Trump says ‘a lot of people are starving’ in Gaza
Donald Trump on Friday said the United States would have the situation in Gaza “taken care of”, telling reporters that people were starving in the besieged Palestinian territory.
According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), the US president told reporters during the final leg of his Gulf tour:
We’re looking at Gaza. And we’re going to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving.
Key events
Trump wraps up Middle East tour with visit to interfaith centre
US president Donald Trump has arrived at the Abrahamic Family House. The interfaith complex in Abu Dhabi features a mosque, church and synagogue – houses of worship for the three Abrahamic faiths.
It was built after the United Arab Emirates signed on to the Abraham accords in 2020, during Trump’s first term. The agreement – which Trump has encouraged other Middle Eastern and north African countries to join – saw the UAE recognise Israel.
The Associated Press (AP) reports that the visit to the white-marble place of worship concludes Trump’s first major foreign trip of his second term.
Trump announces more than $200bn of deals between US and UAE
Donald Trump has announced deals totaling more than $200bn between the United States and the United Arab Emirates, including a $14.5bn commitment among Boeing, GE Aerospace and Etihad Airways, as he pledged to strengthen ties between the US and the Gulf state during a multiday trip to the Middle East.
The White House said on Thursday that Boeing and GE had received a commitment from Etihad Airways to invest $14.5bn to buy 28 US-made Boeing 787 and 777X aircraft powered by GE engines.
“With the inclusion of the next-generation 777X in its fleet plan, the investment deepens the longstanding commercial aviation partnership between the UAE and the United States, fueling American manufacturing, driving exports,” the White House said.
Antonoaldo Neves, the CEO of Etihad, said last month that the airline planned to add 20 to 22 new planes to its fleet of roughly 100 aircraft this year, as it aims to expand to more than 170 planes by 2030 and boost Abu Dhabi’s economic diversification strategy.
Etihad, which is owned by Abu Dhabi’s $225bn wealth fund ADQ, has been through a multiyear restructuring and management shake-up, but has expanded under Neves.
Death toll from Israeli strikes across Gaza Strip on Friday rises to 64
Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip on Friday killed at least 64 people, hospitals said. Earlier, Gaza’s civil defence agency put the death toll at 50, but survivors had also said that many people were still under the rubble.
At least 48 bodies were brought to the Indonesian hospital and another 16 bodies were taken to Nasser hospital, health officials said, as strikes overnight into Friday morning hit the outskirts of Deir al-Balah and the city of Khan Younis.
Here is a video of the US president, Donald Trump, speaking about Gaza (as reported earlier at 9.14am BST):
Trump agrees deal for UAE to build largest AI campus outside US
The United Arab Emirates and the United States have signed an agreement for the Gulf country to build the largest artificial intelligence campus outside the United States, one of several deals around AI made during Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East.
But the agreement has also raised concerns, since it would have faced restrictions under the previous administration over Washington’s fears that China could access the technology.
The agreement to build the campus would give UAE expanded access to advanced AI chips. The US and UAE did not say which AI chips could be included in the data centers, but sources told Reuters the UAE could be allowed to import 500,000 of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips per year starting in 2025.
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang was seen in televised footage conversing with Donald Trump and UAE president Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan at a palace in Abu Dhabi on Thursday.
The agreement is a major win for the UAE, which has been trying to balance its relations with its longtime ally the US and its largest trading partner China. The Gulf state has been spending billions of dollars in a push to become a global AI player. But its ties to China had limited access to US chips under former president Joe Biden.
The deal reflects the Trump administration’s confidence that the chips can be managed securely, in part by requiring datacentres be managed by US companies.
William Christou
In 2006, Ahmed al-Sharaa was sitting in a US prison in Iraq, then an al-Qaida fighter waging jihad against what he viewed as an American occupation of the Middle East. Nearly two decades later, on Wednesday, he posed for a photo with the US president, Donald Trump, in Riyadh after discussing normalising ties with Israel and granting US access to Syrian oil.
The transformation of Sharaa over the last 20 years from al-Qaida fighter to the president of Syria, sharing the world’s stage with foreign leaders like Trump, is staggering. For Syrians, the pace of change has been whiplash-inducing.
In just six months after the toppling of former president Bashar al-Assad, Syria has gone from a global pariah under some of the world’s most intense sanctions regimes to a country of promise. On Tuesday, Trump announced he would end all US sanctions on Syria, a move he said “gives them a chance at greatness”.
In Syria, a weary country is finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Eyes were glued to television screens which replayed video of Sharaa meeting Trump and hands gesticulated fervently as debates over the sanctions ending raged throughout the country.
“You need to wait a bit, there are steps that need to be taken by the experts,” an elderly man cautioned his peer, pausing for breath as they struggled to cycle up the narrow streets of old Damascus. Their slow ascent on rickety-framed bicycles is a common sight in Damascus, where cars and fuel have become increasingly out of reach for much of the country’s war-battered, sanctions-laden population.
US president Donald Trump began the final day of his Middle East trip with a meeting of US and UAE business executives alongside UAE president Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Energy, health care, aviation, entertainment and other business leaders were in attendance to highlight ties between the two countries -a central focus of Trump’s trip to the region.
Soon, Trump will tour the Abrahamic Family House, a complex that houses a church, mosque and synagogue and is a symbol of interfaith tolerance, reports the Associated Press (AP). Trump has encouraged other countries in the region to join the Abraham accords and recognise Israel, as the UAE did in 2020. The president will then depart back to Washington.
Trump says ‘a lot of people are starving’ in Gaza
Donald Trump on Friday said the United States would have the situation in Gaza “taken care of”, telling reporters that people were starving in the besieged Palestinian territory.
According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), the US president told reporters during the final leg of his Gulf tour:
We’re looking at Gaza. And we’re going to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving.
Israel’s main group representing families of hostages still being held in Gaza said Friday that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was missing an “historic opportunity” to get them released, as US president Donald Trump concludes a visit to the region.
“The hostages’ families woke up this morning with heavy hearts and great concern in light of reports about increased attacks in Gaza and the imminent conclusion of President Trump’s visit to the region,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The group added:
Missing this historic opportunity would be a resounding failure that will be remembered in infamy for ever.
A doctor at the Indonesian hospital in the northern city of Beit Lahia in Gaza, who requested anonymity, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that 30 dead and dozens of injured, mostly children and women, had arrived at the hospital.
Mohammed Saleh, acting director of al-Awda hospital in Jabalia, told AFP that the hospital had received five dead and “more than 75 injured” as a result of the bombardment.
“The Israeli occupation bombed the house next to mine, hitting it directly while its residents were inside,” Yousef al-Sultan, 40, from the al-Salatin area, west of Beit Lahia, told AFP, reporting “airstrikes, artillery shelling and gunfire from quadcopter drones”.
“There is a massive wave of displacement among civilians. Fear and panic grip us in the middle of the night,” he said.
Gaza rescuers say 50 killed in Israeli strikes since midnight
Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Friday that 50 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on the Palestinian territory since midnight.
“The number of martyrs killed in Israeli shelling targeting civilian homes in the northern Gaza Strip between midnight and early this morning has risen to 50 … Our teams are still working in those areas,” civil defence official Mohammed al-Mughayyir told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Opening summary
Israeli strikes killed at least 20 people in Gaza on Friday morning. An Associated Press (AP) journalist counted the bodies at the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, where they were brought. Survivors said many people were still under the rubble.
The widespread attacks across northern Gaza come as US president Donald Trump finishes his visit to Gulf states but not Israel.
An Israeli blockade of Gaza is now in its third month. On Thursday, Trump said he wanted the US to “make” the devastated territory “into a freedom zone”.
Trump’s statement recalled the plan he put forward in February for the US to take control of Gaza to reconstruct it as a luxury leisure and business hub. The scheme implied the possible permanent displacement of many or all of the territory’s 2.3 million people and triggered global outrage.
The most recent strikes lasted hours into Friday morning sending people fleeing from the Jabaliya refugee camp and the town of Beit Lahiya and followed days of similar attacks that killed more than 130 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strikes.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed earlier in the week to push ahead with a promised escalation of force in Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip to pursue his aim of destroying the Hamas militant group.
In comments released by Netanyahu’s office on Tuesday, the prime minister said Israeli forces were days away from entering Gaza “with great strength to complete the mission … It means destroying Hamas”. It was unclear if Friday’s bombardment was the start of the operation.
In other developments:
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Israel’s military killed five Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, hours after a pregnant woman died in a shooting. Islamic Jihad said five of its members had been killed while clashing with Israeli forces who surrounded their house in the town of Tammun. It was unclear whether they had any link to the shooting.
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Israeli settlers meanwhile attacked Palestinians and blocked roads in the occupied West Bank, while WhatsApp groups for Israeli settlers in the West Bank were rife with calls for vengeance, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). Far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich called for “nests of terror” to be flattened.
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Trump announced deals totalling more than $200bn between the United States and the United Arab Emirates, including a $14.5bn commitment among Boeing, GE Aerospace and Etihad Airways. The White House said on Thursday that Boeing and GE had received a commitment from Etihad Airways to invest $14.5bn to buy 28 US-made Boeing 787 and 777X aircraft powered by GE engines.
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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”. He made the comments on a visit to al-Udeid airbase in Doha, Qatar. Prior to that visit, the president attended a business forum in Qatar.
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Trump said on Thursday that the US 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 AFP.
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Hamas on Thursday accused Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of undermining mediation efforts for a hostage release and ceasefire deal by carrying out military operations in Gaza. “War criminal Netanyahu undermines mediation efforts through deliberate military escalation, showing indifference to his captives, endangering their lives,” Hamas said in a statement referring to hostages held in the Palestinian territory.
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“Israel’s blockade has transcended military tactics to become a tool of extermination”, Human Rights Watch (HRW) interim executive director Federico Borello said in a statement on Thursday. HRW said: “The Israeli government’s plan to demolish what remains of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and concentrate the Palestinian population into a tiny area would amount to an abhorrent escalation of its ongoing crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and acts of genocide.”
