Hamas terrorists use ambulances, schools, hospitals in violation of US-brokered ceasefire, IDF official says
FIRST ON FOX: Amid the recent start of phase two of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Hamas and the Jewish state, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claim that Hamas has violated the deal through its misuse of ambulances, hospitals and schools to regain control of the northern Gaza Strip.
The IDF provided Fox News Digital with exclusive video footage of what it alleges is Hamas operatives using an ambulance to transport terrorists and weapons from the “inner yard of the Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital” to various checkpoints in northern Gaza.
“You see an armed suspect going into the ambulance with a Kalashnikov. The ambulance is connecting the dots for us. We passed the information to the American headquarters of the footage of the militants,” an IDF official said of the video shared with Fox News Digital.
GAZA’S RAFAH BORDER CROSSING PARTIALLY REOPENS UNDER CEASEFIRE DEAL
The first phase of the agreement required that Hamas return all hostages held in Gaza. The second core part involves the disarming of Hamas, the U.S. and EU-designated terrorist movement.
An IDF spokesperson told Fox News Digital, “There are disturbing developments over the last few weeks. We see the return of Hamas to the front line, to the yellow line.”
The yellow line separates IDF-controlled territory in Gaza, which is estimated to be 53%, from the enclave area not under Israeli control.
“Hamas has returned to schools, hospitals and kindergartens and is turning them into military bases. A Hamas commander is in charge of each school in Jabalia in northern Gaza,” the IDF official claimed.
They continued, “We have seen Hamas with Kalashnikovs and, over the past few weeks, Hamas has been using ambulances. We have tracked over several weeks that Hamas uses ambulances to do checks in Jabalia. It is a big change. We see the confidence of Hamas using ambulances. It is a symbol for Hamas that it is gaining confidence and rebuilding itself, a sign of a potential raid on our bases in the future.”
The city of Jabalia was the scene of intense combat for the IDF during the over two-year war with Hamas. In May 2024, Fox News Digital reported the IDF secured the bodies of seven hostages from Jabalia. Hamas turned the “civilian area into a fortified combat compound,” the IDF said at the time about Jabalia.
When asked about the number of Hamas fighters in Jabalia in January 2026, the IDF official told Fox News Digital, “There are 3,000 Hamas operatives in Jabalia. 75,000 citizens have returned to Jabalia.”
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The official said, “In the Jabalia refugee camp there are still functioning tunnels. We are working on destroying tunnels inside of the yellow line and are at an advanced stage of clearing tunnels.”
Fox News Digital has reported extensively during the war on Hamas’ use of hospitals as military centers. The IDF operation against Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza resulted in the capture of roughly 100 suspected Hamas terrorists.
Shortly before the ceasefire came into effect in Oct. 2025, the IDF showed international reporters a Hamas terrorist tunnel adjacent to the Jordanian Field Hospital in Gaza City. The IDF said that Hamas terrorists were in the hospital and Jordanian medical personnel cooperated with Hamas. The state of Jordan denied the links to Hamas at its field hospital.
The IDF official said, “At the Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital, a Hamas commander with the rank of lieutenant colonel controls the hospital. We have notified the Americans. The freedom of action of IDF is limited. Hamas is violating the ceasefire. We have footage of Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital that we used to see before Oct. 7. Hamas places citizens in the hospital. The ambulance with Hamas goes through major crossroads.”
Hamas invaded parts of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and murdered over 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 250 individuals.
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The IDF official, along with many U.S. and Israeli counter-terrorism officials, have placed large question marks over the possibility of disarming one of the world’s worst and most ideologically committed Islamist terrorist movements.
Hamas officials have stressed over the last week and since the ceasefire started that it will not disarm. The senior Hamas official, Moussa Abu Marzouk, told the Qatari government-controlled outlet Al-Jazeera last week that the Hamas agreement to abandon its weapons “never happened, not for a single moment did we talk about the surrender of weapons, or any formula about destroying, surrendering, or disarmament.”
The IDF official said, “There is a lot of belief in phase two and it will include disarming Hamas. I am very pessimistic in this matter. Hamas will not give away its weapons, and it will put on a show. Hamas might have civilians give away weapons. The game will be how good the show is.” The official added, “We have indications from the ground level that there is no process of full disarmament by Hamas. We have intelligence that Hamas operatives know that no full disarmament is planned.”
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When asked about disarming Hamas, Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser (res.), a former head of research in the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate, told Fox News Digital, “Hamas is not willing to disarm but may be ready to give up some heavy weapons.”
Fox News Digital efforts to reach the Hamas spokesman were not successful.
Iran bleeds $1.56M every hour from internet blackout restrictions amid economic crisis: analyst
Iran is losing an estimated $1.56 million every hour because of its state-imposed internet blackout, draining its struggling economy and disrupting life for more than 90 million people, according to an internet privacy analyst.
The prolonged disruptions originated amid spiraling protests through January with losses he claimed were continuing even after partial connectivity was restored.
“The current blackout is costing Iran an estimated $37.4 million per day, or $1.56 million every hour,” Simon Migliano, head of research at PrivacyCo, told Fox News Digital. “The full internet blackout itself cost Iran more than $780 million, and the subsequent strict filtering continues to have a significant additional economic impact.”
“Iran has already drained $215 million from its economy in 2025 by disrupting internet access,” the internet privacy and security analyst added.
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Migliano said his estimates were calculated using the NetBlocks COST tool, an economic model that measures the immediate impact on a nation’s gross domestic product when its digital economy is forced offline.
The model assesses direct losses to productivity, online transactions and remote work, drawing on data from the World Bank, the International Telecommunication Union, Eurostat and the U.S. Census Bureau.
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Iranian authorities abruptly cut off communications on the night of Jan. 8 amid widespread protests against the clerical regime.
While officials later restored much of the country’s domestic bandwidth, as well as local and international phone calls and SMS messaging, the population is largely unable to freely access the internet because of heavy state filtering.
“The recent 579% surge in VPN demand reflects a scramble for digital survival,” Migliano said before describing how even when access is briefly restored, the internet remains “heavily censored and effectively unusable without circumvention tools such as VPNs.”
“We can see spikes showing that as soon as connectivity returned, users immediately sought VPNs to reach sites and services outside the state-controlled network, including global platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram that remain otherwise inaccessible,” he added.
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“Sustained demand — averaging 427% above normal levels — indicates Iranians are stockpiling circumvention tools in anticipation of further blackouts,” Migliano said.
“The usual strategy is to download as many free tools as possible and cycle between them. It becomes a cat-and-mouse game, as the government blocks individual VPN servers and providers rotate IP addresses to stay ahead of the censors,” he added.
Iran’s minister of information and communications technology, Sattar Hashemi, acknowledged the economic toll caused by the blackout tactics.
He said recent outages were inflicting roughly “5,000 billion rials” a day in losses to the digital economy and nearly 50 trillion rials on the wider economy, according to Iran International.
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“Iran’s three-week internet blackout may have been lifted, but connectivity remains severely disrupted still,” Migliano claimed.
“Access is still heavily filtered. It is restricted to a government-approved ‘whitelist’ of sites and apps and the connection itself remains highly unstable throughout the day,” he added.
Leaked documents expose Khamenei’s secret deadly blueprint for crushing Iran protests
Leaked documents from the Iranian regime reveal a coordinated plan by its security apparatus, approved by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to violently suppress nationwide protests using force, surveillance and internet shutdowns.
Excerpts of the documents, reviewed by Fox News Digital, show that Iran’s Supreme National Security Council developed the strategy after the 2019 nationwide protests that came amid fuel price hikes and economic collapse.
At a National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) press briefing Tuesday covering the regime’s pre-planned orders behind the protests and mass killings, Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the Washington office, said the documents “were obtained from within the regime” and later cited The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK) as having gained access to them.
“This Directive by the National Security Council was obtained by the network in Iran of the MEK, which has access to sources within the regime,” he confirmed to Fox News Digital.
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“These documents show the regime’s efforts to prevent the resurgence of the uprising and, if it occurred, to suppress it,” Jafarzadeh added before stating that there are “clear operational plans allocated to the IRGC to use lethal force to kill as many people as needed to stay in power.”
The first document, classified “top secret,” was issued Mar. 3, 2021, with the regime codifying four escalating law enforcement and security conditions. The regime defined how unrest would be handled and which authorities would be in command at each stage.
Initial law enforcement and non-armed security situations placed command authority with Iran’s national police force, with support from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Intelligence Ministry (VAJA).
In the most severe category, designated an “armed security situation,” full command authority rapidly shifted to the IRGC.
“For now, this compilation should be communicated for two years,” Khamenei wrote before ordering the blueprint implemented nationwide.
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The secret guidelines became the blueprint for crushing the January 2026 protests, which erupted amid soaring inflation, currency collapse and anger toward clerical rule.
According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), at least 6,854 people have been killed during the protests, with 11,280 cases under investigation.
Internal regime assessments cited in other leaked files describe three phases of the 2026 uprising: an initial law enforcement phase, followed by a non-armed security phase and finally an armed security situation beginning Jan. 8 when authority shifted fully to the IRGC that played the command role and carried out armed killings.
The documents specify that during armed security situations, the IRGC operated with support from other security bodies, while Iran’s Ministry of Communications was ordered to impose internet restrictions, including full shutdowns.
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A second classified document, compiled in 2024 by the IRGC’s Sarallah Headquarters, reveals how far the regime went to prepare for dissent.
The 129-page “Comprehensive Security Plan of Tehran” details extensive surveillance and repression measures, identifying members of the opposition MEK and family members of executed dissidents as “level number one” enemies subject to monitoring and control.
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“It also shows how far the regime is prepared to go to kill as many people as needed, which they did in January 2026. However, these killings further convinced the people that there is only one way to end the killings, and that is to overthrow the regime,” Jafarzadeh added.
“There are more people, especially young ones, who have joined the ranks of the organized force to confront the IRGC and liberate the nation,” he said.
Iran pushes for Friday nuclear talks in Oman amid rising tensions with US forces: source
Iran has requested that nuclear talks with the United States be held in Oman on Friday, a source familiar with the discussions told Fox News, as Tehran pushes for changes to the structure of renewed negotiations.
The request comes as Axios reported that Iranian officials are also pressing to limit the talks to a bilateral U.S.-Iran format, excluding other Arab and regional countries — a move that could complicate U.S. diplomatic efforts in the region.
The State Department has not publicly confirmed whether any talks are scheduled or what format they would take.
TRUMP SAYS IRAN ALREADY HAS US TERMS AS MILITARY STRIKE CLOCK TICKS
Reuters reported Monday that Tehran is examining the possibility of renewed nuclear talks with the United States, with Turkey emerging as a potential venue and regional mediators, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, playing an active role, after President Donald Trump said he was hopeful a deal could be reached to avert military action against Iran.
Trump has reportedly been weighing his options on a possible military strike on Iran amid widespread protests and violent crackdowns inside the country. Trump announced last week that a “massive Armada is heading to Iran,” led by the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that talks between the U.S. and Iran are still scheduled, confirming special envoy Steve Witkoff remains engaged in diplomatic discussions.
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“Oh, look, I just spoke with special envoy Witkoff. And, these talks as of right now are still scheduled. President Trump is always wanting to pursue diplomacy first, but obviously it takes two to tango. You need a willing partner to achieve diplomacy. And that’s something that special envoy Witkoff is intent on exploring and discussing,” Leavitt said.
Leavitt added that Trump continues to keep military options on the table.
“As always, though, of course, the president has a range of options on the table with respect to Iran. As commander in chief, I think they learned that quite well last year with the strike in Operation Midnight Hammer, which was wildly successful and obliterated their nuclear capabilities. But those talks will continue later this week as far as we’re concerned. Right now,” she said.
The news comes after six Iranian gunboats unsuccessfully attempted to halt a U.S.-flagged oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The security firm Vanguard Tech told its clients on Tuesday that the Iranian vessels were armed with .50-caliber guns, and they ordered the oil tanker to turn off its engines and prepare to be boarded. Instead, the tanker sped up and was ultimately escorted to safety by a U.S. Navy vessel, according to the Journal.
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In addition, the U.S. military shot down an unmanned Iranian drone Tuesday after it “aggressively approached a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier with unclear intent,” a U.S. Central Command spokesman told Fox News. No U.S. service members were injured and no U.S. equipment was damaged during the incident.
Iran’s president strikes softer tone on nuclear talks after Trump’s warning that ‘bad things would happen’
The Iranian president, who just days ago accused President Donald Trump of provoking unrest and trying to “tear this country apart,” is now striking a softer tone regarding talks about its nuclear program, following a warning from Trump.
Trump said at the White House on Monday that the U.S. is talking with Iran and that he would “like to see a deal negotiated.”
“And if we could work something out, that’d be great,” Trump added. “And if we can’t, probably bad things would happen.”
Masoud Pezeshkian then took to X on Tuesday and wrote, “In light of requests from friendly governments in the region to respond to the proposal by the President of the United States for negotiations: I have instructed my Minister of Foreign Affairs, provided that a suitable environment exists — one free from threats and unreasonable expectations — to pursue fair and equitable negotiations, guided by the principles of dignity, prudence, and expediency.”
IRAN RAMPS UP REGIONAL THREATS AS TRUMP CONSIDERS TALKS
“These negotiations shall be conducted within the framework of our national interests,” Pezeshkian also said.
Axios has reported that U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff will meet Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Istanbul on Friday. However, a source familiar with the matter told Fox News on Tuesday that Iran wants to move the discussions to Oman.
Pezeshkian told state television on Saturday that Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and European leaders “rode on our problems, provoked, and were seeking — and still seek — to fragment society,” according to Reuters.
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“They brought them into the streets and wanted, as they said, to tear this country apart, to sow conflict and hatred among the people and create division,” Pezeshkian reportedly added about the anti-government protests and deadly crackdown that recently swept through Iran. “Everyone knows that the issue was not just a social protest.”
Then in a series of posts on X on Tuesday, Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, “The United States wants to devour Iran; the Iranian nation and the Islamic Republic prevent this,” and, “Iran stands firm and will continue to stand firm, and — God willing — will put an end to the United States’ mischief and harassment.”
“The recent sedition was orchestrated by Zionists & the US. I was informed through a certain channel that the CIA & Mossad deployed all of their resources into the field!” Khamenei also claimed, without providing any evidence.
Trump said last week that “time is running out for Iran.”
In a Truth Social post last Wednesday, Trump wrote, “A massive Armada is heading to Iran.”
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“It is moving quickly, with great power, enthusiasm, and purpose. It is a larger fleet, headed by the great Aircraft Carrier Abraham Lincoln, than that sent to Venezuela. Like with Venezuela, it is, ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary. Hopefully, Iran will quickly ‘Come to the Table’ and negotiate a fair and equitable deal — NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS — one that is good for all parties. Time is running out, it is truly of the essence!” the president warned.
Russia launches record missile barrage against Ukraine one day before peace talks set to resume in Abu Dhabi
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that Russia carried out a large-scale overnight attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure using a record number of ballistic missiles, one day before peace talks with Moscow and Washington are set to resume in Abu Dhabi.
Zelenskyy said the attack involved more than 70 missiles — among them 32 ballistic and 28 cruise — as well as more than 450 attack drones that targeted eight regions, including Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Sumy, Vinnytsia, Odesa and Zaporizhzhia.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said five people were injured and three more were rescued in Kharkiv after a drone strike caused a fire in a residential high-rise building.
“The Russian army exploited the U.S. proposal to briefly halt strikes not to support diplomacy, but to stockpile missiles and wait until the coldest days of the year, when temperatures across large parts of Ukraine drop below -20°C (-4°F),” Zelenskyy wrote on X.
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The large-scale strikes came after President Donald Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to pause attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for one week, as freezing temperatures caused widespread power and heating outages.
Trump announced the weeklong pause Thursday, but Russia resumed its attacks several days before the period was set to expire, striking a maternity ward in Zaporizhzhia and a bus of Ukrainian miners, leaving 12 people dead.
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
ZELENSKYY ANNOUNCES NEXT ROUND OF TALKS WITH US, RUSSIA AS UKRAINE AIMS FOR ‘REAL AND DIGNIFIED END TO THE WAR
Residents took to subway and metro stations on Monday to hide underground as air raid alerts sounded throughout the night.
“With temperatures dropping to -25°C (-13°F), Russia knowingly yet again aims to leave hundreds of thousands of people, including children and the elderly, without heating or electricity,” said Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s prime minister.
“This is an attempt to freeze civilians into surrender. Thanks to Ukraine’s air defense forces, the majority of missiles and drones were intercepted,” she added.
Zelenskyy said the work of his negotiating team will be “adjusted accordingly” as his country prepares for another round of meetings in the United Arab Emirates with U.S. and Russian officials on Wednesday and Thursday.
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U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff met with his Russian counterpart Kirill Dmitriev in Florida on Saturday and said the discussions were constructive, amid ongoing hostilities in Ukraine.
“We are encouraged by this meeting that Russia is working toward securing peace in Ukraine and is grateful for @POTUS’s critical leadership in seeking a durable and lasting peace,” Witkoff wrote on X.