The U.N. secretary-general is calling for an immediate halt to Israel's large-scale military operation in the West Bank.

Antonio Guterres also called on Israel’s government to comply with its obligations under international law and take measures to protect civilians, according to a written statement from his spokesman Stephane Dujarric late Thursday.

Ireland’s foreign minister said Thursday that Israel is targeting Palestinian people and not just Hamas with its military campaign in Gaza, and he wants the European Union to review its ties with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

“This is a war against Palestinians not just against Hamas. The level of civilian casualties and dead is unconscionable,” Micheál Martin said at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels. “It’s a war on the population. No point in trying to fudge this.”

Germany is planning to deport the leader of an Islamic center it banned in July over alleged links to militant groups, an interior ministry spokeswoman said Thursday.

Investigators swooped on the Hamburg Islamic Center five weeks ago after concluding it was an "Islamist extremist organization" with links to Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

The Israeli military said it has killed a "significant" Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative in a strike in the Syria-Lebanon border area, while a monitor of Syria's conflict reported four dead in the incident.

The Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, said in a statement that three of its fighters "from the Syrian arena" were killed, while Lebanon's Hezbollah issued a statement saying a fighter was killed, without specifying where.

Yemen's Houthi rebels have agreed to allow tugboats and rescue ships to assist a Greek-flagged oil tanker that remains ablaze in the Red Sea "in consideration of humanitarian and environmental concerns," Iran's mission to the United Nations claimed late Wednesday. However, the Houthis did not offer specific details and are believed to have blocked an earlier attempt to salvage the vessel and continue to attack shipping across the Red Sea.

Last week's attack on the Sounion marked the most serious assault in weeks by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who continue to target shipping through the Red Sea corridor over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. The attacks have disrupted the $1 trillion in trade that typically passes through the region, as well as halted some aid shipments to conflict-ravaged Sudan and Yemen.

The Israeli military said it has killed five more militants in a large-scale operation in the occupied West Bank early Thursday, including a well-known local commander.

Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad confirmed the death of Mohammed Jaber, known as Abu Shujaa, a commander in the Islamic Jihad in the Nour Shams refugee camp on the outskirts of the city of Tulkarem.

An Israeli hostage rescued from Gaza returned to a hero's welcome tinged with a bitter reality: Much of the small village he calls home – Khirbet Karkur -- is targeted for demolition.

Qaid Farhad Alkadi, 52, is one of Israel's roughly 300,000 Bedouin Arabs, a poor and traditionally nomadic minority that has a complicated relationship with the government and often faces discrimination. While they are Israeli citizens and some serve in the army, about a third of Bedouins, including Alkadi, live in villages the government considers illegal and wants to tear down.

Palestinian health officials said an Israeli airstrike hit a cluster of tents housing displaced people, killing at least eight people.

The strike occurred Wednesday near the central town of Deir al-Balah, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where the bodies were taken. Another 10 people were wounded.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas interrupted his visit to Saudi Arabia to return to the occupied West Bank on Wednesday after Israel launched military operations in the Palestinian territory, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said.

"Abbas cut short his visit to Saudi Arabia and returned to his homeland on Wednesday to follow up on the latest developments in light of the Israeli aggression on the northern West Bank," Wafa said.

Four people were killed in an Israeli strike that hit a car in Syria near the border with Lebanon, Syrian media and an official with a Lebanese group said.

The Lebanese official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, said the strike killed one member of the Lebanese Hezbollah and three members of the allied Palestinian Islamic Jihad group.