By late Wednesday, the number of displaced people in Gaza had risen by an additional 75,000 people from the figure given 24 hours earlier, reaching 338,934, it said. The announcement came as Israel pounded Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip -- a densely populated enclave of 2.3 million people --...

Demanding that aid be immediately allowed to go into the besieged enclave, Arab foreign minister condemned Israel's siege of Gaza in the wake of the shock attack by Palestinian militants on Israel. It has imposed a "complete siege" on the Gaza Strip, cutting off the water supply, food, electricity and...

Thierry Breton, EU commissioner and self-styled "digital enforcer", raised the alarm in letters sent to Elon Musk, owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, and Mark Zuckerberg, whose Meta group includes Facebook and Instagram.

Reports about "40 babies murdered" have been reposted massively on social media sites since Tuesday, and used to condemn Hamas's armed offensive against Israel, which began on Saturday.

The three-member "war cabinet" would include Netanyahu, Gantz and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, according to the statement. It said Gadi Eisenkot, also a former army chief from Gantz's party, and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer will serve as observers.

"Soldiers are responding with artillery and mortar shells toward the origin of the launching in Syria," an Israeli military statement said, on the fourth day of a war with Gaza-based Hamas militants that has sent regional tensions soaring. The military said there had been "a number of launches from Syria...

"Equity markets are bouncing back on Tuesday after a risk-averse start to the week, buoyed... by some promising Fed commentary," said analyst Craig Erlam at trading firm OANDA.

Geneva, Switzerland--Israel's total siege of the Gaza Strip, depriving civilians of goods essential for survival, is banned under international law, the United Nations human rights chief said on Tuesday. Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said people's dignity and lives had to be respected as he called for...

Dubai, UAE--Condemning Israel's relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip, Qatar's top diplomat has urged Western countries to exert pressure on the Tel Aviv regime to immediately stop its attacks against Palestinians. According to Mehr News Agency, Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani held talks over the...

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman tells Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas that he was working to prevent an expansion of conflict between Israel and Gaza.

The UN's World Food Programme expressed concern over the mounting challenges civilians, including vulnerable children and families, face in accessing essential food supplies, with food distribution networks disrupted by hostilities. The WFP is concerned about stocks in food shops and the impact of power cuts in the Gaza Strip.

Caught unawares by the surprise attack, PM Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Israelis to prepare for a "long and difficult war" with Hamas, raising concerns of a much wider conflict.

Washington, United States -- US President Joe Biden has ordered "additional support" for Israel after the attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas, the White House said Sunday, without giving further details. "The President directed additional support for Israel in the face of this unprecedented terrorist assault by Hamas," the White House...

PARIS, FRANCE - The Gaza Strip is an impoverished Palestinian enclave that has been under Israeli blockade since 2007. It is ruled by Hamas (the Arabic acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement), now at war with Israel for the fifth time in 15 years. Here is what you need to know about Gaza:...

President Joe Biden said US support for Israel was "rock solid and unwavering". "The United States stands with Israel," Biden said in a televised statement at the White House, flanked by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

World calls for restraint as Palestinian death toll reaches 232 and Israeli casualties cross 200, prompting a vow of retaliation from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Violence has surged in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since early last year, particularly in the West Bank where eight Palestinians have now been killed in Israeli incursions since Tuesday. "Two Palestinians were killed by live Israeli bullets to the head" during the pre-dawn raid, the ministry said.

A drone "struck a military post belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization, adjacent to the area where a violent riot was taking place", the army said. It added that "shots were fired toward" Israeli soldiers near the border during the strike, without reporting any casualties.

Gaza City, Palestinian Territories - Four Roman tombs dating back 2,000 years have been discovered in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian archaeologist said on Saturday, bemoaning a lack of resources that has delayed excavations in the besieged territory. "With the discovery of these four tombs, the total number of tombs in this...

In recent days, violence has also risen in the Gaza Strip, with Palestinians in the coastal enclave holding protests along the Israeli border fence that have turned violent. The violence in Gaza follows an Israeli announcement late on Sunday that it would keep the Erez border crossing closed. The crossing...

The report published on Wednesday by the UK-based organization Save the Children said that nearly 400 children in Gaza, at least two children per day, were denied permits to travel to the West Bank and receive critical treatment in the first six months of 2023.

The Kerem Shalom crossing, the only point of entry for goods between Gaza and Israel, was closed last week after the Israeli army said it found explosives hidden within a clothing delivery carried in three trucks. Israeli army chief of staff Herzi Halevi last Monday ordered an immediate halt of...

A cat cafe in the Gaza Strip aims to "cheer up" Palestinian residents and offer them a respite from the trials of daily life in the blockaded territory, its owner said.

Cinemas were forced to close in the late 1980s during the first Palestinian uprising, or intifada. They reopened following the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s but for years have largely been gathering dust.

GAZA CITY, PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES - Israel returned a boat to a Gaza fisherman it had seized for allegedly breaching the limits of the Palestinian enclave's fishing zone, an NGO said on Sunday, following an Israeli court order. Israeli authorities had called for the vessel, belonging to fisherman Mohammad al-Hissi, to be permanently...

Exhibitions are also scheduled to take place on Saturday in the north and center of the Gaza Strip, where people are normally forbidden to approach and photograph military sites.

A day after the Israeli army killed six Palestinians, four people were killed on Tuesday near a settlement in the occupied West Bank. Around 100 Jewish settlers attacked residents and set fire to olive groves in Huwara, near Nablus. The deaths are the latest in a surge of violence, leaving...

With 45 percent unemployment in Gaza, according to the International Monetary Fund, Khoudair's bees provide her with a job.

In total, 103 homes were completely destroyed and 140 severely damaged in Israeli military strikes, the United Nations said.

The foreign ministers of Egypt, France, Germany and Jordan called for an end to the violence between Israel and Gaza militants, who have been trading heavy fire for three days. The four ministers said later in a joint statement that they were "deeply alarmed" by the escalation.

Israel told the UN it was justified in carrying out strikes on Gaza, even as its overall human rights record met resounding criticism from several countries. Following the pre-dawn strikes that killed 13 people, including several children, an Israel Defense Forces representative said the attacks adhered to the law of...

According to the health ministry of the Hamas-ruled Gaza, 12 people were killed, including women and children. Among the deceased were also three senior officials of Islamic Jihad whom the Israeli army had targeted in the attack. An AFP journalist in the area spotted the top of a building on...

The pro-Palestinian rallies follow months of unrest in Iran sparked by the September death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young women arrested for an alleged breach of strict dress rules. The rallies, an annual fixture since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, are held on the last Friday of Ramadan.

Mohammed Fayez Balhan, 15, was killed after being shot "with live occupation (Israeli) bullets in the head, chest and abdomen", the Palestinian ministry said. An earlier statement said two people were injured by "occupation (Israeli) bullets".

Following the killing of three people in the West Bank and Tel Aviv, Israel has mobilized police and army reserves in the latest escalation of violence in the Middle East. In spite of appeals for restraint, violence has spiked since Israel police stormed into Al-Aqsa mosque on Wednesday and beat...

On Thursday, the Israeli army said more than 30 rockets had been fired from Lebanese territory into Israel in the largest escalation on the northern border since Israel and Hezbollah fought a 34-day war in 2006. It was the first time Israel has confirmed an attack on Lebanese territory since...

Tensions have soared between Israel and Palestinians during what is both the Jewish Passover and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, prompting international calls for restraint. On Thursday, the Israeli army said more than 30 rockets had been fired from Lebanese territory into Israel in the largest escalation on the...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said the parliamentary vote scraps "a discriminatory and humiliating law, that prohibited Jews from living in areas in northern Samaria, which is part of our historic homeland," using the biblical name for the northern West Bank.

The parliamentary vote notably paves the way for Israeli authorities to formally allow settlers to return to Homesh, the only one of the four sites whose residents were forcibly removed before their homes were demolished. Most governments around the world consider all Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories as illegal...

Cairo, Egypt - Israeli and Palestinian officials were holding talks in Egypt on Sunday "to restore calm" after a surge in deadly violence in the occupied West Bank, Egypt's foreign ministry said. The meeting, which follows similar talks last month in Jordan where both sides pledged to prevent more violence, comes...

Dozens of Israeli settlers set homes and cars ablaze in the northern town of Huwara overnight, after a day of Israeli-Palestinian talks in neighboring Jordan aimed at quelling a surge in violence in the Palestinian territory. The violence came hours after two Israeli settlers -- brothers Yagel Yaniv and Hallel...

The Palestinian Red Crescent said one person was killed in a pre-dawn Israeli army raid in Nablus in the northern West Bank, the scene of near-relentless violence over the past year.

Hamas confirmed its fighters were among the dead, saying in a statement the Gaza-based group was mourning members of its military wing killed "in an armed clash with the Zionist occupation". The early morning Israeli raid came amid a spike in Israeli-Palestinian violence and after days of what Jericho authorities...

The army stressed it was not rocket or other fire that posed a threat to Israelis. "It was not a projectile launch. Full routine continues on the Israeli home front," it said in a statement.

During the three-decade rule of Islamist general Omar al-Bashir, Sudan was one of the staunchest supporters of Hamas and other militant groups, but since his ouster following mass protests in April 2019, the policy has been dropped. A spokesperson for Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian militant group, described the move as...

Gaza City, Palestinian Territories--Ramadan Abu Saif looked on as bulldozers ploughed into his neighbor's Gaza City home, knowing his could be next as an infrastructure project surges forward in the impoverished Palestinian enclave. Last month, Hamas that governs Gaza began demolishing 62 houses at Al-Shati refugee camp as they widen the...

Gaza City, Palestinian Territories--Israel conducted air strikes on the central Gaza Strip early Thursday, according to AFP journalists and witnesses, hours after intercepting a rocket fired from the Palestinian territory. New rounds of rockets were fired from Gaza after these strikes, and fresh explosions could be heard from Gaza City at...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Egypt at the start of a Middle East trip on which he will look to notch down Israeli-Palestinian tensions after an eruption of violence. Blinken, who will travel Monday and Tuesday to Jerusalem and Ramallah after his stop in Cairo, had planned...

An assailant shot and wounded two people in east Jerusalem, Israeli medics said, hours after a Palestinian gunman killed seven outside a synagogue in one of the deadliest such attacks in years. Police said the suspect was "neutralized" following the latest gun attack in the Silwan neighborhood, just outside Jerusalem's...

Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian in the West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said, in what the army described as a "stabbing attack". The ministry said that Arref Abdel Nasser Arref Lahlouh, 22, was killed "by Israeli gunfire," near the city of Qalqilya. Lahlou is the 19th Palestinian killed...