket attack launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and has extended the suspension several times.
The missile landed near a car park at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion international airport and injured six people, in a rare penetration of Israel’s air defences.
The Houthis have repeatedly targeted Israel throughout its war with Hamas, saying they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians.
Twice this week the Israeli military said it intercepted missiles fired by the Houthis, with the Houthis saying they were targeting Tel Aviv airport.
Donald Trump, who began his first major foreign tour in Saudi Arabia and later on Thursday heads to the United Arab Emirates, has been unabashed about seeking Gulf money and hailed the effect on creating jobs at home, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“This is a record tour. There’s never been a tour that will raise – it could be a total of $3.5-4tn just in these four or five days,” Trump said in Qatar.
In Doha, the president hailed what he said was a record $200bn deal for Boeing aircraft.
Saudi Arabia promised its own $600bn in investment, including one of the largest-ever purchases of US weapons, reports AFP.
The final stop of his tour is the UAE, which is seeking to become a leader in technology and especially artificial intelligence to help diversify its oil-reliant economy. But these ambitions hinge on access to advanced US technologies, including AI chips under restricted export – which the UAE president’s brother and spy chief sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed reportedly lobbied for during a Washington visit in March.
The Gulf leaders’ largesse has also stirred controversy, with Qatar offering Trump a luxury aeroplane prior to his visit for presidential and then personal use, in what Trump’s Democratic rivals charged was blatant corruption.
Gaza civil defence says toll from latest Israeli strikes up to 82
Gaza’s civil defence agency has said that the death toll from Israeli strikes overnight into Thursday is up to 82 people, updating a previous toll.
“The number of martyrs from Israeli airstrikes on Gaza has risen to 82 after the occupation targeted several homes in northern Gaza,” civil defence spokesperson Mohammad al-Mughayir told AFP, after the agency earlier reported at least 50 dead (see 8.27am BST).
Palestinian medics had most recently said the death toll was at least 60 people (see 9.55am BST).
Trump says US close to a nuclear deal with Iran
President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the United States was getting very close to securing a nuclear deal with Iran, and Tehran had “sort of” agreed to the terms.
“We’re in very serious negotiations with Iran for long-term peace,” Trump said on a tour of the Gulf, according to a shared pool report by Agence France-Presse (AFP).
He said:
We’re getting close to maybe doing a deal without having to do this … there [are] two steps to doing this, there is a very, very nice step and there is the violent step, but I don’t want to do it the second way.
An Iranian source familiar with the negotiations told AFP that there were still gaps to bridge in the talks with the United States.
Oil prices fell by about $2 on Thursday on expectations for a US-Iran nuclear deal that could result in sanctions easing.
Fresh talks between Iranian and US negotiators to resolve disputes over Tehran’s nuclear programme ended in Oman on Sunday with further negotiations planned, officials said, as Tehran publicly insisted on continuing its uranium enrichment.
Though Tehran and Washington have both said they prefer diplomacy to resolve the decades-long nuclear dispute, they remain divided on several red lines that negotiators will have to circumvent to reach a new deal and avert future military action, reports AFP.
Iran’s president reacted to Trump’s comments on Tuesday calling Tehran the “most destructive force” in the Middle East. “Trump thinks he can sanction and threaten us and then talk of human rights. All the crimes and regional instability is caused by them [the United States],” Masoud Pezeshkian said. “He wants to create instability inside Iran.”
However, in an interview with NBC News published on Wednesday, an Iranian official said Iran was willing to agree to a deal with the US in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Iran would commit to never making nuclear weapons and getting rid of its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, agree to enrich uranium only to the lower levels needed for civilian use and allow international inspectors to supervise the process, NBC reported.
Death toll in Gaza from overnight Israeli strikes rises to at least 60 people
The death toll in Gaza from overnight Israeli military strikes has risen to at least 60 people, according to Palestinian medics.
Most of the victims, including women and children, were killed in Khan Younis in southern Gaza in airstrikes that hit homes and tents, they said.
According to Reuters, there was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Emma Graham-Harrison
It was a short distance but a very long journey from a bombed-out hospital in Gaza to the Jordanian border. Zeinab al Astal arrived with her two sick sons as dusk was falling on Wednesday evening, and she seemed stunned they had made it at all.
Twenty-four hours earlier she had been watching chunks of ceiling crash down to the floor around them, after Israel bombed the European hospital in Khan Younis where they were staying.
“This medical evacuation saved us,” she said, minutes after crossing into Jordan, where her sons Ahmad, 13, and Qassem, 15, will get treatment for leukaemia, something that is now almost impossible inside Gaza.
Medical equipment has been destroyed, medicines are running out, one in three hospitals have been closed by attacks, those partly functioning are overcrowded with victims of airstrikes and assaults, and the ranks of doctors and nurses have been decimated by Israeli detention and killings.
The Astal brothers and other cancer patients are doubly unlucky children, trapped in a brutal war while also fighting their own traumatic battles against a deadly disease.
Their best hope of survival is to apply for treatment abroad, and then wait for Israeli authorities’ response – although trying to get an exit permit can feel like a grim lottery.
CBS News senior White House reporter, Jennifer Jacobs, has shared more on Trump’s latest comments about Gaza.
On X, Jacobs wrote:
TRUMP said wants a Gaza “freedom zone.”
“I have concepts for Gaza that I think are very good: Make it a freedom zone, let the United States get involved,” he told us in Doha, Qatar.
“I’d be proud to have the United States have it, take it, make it a freedom zone, let some good things happen. Put people in homes where they can be safe.”
Trump said “the Gaza problem has never been solved.
“Hamas is going to have to be dealt with,” he said. “Remember, Oct. 7 was one of the worst days in the history of the world, I think, not just, not just local to this region, it was one of the worst, most atrocious attacks anyone’s ever seen.”
Trump says US should ‘take’ Gaza and turn it into ‘freedom zone’
President Donald Trump said on Thursday he wanted the United States to “take” Gaza and turn it into a “freedom zone”, as the Israel-Hamas war rages on in the Palestinian territory, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“I have concepts for Gaza that I think are very good, make it a freedom zone, let the United States get involved and make it just a freedom zone,” the US leader said in Qatar, adding:
I’d be proud to have the United States have it, take it, make it a freedom zone.
Donald Trump has said he wants the US to make a ‘freedom zone’ in Gaza, according to a breaking news line from Agence France-Presse (AFP).
More details soon …
Gaza’s civil defence agency spokeperson Mahmud Bassal said at least 13 people were “recovered from rubble” after a dawn strike in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, while another 35 were killed in 12 separate strikes across the Gaza Strip.
Bassal added that in southern Gaza, one woman was killed in artillery shelling, and one man by gunfire.
President Donald Trump has attended a business forum in Qatar, reports the Associated Press (AP).
Trump sat with GE Aerospace’s Larry Culp and Boeing Co’s Kelly Ortberg on either side of him on Thursday. According to the AP, both praised Trump for his support for the Qatar Airways order for Boeing aircraft, with Ortberg calling it one of the largest orders Boeing has ever had.
On Thursday, Trump plans to address troops at Qatar’s al-Udeid airbase, which was a major staging ground during the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and supported the recent US air campaign against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis.
The US president has held up Gulf nations like Saudi Arabia and Qatar as models for economic development in a region plagued by conflict as he works to entice Iran to come to terms with his administration on a deal to curb its nuclear programme.
Trump will then head to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
Trump visits Middle East as airstrikes kill more than 50 people in Gaza
Multiple airstrikes have hit Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis overnight, killing more than 50 people in a second consecutive night of heavy bombing.
The Associated Press (AP) said its cameraman in Khan Younis counted 10 airstrikes on the city overnight into Thursday, and saw numerous bodies taken to the morgue in the city’s Nasser hospital. The hospital’s morgue confirmed 54 people had been killed.
The dead included a journalist working for Qatari television network Al Araby TV, the network announced on social media, saying Hasan Samour had been killed along with 11 members of his family in one of the strikes in Khan Younis.
It was the second night of heavy bombing, after airstrikes on Wednesday on northern and southern Gaza killed at least 70 people, including almost two dozen children.
The strikes come as US president Donald Trump is on a trip to the Middle East, visiting Gulf states but not Israel.
An Israeli blockade of Gaza is now in its third month. Nearly half a million Palestinians are facing possible starvation while 1 million others can barely get enough food, according to findings by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a leading international authority on the severity of hunger crises.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed earlier in the week to push ahead with a promised escalation of force in Israel’s war to pursue his aim of destroying the Hamas militant group.
In other developments:
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President Donald Trump on Thursday will visit a US base installation at the cente of American involvement in the Middle East as he uses his four-day visit to Gulf states to reject the “interventionism” of America’s past in the region. The US president will also meet business leaders in Qatar and head to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
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Human Rights Watch said that Israel’s plan to seize Gaza, remain in the territory and displace hundreds of thousands of people “inches closer to extermination”. The international rights group called on the international community to speak out against the plan.
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A pregnant Israeli woman has died after she was shot and critically injured in a shooting attack in the occupied West Bank, a hospital said Thursday. Beilinson hospital said that doctors succeeded in saving her unborn baby, who was in serious but stable condition after being delivered by caesarean section.
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