Israel reportedly claimed to the US that Turkey was planning to set up an air defense system on the airbase in northwest Syria that the IDF struck last week, according to the Kan public broadcaster.
According to the report, citing sources familiar with the matter, Israel told the US that if Turkey were to set up an air defense system at the Abu Duhur military airport, it would interfere with Israel’s air superiority in the region and change the balance of power.
Jerusalem claimed on Tuesday, following the overnight strikes, that Turkey was planning to deploy forces to the airbase, but did not provide any details as to the nature of the alleged Turkish military deployment.
According to Kan, Israel did not give the US an estimated date for the arrival of Turkish air defense systems to Syria, saying only that Ankara was planning to dispatch the system and that Abu Duhur was its likely destination.
Earlier, the US Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack cast doubt on Israel’s claim that Turkey was moving military assets in the airbase, and said US intel did not indicate such action.
Three people were shot and killed in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan earlier tonight, two of them by the police, in an incident that the Israel Police says was sparked by a “family conflict.”
The Magen David Adom emergency service says that it received a report just before midnight about two men who were injured in a “violent incident in East Jerusalem.”
It says medics pronounced one of the men dead upon their arrival at the scene, and another was evacuated from the scene in critical condition.
Following up on the initial MDA report, the police raises the toll of the incident to three, saying that officers dispatched to the scene killed two other people who posed a “real threat to their lives.”
The statement, which is provided to Hebrew media outlets, says that security forces who arrived on the scene after the first man was killed “identified two suspects who posed a real threat to their lives, holding weapons and Molotov cocktails.”
“A shot was fired at them to neutralize the danger and as a result, they were declared dead on the spot,” the statement says.
Iran warns countries against joining the US in its newly announced “economic war” against the Islamic Republic, saying they would be considered enemies.
“We declare to all countries… do not join the economic war waged by the United States. Any country participating in the imposition of economic restrictions against us is considered an enemy,” says Mohsen Rezai, the head of Iran’s supreme national security council, on state television.
In an apparent bid to hold onto moderate voters turned off by its hardline stance on IDF conscription, the ultra-Orthodox Shas party releases a campaign video featuring a family waiting for their son to arrive home from the army for Shabbat dinner.
As the young soldier runs in, he is hugged by his father and brother, a full-time yeshiva student, and a message comes up on the screen stating that “more than 30,000 conscripts and career soldiers voted for Shas in the last election.”
“One son studies in a yeshiva, and his brother serves in the IDF, each contributing to the people of Israel in their own way,” the party says in a statement. “This is the story of the Shas family: faith, tradition, unity and love of Israel. Torah students and IDF soldiers, we are all one family.”
Shas is reportedly concerned that its more traditional, Zionist voters, upset over the party’s hardline stance against ultra-Orthodox military service, are defecting to National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and even Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition Yashar factions.
Last Thursday, during a discussion aimed at patching up a public rift with chairman Aryeh Deri, Shas spiritual leader and former chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef blessed the troops, calling them “messengers of the Holy One, Blessed be He” in a video released by a party spokesman.
Shas has pushed hard for legislation maintaining the decades-long broad exemption of ultra-Orthodox men from military service. Yosef himself has engaged in years of harsh anti-conscription rhetoric, including calling on yeshiva students to flush draft orders down the toilet and threatening a mass exodus of Haredi Jews from the country should the government arrest yeshiva students for evasion.
He has also blamed the deaths of IDF troops in Gaza on Haredi yeshiva students’ insufficient Torah study, called a fellow rabbi and bereaved father of a slain soldier a heretic for advocating Haredi conscription, and called June’s US-Iran deal a divine punishment for Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara’s efforts to crack down on draft dodgers.
New Shas campaign ad seems intent on fixing its hardline anti-conscription efforts' effect on its more traditional, Zionist voters pic.twitter.com/MKXPLBNy3j
— Sam Sokol (@SamuelSokol) August 22, 2026
Former prime minister and the current head of the B’Yachad party, Naftali Bennett, denounces Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an “anarchist” whose toxic campaigning could put his main rival Gadi Eisenkot in physical danger ahead of the October 27 election.
Bennett makes the comments in a wide-ranging interview with Channel 12 that accompanies the release of a new book by journalist Ari Shavit, titled “Bennett: Hour of Truth,” based on dozens of conversations between the two.
Bennett alleges that a pro-Netanyahu “poison machine” — including the Likud campaigns and a network of pro-Netanyahu media and social media outlets, headed by the Channel 14 network — has since created a false image of him as power-hungry and obsessive for the post of prime minister, arguing that his real motive is to save the country.
Recent months have seen Bennett’s alliance with Opposition Leader Yair Lapid consistently lose ground in opinion polls, with the centrist Yashar party chief Eisenkot becoming the main rival to Netanyahu.
“I’m running for prime minister, with by far the most experience [in the anti-Netanyahu bloc],” Bennett tells Channel 12, while adding: “I will do anything that guarantees victory for the bloc. One minute after the election we will go into a room, Gadi, [Yisrael Beytenu party head Avigdor Liberman] and the whole bloc, and we will exit with a single candidate. I won’t do anything that endangers the replacement of the government, and if I need to be in the most junior position in the world — so be it.”
He also voices fear that the Likud-led campaign against him, Eisenkot, Liberman and Yair Golan could lead to political violence, saying he fears it will get to the point that some people “will think they are Hitler and make a move.”
While he himself has security as a former prime minister, Bennett says Eisenkot, who doesn’t have security, is in potential danger. “The scale of the daily brainwashing on Channel 14, in the [poison] machine’s elements, is very, very powerful.”
Commenting on an excerpt from the book which he described Netanyahu as “revolutionary” as opposed to a conservative, Bennett says he would now go beyond “revolutionary” and describe Netanyahu as “almost an anarchist. What we are going through over the past few years is anarchy in the State of Israel.”
Israel Airports Authority chair Yiftah Ron-Tal is seeking to fire Pinhas Idan, the head of the IAA workers’ union, in the wake of Thursday’s two-hour wildcat strike that caused chaos on the year’s busiest day for travel, Channel 12 reports. Cancellations and extensive delays at Ben Gurion Airport extended well into Friday. The airport has been functioning more normally today, Shabbat, when air traffic is in any case lower, albeit still with delayed flights and delayed baggage return.
Idan is 70, and had his term extended after it was set to end in May, reportedly amid pressure on the IAA from senior Likud politicians. Idan is a Likud Central Committee member who has reportedly signed up thousands of people as Likud members. He ran for the Knesset with Likud in 2019 but was told he could not do so and retain his job, and so he abandoned that bid.
Ron-Tal is seeking to convene the IAA board to oust Idan, and is seeking legal advice over handling the issue, Channel 12 reports.
The report says the IAA is also set to fire a senior administrative aide to Idan who was the subject of a Civil Service Commission inquiry for allegedly clocking in at the airport for over a decade without actually working. A Channel 12 report earlier this year also alleged that numerous relatives of Idan were employed at the airport without actually working.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to expel Idan from Likud.
At the same time, Idan is tonight appealing to Israel’s Labor Court, alleging that the IAA has been breaching employees’ rights at the airport, including by requiring baggage handlers to routinely work 12-hour shifts, six days a week, the TV report says, noting that this phenomenon is at the root of Thursday’s airport walkout.
The IAA and Idan have been blaming each other for Thursday’s chaos, with Idan claiming that he did not order strike action.
According to the TV report, Idan asserts that the baggage handlers were exhausted on Thursday — when the airport was scheduled to be handling some 107,000 passengers on over 600 flights — and that he gave those who had been working for nine hours that day permission to end their scheduled shift, rather than continuing for overtime hours.
Channel 12 says it has confirmed that this was indeed the case, and that it was Ben Gurion Airport management — under Ron-Tal and Ben Gurion Airport CEO Sharon Kedmi — who told airport staff, including at check-in, to stop work, since the airport could not function as some 12-20 baggage handlers had gone home. Luggage coming off planes and going onto planes was backing up, and the situation was unworkable.
The report says the airport management nonetheless blames Idan for the chaos, since the heavy workload in the later summer months is known, the shifts are routinely extended, and overtime is routinely paid.
It says Kedmi and Idan were due to meet on Thursday morning to discuss the issue amid the very high numbers using the airport in recent weeks, but that Idan did not turn up for the meeting and gave no advance warning that he would be allowing the baggage handlers to go home without doing their overtime hours, inevitably causing the airport shutdown.
The cost of the shutdown has been estimated at NIS 25-30 million ($8.3-10 million).
Liad Baram, whose soldier son Neta was killed at the Nahal Oz military base in the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, tells anti-government protesters at Tel Aviv’s Habima Square that the state still has an “unceasing and unforgivable debt” to probe “the circumstances and incidents that led to the largest and worst disaster since the state was founded.”
Roughly 250 people attend the weekly protest tonight to demand a statutory state commission of inquiry into the attack. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected such a commission because its members are chosen by the judiciary, which he claims is biased against him.
“Instead of leadership… we come up against a wall of obtuseness and evasion of responsibility,” says Baram, a member of the October Council of families that lost loved ones in the massacre and demand it be probed by a state commission of inquiry.
“The system that’s in power demands, and keeps making sure, to blind us,” he says. “It refuses to investigate, and will continue to do so if, God forbid, it’s reelected.”
Baram also references recent Hebrew media reports that IDF surveillance soldiers and returning residents of devastated Gaza border communities have warned of unusual movements in the Strip — “occurrences across the fence just like before October 7,” he says.
Parents of IDF soldiers in the area, worried about a repeat attack, “want to intervene” on behalf of their children but “are afraid to, because their sons and daughters are threatened with military trials and incarceration,” Baram says, adding: “It’s better to be in a military jail than in a military cemetery.”
“The past few days prove beyond a doubt: We can’t wait” for a state inquiry, he says. “We won’t be silent or stop demanding truth and transparency… because we have no other land.”
A 15-year-old Palestinian boy was left wounded after being assaulted by Israeli settlers near the town of Tammun, southeast of Tubas in the northern West Bank, the WAFA news agency reports.
According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, the boy is being treated for moderate injuries.
Palestinian media outlets also report that a Palestinian car crashed and overturned as a result of stone-throwing by settlers on the road between Khirbet Abu Falah and al-Mughayyir in the Ramallah area. This was the second time in three days that a Palestinian vehicle has overturned after being attacked by stone-throwers.
No injuries were reported in today’s incident.
تغطية صحفية | إصابة فلسطيني إثر هجوم مستوطنين على مركبته وانقلابها بين بلدتي المغير وأبو فلاح شرقي رام الله.. pic.twitter.com/a26V4nvbjc
— بوابة اللاجئين الفلسطينيين (@refugeesps) August 22, 2026
The IDF says that “a report was received of Israeli civilians throwing stones at Palestinian vehicles near al-Mughayyir. As a result, a Palestinian vehicle lost control. IDF and Border Police forces were dispatched to the area and dispersed those involved. The forces also remained in the area. A closed military zone was imposed in the area in order to prevent rioters from returning.”
On Thursday, five Palestinians were reportedly injured in a settler attack on the same road. Footage circulated at the time also showed settlers and Palestinians throwing stones at each other, and it is possible that the vehicle veered off the road during the clashes seen in the footage.
The IDF said at the time that “forces were dispatched following a report of friction between Israelis and Palestinians,” adding that an Israeli civilian who was injured was treated at the scene and that several Palestinians were evacuated for medical treatment.
The Shaar Hanegev Regional Council on the border with the Gaza Strip demands that the military respond to kites that are being flown over the border from the Hamas-run territory.
Over the weekend, four kites with strings stretching for kilometers were located in Kibbutz Nahal Oz. The army said the kites were not carrying anything suspicious and did not pose a threat.
“We demand that the IDF act against every kite that crosses into Israeli territory, locate it, and deal with it in real time. Not after it has landed. Not retroactively. In real time,” says the head of the council, Uri Epstein.
“These incidents must not become routine that the security establishment learns to live with. A kite that crosses into Israeli territory is an incident that requires a response. When there is no response, the message that gets across to the other side is that they can continue,” he adds.
In 2018, Palestinian terrorists launched kites carrying incendiary devices at Israeli border communities, setting fire to wide swaths of land.
“We must not make this mistake again. We demand an immediate investigation of the incidents, and to ensure that there is a response that is activated in real time, not after the incident has ended,” Epstein says.
Politicians from across the aisle in Israel slam Ra’am head MK Mansour Abbas for his statement earlier today that an “independent state of Palestine is a reality” that most of the world recognizes.
“As long as I am prime minister, a Palestinian state controlled by Iran will not be established” in Gaza or the West Bank, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says.
“The price of a left-wing coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood has been exposed once again,” he adds, referring to the Islamist roots of the Arab party, which was part of the last government that unseated Netanyahu in 2021, and which Netanyahu has reportedly also recruited to join his coalition.
“Listen to Mansour,” says National Security Minster Itamar Ben Gvir.
“This is his plan for the next government. To establish a state of terror,” the far-right minster says. “This must not be allowed to happen. We won’t let it happen!”
Yashar party chief and election frontrunner Gadi Eisenkot also rebukes Abbas: “There is no Palestinian state, and in the government we form, a Palestinian state will not be established.”
Shin Bet chief David Zini has denied the request to provide an armed security detail for Gadi Eisenkot, the former minister and ex-IDF chief whose Yashar party is leading in most opinion polls ahead of the October 27 election, Channel 12 reports.
Eisenkot is not formally entitled to a state-issued security detail, but Channel 12 previously reported that Zini was weighing his request amid indications that Iran is stepping up efforts to harm Israeli leaders, and as the election season heats up.
The outlet does not elaborate on the reasons behind the reported denial of Eisenkot’s request.
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar tells Channel 12’s “Meet the Press” that Israel has “no interest in escalation with Turkey,” amid tensions over a recent IDF strike in Syria due to the alleged deployment of Turkish troops to the base.
“We are committed to preserving the status quo,” Sa’ar says, adding: “We will not accept the establishment of Turkish bases in Syria.”
Sa’ar explains that Israel has taken note of how Iran infiltrated Lebanon and Gaza and says that “We don’t want that same situation with Turkey and Syria.”
He adds that Israel “always prefers” diplomatic solutions, and reiterates that there is no intention to escalate tensions with Turkey.
An explosive device recently detonated on a bus carrying security forces near Damascus, resulting in several injuries, Syrian state media reports.
“An explosive device targeted a bus carrying Internal Security Forces personnel on the Maarounah–al-Tal road in Damascus countryside, leaving several personnel injured,” state news agency SANA reports, adding that the attack is under investigation.
A Palestinian man is injured after extremist Israeli settlers attacked a village in the West Bank’s South Hebron Hills, according to Palestinian media reports.
According to the WAFA news agency, citing local activists, a man named Saeed al-Amour was “severely assaulted” by settlers during a raid on the hamlet of Khirbet al-Rakiz, in the Masafer Yatta area, earlier this afternoon.
He was taken to a local hospital by Palestinian Red Crescent medics for treatment, the report says.
A video of the incident posted to social media shows a settler beating the apparently elderly, handicapped Palestinian man with a metal stick.
HORRIFIC: A video shows an Israeli settler terrorist assaulting an elderly Palestinian amputee in Hebron, in the West Bank, beating him with a club. pic.twitter.com/9kYCYB7CUx
— Ihab Hassan (@IhabHassane) August 22, 2026
Elsewhere in the West Bank, WAFA says two Palestinians were injured after armed settlers raided the town of Arraba, south of Jenin. According to the report, the attackers opened fire near homes in the area, though it does not specify if the wounded were hit by the gunfire.
Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers has reportedly asked AIPAC not to campaign on his behalf, fearing support from the pro-Israel lobby could harm his chances of winning the November general election in Michigan.
The decision demonstrates just how far AIPAC’s standing has fallen in American politics after it once enjoyed overwhelming support from both sides of the aisle.
Over the past year, most Democratic Party candidates have distanced themselves from AIPAC, with accusing one’s opponent of being tied to the pro-Israel group increasingly becoming the norm, regardless of whether it’s true.
But Rogers’s reported decision to distance himself from AIPAC shows the desire to disassociate from the group now exists in both parties.
Rogers spoke with AIPAC chair Michael Tuchin in Los Angeles last week. The next day, AIPAC shelved an already-prepared video ad targeting Rogers’s Democratic opponent and outspoken Israel critic Abdul El-Sayed, Axios reports.
Rogers’s decision to distance from AIPAC infuriated officials in the group, which had already spent over $30 million to defeat El-Sayed in the Democratic party and was prepared to spend millions to help elect the Republican nominee in the general, Axios says.
Rogers’s aides warned AIPAC before the Democratic primary that they believed El-Sayed would beat moderate Haley Stevens, but the pro-Israel group insisted on staying involved, thinking that Stevens would win, Axios says.
AIPAC still wanted to stay involved in trying to defeat El-Sayed, but Rogers’s campaign thinks the lobby’s involvement has backfired and will continue to do so, according to sources who spoke with Axios.
A Hamas commander involved in attempts to restore the terror group’s tunnels in Gaza was killed in a strike in the Strip’s center earlier today, the IDF announces.
The strike in Deir al-Balah killed Sharif al-Hasanat, identified by the army as a company commander in the terror group’s Deir al-Balah battalion.
????ELIMINATED: Sharif al-Hasanat, a company commander in Hamas.
Throughout the war, he took part in leading efforts to restore Hamas’ underground infrastructure & recently continued to advance terror attacks against IDF troops and Israeli civilians.
He posed an immediate threat… pic.twitter.com/bU7PRu6rVz
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) August 22, 2026
“Throughout the war, the terrorist was involved in leading efforts to restore the underground infrastructure of the Hamas terror organization,” the military says.
The IDF justifies the strike amid the ceasefire by saying that Hasanat had recently been attempting to advance attacks. “The terrorist posed an immediate threat to our forces and was eliminated,” the military adds.
Syrian condemns the latest Israeli attack on its territory as a “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty and “blatant breach of international law.”
“This attack constitutes a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic and the integrity of its territory, and a blatant breach of international law, and comes in the context of repeated Israeli attacks on Syrian territory,” the foreign ministry says in a statement.
The IDF confirmed carrying out a strike in southwest Syria this afternoon, saying it targeted a terror operative “who advanced terror attacks in final stages of preparation.”
Syrian media reported that the strike in Beit Jinn injured one person. The town is about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the Israeli border.
Four kites apparently flown from the Gaza Strip landed in Kibbutz Nahal Oz over the weekend, according to the military.
One kite was found yesterday in the kibbutz, and three more were found this morning. The IDF says it assesses that the kites were flown from the Strip.
The IDF says that “no suspicious findings were identified on the kites” and that “at no stage was there any danger to the public.”
מתגברים העפיפונים מעזה. 3 נמצאו בעוטף בפחות מיממה, סה"כ כשמונה עפיפונים בכמה שבועות pic.twitter.com/JKaIWJCz4W
— אסף פוזיילוב (@pozailov1) August 22, 2026
In 2018, Palestinian terrorists launched kites carrying incendiary devices at Israeli border communities, setting fire to wide swaths of land.
New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch attended Friday night services at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue last night, a week after an assailant disrupted Shabbat services and attacked a guard and a congregant, in what is being investigated as a hate crime.
New York’s ABC 7 News reports that Tisch led a prayer during the services and spoke to congregants.
“As a proud Jew and lifelong member of this congregation, you have my word that I stand with you in these uncertain and precarious times,” Tisch told a packed congregation, according to the reports
Also in attendance was Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who said he attended out of solidarity.
“There’s this sense of amity and respect and neighborliness and to see that every religion was represented tonight in just solidarity and accompaniment with this cheerful community. I’m thrilled,” Cardinal Dolan, one of the most senior catholic figures in the US, said, according to ABC 7.
Ra’am head MK Mansour Abbas tells party delegates at their convention in Taibe that the traditionalist Arab faction has “put Israeli democracy to a test” by turning an Arab party’s participation in a governing coalition into a “real political option on the table.”
“We, the Arab citizens of Israel, are a bridge for achieving peace,” Abbas says, in excerpts Ra’am publishes from his speech before the roughly 1,050 delegates select the party’s candidate slate for the October 27 election.
“The independent state of Palestine is a reality, which most of the world recognizes, with the exception of the United States and Israel,” he also says. “We want them to recognize it, and we’ll work to achieve peace, rapprochement and an end to the occupation and conflict.”
Abbas also announces “the turning of a new page in our relation with our brothers in the three Arab parties” — Balad, Hadash and Ta’al — which this week reached an agreement to revive the Joint List, without Ra’am.
He calls for Ra’am to reach agreements with the Joint List on “cooperation and coordination” and sharing of surplus votes.
Abbas also says that Ra’am intends to be part of the so-called “change bloc” of parties to oust the current coalition. Opposition Zionist parties, with the exception of the Democrats, have rejected partnering with Ra’am in a governing coalition, as happened with the 2021-22 Bennett-Lapid government.
The Ra’am leader later tells Channel 12 that former Yesh Atid MK Yoav Segalovitz is not set to formally join Ra’am, but that negotiations with him are aimed at agreeing terms for him to be given a slot on the Ra’am Knesset slate.
Abbas says Segalovitz, a former senior police officer and deputy national security minister, would be a good fit for national security minister. And he says, “we’ll see,” when asked whether he himself expects to be a minister.
Ra’am MK Walid Taha also speaks at the convention, telling delegates that “the difference between Ra’am and the other (Arab) parties is that we in Ra’am are not satisfied with making demands — we also act politically to implement solutions.”
“Ra’am has chosen to suffer the fire of partnership in a coalition in order to put out the flames of injustice and discrimination that burn our people,” he says. “We extend a hand to the Jewish community to achieve just civic integration for all citizens of the state, without exception.”
Other speakers also allude to Abbas’s effort to shed the party’s Islamist connections, with Yahya Dahamsheh, the political director of Ra’am, saying the party “is the voice of the conservative Arab community in all its forms and religious sects, including our Christian and Druze brothers.”
Defense Minister Israel Katz says the Israeli military had recommended “several times” striking Syria’s Abu Duhur military airport due to Turkey’s alleged plans to deploy forces there, and that the political echelon directly warned the Syrian government to prevent the move before authorizing a strike.
The Israeli Air Force struck the airbase overnight Monday. The military remained silent on the attack, but it was later confirmed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Some, including US Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, have accused Israel’s leaders of ordering the strike to influence the upcoming elections.
“The IDF recommended several times carrying out the strike on the Abu Duhur airport in Syria in light of the clear intelligence received regarding Turkey’s intentions to carry out activities there that would endanger the security of the State of Israel,” Katz says in a statement.
Katz says that after several discussions held with Netanyahu and the military, “it was agreed that before granting approval [for the strike], a direct warning would be issued to the Syrian regime at the highest levels in an attempt to prevent the move, and that is what was done.”
“At the same time, the intelligence was conveyed to the relevant authorities in the United States,” the defense minister says.
After Israel’s warning “went unanswered,” Katz says he and Netanyahu “authorized the IDF to carry out the strike, and it was successfully carried out.”
“The attempt by opposition figures and parts of the media to paint the operation in Syria in political colors stems from a combination of ignorance, a lack of understanding of Israel’s security interests, and a constant desire to attack the government, and deserves condemnation,” Katz says.
He also adds that remarks by Barrack, who also said Israel was illegally occupying the Golan Heights, “is full of inaccuracies and positions that contradict the position of US President Trump.”
The chaos at Ben Gurion Airport appears to have subsided, two days after workers staged a wildcat strike that wreaked havoc on tens of thousands of people’s flights at the height of the travel season and briefly turned Ben Gurion into the most disrupted airport in the world.
The Flightradar24 tracking site says Ben Gurion is experiencing “minor problems with some delays,” with flights delayed by 38 minutes on average — down from 70 to 90 minutes on Friday morning.
Roughly 50,000 people were expected to use the airport today — about half the number of passengers on the day of the strike.
Saturdays generally see lower passenger volume at Ben Gurion because observant Jews don’t travel on Shabbat.
The IDF confirms carrying out a strike in southwest Syria a short while ago, saying it targeted a terror operative “who advanced terror attacks in final stages of preparation.”
“The terrorist’s activity posed an immediate threat to our forces,” the military says.
Syrian media reported that the strike in Beit Jinn injured one person. The town is about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the Israeli border.
A Ukrainian drone attack on Saturday hit a house in southern Russia, killing two children and injuring their parents, officials say, while a daytime Russian ballistic missile attack killed two outside the capital Kyiv.
“This morning, civilian infrastructure and residential buildings in the Yeysk district came under a drone attack,” says Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of Russia’s southern Krasnodar region.
“As a result of yet another vile and cynical strike … two children were killed, and two adults are in the hospital,” he adds.
A separate Ukrainian drone attack on the central region of Samara killed one person, the local governor says.
Around lunchtime on Saturday, Russia fired ballistic missiles toward Kyiv, the Ukrainian air force says — killing two and wounding eight in the Boryspil district, on the eastern edge of the capital.
Overnight Russian attacks had already killed two — one in Kyiv and one in Zaporizhzhia, close to the front line.
Meanwhile, in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s home city of Kryvyi Rih, the regional governor says four people are still missing after Russian drones smashed into a busy shopping center on Friday afternoon.
Sixteen people have been confirmed killed and more than 100 wounded.
The strike set the mall ablaze and sent blood-covered victims running for the streets, only for a second drone to fly in around half an hour later — a double-tap attack blasted by Zelensky as “cynical and despicable.”
Mourners placed flowers and letters on the grass outside the mall in a makeshift memorial on Saturday. An AFP reporter saw machinery piling up twisted and charred metal.
Supermarket shelves stacked with products blackened from the fire were stacked up beneath a cratered ceiling and behind blown-out windows.
The strikes mark the latest escalation in the four-and-a-half-year conflict. The United Nations reported that the civilian death toll so far this year had risen to its highest level since the first months of the war.
Palestinian media reports one person dead in an Israeli strike in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah a short while ago.
The military tells The Times of Israel that it is looking into the reports.
Tom Barrack, the US special presidential envoy for Syria and Iraq, suggests Israeli leaders were “baiting” Turkey into a conflict for electoral gain by striking a Syrian military airport where Israel claimed Turkey was set to deploy troops.
In an interview published Friday with Dubai-based social media personality Mario Nawfal, Barrack says that is one of two “postulated theories” for why Israel attacked Syria despite their high-level contact, including what Barrack described as a two-hour, in-depth conversation days beforehand between Mossad chief Roman Gofman and Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani.
“One theory is they were just baiting Turkey, and it’s a very aggressive, but maybe well-received, pre-election concept,” Barrack says.
“The other theory is that between the IDF, the Mossad and the Prime Minister’s Office there was a miscommunication,” he says. “That perhaps the Mossad director was conducting a really serious backchannel that he wasn’t finished with, perhaps he wasn’t satisfied with, that he was going to come back the next week and have another discussion. And in the meantime, a commander someplace, based on what they thought their intelligence reading was, thought we need to move quickly and we need to move now.”
Barrack also casts doubt on Israel’s claim that Turkey was moving military assets into Syria’s northwestern Abu al-Duhur military airport.
“To Israel’s credit,” he says, it told the US some six days before the strike that it had intelligence indicating “there might be Turkish movement into this site.”
“We all did our due diligence. We went back to our perspective intelligence agencies. The answers we got is, no, that’s not happening [sic],” Barrack says.
“Probably the most likely” explanation for the Israeli strike “is that they picked up some conversations of some contemplated strategy of the Turks increasing a training program on that site,” according to Barrack.
U.S. Ambassador to Türkiye Tom Barrack:
Let me give you the postulated theories. The first one is that the Israelis were baiting the Turks. If you remember, the Turks took out a Russian jet under the same kind of circumstances, right? Very dangerous game, having jets deployed on… pic.twitter.com/GLdrq2Ccu1
— Clash Report (@clashreport) August 21, 2026
He adds that current arrangements don’t forbid that, and that the Turks “openly train and supply and help the Syrian government” along the countries’ shared border.
In a separate portion of the interview, Barrack also refers to the Golan Heights as occupied by Israel, in an apparent break with Washington’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty there during US President Donald Trump’s first term.
“In the Golan, with Syria, they still occupy the Golan against the UN resolutions, against all the international order, which has said the Golan is Syria’s,” Barrack says, referring to Israel.
An Iranian military official calls on Qatar to transfer detained Iranian pilots to a hospital on land, saying they were being held on water and were in “poor physical condition,” Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reports.
Mohammad Bagherzadeh, commander of the Committee for the Search for Missing Persons of Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff, says the location where the pilots were being held was unsuitable, and requests that the International Committee of the Red Cross send an air ambulance to Qatar to expedite the return of injured and sick detainees to Iran.
Qatar denied last week that it was holding Iranian pilots, saying they had violated Qatari airspace earlier this year and failed to respond to attempts to contact them.
Doha said it had contacted Iran to coordinate the handover of the remains of one pilot and had invited Tehran to review details of its search and rescue operations, but had received no response.
A Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday that the invitation remained open for an Iranian delegation to visit over the issue of the pilots.
In his latest statement, Bagherzadeh welcomes Qatar’s decision to receive a team of Iranian experts, and calls on Doha to provide them with the necessary cooperation.
Bagherzadeh previously said an Iranian Air Force expert and fact-finding team had been waiting for months to enter Qatar, and accused Qatari officials of repeatedly delaying the investigation.
Syrian media reports one person was injured in an Israeli drone strike in southwest Syria a short while ago.
The local Sham FM radio says the strike hit a car in the town of Beit Jinn, around 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the Israeli border.
The IDF does not immediately comment.
جيش الاحتلال يستهدف شخص بمسيرة على الطريق الواصل بين مزرعة بيت جن وبلدة بيت جن بريف دمشق pic.twitter.com/xXrOzmktnB
— Nour Abu Hasan _ نور الحسن (@Nuorgolan) August 22, 2026
Three Palestinians from the West Bank town of Sa’ir were detained by Israeli troops overnight for allegedly hurling stones at Israeli settlers who were on an “unauthorized hike” in the area.
Police say that the trio — two brothers aged 51 and 45 and another man aged 46 — along with others, threw stones at the hikers from the nearby settlement of Metzad.
During the incident, the security coordinator for Metzad rushed to the scene and opened fire. Palestinian health officials said the gunfire killed a 17-year-old and wounded another man.
Police say the three suspects, after being detained by the army, are being questioned, and “depending on the findings of their investigation, a decision will be made regarding further proceedings against them.”
Investigators are working to locate other suspects involved in the stone-throwing, police add.
No Israelis have been arrested over the incident, which the IDF said yesterday disrupted its counter-terrorism activities in the West Bank.
Jihadists kidnapped and killed scores of people in an attack during Friday prayers in central Nigeria’s Niger state, a local resident and lawmaker tell AFP.
Lakurawa fighters “slaughtered some of our people” and “kidnapped many,” says Jibril Ahmad, from Dikera village, adding some were able to escape when another jihadist group, known as Mahmuda, started clashing with the Lakurawa.
The exact toll of the attacks, which also hit the village of Binzi, was unknown, he and federal representative Jafaru Mohammed say
A 26-year-old motorcyclist was killed in a traffic accident on Route 574 outside the small town of Zemer in central Israel, Magen David Adom says.
Medics found the man strewn on the road some distance away from his motorcycle, without a pulse and not breathing, and declared him dead on the spot, according to the ambulance service.
Iran has granted permission for a number of Iraqi oil tankers to pass through the Strait of Hormuz following repeated requests from Baghdad through various channels, Iran’s state news agency IRNA reports.
IRNA says obtaining special permission for Iraqi tankers was one of Baghdad’s main requests during Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s visit to Iraq.
Traditionalist Arab party Ra’am holds its first internal election since chairman MK Mansour Abbas announced last year that the party would become “completely civil” and cut ties with its religious governing body, the Islamic Shura Council.
Roughly 1,050 party members are convening in the central Arab city of Taibe today to select the first five candidates on Ra’am’s slate for the October 27 election, the party says in a statement.
Places 6 through 10 on the party slate will then be selected by the party’s executive council, the statement says.
Abbas and former Yesh Atid MK Yoav Segalovitz have also confirmed holding talks on a possible joint run in the election, with the proposal on the table reportedly giving Segalovitz the second place in a technical bloc he would form with Ra’am.
Today’s gathering is Ra’am’s 28th general convention, and marks 30 years since the party’s establishment, the party says, adding that “the broad participation in the convention… comes after Ra’am has strengthened its institutions and identity and expanded its ranks and public presence.”
“The conference represents a political and organizational pivot point, amid the harsh conditions that have affected our community and people, and the unprecedented, racist policies and practices of the Netanyahu-Ben Gvir-Smotrich government,” the party says.
It reiterates its “efforts to topple this government and replace it with a new ‘change government’ that will include Ra’am as a partner, in order to advance salient issues for the Arab community.”
Ra’am was a member of the 2021-2022 so-called “change government,” which comprised a motley crew of factions opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Several leaders of the Zionist opposition, including some who served in senior positions in that government, have since said they would not form a government with an Arab party.
The United States and Canada failed to reach a trade deal late on Friday, and the US says it will impose 50% tariffs on some imports from Canada, an escalation of tensions between the two long-time allies.
A senior White House official said Section 338 tariffs on about $20 billion worth of Canadian goods would go into effect just after midnight on Saturday.
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney says he suspended trade negotiations and Canada would retaliate “dollar for dollar” on the new tariffs.
The decision by the US administration followed three days of talks in Washington between Canada’s minister for trade with the US, Dominic LeBlanc, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
“I have decided to suspend trade negotiations with the US and have directed Canada’s negotiators to return to Ottawa,” Carney says in a statement.
“They (negotiators) have worked hard, in good faith, to defend the interests of Canadians throughout these negotiations up until the very last minute,” he says. “However, last-minute changes in the US proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.”
While the new measures affect a relatively small share of Canadian exports, they add to existing US tariffs on steel, lumber and autos. The new tariffs could thwart Canada’s fragile economic recovery and impact how the two neighbors engage in the coming months on broader negotiations for a free-trade pact.
They apply regardless of whether Canadian goods qualify for preferential treatment under the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, which has shielded much of Canadian industry from earlier US tariffs.
A roughly 25-year-old man was shot on Route 40 near Kiryat Gat overnight and was rushed to Beersheba’s Soroka Medical Center in serious condition, the Magen David Adom ambulance service says.
Police say an investigation has been launched and southbound traffic has been halted on Route 40 from the Plugot Interchange, where the man was shot.
The shooting is of a “criminal” nature, rather than nationalist, police say.
US Central Command says it has redirected 68 commercial vessels in an update on its blockade of Iranian ports.
CENTCOM says its forces have also “disabled 3 and boarded 2 to ensure compliance” with the blockade.
U.S. Sailors observe an MH-60R Sea Hawk landing on the flight deck aboard USS Ross (DDG 71). Ross is one of more than 20 warships supporting the U.S. blockade against Iran. As of Aug. 21, U.S. forces have redirected 68 commercial vessels, disabled 3 and boarded 2 to ensure… pic.twitter.com/kpNJ8TzEqC
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) August 21, 2026
WASHINGTON — The US government has notified Congress of its plans to pay $850 million of the several billion it owes to the United Nations, the largest payment the Trump administration would make to the world body since it demanded sweeping reforms in exchange for continued support as its largest donor.
The State Department laid out its plans to transfer $725 million as part of its dues to the regular UN budget and $125 million toward UN peacekeeping operations in Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to notifications sent to lawmakers this month and obtained by The Associated Press.
The US is behind on about $5 billion in dues related to its UN membership, with more than $2 billion owed toward the regular budget and $3 billion for peacekeeping operations, the United Nations says.
In February, the Trump administration made a single payment of $160 million shortly after UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the institution was facing “imminent financial collapse” unless its financial rules were overhauled or all 193 member nations paid their dues, a message clearly directed at the United States.
AUSTIN, Texas — A Texas court slashes a $50 million judgment that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was ordered to pay families of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre over his false claims that one of the deadliest mass shootings in US history was a hoax.
The Infowars founder can only be forced to pay about $6 million, the Texas Third Court of Appeals rules in a unanimous opinion, citing state laws that limit lawsuit damages.
The ruling does not affect a separate $1.25 billion judgment against Jones in Connecticut, where he was also found liable for defaming and causing emotional distress to relatives of the 20 first-graders and six educators killed in the Newtown shooting.
The punishing financial verdicts against Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, in recent years have forced him into bankruptcy, led to some of his personal property being put up for auction, and led to him leaving his Infowars platform. For decades, he used the platform to push conspiracy theories about the United Nations, the federal government, gun control, and more.
Sandy Hook families have yet to collect any money from Jones, who has waged lengthy appeals in state and bankruptcy courts as his company faces liquidation. He remains on air after moving onto new websites and streaming platforms.
US President Donald Trump says he did not think that Iran was ready to make the “right deal,” and that Washington was observing “what happens” in the conflict.
“It just means that we’re seeing what happens,” Trump tells reporters when asked if US military options with Iran were limited.
“We have total control of that entire region having to do with the Strait of Hormuz, and that means well into it, the land areas. So, they would love to make a deal, but they’re not ready to make the right deal, in my opinion,” Trump adds.
US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is expected to step down from his role by the end of the year after months of tension with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing people familiar with the discussions.
Reuters cannot immediately verify the report.
Driscoll’s departure would leave the Army without a Senate-confirmed leader as the US looks to resolve a war it began alongside Israel nearly six months ago.
It would also add to upheaval at all levels of leadership at the Pentagon under President Donald Trump’s second term, including the firing of US Army Chief of Staff Randy George in April, the previous chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as the chief of naval operations and Air Force vice chief of staff.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Driscoll and his family this summer moved out of the house reserved for the Army Secretary.
Driscoll’s spokesperson does not immediately respond to a request for comment.
DAMASCUS, Syria — Syria says it had requested to join the International Partnership Against Impunity for the Use of Chemical Weapons on the anniversary of a 2013 chemical attack on a suburb of the capital Damascus.
In a joint statement with France, Syria announces its bid to join the partnership of dozens of countries, launched by Paris in January 2018, a day after reports of another chemical weapons attack in an area held by rebels fighting against former ruler Bashar al-Assad.
France welcomes the step as “a clear demonstration of Syria’s commitment to strengthening accountability and justice and combating impunity” following its more than decade-long civil war.
In August 2013, the Syrian army under Assad was accused of using chemical weapons to target areas then under rebel control.
According to US intelligence and rights groups, more than 1,400 men, women and children died as a result.
With Syria at the height of its civil war, the Assad government denied responsibility, but agreed to hand over its chemical arsenal in order to avert US strikes.
Assad went on to remain in power for more than a decade, only to be ousted in 2024 by Islamist-led rebels, headed by now President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
Survivors of the attacks, including medics, at the time risked their lives by posting dozens of videos online and spoke to journalists, including AFP reporters, about the horror they had witnessed.
The footage showed dozens of corpses, many of them children, outstretched on the ground.
Other images showed unconscious children, people foaming at the mouth, and doctors trying to help them breathe.
The scenes provoked revulsion and condemnation around the globe.
