Mamdani takes New York City as Democrats romp to victory across the country; 40 killed in Sudan drone strike; Israeli strikes continue

Drop Site Daily: November 5, 2025

Israeli strikes continue against Gaza, with shelling, airstrikes, and shootings in southern and central areas of the enclave. Israel returned the bodies of 15 Palestinians a day after receiving the body of an Israeli captive with U.S. citizenship. Zohran Mamdani wins the election for New York City mayor as Democrats romp across the country. Democrats Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill win their elections for governorships in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively. California’s Proposition 50 passes, giving Democrats a chance to capture an additional five seats in the U.S. House, while a measure to restrict voting in Maine fails. Israel bombs southern Lebanon killing one person. The UAE is sucking up African gold, according to a new report. 40 killed in a strike on the Sudanese city of el-Obeid. Mexico’s Sheinbaum unequivocally opposes U.S. intentions to send U.S. troops and intelligence officers into Mexico. Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouk clarifies his faction’s positions in an interview with Al Jazeera, making salient comments concerning its positions on disarmament, the U.S.-proposed “stabilization force,” and Hamas’s relationships with other factions.

This is Drop Site Daily, our new, free daily news recap. We send it Monday through Friday.

New from Drop Site: “Canada’s Plan to Take in Palestinians from Gaza Is a ‘PR Show,’ Families Say.” Journalist Mersiha Gadzo spoke with Palestinian-Canadian citizens petitioning the Canadian government to help evacuate their families from Gaza, but they say that the Temporary Residence Visa Program for Palestinians in Gaza with family ties in Canada was “seemingly designed to fail.”

Supporters watch Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani give his victory speech on television at an election-night watch party at the Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden on November 4, 2025 in the Queens borough of New York City. The watch party was one of many hosted by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America in support of Mamdani. (Photo by Jeremy Weine/Getty Images)

The Genocide in Gaza

• Gaza’s Health Ministry reports that in the last 24 hours, one person has been killed, two have been wounded, and two bodies have been recovered from the rubble as we enter the 27th day of the ceasefire. In that period, 241 Palestinians have been killed, 609 have been injured, and 513 bodies have been recovered. This brings the recorded death toll from the Israeli genocide in Gaza to 68,875 and 170,679 injuries

• Israel’s military continued its bombardment of Gaza on Wednesday, carrying out air raids on Khan Younis and its surrounding areas, shelling its eastern outskirts, and demolishing residential structures in the area, according to Al Jazeera. The area was also subject to overnight Israeli air strikes, according to the outlet Walla, and the Israeli military is also alleged to have hit targets in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.

• The Israeli military on Wednesday said it killed two Palestinians who “were identified crossing the yellow line and advancing toward IDF troops in central Gaza.” Israel has placed only a few physical markings delineating the boundaries of the yellow line to where Israeli troops have withdrawn as part of the ceasefire agreement. Israel has also repeatedly struck civilians hundreds of meters beyond the yellow line.

• The ministry of health announced on Wednesday it had received the bodies of 15 Palestinians handed over by Israel through the Red Cross. The 15 bodies were returned a day after Hamas handed over the body of Itay Chen, an Israeli soldier with U.S. citizenship who was killed on October 7, 2023. As with previous handovers, the bodies of the 15 Palestinians received on Wednesday are unidentified. To date, only 84 of the 285 bodies returned to Gaza by Israel have been identified, the health ministry said. Many of the bodies bore signs of torture and field execution.

• Overnight on Wednesday, Hamas handed over the body of another Israeli captive it had recovered. The Israeli military confirmed the delivery.

• Since the ceasefire went into effect on October 10, Israeli authorities have rejected 23 requests from nine aid agencies to bring in essential shelter materials to Gaza, including tents, sealing kits, bedding and blankets, amounting to to 3,986 pallets and 1,699 metric tons, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). In 21 of the 23 rejected requests, Israeli authorities cited the claim that the organizations submitting them were “not authorized to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza,” including organizations which have a valid registration in Israel, the NRC said. “We have a very short chance to protect families from the winter rains and cold,” Angelita Caredda, Middle East and North Africa Regional Director for the NRC, said in a statement.“More than three weeks into the ceasefire, Gaza should be receiving a surge of shelter materials, but only a fraction of what is needed has entered. The international community must act now to secure swift and unimpeded access.”

• Senior Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouk told Al Jazeera Mubasher that his movement has “no objection” to the Palestinian Authority (PA) running Gaza under a unified administrative committee, reaffirming that Hamas had agreed to such a plan earlier in Cairo. He emphasized Hamas’s commitment to dialogue with Fatah and the PA on “how, to whom, and under what guarantees,” weapons and governance are distributed and administered. On the issue of disarmament, Abou Marzouk said, “Hamas is a controlling force,” adding “if you disarm the controlling force, what will happen?” Comparing it to Iraq, where ISIS emerged in a political vacuum, he argued that a similar fate could await Gaza without an armed Hamas, and that its civil and police institutions are well up to the task of governance: “These forces sacrificed thousands of their members. They are from the sons of Gaza, the sons of the Palestinian people. What will you do with these existing forces? They will never accept a foreign force coming to replace them.” Marzouk stated Hamas’s openness to relinquishing weapons capable of striking beyond Gaza’s borders as part of the second phase of ceasefire negotiations, though the first phase, he made clear, is far from complete.

• Giving an overview of the uses of Israeli military technology against Palestinians in Gaza during the genocide, Drop Site contributor Hamza Salha relays to Palestinian Deep Dive the chilling extent to which the Israeli government can surveil individuals under occupation. “At checkpoints, they will scan your face,” he says, “They will know your ID.” Watch the full video here.

West Bank and Israel

• Israeli forces demolished two Palestinian agricultural sites in the occupied West Bank, destroying a poultry farm and killing thousands of chickens, according to the Wafa news agency. In the village of Umm al-Rihan, west of Jenin, Israeli soldiers stormed a poultry farm and electrocuted 7,000 hens. In Wadi Fukin, west of Bethlehem, soldiers demolished an agricultural room belonging to a local farmer, claiming it lacked a building permit.

• Israeli forces and settlers carried out 2,350 attacks across the occupied West Bank last month, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission. The attacks included direct physical assaults, the uprooting of trees and burning of farmland, violently preventing olive pickers from accessing their lands, destroying agricultural facilities, as well as seizing property and demolishing homes.

• Incidents on Tuesday and Wednesday in the West Bank included settlers attacking a house in the village of Turmus’ayya; Israeli special forces storming Ramallah’s city center and arresting at least one man; settlers draining a Palestinian family’s water tank in the village of Al-Mughayyir, blocking their livestock from drinking the water, and harassing the family; settlers setting fire to farmland near al-Lubban Asharqiya, south of Nablus; settlers raiding Palestinian-owned land in the town of al-Attarra, northwest of Ramallah and stealing their olive harvests; Israeli forces raiding a bus in Jerusalem and temporarily detaining every Palestinian passenger, according to journalist Andrey X.

• The Tel Aviv Magistrates Court has ruled that former Israeli military advocate-general Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi will be held in custody until at least Friday after her arrest over a leaked surveillance video from Sde Temain prison showing the gang rape of a Palestinian detainee by Israeli soldiers. Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned last week after acknowledging that her office was behind last year’s release of the video.

U.S. News

• Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani was elected New York City’s 111th mayor on Tuesday, beating former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa.The 34-year-old will be the first Muslim and the first South Asian to hold the office, and the youngest mayor in over a century. More than two million New Yorkers cast ballots in the election, nearly double the 1,100,000 people who voted for mayor four years ago.

• Drop Site and Breaking Points teamed up for a livestream from New York and Virginia. Throughout the night we were joined by Naomi Klein, Lina Khan, Hasan Piker, Dave Weigel, Mamdani communications aide Andrew Epstein, Representative Pramila Jayapal, Cynthia Nixon, Sam Seder, Mamdani speechwriter Julian Gerson, and NYC political analyst Michael Lange, among others. The stream is here.

• In his victory remarks, Mamdani directly addressed President Trump, saying: “New York will remain a city of immigrants: a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant… To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.” As former Obama advisor and liberal podcast host Dan Pfeiffer points out, Mamdani won 9% of New York City’s Trump voters.

• Mikie Sherrill—a centrist Democrat and former U.S. congresswoman, naval intelligence officer, and federal prosecutor—won New Jersey governor’s race early Tuesday, defeating Republican Jack Ciattarelli in one of the night’s two off-year gubernatorial contests. Polls underestimated Sherrill’s margin significantly, as she leaned into Mamdani’s economic populist themes around affordability and corporate greed.

• A blue wave swept Virginia as former CIA operations officer Abigail Spanberger, the other centrist Democratic nominee for governor, secured an early victory in Virginia over Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, who failed to win President Trump’s endorsement in the final days of her campaign. Spanberger, the founder of the short-lived “Mod Squad,” formed in opposition to the unofficial progressive caucus of the same name, is known for a leaked 2020 call in which she lashed out at what she saw as her party’s failure to curb left-wing excesses—blaming them for Democrats’ downballot underperformance that year. Democrats also flipped the lieutenant governorship and attorney general seat, despite a major scandal dogging the Dem AG nominee. The party added at least 13 seats in the General Assembly, as Republican efforts to run once again on trans issues fell flat.

• California voters approved Governor Gavin Newsom’s new electoral map by voting resoundingly in favor of Proposition 50, a rare single-issue special election in the nation’s largest state. It gives Democrats a shot at winning as many as five additional congressional seats and Newsom, a 2028 hopeful, a signature achievement to tout should he decide to run for his party’s presidential nomination. The Proposition was in response to redistricting moves in Texas and inspired a number of similar maneuvers and counter-maneuvers in states like Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Missouri.

• An exit poll from NBC News comparing the favorables of the three victors of last night’s election among young men under 30 (a growing Democratic concern since the party’s loss in 2024) shows that Spanberger was +14 points, Sherrill was +10, and Mamdani was an astonishing +40.

• Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offered the following analysis of Zohran Mamdani’s historic win when Drop Site contributor Meghnad Bose asked her about his victory in the face of opposition or ambivalence from his own party, including from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has still not said publicly who he voted for: “We can’t bet against our young, we can’t bet against our future.” AOC has been considering a challenge to Schumer in 2028.

• Representative Pramila Jayapal of Seattle also joined our livestream and warned there would be a “reckoning” coming for Schumer and others who fought Mamdani. In Seattle, an insurgent candidate she endorsed, Katie Wilson, is trailing.

• In this clip from our election coverage, Ryan Grim tells the story of why Zohran only ever wears a suit. When Andrew Epstein later joined the stream, he confirmed the account.

• A winner is not yet declared in yesterday’s mayoral race in Minneapolis. Incumbent Jacob Frey leads with 42 percent of first-choice votes, and democratic socialist challenger Omar Fateh trails with 32 percent. Because no candidate reached the 50 percent threshold, ranked-choice tabulation resumes this morning. Frey addressed an assembly of his supporters, saying, “It looks damn good for us.” Fateh, whose campaign has focused on affordable housing, police reform, and an increase in the minimum wage, has drawn comparisons to Mamdani. Fateh said of the delays in counting votes: “We’ve waited eight years. We can wait one more day… We stay proud because this campaign has already changed the conversation for what Minneapolis can be.” You can watch more of Fateh’s address to his supporters here.

• Former New York Assemblyman Michael Blake hinted at a campaign against pro-Israel U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres during an appearance on Zeteo’s election night livestream, and sources with knowledge of his plans told Drop Site an announcement is imminent. Blake, a former Obama White House aide and DNC Vice Chair, lost by 10,000 votes to Torres in a crowded primary for his Bronx congressional seat in 2020. Blake ran for mayor and cross-endorsed Mamdani, eventually dropping out to support him. If Mamdani gets behind Blake’s challenger of the hyper-pro-Israel Torres, the incumbent is in trouble.

• Rumors continued to swirl at Mamdani headquarters that key ally Brad Lander would be challenging the equally pro-Israel Dan Goldman for his congressional seat.

• Maine senatorial candidate Graham Platner offered the following eulogy for Vice President Dick Cheney: “Usually when a former vice president passes, we all take some time to mourn. As a veteran of the Iraq war, I’m going to say, no, not this time.” Platner added that Cheney “wasted thousands of young American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and trillions of dollars for absolutely nothing.”

International News

• An Israeli airstrike on a vehicle in Burj Rahal in southern Lebanon on Wednesday killed one person and wounded another, according to the health ministry in Lebanon. The attack took place near the Mohammad Saad secondary school, and followed the use of a sonic bomb between the Wata el-Khiam and Wadi al-Assafir areas earlier in the day.

• At least 20 Lebanese civilians are being held secretly in Israeli prisons, according to a new report from Quds News Network, some of whom were captured in Israel’s 2024 invasion of the country, and others of whom were abducted while returning to villages in the border region.

• The U.S. is reportedly advancing a Security Council vote to lift sanctions on Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa and Interior Minister Anas Khattab ahead of Sharaa’s visit to Washington, according to reporting from Al Monitor. Sharaa and Khattab would be delisted from the UN’s terrorism watchlist. China objected to delisting Sharaa due to the presence of Uygur militants in the Syrian military but may abstain from the vote rather than use its veto power.

• Saudi Arabia’s request to buy F-35 fighter jets has reportedly been approved by the Pentagon’s policy office, Reuters reports. The Saudi military intends to buy 48 of these planes, as part of its plan to modernize its air force. Washington has previously hesitated to equip Saudi Arabia with these planes as it might impede Israel’s legally mandated “qualitative military edge” over its rivals, though Saudi leaders have lobbied hard for the sale.

• A drone strike in Sudan killed at least 40 people attending a funeral in the North Kordofan city of el-Obeid, according to the United Nations. The city, held by the Sudanese army, is on the route between the state of Darfur and the capital of Khartoum. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is presumed to have carried out the strike, though it has yet to comment. The RSF also bombed a children’s hospital in the Darfur town of Karnoi, according to The New Arab, killing at least seven people, all women and children. The attack inflicted significant damage on the hospital. The UAE, which backs the RSF, has been accused of using their influence in Sudan as a means of exploiting the country’s gold resources.

• Sudanese defense minister Hassan Kabroun rejected a U.S. ceasefire proposal and announced his government’s intent to keep fighting on a government broadcast Tuesday, as reported by France 24. The army previously rejected another ceasefire deal from the so-called Quad—Egypt, the United States, the UAE, and Qatar—and the terms of the most recently proposed truce remain unreported. U.S officials say they are “actively engaged” in seeking a deal alongside these four partners.

• Ukraine’s military said it struck an oil refinery in Russia’s western Nizhny Novgorod oblast on Tuesday, as well as a petrochemical plant in the southern Russian region of Bashkortostan, both of which it claims caused significant damage but no injuries or deaths. The strike in Bashkortostan, nearly 1,500 km (932 miles) from the Ukrainian border, led to the partial collapse of a water-treatment facility. Russian sources claim it destroyed both drones involved in this attack and that it intercepted 83 Ukrainian drones in seven other Russian regions.

• Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum responded to threats from the Trump administration to send U.S. troops and intelligence officers into Mexico to fight cartels, saying there will not be a unilateral U.S. military incursion: “It won’t happen, we have no reports that it will happen... And besides, we don’t agree to it,” she said in her regular morning press conference.

• Cameroon’s security forces killed 48 civilians involved in protests against the re-election of President Paul Biya, the 92-year-old who has served as the country’s president since 1982, according to data from the UN reported by Reuters. The majority of victims were killed by live rounds of ammunition, the sources said, though some were killed by wounds sustained when they were beaten with batons and with sticks. The protests and the majority of deaths from them have been concentrated in the Littoral Region of the country and in the regional capital of Douala.

• Nigeria’s military said 19 armed bandits were killed in a firefight with its military in the northwestern state of Kano. Army spokesman Babatunde Zubairu reported that two soldiers and a local vigilante were also killed in the operation, which was part of the army’s broader campaign to calm the increasingly restive northern part of the country.

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