Live updates • Explosions reported in Iran’s Bandar Abbas as Tehran strikes Kuwait

The IDF says an Israeli expert emergency response delegation has been operating in Venezuela following its deadly earthquake, “conducting structural classification and assessing the stability of buildings to enable the safe continuation of search, rescue, and recovery efforts.”

According to the IDF, Israel’s Home Front Command experts helped develop Venezuela’s national earthquake recovery plan, which was approved by the president Venezuela, the infrastructure minister, and the local team managing the project.

Teenage activists from the group “Mesarvot,” an advocacy group that supports conscientious objectors, unfurled a giant banner reading “We hereby refuse to enlist” in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square.

The banner included a link to the refusal letter, which has been signed by over 130 signatories who pledge not to join the IDF in protest of the Israeli military’s “policy of war, occupation and extermination.”

After Iran’s Fars news agency reported that explosions were heard east of Iran’s Bandar Abbas and in the coastal area of Qeshm, IRNA said that missiles were launched by the “enemy” and there were no casualties.

Axios reported that the U.S. military conducted a few strikes on missile and air defense systems and targeted Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps small boats at multiple locations around the Strait of Hormuz.

Syria’s newly elected parliament held its first session since the ouster of former President Bashar Assad on Sunday, hoping to restart the legislative process in the country after years of conflict and autocratic rule.

Two-thirds of the 210-member People’s Assembly were elected through electoral colleges, while one-third were appointed directly by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa. The new parliament will serve a 30-month term while preparing for future elections.

The launch of parliament indicates that the country is moving ahead with drafting new laws as it recovers from decades of brutal rule under the Assad family and a deadly war that killed about half a million people.

“After liberating our homeland and regaining our freedom, we are all moving toward consolidating the state,” al-Sharaa said in an address to parliamentarians.

After taking an oath, the legislators elected Abdul Hamid al-Awak as speaker. Al-Awak, who is from northeastern Hassakeh province, served as a judge in the Justice Ministry for a decade, according to Syria’s state-run SANA news agency. Reports said he was among many Syrian officials who defected from the Assad government in the early days of the uprising and left to Turkey.

Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna of California recalled the incident on Wednesday of being blocked by armed settlers in the West Bank and detained by the IDF to the NBC’s Meet the Press.

Asked about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to the incident and an IDF statement that said troops were dispatched to the scene quickly, dispersed the Israeli civilians, and reopened the blocked road, Khanna said, “The IDF is lying.”

“What happened was unprecedented. They had violent settlers detain American citizens, including an American government official. You had these settlers brandishing M4S, kicking the tires off our van, laughing at us, mocking us, videotaping us,” he said.

“We were detained for about twenty minutes, fearful of our lives. Then the IDF comes, four soldiers. They tell our translator that they’re on the side of the settlers. They further detain us and block us in.

“We had to call the American embassy. Fortunately, David Brownstein [Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem] helped, and he reached someone in Israel. And 75 minutes after the detention by the IDF soldiers and by these settlers, we were let through.”

“Now I heard the prime minister, and he says that Israel is a country of law and order. Well, let me be very specific. The prime minister needs to open an investigation into these violent settlers who are connected to Yinon Levi, who has destroyed Zanuta’s village and is a known person who has killed Palestinians,” Khanna said, referring to the fatal shooting of activist Awdah al-Hathaleen.

According to Khanna, the settlers who detained him are connected to Levi and they “need to be prosecuted.”

“Their outpost needs to be investigated, and [Netanyahu] needs to have an investigation on these four IDF officers. Security cameras can see that they were involved in the detention of American citizens. How dare they mistreat people with an American passport that way?”

After U.S. Democratic Representative Ro Khanna called for the arrest of four Israeli soldiers who he said assisted armed Israeli settlers in detaining him during a visit to the West Bank this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told NBC’s Meet the Press, “We’re a country of laws, and people who break the law, we take them to court.”

He said the incident was the result of “150 juvenile delinquents” who are not part of what he calls the “law-abiding” settler community.