US and British forces have launched two rounds of joint strikes aimed at reducing the Houthis' ability to target vessels transiting the key Red Sea maritime trade route. The attacks by the rebels -- who are part of the anti-Israel have disrupted trade in the Red Sea, which carries around...

Jerusalem, Undefined - Israeli flag carrier El Al said Friday it will scrap direct flights to South Africa following "a significant fall in demand by Israeli travelers" to the country and other destinations."From the end of March 2024, El Al will suspend its operations on the Johannesburg-Tel Aviv route," an El...

"WHO refutes Israel's accusation at the executive board meeting yesterday that WHO is in 'collusion' with Hamas and is 'turning a blind eye' to the suffering of hostages being held in Gaza," WHO chief Tedros said on X. "Such false claims are harmful and can endanger our staff who are...

At this stage, the ICJ is only deciding whether to impose emergency orders on Israel ("provisional measures" in the court's jargon). A ruling on whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza will be for a second stage of the procedure and is likely to take years.

The top UN court said Israel should do everything it could to prevent any acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip, in a highly anticipated ruling. Israel must do everything to "prevent the commission of all acts within the scope" of the Genocide Convention, said the International Court of Justice.

India's urban unemployment rate -- the percentage of people wanting work who cannot find a job -- dipped to 5.1 percent in July 2022-June 2023, from 6.6 percent between the same months a year earlier. Over the same period, nearly 22 percent of India's workforce was classified as "casual labour",...

According to Axios, Israel has offered Hamas a two-month pause in fighting in Gaza in exchange for the release of all hostages. Vowing to crush Hamas, Israel has launched a relentless military campaign that has killed at least 25,900 people in the Palestinian territory, mostly women and children, according to...

"The army called the UNRWA official through the loudspeaker, she went over to them next to the tanks, and they told her to notify us to vacate the premises by 5 pm tomorrow," said Amal Lubbad, a displaced Gazan at the facility. "We don't know where we'll go."

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich commented after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was caught on tape allegedly telling hostages' families this week that Qatar's mediation was "problematic" when it came to resolving the hostage crisis. Smotrich accused Western governments of being "hypocritical" in maintaining close relations with Doha.

The deadly incident came after the Israeli army said it had encircled the city, where footage released by the military showed soldiers engaged in urban combat amid ruined buildings. Hamas's press office also reported fierce clashes in the center and west of Khan Yunis, while its health ministry counted multiple...

Israeli prime minister accused Qatar of financing Hamas at a meeting this week with the families of hostages held in Gaza. Making his annoyance with the country known, he said he was upset at a US decision to extend the presence of a military base in the Gulf state, according...

Palestinian Territories - Tank shelling on a UN shelter on Wednesday killed nine people in Gaza's main southern city of Khan Yunis, said the Gaza head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees."Two tank rounds hit building that shelters 800 people - reports now 9 dead and 75 injured," Thomas White,...

Basil Shehadeh was arrested on suspicion of helping two other Palestinians carry out the deadly shooting at a petrol station near Eli settlement in the northern West Bank.

"Heavy fighting is reported in proximity to hospitals in Khan Yunis, including Al-Aqsa, Nasser and Al-Amal, with reports of Palestinians trying to flee to the southern town of Rafah," the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said. "No-one can enter or exit (Nasser Hospital) due to ongoing bombardments," OCHA said citing medics...

US and Britain have carried out two rounds of joint strikes aimed at reducing the Houthis' ability to target shipping, while the US has also launched unilateral air raids on the Iran-backed rebels' missiles. Washington is seeking to put diplomatic and financial pressure on the Houthis, redesignating them as a...

In a speech to the Security Council, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres demanded that "Israel's occupation must end." Guterres warned that "this refusal and the denial" of the right to statehood to the Palestinian people would indefinitely prolong a conflict that has become a major threat to global peace and...

Raisi will meet Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the capital Ankara, making a visit that was postponed twice -- once in November and once earlier this month -- because of spiraling tensions across the Middle East.

A study conducted between November 24 and December 7 found that all 2.2 million people living in the Palestinian territory were in a crisis level of acute food insecurity, or worse. The situation has only deteriorated since then, said Abeer Etefa, the WFP's senior Middle East spokeswoman.

American and British forces carried out a first wave of strikes against the rebel group earlier this month, and the United States launched further air raids against missiles that Washington said posed imminent threats to both civilian and military vessels. But the Houthis have vowed to continue their attacks --...

Since the outbreak of war between Hamas and Israel on October 7, the Lebanese-Israeli border has witnessed a near-daily exchange of fire between Israel's army and Lebanon's Shiite movement Hizbollah, an ally of Gaza-based Hamas. On Monday, Hizbollah announced that three of its fighters had been killed "on the road...

"We worked to find the victims until the last hours," military spokesman Daniel Hagari said, indicating the difficulty in extracting bodies buried under the rubble. "Our reservists sacrificed what was dearest to them, so that we could all live here in complete safety,” he said.

A separate campaign is urging supporters to write Biden's name on the ballot in exactly the same manner that "Vote Ceasefire" is promoting. The outcome will not affect the nomination process in any case, as the Democratic National Committee has declared the New Hampshire primary illegitimate.

The US news site Axios reported, citing unnamed Israeli officials, that the deal would take place in multiple stages, the first of which would see the release of women, men over 60 and those in critical medical condition. Later phases would involve the release of soldiers, younger civilian men, and...

Since the outbreak of war between Hamas and Israel on October 7, the Lebanese-Israeli border has witnessed a near-daily exchange of fire between Israel's army and Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah, an ally of Gaza-based Hamas. On Monday, HIzbollah announced that two of its fighters had been killed "on the road...

Abdelrahman Iyad, wounded in Gaza and now being treated aboard the French helicopter carrier Dixmude, docked in Egypt, said he did not have time to leave his house before it was hit. "I was with my parents, my brother, my sister, my second sister and her husband and their daughter....

The bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell risked incurring Israel's wrath by accusing it on Friday of having "created" and "financed" Hamas to undermine the prospect for a possible Palestinian state. Borrell insisted the only way to get an enduring peace in the region was for a two-state solution to...

Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 25,105 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. The healthcare system has almost entirely collapsed, with hospitals overwhelmed and doctors having to treat a growing number of casualties with dwindling resources.

A Lebanese security official said the Israeli strike on a car in south Lebanon "killed a member of Hizbollah's protection team", adding that the senior commander he was protecting "escaped death". Since the war began between Hamas and Israel, the Lebanese-Israeli border has seen near-daily exchanges of fire between Israel's...

The group admitted in a 16-page report justifying the attack that "some faults happened... due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the border areas with Gaza". The document was the group's first public report released in English and Arabic explaining...

"Dozens are still under the rubble," the Hamas government's media office said, adding that the dead and injured "could not be transferred to hospitals due to the continued artillery shelling on... Khan Yunis and the Tal al-Hawa area in Gaza City and the north".

In its final summit communique, the Non-Aligned Movement on Saturday "strongly condemned the illegal Israeli military aggression against the Gaza Strip", and called for "a lasting humanitarian ceasefire". The assembled leaders in Kampala also called for "the independence and sovereignty of the State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its...

Demonstrators marched through the city's Habima Square, a frequent protest site, with some carrying signs calling Netanyahu "the face of evil" and demanding "elections now". Protesters demanding the return of hostages also gathered in Haifa and outside the premier's Jerusalem residence.

Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi vowed not to let the "cowardly assassination" go unanswered. Israel has been blamed for intensifying strikes targeting senior Iranian and allied figures in Syria and Lebanon -- backers of the Palestinian movement Hamas -- raising fears that fighting in the Gaza Strip could spread further.

A senior Hamas official dismissed comments by US President Joe Biden about the possibility of Israel agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Biden said it was still possible that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could agree to some form of Palestinian state after the two leaders spoke by...

Washington is seeking to reduce the Iran-backed Houthis' capabilities, but the Yemeni rebels are still able to attack despite a week of strikes, and they have vowed that they will keep targeting merchant vessels. The Houthis began striking Red Sea shipping in November, saying they were hitting Israeli-linked vessels in support...

Three UN agencies -- the World Food Program (WFP), UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) -- pushed for the opening of Ashdod in a joint statement on Monday. The use of Ashdod, located some 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of the Gaza border, is "critically needed by aid agencies,"...

Netanyahu has said Israel expects the war to continue for months, but his comments on Thursday rejecting a so-called two-state solution suggested a rift with key backer the United States. Biden said after Friday's call with Netanyahu, with whom he has had a complicated relationship over some 40 years, it...

Hamas was created in December 1987 shortly after the start of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories by a group of fighters claiming to be from the Muslim Brotherhood, including the influential Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Twenty years later, in June 2007, Hamas took control of...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week said Israel would not get "genuine security" without a "pathway to a Palestinian state." Israel's relentless air and ground offensive has killed at least 24,762 Palestinians, around 70 percent of them women, young children and...

Thousands of Gazan men may have been detained by Israeli forces since war erupted on October 7, often facing conditions that could amount to torture, the UN's human rights representative in the Palestinian territories said. Some of those released have reported being blindfolded, beaten and ultimately freed wearing only diapers,...

Palestinians held funerals and assessed the damage of a days-long Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank, where violence has surged since war erupted in Gaza. Israeli forces withdrew on Friday after raiding the Tulkarem area for almost two days, during which the military said troops killed "at least eight...

Internet services in the Gaza Strip have been constantly disrupted throughout the war, with telecom firms blaming Israel's bombardment of the besieged territory for the outages. The "near-total telecoms blackout" has now lasted for 168 hours, NetBlocks posted on X.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has been targeted with a criminal complaint during a visit to Switzerland, Swiss prosecutors said, amid allegations of crimes against humanity over the war in Gaza. The Federal Prosecutor's Office (BA) confirmed that it had received a criminal complaint against the Israeli president, who was in...

BEIRUT, LEBANON - "Good morning, madame. This is the bank calling. Are you at home?"  Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out more than three months ago, residents of southern Lebanon have been receiving strange phone calls from Lebanese numbers and from people speaking in Lebanese accents.The voices on the other end...

Beijing, China--China called for an end to "harassment" of civilian vessels in the Red Sea on Friday after attacks on ships by Houthi rebels in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.Houthi aggression against vessels in and around the Red Sea has led to retaliatory strikes in Yemen by US and British forces.Some shipping...

Francesca Albanese, an Italian lawyer who is the UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, told a Madrid news conference that Israel had done a "number of things that are highly illegal, highly unlawful." Her comments came as Israel confronts a case brought by South Africa to the UN's ICJ...

ISTANBUL, TURKEY -  Turkish first division club Basaksekir on Thursday sent Israeli midfielder Eden Karzev on loan to Maccabi Tel Aviv following a probe into his repost of a social media message calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas.The Istanbul side launched disciplinary proceedings against Karzev earlier this week after...

In the occupied West Bank, where violence has soared alongside the war in Gaza, an Israeli raid continued into a second day around Tulkarem, an official said. Palestinian health officials reported a sixth person had been killed in the operation. Tensions flared further in the wider region, following Pakistani strikes...

A Houthi military official told the rebels's Al-Masirah TV that fighters will continue to target Israeli ships heading to "the ports of occupied Palestine, no matter how the American-British aggression tries to prevent us from doing so." US media quoted US officials as saying another round of strikes had been...

At least 24,448 Palestinians, more than 70 percent of them women, young children and adolescents, have been killed in Israeli bombardments and ground assaults, according to the Gaza health ministry's latest figures. "When we talk about rebuilding Gaza, it's not anymore like before, where we had to rehabilitate some shelter and...