Witnesses heard an intense series of strikes and saw smoke billowing above the city, which now hosts more than half of Gaza's total population after they fled bombardment elsewhere on the Strip. The strikes hit 14 houses and three mosques in different parts of Rafah, according to the Hamas government.

Foreign governments, including Israel's key ally the United States, and aid groups have voiced deep concern over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's vow to extend operations. Rafah, on the border with Egypt, has remained the last refuge for Palestinians fleeing Israel's relentless bombardment elsewhere in the Gaza Strip.

In late 2020, Morocco established diplomatic ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords brokered by the United States which saw similar moves by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. As part of the deal, Rabat received Washington's recognition of its claim to sovereignty over the disputed territory of Western Sahara.

"The Palestinian economy's dire outlook is worsening as the conflict persists," managing director Kristalina Georgieva told the World Governments Summit in Dubai. "Only a durable peace and political solution will fundamentally change it".

Amir-Abdollahian met top officials in Beirut including Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a powerful ally of the group. He also met Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziad Nakhaleh, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan, and deputy chief of the People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine Jamil Mazhar,...

Israel's massive military offensive in Gaza as per the territory's health ministry has killed at least 28,064 people, mostly women and children. To critics who say an assault on Rafah is crossing a red line, Netanyahu said: "Those who say that under no circumstances should we enter Rafah are basically...

Israel's army and the Shin Bet security agency said operations in Gaza City in recent weeks had led to the discovery of a "tunnel shaft" near a school run by the humanitarian agency. Documents and weapons in the UN compound itself "confirmed that the offices had in fact also been...

Palestinian Territories - Six-year-old Hind Rajab pleaded to be rescued, after her family's car came under fire in war-ravaged Gaza City, leaving her alone, frightened and injured, surrounded by the bodies of her dead relatives. "I am so scared," she had said in a desperate phone call to the Palestine...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week said he had ordered troops to prepare to go in to the city, crowded with displaced Palestinians, as it hunts down those responsible for the deadly October 7 attacks on southern Israel. The announcement has prompted concern from foreign governments including the United States...

New defense technologies including artificial intelligence-powered gunsights and robotic drones form a bright spot in an otherwise dire period for Israel's tech industry. Over 150 countries in December backed a UN resolution identifying "serious challenges and concerns" in new military tech, including "artificial intelligence and autonomy in weapons systems."

Hospitals are granted special protection under the laws of war, but they have been repeatedly hit in Gaza over the past four months. There are no fully functioning hospitals left in the Palestinian territory, the United Nations said Wednesday, while just over a third of them are working at limited...

Rafah is the southernmost city in the Palestinian enclave that has been hit by a fierce Israeli offensive since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. Many of the population of 2.2 million have taken refuge there. Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told officials to "submit to the cabinet...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the army to prepare to "evacuate" hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza's Rafah, his office said, after US warned it would not support any ground assault. Netanyahu's planned offensive on Rafah, where an estimated 1.3 million civilians have sought refuge, drew condemnation...

"We expect the negotiations to be very complex and difficult but Hamas is open to discussions and the movement is keen to reach a ceasefire," added the official, who is familiar with the negotiations. "The two parties will hold several rounds of negotiations indirectly," he said on condition of anonymity

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken left Israel without securing a pause in fighting, wrapping up his fifth crisis tour of the Middle East since the war started. In fact, Israeli PM said he has ordered troops to 'prepare to operate' in Rafah.

Four students and a woman and her son were among the dead along with an unidentified civilian, the Observatory said, while a Syrian working with Lebanon's Hizbollah group and an unidentified pro-Iran fighter were also killed. A source close to Hizbollah confirmed to AFP that two of the Iran-backed fighters...

"Ten people, including six civilians and two Hizbollah fighters, were killed in Israeli strikes on a building in the Hamra neighborhood of Homs," the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP. The strikes completely levelled the building in one of the city's most affluent...

"There's a lot of work to be done, but we are very much focused on doing that work and hopefully being able to resume the release of hostages that was interrupted" after a week-long truce in November, he said. The US top envoy, on his fifth Middle East tour since...

Cairo, Egypt -- Egypt and Qatar are sponsoring a new round of negotiations to start Thursday in Cairo aimed at achieving "calm" in Gaza as well as a hostage release deal, an Egyptian official said. A Hamas source with knowledge of the matter confirmed the Palestinian group had agreed to the...

As customers in the Middle East shun international restaurants, local businesses report they have benefited from the boycott.

Republicans in the House of Representatives scheduled the vote after the Democratic-led Senate released a bipartisan bill Sunday pairing billions of dollars for Israel and Ukraine with some of the strictest immigration curbs in decades. But support for that $118bn package has dwindled, with Donald Trump pressuring Republicans to avoid handing President Joe...

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that five people have been killed including three civilians, and seven others were injured in Israeli strikes on a building in the Hamra neighbourhood of Homs city. The country's defence ministry reported that "the Israeli enemy launched air strikes targeting a number of...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia drew 27 million foreign tourists in 2023 and has more than doubled its goal for the end of the decade, an official said on Tuesday. The announcement came less than five years after the Gulf kingdom fully opened up to tourism and as fears persist...

Hamas has for more than a week mulled the deal drawn up in its absence at Paris talks, as international pressure mounts to end the four-month war. Hamas said the proposal was aimed at "ending the aggression against our people, securing relief and shelter, reconstruction, lifting the siege on the...

The Palestinian Ministry of Education said more than 4,851 students were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, while 8,227 others were injured. In the West Bank, a total of 44 students were killed, 283 others injured and 89 detained.

Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said last week that the movement's armed forces had targeted an American merchant ship named KOI with "several appropriate naval missiles". The ship, he said, had been heading to "the ports of occupied Palestine", a phrase which is sometimes used to mean Israel.

French minister denounced anti-Palestinian rhetoric and "even calls to commit war crimes" by Israeli officials, after some Netanyahu allies have appeared to endorse Jewish re-settlement of the Gaza Strip after the war. Sejourne called for supporting the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority of president Mahmud Abbas.

The OECD raised its 2024 world economic growth forecast Monday but warned that the Middle East conflict posed a risk, with disruptions in Red Sea shipping threatening to increase consumer prices. Global growth "proved unexpectedly resilient" in 2023, reaching 3.1 percent as inflation declined faster than anticipated..

MADRID, SPAIN -  Spain said on Monday that it would give an additional US$$3.8 million (3.5 million euros) in aid to the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, which is facing a cash crunch after several nations suspended their funding. Over a dozen countries, including major donors the United States, Germany, Britain...

On his fifth trip to the region since the war broke out, Blinken will visit Saudi Arabia, Israel and mediators Egypt and Qatar. Ahead of the trip he stressed the need for "urgently addressing humanitarian needs in Gaza", after aid groups have repeatedly sounded the alarm over the devastating impact...

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has managed to maintain trade and political relations with both Ukraine and Russia, allowing Russia to avoid Western sanctions while selling weapons to Ukraine. The last meeting between Putin and Erdogan was in September 2023 in Sochi, but they frequently talk by phone.

The US secretary of state is expected to discuss a proposed truce hammered out in a Paris meeting in January of top US, Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari officials. The diplomatic push has become more urgent with the surge in attacks by Iran-backed groups in solidarity with Hamas, triggering counterattacks by...

JERUSALEM - When Fatima, an Arab Israeli married to a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, fled Israel's bombardment of the territory, she was terrified they would run out of fuel. "We feared that the gas wouldn't be enough. The road was deserted. All the way along, we saw devastated houses,"...

French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne was in Egypt and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expected in the region in the coming days to push for a ceasefire and hostage release. The health ministry in the territory, most of which has been left uninhabitable by Israeli bombardments, said at least...

Since Hamas fighters stormed across the border on October 7, Israeli forces have targeted structures in Gaza within a kilometre (0.6 miles) of the border, said Adi Ben Nun, a professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem who has carried out an analysis of satellite imagery.

Scaling up attacks in the Middle East, US and UK carried out joint air raids in Yemen after a separate wave of US strikes on targets in Iraq and Syria carried out in response to the killing of three US soldiers in Jordan. It is the third time the western...

Osama Hamdan, a top Hamas official in Lebanon, said the movement's leaders were reviewing a proposed framework hammered out by top officials from Israel, Qatar, Egypt and the United States. Speaking at a news conference, he said Hamas "has repeatedly said" it was "open to discussing any initiative.

Palestinian group Hamas condemned overnight US strikes in Iraq and Syria, saying Washington had poured "oil on the fire" in the Middle East. The US "bears responsibility for the consequences of this brutal aggression against both Iraq and Syria, which pour oil on the fire," the group said in a...

The strikes hit "locations in the Akashat and Al-Qaim regions, including areas where our security forces are stationed", Awadi said. The United States carried out the strikes on Friday in retaliation for the killing of three US military personnel in a drone attack on a base close to Jordan's border...

ABU DHABI, UAE – As per the directives of President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan announced that the UAE has allocated US$5 million to support the efforts of the United Nations Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza. Sheikh...

Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have fled south to Rafah since the outbreak of the war, with the former city of 200,000 now housing more than half of Gaza's two million-plus population, a WHO representative said Friday. The United Nations' humanitarian agency OCHA said it was deeply concerned about...

The attack was the latest in a series of drone and missile strikes launched by the Houthis since the start of the Gaza war between Israel and Palestinian fighters group Hamas nearly four months ago. The Houthis have also repeatedly targeted vessels in the Red Sea with strikes they say...

"Any (US) strike will result in an appropriate response," Al-Nujaba leader Akram al-Kaabi said in a statement, adding the group would continue its actions until its demands are met for US troops to leave Iraq and an end to Israel's war on Hamas in Gaza.

"Each one has a heartbreaking story of loss and grief," said Jonathan Crickx, spokesman for the UN children's agency UNICEF in the Palestinian territories. "This figure corresponds to one percent of the overall displaced population -- 1.7 million people," he told a media briefing.

A Hamas source had told AFP the three-stage plan would start with an initial six-week halt to the fighting that would see more aid deliveries into Gaza. Only "women, children and sick men over 60" held by fighters would be freed during that stage in exchange for Palestinian captives in...

ISTANBUL, TURKEY - An assailant on Thursday took a number of people hostage at a plant owned by US cosmetics giant Procter & Gamble near Istanbul in protest at the war in Gaza, a police spokesman said. It was not immediately clear how many people were being held at the plant,...

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said that "if the funding remains suspended, we will most likely be forced to shut down our operations by end of February not only in Gaza but also across the region". Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said after talks with Lazzarini that he "emphasized the immediate...

The trip comes days after the Democratic incumbent's campaign manager traveled to the city of Dearborn -- home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States -- only to be snubbed by the Detroit suburb's mayor. It was an ominous sign for Biden, for whom swing states...

CENTCOM earlier announced that the USS Carney had shot down an anti-ship ballistic missile fired by the Houthis, and then downed three Iranian drones less than an hour later. It did not specify if the drones shot down by the naval destroyer were designed for attack or surveillance.

Palestinian Territories - International efforts towards a new pause in the devastating Gaza war gathered pace Wednesday, as Israel bombarded the Palestinian territory during fierce fighting with Palestinian fighters. Hamas was reviewing a proposal for a six-week truce in its war with Israel, a source told AFP, after mediators gathered...