A gunfight with police outside the Israeli consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, left one attacker dead, two others injured and two police officers sustaining minor injuries.

The armed attackers had ties to an activist group that "exploits religion," according to Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci on X.

"The identities of the terrorists have been identified," he wrote in a post translated by X. "It has been determined that the individuals, who arrived in Istanbul by a rental vehicle from Izmit, include one with ties to an organization that exploits religion; and it has also been established that one of the two terrorists, who are brothers, has a drug record."

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U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack condemned the attack and praised Turkish authorities.

"The United States condemns in the strongest terms today’s attack on the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul," Barrack wrote on X. "Attacks on diplomatic missions are attacks on the international order — and an assault on the principles that bind nations together. We commend Türkiye and Turkish security forces for their swift and decisive response."

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Police officers pulled out guns and took cover as shots rang out for at least 10 minutes near a permanent security checkpoint near the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul. One person was seen covered in blood amid the glass towers in the heart of the city's main financial district.

Footage obtained by Reuters showed an apparent attacker, in a dark top and carrying a backpack, moving among parked white police and security buses and firing with an automatic rifle and a handgun.

Two bodies lay on nearby streets and parking areas, near grassy areas.

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Two police officers were lightly wounded in the attack, Istanbul Governor Davut Gul told reporters at the scene.

He said there had been no Israeli diplomatic staff at the consulate for 2-1/2 years, since the Hamas-Israel war began in 2023, leading to a deep chill in Turkish-Israeli diplomatic ties.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry confirmed there were no staff at the consulate at the time of the shootings.

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The incident occurred next to a major motorway just after midday, immediately outside the tower where the Israeli Consulate is located. The gunfire echoed inside nearby bank headquarters, where thousands of workers were breaking for lunch.

Turkey, a fierce critic of Israel's military operations in Gaza, had recalled its ambassador from Israel in November 2023 and diplomatic relations have been effectively frozen since then.

At the same time that year, Israeli diplomats left Turkey due to security concerns after pro-Palestinian protests erupted across the country and in front of the consulate. Since then, a heavily armed police presence has been maintained in the area near the consulate.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Dr. Gal Rosen is an Israeli paramedic who has saved lives under the threat of missile attacks.

Racing from emergency to emergency, heart pounding, but calm under fire — "don't think, just act."

He said he lost his mother when he was a child at the hands of a murderous terrorist. He saved lives as an army paramedic, but he continues to do it now as a civilian — defiantly choosing to live in Israel and work at Tel Aviv's Magen David Adom (MDA) while under threat and emergencies from multiple-front wars.

He saves lives in the "dark" of war. He sees lives go, sometimes after making difficult split-second decisions.

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"We need to choose sometimes," he says, speaking to Fox News Digital during a rare moment off between emergencies. "And this is hard."

But, today, he is sharing a story of "light": a stark contrast from the stories he usually refuses to share with his family to spare them the horrifying realities of war — even if they live those themselves.

Last Thursday, Rosen delivered a healthy baby boy into the world and, in sudden threat of a missile attack and blaring sirens, carried that son away from the mother in the ambulance as he and the father raced to reach a bomb shelter.

This was his fifth emergency delivery of a newborn as a paramedic. It was his first under the threat of a missile attack and blaring sirens.

"It was so surrealistic situation, in my opinion, never happened to me, something like this," he said, able to smile about the gravity of it all one week later, after finally finding sleep and time to reflect.

"This is an amazing thing to share at home," Rosen said. "Most of my stories are not like this, most of our stories I share are really hard things for my family to hear. This is why, usually, I'm not sharing with my family stories from my work: 'Sorry, I'm not doing it.'

"Car accidents or about the CPRs or about really difficult situations that I had to deal with."

Just two days after bringing one life into the world, he saw five go.

"I had, like last Saturday, five cases of death in the shift," he said. "I don't want to get home and tell about it in my family, right? But this story is amazing.

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"I went to my grandma," he continued, "and said, 'You have to hear it.'

"She was so proud of me and also my family and my father and my friends and my partner. Of course, this is a really nice story to tell to everyone."

The call came around 6:30 a.m. local Tel Aviv time on a Thursday morning: a woman was in labor, getting an assist on emergency delivery over the phone as if it was a movie.

But this was real life, a new life and war.

By the time the MDA paramedic team arrived, the baby was still inside and the husband was helping his wife through the final moments of delivery. Dr. Rosen stepped in for the last few minutes and helped safely deliver the boy.

Then came the alert.

Within moments, a warning sounded that a missile attack on Tel Aviv was expected in about 10 minutes. The paramedic suddenly had to balance the urgency of a wartime emergency with the delicate, critical first steps of childbirth.

He quickly placed the newborn on the mother’s chest for skin-to-skin contact, a key step for bonding and early development. He had the father cut the umbilical cord and helped the mother nurse the baby for the first time.

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"I tried to do something as close as possible to reality for them," he said, wanting to preserve the intimacy of a normal birth even though they were far from a hospital delivery room.

With the help of the father and her team, he then moved the family into the building’s shelter. There, in the middle of blaring alarms and the sounds of missile interceptions overhead, relatives from the apartment building — a grandmother, an aunt and others — came downstairs and saw the baby for the first time.

"It was the first time they met the baby, while there were alarms," he said. 

"Adrenaline" and former army paramedic instinct took over.

"I put the helmet, I put the vest and everything, I took the baby, and we stopped by the side and I ran with the baby to a public shelter," he recalled. "So, me and the father, we're running together, I'm taking the baby with me, running to a shelter and just a random building and there was no shelter there.

"'OK, this is not good.' We need to go out.

"And we're going out. There is still alarms; I know that we have like maybe 20 seconds left, going to another building, and then we're getting into a public shelter. There is 50 people there in the shelter and they closed the door. We were still there standing in the shelter, so I gave the father the baby.

"I didn't want the idea for the father also — you know, in the future — to think about the situation that a stranger held his baby while there is a missile attack."

In the shelter, with the postpartum mother still in the ambulance under the Iron Dome, the unmistakable sound of war came with a shock.

"We also heard the interception with the Iron Dome," Rosen said.

The sound, he said, was impossible to ignore: "a boom," followed by a shock wave you could feel.

The air was vibrating.

The grateful father and mother, identified by MDA as Nikola and Violet, said the experience was frightening but that the emergency team helped keep them calm.

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"It wasn’t a simple experience," they wrote in a joint statement, preferring to keep privacy but permitting Dr. Rosen to share the war story out of praise and thankfulness.

"The labor started at home, and just minutes after the MDA team delivered the baby, the siren caught us, and we went down to a shelter. The team functioned amazingly, calmed us, and treated us in the best possible way. This isn’t the ideal experience, but we’re happy everything ended safely, and we’re grateful to the team who helped us so much."

In that cramped shelter of about 50 huddling Israelis, surrounded by strangers and the threat of falling missiles, the room broke into applause. People congratulated the father and shouted "Mazal tov."

Mother was still in the ambulance with members of the MDA team, still at risk postpartum, as the Iron Dome was busting missiles overhead.

"And after 10 minutes that we sat there, we went out, and we walked in the street with a baby, 30 minutes old, crossing the intersection together, going to the ambulance," Rosen said. "They put a helmet on her and a vest on the mother, and one of my teammates stayed with her, because she couldn't come to the shelter. It was too much time, too risky for her.

"And, you know, in these moments, I didn't think so much. So I just act.

"I realized that it would be better to protect the son; it would better to go to find a shelter. And we didn't think about the idea that maybe we'll be in alarms, because we were in the situation, we were at the moment, we're with the family, with the delivery, with everything, and you can't imagine something like this — even though it's Israel, and now we can actually imagine everything.

"Still, it was really, really, really exciting — excitement and happiness – and a good thing because most of our days right now are dark."

Despite losing his mother to a murderous terrorist and living under the threat of multiple-front wars and shrieking Iron Dome sirens and missile attacks, Rosen would choose no other life.

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"My mother was murdered in a terror attack when I was a kid, when I was a child, and to choose to still be here with my family, to live here: This is our home and to choose, going to a different path, not hate.

"I will save lives, and I will do my best to help other families going through these situations, and I will do my best to make sure there are no other families that will need to suffer from a loss.

"So I think this is the mentality of Israelis in general. But still, see, this is one of the only places in the world that people are getting rescued by a flight to come back to Israel.

"In a war," he deadpanned.

But, with everything happening under the stress of war, Rosen kept the calm, precision and resolve of an army paramedic, knowing the best medicine for a baby born under stress is skin-to-skin and mother's milk.

"I learned in med school, I learned these two things are the most important: Put the baby on the skin, give them the bond, help her to nurse," he said. "It also can help the mother a lot when she nursing the baby. It's also helping with postpartum bleeding. And a lot of things.

"So this situation, it's hard to do when we are in this missile attack."

But all is well that ended well and — in the case of Nikola and Violet's newborn — began as well as could be under the circumstances.

"I was so excited I couldn't sleep for — like the delivery. It was something like 17 hours into my shift," he recalled. "So I worked 16 hours. It was after 17 hours shift.

"Now and after 17 hours shift, I went back home, I tried to sleep, I couldn't sleep, and then I had to go to another shift. So I was awake for at least 24 hours."

One week later, the adrenaline and excitement have not worn off. And the baby boy, mother, father and MDA paramedic team live on to tell an all-timer.

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, on Monday passed a law mandating the death penalty for Palestinian terrorists convicted of deadly acts of terrorism, sparking anger from European countries and an Israeli opposition leader.

Lawmakers voted 62-47 in favor of far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s legislation to prescribe the death penalty by hanging. Ben Gvir and his party, Otzma Yehudit, proposed the measure.

Otzma Yehudit lawmaker Tzvika Foghel, who chairs the National Security Committee and advanced the bill through the committee under his leadership, told Fox News Digital that Israelis are fed up with policies of containment and compromise.

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"For too many years, we have tried to please the entire world, even when we were being murdered in our streets. Since October 7, we have shifted to an offensive approach so that we can dictate the reality in the future," he said.

Foghel said the death penalty for terrorists is part of a broader shift in Israel, driven by the recognition that no other country faces a reality in confronting radical Islamic terrorism in Gaza, Lebanon, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), as well as in Yemen and Iran.

"The death penalty for terrorists who burned, raped, mutilated and abused children and parents is the same punishment we established for the Nazis," he said.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, said, "The EU has a principled position against the death penalty in all cases and in all circumstances. Israel had long upheld a de facto moratorium on both executions and capital punishment sentencing, thereby leading by example in the region despite a complex security environment."

She added, "The approval of the Death Penalty Bill by the Israeli Parliament marks a grave regression from that practice and from Israel’s own commitments. We are deeply concerned about the de facto discriminatory character of the Bill."

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Israel has applied the death penalty only once in the state’s history for the Nazi mass murderer Adolf Eichmann in 1962. The death penalty exists on the books in Israel, but Israeli courts have limited latitude to apply execution to cases beyond penalties for Nazi war criminals.

Former Prime Minister and current leader of the centrist Yesh Atid party, Yair Lapid said the legislation is fundamentally flawed because it does not apply to Hamas terrorists involved in the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre that killed 1,200 people.

"This law is not a show of force; it is a sign of panic. This law is more extreme than anything in the United States, and they know it will get struck down by the law. It isn’t a law for justice or for deterrence, it is a law for public relations," he added.

Likud lawmaker Dan Illouz, a supporter of the legislation, told Fox News Digital that the events of Oct. 7 underscored, in his view, the need to prevent terrorists from viewing the kidnapping of civilians as a viable means of securing the release of imprisoned militants.

"The death penalty shatters that equation. It serves as the ultimate deterrent, ensuring that terrorists know their actions lead only to their own demise, not a negotiated release. We are a life-loving nation, but to protect life, we must deal decisively with those who seek to destroy it," he said.

"Prime Minister Netanyahu's vote in favor was crucial. It projects an unmistakable message of strength and moral clarity from the very top of Israel's leadership. By personally casting his vote, the Prime Minister showed our enemies, and the entire world, that our government is completely united and unyielding in our resolve to eradicate terrorism and defend our citizens," he added.

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The Israeli Channel 12 political commentator, Amit Segal, wrote that he supports "executing terrorists who attempt to murder civilians — especially the monsters of October 7," but was critical of Ben Gvir’s legislation.

He wrote in his newsletter, "The law defines terrorism as acts ‘to negate the existence of the state,’ a definition that could apply to groups such as extremist Haredi factions and violent members of the ‘Hilltop Youth’ (which Ben-Gvir supports.)

Segal said that "while Ben-Gvir’s law is essentially a campaign stunt, a more responsible law is making its way through the system. Proposed by MKs Simcha Rotman and Yulia Malinovsky, the law establishes the practical mechanisms — procedural and evidentiary — to secure convictions of Nukhba terrorists, after which the death penalty could be imposed."

Another Likud lawmaker, Amit Halevi, told Fox News Digital that the central element of the legislation is the distinction between criminal offenses and crimes against the state or against humanity.

"A terrorist commits his crimes as part of an ideology aimed at killing, oppressing and controlling all Jews. These terrorists, if they could, would kill every one of us. They are ideological murderers, in a different category from ordinary criminals, and that is a critical point of the bill," he said.

Halevi added that further efforts are needed to clearly delineate crimes against the state, including what falls within that category and what does not.

"Generally speaking, this legislation is a step in the right direction. Much of the criticism I hear relates to ordinary criminals. People do not understand the enemy — who he is and what this war is about," he said.

As Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) publicly claim their dead, new research shows that many previously counted as civilians were in fact members of the terrorist organizations, undermining accusations that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians in Gaza.

Researchers monitoring the Hamas-run health ministry’s death reports told Fox News Digital that a growing number of "martyrs" were exposed as terrorists by their own groups such as Hamas, despite maintaining public identities as healthcare or media workers.

Gabriel Epstein, senior policy associate at Israel Policy Forum, told Fox News Digital that he has tracked multiple individuals named by Hamas and PIJ as martyrs killed in battle in Gaza who held positions in the health industry, including nongovernmental organizations (NGOs.)

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Epstein found several individuals labeled as medical staff who are also members of terrorist groups. The most serious revelation from the martyr list is Fadi al-Wadiyya, a physiotherapist for Médecins sans frontières, who was killed by Israel Defense Forces in June 2024. MSF responded to the death, saying they were "outraged" and "strongly condemn[ed] the killing of our colleague."

When the IDF claimed that al-Wadiyya was a member of PIJ, MSF said they had "no prior knowledge" of his "alleged involvement in military activities" and said they had "not received any formal explanation" of "the circumstances of his killing."

In a Telegram account claiming to be the media reserve for the Al-Quds Brigades, a post mourning al-Wadiyya’s martyrdom on Feb. 24 lists the physiotherapist as an assistant to the military manufacturing unit of PIJ’s Al-Quds Brigades.

Fox News Digital asked MSF whether they were aware of al-Wadiyya’s PIJ connections prior to the martyr announcement. A spokesperson said, "We would not knowingly employ people engaging in military activity" as it "would pose a danger to our staff and patients by compromising our neutrality."

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The spokesperson said that "MSF had no indication that Fadi Al Wadiya might have been involved in military activity of any kind prior to the Israeli authorities’ online posts in June 2024. In the immediate aftermath of Al-Wadiya's killing, we asked for explanations from the Israeli authorities, but never received an official response. If the Israeli authorities were aware of Al-Wadiya's links with militant activities, they never shared this info with us until after he was killed. To this day, the only information they shared and that we are aware of is what was shared through public social media posts."

The IDF banned MSF operations in Gaza from the beginning of March because the organization refused to provide a list of its Palestinian employees. In response to Fox News Digital’s questions about whether they would consider providing this list to the IDF presently, MSF’s spokesperson said, "We did not share our staff lists with Israel because we did not receive concrete assurances to ensure the safety of our staff or the independent management of our operations. This is a place where humanitarian workers have frequently been detained, attacked, and killed. We have a responsibility to protect our colleagues from harm."

Epstein shared several other cases of healthcare workers who played prominent roles in terror groups.

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Mohammed Akram Abdullah al-Kafarna was mourned by the Palestinian Nursing and Midwifery Association’s Facebook page as the nursing supervisor at Kamal Adwan Hospital and by the Institute for Palestine Studies as head of the Gaza nursing system. A Telegram account that lists members of Hamas’ best-outfitted Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, al-Kafarna is described as one of Beit Hanoun’s "Qassam Martyrs."

Ayman Suleiman Aliyan Abu Tayr was listed as martyred in Khan Younis in June 2025. The Institute for Palestine Studies labels him as a nurse and head of the clinical nutrition department at Nasser Hospital. According to a Telegram account linked to PIJ’s Al-Quds Brigades, Abu Tayr was a Commander in the Central Operations Unit of the Al-Quds Brigades.

Jaber Abdulhamid Diab Mohammedin was mourned on the Palestinian Ministry of Health General Directorate of Nursing’s Facebook page as an Intensive Care Unit nurse at the Al-Rantisi Specialized Children’s Hospital. A Telegram account linked to the Islamic Jihad Movement lists Mohammedin as a commander in the military manufacturing unit of the PIJ’s Al-Quds Brigade.

Nidal Jaber Abdulfattah al-Najjar is labeled as an administrator at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, according to the Institute for Palestine Studies, while a mourner on Facebook noted that he worked in the Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital. He is labeled on a Telegram account emblazoned with Hamas’ distinctive red triangle as a martyr commander of Hamas’ Al-Radwan Battalion.

Salo Aizenberg, director of media watchdog group HonestReporting, told Fox News Digital that he is tracking at least 10 "virtually indisputable" examples of journalists who are actually combatants, working with Hamas and other terrorist groups.

David Adesnik, vice president of research for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that he has also been tracking the disclosures. "With PIJ, the number of commanders who operated with civilian cover is striking," Adesnik said. "We’re at a point where the evidence indicates that this duplicity was a routine part of a strategy to infiltrate civilian organization, especially humanitarian ones. This provides access and protection while ensuring outrage when these supposed humanitarians are killed."

Adesnik said he believes it "likely that Hamas also employed this strategy in a systematic way, but right now we mainly have the PIJ disclosures. Given that Hamas is many times larger, if it were to disclose this kind of information, the effects could easily ripple across the humanitarian sector in Gaza."

Among the cases Aizenberg is tracking are media workers. He said that his list is "based solely on admissions by those groups and other Gazan sources," and "does not include the many additional examples identified through Israeli evidence."

Though the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) cites Yacoup Al-Borsch as a journalist and the executive director of Namaa Radio, Aizenberg has found "numerous social media posts and martyr notices identifying him as a fighter and ‘mujahid.’" This includes a Facebook post from an account affiliated with the Al-Omari Mosque in Jabalia.

Ahmed Abu Sharia was a freelancer who worked for outlets like Iranian Tasnim News Agency, the CPJ says. According to the "official" Telegram site of the Mujahideen Brigades, the Palestinian Mujahideen movement’s military wing, he was also a member of the Mujahideen Brigades.

Rizq Abu Shakian was a "media worker and administrator for the pro-Hamas Palestine Now Agency," according to CPJ. Shakian also appears in Hamas uniform on a Telegram site that shares images of Palestinian martyrs. According to Aizenberg’s research, he was a member of the Al-Qassam Brigades.

In response to questions about whether CPJ would update listings of journalists who have been claimed as terror affiliates, the group directed Fox News Digital to its policy for updating listings, which states, "CPJ has a long-standing policy of updating its data and the accompanying narrative accounts without issuing formal corrections as new information becomes available over time. In certain cases, a record may be removed from public view when new information leads CPJ to determine that a case falls outside its mandate or for security concerns, such as the safety of the journalist and their family.  CPJ will publicly record when it has removed a journalist from the database for a reason outside of security concerns. "

As the shaky ceasefire in Gaza continues, analysts say they continue to place value in closely examining the war’s casualties. Epstein said that "reviewing cases of militants who held dual civilian roles in key sectors like media, healthcare and education is important for the historical record and underscores the information limitations press, government, and analysts face in real time during conflict." He said that "over time, militant identification can give a sense of just how deep Hamas, PIJ and other militant groups' hold over key sectors in Gaza was."

As the war with Iran dominates the region's attention, Hamas is quietly reasserting control inside Gaza, according to videos and photos circulating on social media. An Israeli analyst and a Gazan political commentator say the developments raise fresh doubts about whether postwar plans for the enclave can move forward anytime soon.

Michael Milshtein, a senior analyst at the Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, said Hamas has used the past two and a half weeks not only to rehabilitate militarily but to project visible control in public life.

"They are really making good use of them to establish their power in the public sphere, not just for military rehabilitation," Milshtein said, describing what he said were new recruits, police deployments and even parades in central Gaza. "Hamas is here to stay."

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He said Gazans have reported that Hamas is also rebuilding the machinery of governance. "Their police are everywhere," he said. "They are also improving their taxation system." During Ramadan, he added, Hamas personnel were checking markets and mosques and "starting to build education systems." 

Mkhaimar Abusada, a Gazan political analyst, agrees momentum around postwar Gaza planning has largely stalled since the Iran war escalated.

"Everything with regard to Gaza has been put on hold," Abusada told Fox News Digital. Before the regional war erupted, he said, developments had been "moving in the right direction," including work around the Board of Peace, the Gaza Technical Committee and discussions tied to a possible international stabilization force.

"Yes, Hamas has taken advantage of the current situation," Abusada said. "They are not under the pressure that they were before."

Both analysts pointed to the same broad dynamic: as attention shifted to Iran, pressure on Hamas eased.

Abusada said that before the war, there had been what he described as serious discussions about disarmament, the deployment of an international force and Gaza’s political future. But "the enthusiasm that preceded the war has come down," he said, adding that Gaza has been pushed to the "back burner."

"When I talk to Palestinians, they tell me, ‘Listen, we are actually already waiting for the day after the war,’" Milshtein said. He said some expect Netanyahu to become "very indebted to Trump because of the war in Iran, and he will have to accept whatever dictates he has regarding Gaza."

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At the center of that conversation is the prospect of an international stabilization force entering Gaza. But both men suggested Hamas may not see such a force as a threat.

Abusada said Hamas had "welcomed the deployment" of such a force and appears to view it as "restraining the Israeli army" rather than coming in "to disarm" the group. He said the possibility of troops from countries such as Indonesia may make such a deployment appear less threatening to Hamas, which could see it as a buffer against continued Israeli military operations.

Milshtein took that argument further, saying Hamas sees the model less as a peacekeeping mission than as a version of the Hezbollah-UNIFIL arrangement in Lebanon.

"Hamas says, ‘I have no problem, it will be like UNIFIL in Lebanon,’" Milshtein said. "Don’t even dream about starting to chase us, taking our weapons, and entering the tunnels. You need to protect us from Israel as well."

Abusada said the next phase depends heavily on how the Iran war ends. If the Iranian regime survives and avoids collapse, he said, Hamas will draw encouragement from that outcome.

"If Iran is not defeated, if the Iranian regime is not collapsing, that’s going to be some kind of moral support for Hamas," he said.