Israel-Hamas War: What happened on day 161?

In the shadow of ground troops entering Rafah, air strikes were carried out overnight in the Southern Gaza Strip, according to Arab media sources.

The US Central Command said on Friday that Houthis fired three anti-ship ballistic missiles from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen toward the Red Sea.

It said there were no injuries or damage reported.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was interviewed by John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute, in a video uploaded on X on Friday, which tackles Israel's current war against Hamas.

Spencer described the current war, also titled Operation Swords of Iron, as "one of the most historic wars of our generation" at the beginning of the interview, also noting it as a "generational war."

This week, police in Cambridge, England, announced they were opening an investigation into a protest act focused on a British lord who has been dead for nearly a century.

Last week, pro-Palestinian protesters at Trinity College — part of the University of Cambridge — sprayed red paint onto a 1914 portrait of Lord Arthur James Balfour and then slashed through it. Balfour, when he served as foreign minister in 1917, authored the Balfour Declaration, which committed Britain to “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” laying the groundwork for the establishment of the State of Israel three decades later. 

A special chess event was held at the Berlin Parliament for the hostages held in Gaza and to strengthen Israel-German ties on Thursday evening. 

Thursday’s event saw Judit Polgar, the number one chess player of all time, alongside her sister, Sophie, who is also a well-respected chess player and artist, face 40 German participants in a simultaneous exhibition on behalf of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

Israel is considering hiring the services of international security contractors to secure aid shipment to Gaza, Maariv reported on Friday evening. 

This is a developing story.

The IDF announced that a launch from northern Gaza toward the city of Sderot was detected and successfully intercepted by the IDF Aerial Defense Array on Friday.

A few minutes after the detection, the IDF and the Israeli Air Force carried out a joint aircraft and artillery strike on the launcher, which was located in the northern Gaza Strip.

The latest Hamas deal proposal is "within the bounds" of the deal the White House and partners have been working on for months, National Security spokesperson John Kirby said from the White House on Friday. 

"The fact that there's another delegation now heading to Doha, the fact that there's proposals out there... that there are conversations about it, that's all good," Kirby said. 

The US has not been briefed on the plans Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved on Friday for the invasion of Rafah White House National Security Spokesman John Kirby told reporters, saying the Biden administration would "welcome the opportunity to see it."

For weeks, the White House has maintained it would not support an Israeli invasion of Rafah without a credible evacuation plan for the more than 1.3 million Palestinians who have been seeking refuge in the Southern Gazan city. 

Yemen’s Houthi terrorist group has obtained a new hypersonic missile and upgraded its current arsenal with warheads, Russian state media RIA reported on Thursday.

Citing an unnamed Houthi official, the terrorist group told RIA that they had tested a hypersonic missile “with high lethality” and are planning to add it to their arsenal.