Israel-Hamas war: What happened on day 174?

IDF and Shin Bet troops arrested during an overnight operation six suspects who had been involved in terror activities, the military said on Friday.

Suspect Omer Abu Halal, affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad was arrested in Nur Shams in the West Bank.

The military said he had been involved in shooting attacks and preparing explosive devices aimed at harming IDF soldiers and Israelis.

Five additional suspects were arrested and taken for questioning. 

An aircraft reportedly struck a vehicle on the outskirts of Tyre in southern Lebanon on Friday, according to Israeli media, citing Lebanese sources.

Al Jazeera confirmed one person was killed in the strike.

Senior Hezbollah official reportedly killed 

According to Israeli media, citing Lebanese reports, he was a senior Hezbollah official responsible for the terror group's rockets on the southern Lebanese front. 

Rocket sirens sounded in northern Israel shortly after the reported attack. 

דיווחים בלבנון: ישראל תקפה באמצעות מל"ט רכב בכפר אל-באזוריה שבאזור העיר צור@kaisos1987 @nurityohanan pic.twitter.com/e1NyvGKItb

— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) March 29, 2024

In the past week, the IDF has carried out multiple strikes in southern Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah terrorists and terror infrastructures. 

On Tuesday, Israeli jets attacked Zboud in northeastern Lebanon, the deepest strike to be conducted since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war.

Tzvi Joffre contributed to this report. This is a developing story.

Israel Police, in conjunction with the IDF, conducted an operation against illegal aliens in the area of the Dead Sea, police said on Friday. 

Four illegal aliens from the West Bank were arrested, while nine others were caught and brought back to the territories of the Palestinian Authority.

An aircraft reportedly struck a vehicle on the outskirts of Tyre in southern Lebanon on Friday, according to Israeli media, citing Lebanese sources.

Al Jazeera confirmed one person was killed in the strike. According to Israeli media, citing Lebanese reports, he was a senior Hezbollah official.   

This is a developing story.

IDF and Shin Bet troops continued targeted operations in the area of the Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip, the military said on Friday.

Forces of the 401st Brigade, the Nahal Brigade, and Shayetet 13, under the command of the 162nd Division, fought in the area while avoiding harming civilians, patients, medical teams, and medical equipment, the IDF added.

In the past day, troops killed terrorists and found weapons and terror infrastructure in the area.

In the center of the Strip, troops of the Nahal Brigade continued to fight and, in conjunction with the Air Force, killed several terrorists.

Troops destroy rockets aimed at Israeli territory 

Guided by intelligence information, fighters found and destroyed several rockets that were aimed at Israeli territory, the IDF stated.

During one of the operations, forces identified a terror squad in a building near them, which was subsequently eliminated by a fighter jet. 

The forces identified additional terrorists in their area and killed them.

The Defense Ministry’s Directorate of Research and Development (MAFAT) unveiled a new surveillance aircraft earlier this week.

The product resulted from a joint effort between Israel’s Defense Ministry, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), and Israel Air Force.

Converting a business jet into a surveillance aircraft 

The plane, named Oron, quickly became operational during Israel’s war on Hamas and has already carried out hundreds of operational flight hours and almost 100 sorties, according to the ministry.

Oron is a business jet-turned-surveillance aircraft. It is equipped with advanced sensors and defense systems.

The ministry said the aircraft can scan vast areas at a very high rate of information flow, the likes of which the military has not had in a single data-collecting aircraft.

In addition, the aircraft is unique in that it can operate at a vast range from Israel and the targets it tracks. 

Syrian state media accused Israel of launching airstrikes on the Aleppo area in conjunction with a kamikaze drone attack launched by rebel groups based in Idlib and areas near Aleppo early Friday morning.

According to the state news agency SANA, several civilians and military personnel were killed and injured in the attack. The news agency added that the alleged Israeli airstrikes were carried out from the airspace southeast of Aleppo.

According to Reuters, 33 civilians and military personnel and five Hezbollah terrorists were killed in the strikes.

#عاجل | لقطات من القصف الإسرائيلي على مواقع في مدينة حلب#تلفزيون_سوريا pic.twitter.com/DzMcchkDGL

— تلفزيون سوريا (@syr_television) March 28, 2024

Just a few hours before those strikes, a site used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Sayyida Zeinab near Damascus was targeted in an alleged Israeli airstrike on Thursday afternoon, according to Syrian reports.

Thousands of Jordanians rallied near the Israeli embassy on Thursday on the fifth day of large protests against Israel, calling for an end to Jordan's unpopular peace treaty with its neighbor to the West.

The protesters in an affluent neighborhood of Amman carried Palestinian flags and chanted: "They said Hamas is terrorist. All of Jordan is Hamas."

"No Zionist embassy on Jordanian land," protesters also cried, demanding that authorities close the embassy and end a 1994 peace treaty that normalized ties with Israel.

Placards declared "Amman-Gaza one destiny", while other posters depicted Hamas' masked military spokesman, Abu Obaida, who has become a folk hero for many in the Arab world.

The Israeli embassy, where protesters have gathered for five straight days, has long been a flashpoint when violence has escalated between Palestinians and Israel.

Police officers scuffle with people as they protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, near the Israeli embassy in Amman, Jordan, March 28, 2024. (credit: REUTERS/Alaa Al-Sukhni)

Curbing protests

Heavy security on Thursday was aimed at curbing the number of protesters, and the rally went peacefully, unlike earlier this week when riot police fired tear gas and struck protesters with batons to prevent them from storming the embassy.

Hundreds of demonstrators, however, defied police orders to disperse and sat on the streets, saying they would remain until the early hours of Friday morning.

Authorities in Jordan have stepped up arrests and harassment of demonstrators in a months-long campaign that has been slammed by international rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for restricting freedom of expression.

Passions have run high among Jordanians, many of whom are of Palestinian origin, over Israel's relentless Gaza bombing campaign against Hamas that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, according to Gaza officials, and flattened many parts of the densely populated enclave.

Jordan has seen some of the biggest outpourings of public anger in the region since the war was triggered when Hamas fighters crossed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Authorities in Jordan say peaceful protests are allowed but that they would not tolerate any attempt to exploit anger against Israel to create havoc or efforts to reach a border zone with the West Bank or Israel.

Jordan's peace treaty with Israel is widely unpopular among many citizens who see normalization as betraying the rights of their Palestinian compatriots.

The US military said on Thursday that it had destroyed four unmanned drones launched by Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen.

The US Central Command said on the social media site X that the drones "presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and US Navy ships in the region."

The drones were aimed at a coalition vessel and a US warship and "were engaged in self-defense over the Red Sea," the statement from the US Central Command said, adding there were no injuries or damage reported to the US or coalition ships.

Gazan fatality data shows a massive deterioration in the reports' accuracy, according to a recent analysis from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy published on Tuesday.

Since early November, the Hamas-controlled Gazan Health Ministry has been relying on media reports to supplement its own data collection systems.

The use of media reports for Gazan fatality data now sits at nearly two-thirds of deaths; this has been on the rise steadily since November and has made up the majority of data since at least late December.

The author of the analysis, Gabriel Epstein, explains that the media reports are difficult to trust as they are "more difficult to verify, regularly lack the details necessary to determine the identities or disposition of those killed, and may double-count or miss many fatalities."