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The Israel-Hamas war in maps: latest updates

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The Israel-Hamas war in maps: latest updates

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A senior Hamas leader has been killed in an explosion at one of the Palestinian militant group’s offices in Beirut, an attack that Lebanon has blamed on an Israeli drone strike.

Hamas accused Israel of “cowardly assassinations” against its leaders, but said it would “not succeed in breaking the will and steadfastness of our people”.

Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati condemned the strike and called it “a new Israeli crime”.

If an Israeli strike is confirmed, it would mark the first targeted attack against a Hamas leader outside of Palestinian territories by the Jewish state since the militant group’s deadly October 7 assault on southern Israel.

Israel’s defence minister has said previously that Israel was being attacked in a “multi-arena war” from seven areas, which he identified as Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran.

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The strike and Hamas leader’s death would heighten tensions across the Middle East and risk an escalation between Iran-backed Hizbollah and Israel, which have traded almost daily exchanges of fire since October 7. 


Israel’s incursion in Gaza: October 2023 to present

Israel’s defence forces launched air and land offensives in Gaza after Hamas’s brutal October 7 attack in southern Israel.

Hamas killed more than 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials. The militant group, which has controlled Gaza since 2007, also seized hostages. The IDF’s response has killed more than 22,000 people in Gaza, according to Palestinian officials.

A temporary truce between the two sides in late November allowed for the release of about 100 Israeli women and children as well as foreigners held hostage by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups. This was in exchange for about 240 Palestinian women and children freed from Israeli jails.

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Israel’s military has carried out one of the largest bombing campaigns in history on the small, blockaded enclave. Satellite data shows the toll the war has taken on Gaza’s infrastructure and homes, with much of the Palestinian enclave’s two biggest cities in ruins, including entire neighbourhoods destroyed.

The IDF’s Arabic spokesperson has posted maps on social media platform X indicating areas people should flee from and telling Gaza residents to “keep following the map carefully”. But it is unclear how the territory’s 2.3mn civilians will be able to follow the updates due to limited access to electricity and internet connections.

Map and chart showing percentage of buildings damaged across the 5 districts of Gaza. Almost 80% of buildings in the two northern districts are likely to have been damaged since October 5

Israel’s military has been tight-lipped about how many troops it has committed to the incursion — its biggest operation in years. But satellite imagery and tracking data shows a significant incursion.

A satellite image from December 3 published by Planet Labs showed IDF military vehicles north of Khan Younis.

Satellite image showing Israel military vehicles detected north of Khan Younis

Data tracking the movement of Israeli forces between October 31 and December 31 showed them tightening their hold on Gaza City, surrounding al-Shifa hospital and taking territory around Khan Younis.

Satellite imagery published by Planet Labs from October 31 showed after breaching the barrier wall in at least six places, Israel’s columns cut through the sparsely populated farmland to the south of the border, before moving deeper into Gaza towards more populated areas.

Satellite map of northern Gaza showing entry point of Israeli troops and signs of damage from air strikes

Aid agencies have warned about the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza, including a lack of water, medicine and food. Israel has allowed some humanitarian convoys into the strip through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, but the UN’s World Food Programme has said people are still at risk of famine.

There is also insufficient fuel to keep hospitals and communications networks running after Gaza’s sole power plant went offline on October 11 due to a lack of fuel, with the outage captured by night-time satellite imagery.

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Hamas’s attack on Israel: October 7 2023

As much of Israel slept, Hamas militants launched an unprecedented, multipronged dawn assault on the country from the Gaza Strip. The Middle East’s most powerful security force was caught off guard.

Launched on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, the assault began in the early hours with thousands of rockets fired at Israeli towns and cities. The barrage set off warning sirens across the south and centre of the country, sending citizens fleeing to air-raid shelters.

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Satellite map of the Israel-Gaza border area showing the location of fires and smoke plumes

Israel’s military said Gaza-based militants launched more than 4,500 rockets over that weekend. Many were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defence system, but satellite imagery showed fires and plumes of black smoke rising from some locations that had been hit.

Hundreds of Hamas fighters simultaneously attacked by land, air and sea, repeatedly breaching the fortified barrier between Gaza and Israel.

Armed militants on a captured Israeli tank near the Gaza-Israel border

Images and videos showed motorbikes carrying armed militants riding through a hole in a wire fence along the border and a bulldozer destroying part of the barrier. Bombs, rockets and drones could also be seen blowing up the fence as well as defensive positions.

Video shows armed militants breaking through a hole in a wire fence section of the border and a bulldozer destroying part of the barrier

Militants used motorised paragliders to attack the Supernova music festival, not far from the Gaza border, flying in and turning the two-day rave into the site of a massacre.

Map showing the location of Supernova music festival attacked by Hamas

Gunmen chased young Israelis across the desert, shooting and snatching people to take back to Gaza as hostages. The Israeli military failed to respond for hours, apparently caught by surprise by the attack. Hundreds of bodies have been recovered from the site.

Drone footage captures the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on the Supernova music festival

After breaching the Gaza fence, armed Hamas fighters began targeting Israeli communities at several locations, going door-to-door and taking hostages.

Images and video show people lying dead in the streets after execution-style killings and residents including women, children and the elderly being taken away.

The Hamas militants also attacked Israeli military sites.

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More than 1,200 Israeli civilians and troops were killed, the IDF said — making it the deadliest attack on the country since its foundation.

The complexity of the assault by Hamas was unlike anything Israel has witnessed in decades. It raised serious questions about the security service’s intelligence gathering and the military’s preparedness for an attack.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu imposed a “complete siege” on Gaza on October 9, calling up a record 300,000 reservists and ordering the strip to be pounded from the air.

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Israel’s military also ordered the evacuation of 42 communities along its northern border, where Israelis have died in cross-border fire that Israel blamed on Hizbollah or Lebanon-based Palestinian factions — part of the Iran-backed “Axis of Resistance”.

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Visual and Data team: Janina Conboye, Peter Andringa, Steven Bernard, Chris Campbell, Sam Joiner, Lucy Rodgers and Alan Smith

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Video: How Trump’s Tariffs Affected the Economy After One Year

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Video: How Trump’s Tariffs Affected the Economy After One Year

new video loaded: How Trump’s Tariffs Affected the Economy After One Year

One of Donald Trump’s central campaign promises was to raise tariffs on imports from multiple countries. Ana Swanson, a New York Times reporter, analyzes data from the past year to examine how those tariffs have affected the economy.

By Ana Swanson, Leila Medina and June Kim

February 2, 2026

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Kennedy Center will close for 2 years for renovations in July, Trump says, after performers backlash

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Kennedy Center will close for 2 years for renovations in July, Trump says, after performers backlash

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he will move to close Washington’s Kennedy Center performing arts venue for two years starting in July for construction.

Trump’s announcement on social media Sunday night follows a wave of cancellations since Trump ousted the previous leadership and added his name to the building.

Trump announced his plan days after the premiere of “Melania” a documentary of the first lady was shown at the storied venue. The proposal, he said, is subject to approval by the board of the Kennedy Center, which has been stocked with his hand-picked allies. Trump himself chairs the center’s board of trustees.

“This important decision, based on input from many Highly Respected Experts, will take a tired, broken, and dilapidated Center, one that has been in bad condition, both financially and structurally for many years, and turn it into a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Entertainment,” Trump wrote in his post.

Leading performing arts groups have pulled out of appearances, most recently, composer Philip Glass, who announced his decision to withdraw his Symphony No. 15 “Lincoln” because he said the values of the center today are in “direct conflict” with the message of the piece.

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Earlier this month, the Washington National Opera announced that it will move performances away from the Kennedy Center in another high-profile departure following Trump’s takeover of the U.S. capital’s leading performing arts venue.

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Minnesota citizens detained by ICE are left rattled, even weeks later

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Minnesota citizens detained by ICE are left rattled, even weeks later

Aliya Rahman is detained by federal agents near the scene where Renee Macklin Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer on Jan. 13 in Minneapolis.

Adam Gray/AP


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It’s a video many saw on social media soon after it happened: Officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, dragging a woman out of her car and forcing her to the ground.

The woman in the video is Aliya Rahman, a Bangladeshi-American and a U.S. citizen. The day she was arrested, Rahman was on her way to the doctor, when she came across an ICE operation and a group of people protesting. She said the ICE officers told her to move her car, but the scene was chaotic and she received multiple instructions at once.

The Department of Homeland Security said in an earlier statement they arrested Rahman because she “ignored multiple commands.” But Rahman, who is autistic and also recovering from a traumatic brain injury, says it sometimes takes her a moment to understand auditory commands. Before she knew it, the officers were carrying her away by her limbs.

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“I thought I might well die,” Rahman said. She was placed in an SUV with three ICE officers.

“I heard the laughing driver radio in, ‘we’re bringing in a body,’” she recalled. It took her a second to realize they meant her.

In recent days, federal officials have signaled a willingness to reduce the large number of immigration agents in Minnesota, though they say any decrease will depend on state and local cooperation. Even if a draw-down occurs, they’ll leave behind a changed community, including many citizens questioned and detained by immigration officers in recent weeks.

Rahman was taken to the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, where immigration agents have brought detainees before releasing them or sending them out of state. While at Whipple, Rahman experienced a severe headache, and asked for medical care for more than an hour. Eventually, she passed out. She says she woke up in a downtown hospital, where doctors told her she had suffered a concussion.

Her arrest was more than two weeks ago, but she can’t shake the fear.

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“I do not feel safe being in my own home, driving these streets,” she said. “And even then, I am in a significantly better place than a lot of the other folks who have been detained.”

Rahman is far from the only U.S. citizen in Minnesota with such a story.

ChongLy Scott Thao, a Hmong man and U.S. citizen, was pulled from his home wearing only sandals, underwear and a blanket around his shoulders. Thao said the immigration agents drove him “to the middle of nowhere” and photographed him. He told reporters he feared they would beat him. They later brought him back to his house.

Mubashir Khalif Hussen, a Somali-American and U.S. citizen, also was detained by ICE.

“I wasn’t even outside for mere seconds before I seen a masked person running at me full speed,” Hussen said at a news conference last month. “He tackled me. I told him, ‘I’m a U.S. citizen.’ He didn’t seem to care. He dragged me outside to the snow while I was handcuffed, restrained, helpless and he pushed me to the ground.”

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Hussen is now suing the Trump administration as part of a class action lawsuit, accusing it of racial profiling. According to the lawsuit, ICE eventually released Hussen outside the Whipple building, telling him to walk the seven miles back to where they detained him.

In a statement to NPR, the Department of Homeland Security said “allegations that ICE engages in ‘racial profiling’ are disgusting, reckless and categorically FALSE.”

But Walter Olson, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, says many legal experts are coming to a different conclusion.

“This is no longer just a series of accidents that could have been due to someone being badly trained or being a bad apple. This is a systematic assault on constitutional rights,” he said.

The Fourth Amendment protects people from being stopped without reasonable suspicion and arresting without probable cause, a higher standard. Courts in the U.S. have decided skin color alone does not meet either bar.

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Last fall, however, the Supreme court ruled that “apparent ethnicity” could be used to determine reasonable suspicion, as long as there were other factors too. Legal experts say the decision may give ICE more discretion.

Olson says even if the Minnesota immigration crackdown eases, these same concerns could arise elsewhere. He noted that judges ruled against the federal government during its crackdowns in Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland.

“And they were not led to call off or rethink the campaign. They just regrouped and came back to another state,” Olson said.

Even citizens who were not arrested but still questioned are rattled after run-ins with immigration officers. Luis Escoto, the owner of El Taquito Taco Shop in West St. Paul, said immigration agents surrounded his wife Irma’s car in their restaurant’s alley when she went out to get more lettuce before the dinner hour. Escoto ran outside.

Luis Escato poses for a portrait inside of his restaurant, El Taquito in West St. Paul, Minnesota.

Luis Escoto poses for a portrait inside of his restaurant, El Taquito in West St. Paul, Minnesota.

Jaida Grey Eagle for NPR

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“I said, ‘Hey, hold on. That’s just my wife,’” Escoto said. “They said, ‘We need proof of U.S. citizenship,’ and I said, ‘She’s a U.S. citizen.’”

Luis and Irma Escoto are both citizens. Escoto showed one of the officers their passport cards, which he still had in his wallet after a recent trip to Mexico.

“He said, ‘Well, next time she should carry that all the time, because if she doesn’t have proof of citizenship we’re going to arrest her,’” Escoto recalled.

The immigration agents left. But weeks later, Escoto is still shaken and angry. Some of his customers are now escorting him and his wife home each night when the restaurant closes.

When he became a citizen 35 years ago, Escoto said he was nervous because the government took away his green card. He asked the judge about it.

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Irma Escoto poses for a portrait inside of her restaurant, El Taquito in West St. Paul, Minnesota.

Irma Escoto poses for a portrait inside of her restaurant, El Taquito in West St. Paul, Minnesota.

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“I said, ‘Sir, what happens if the immigration officers stop me?’ And he said ‘Well, today you’re proud to be a United States citizen,’” Escoto said.

The judge told him you don’t need documentation when you’re a citizen. But now, Escoto said, that doesn’t seem so true anymore.

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