Palestinian Territories -- The health ministry in Gaza said five patients died Friday due to lack of oxygen at one of the war-torn Palestinian territory's few operating hospitals that had been raided by Israeli forces. "A fifth patient at Nasser hospital was martyred as a result of the stopping of...

Access to reliable, high-speed internet will "enable potentially life-saving medical consultations via real-time video calling," UAE Foreign Ministry spokesperson Afra Al Hameli said on social media, welcoming the deal. Gaza's hospitals have been overwhelmed by more than four months of war, during which 68,291 people have been wounded according to...

In a telephone call that saw Macron toughen his tone, the French leader expressed France's "firm opposition" to an Israeli offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, saying it "could only lead to a humanitarian disaster of a new magnitude" and create a new risk of regional escalation, according...

Hizbollah and Israeli army have traded near-daily fire since war broke out on October 7 between Israel and the Palestinian militant group in the Gaza Strip. In the past few days, a series of Israeli strikes has injured officials from Lebanese and Palestinian armed groups in southern Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered his military to prepare for an offensive in the southern Gaza city, where the UN says roughly 1.4 million Palestinians are sheltering after fleeing fighting in other areas of the territory. Israel has carried out a relentless bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza...

DUBAI, UAE- As Houthi attacks roil the Red Sea and Western air raids target the rebels, moves to end Yemen's long-running war are at a standstill, threatening further woe for a country on its knees. As recently as December, painstaking negotiations were gaining ground and the United Nations said the warring...

UN human rights chief Volker Turk urged world powers to "restrain rather than enable" as fears of a looming ground incursion grew among more than one million Palestinians trapped in the territory's far south. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to send ground troops into the crowded Rafah area as...

Despite the last COP in the United Arab Emirates ending with an unprecedented call to "transition" away from fossil fuels, an analysis by the NGO Global Witness based on data from Rystad Energy shows that the upcoming COP29 host aims to hike its gas production from 35 billion cubic meters...

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.

Yemen's Houthi rebels, supported by Iran, have launched dozens of attacks against ships in the Red Sea since November, targeting boats headed for Israel in an act of "solidarity" with inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, which is in the grip of the war between Israel and Hamas. Despite retaliatory strikes...

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."

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.

Strasbourg, France - The EU on Tuesday urged a 90-percent cut to its greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, even as the bloc's transition to a greener future was clouded by a widespread farmers' revolt. "Based on the best available science, and a detailed impact assessment, we are recommending that the 2040 target...

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...

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...

Since the relentless Israeli aerial and ground assault, triggered by Hamas's deadly October 7 attacks inside Israel, the United Nations said the decline in living conditions had been "precipitous". The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimated that by late November, 37,379 buildings -- the equivalent of 18 percent...

Several countries, including the United States, Britain, Germany and Japan, have suspended funding to the UNRWA agency, and the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was holding crunch talks with donor countries. Agency chiefs in the UN's highest-level humanitarian coordination forum warned defunding UNRWA risked a "catastrophic" humanitarian collapse in Gaza.

Heavy Israeli strikes and urban combat across the besieged Gaza Strip killed 128 more people overnight, the health ministry in the Palestinian territory said. The epicenter of fighting has been the southern city of Khan Yunis, where vast areas have been reduced to a muddy wasteland of bombed-out buildings.

Several countries, including the United States, France, Britain, Germany and Japan, have announced the suspension of further funding to the agency. "The secretary-general is personally horrified by the accusations against employees of UNRWA," Guterres's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Monday.

Sheikh Mohammed confirmed that the framework -- which he said might lead to a permanent ceasefire -- includes a phased truce that would see women and children hostages released first, with aid also entering besieged Gaza. A senior Hamas official, Taher al-Nunu, said it wanted a "complete and comprehensive ceasefire,...

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz called on UNRWA Commissioner-General to quit his post. Katz said in a statement that the UNRWA "must be replaced with agencies dedicated to genuine peace" in Gaza's rebuilding. Hamas slammed Israeli "threats" against UNRWA, urging the UN not to "cave in to the threats and...

Waving Palestinian flags and shouting slogans denouncing Israel, protestors expressed gratitude to South Africa for having brought the case against Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Spain has been one of the most critical voices in Europe of Israel's offensive against Hamas and was one of those to...

Australia and Canada have suspended their funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, after Israel accused several employees of involvement in Hamas's October 7 attack. Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said she was "deeply concerned" by the allegations against the agency, UNRWA.

The reactions to the top UN court's ruling Friday in the Israel-Gaza case were split along the lines of the war raging in the Palestinian territory. Saudi Arabia welcomed the ICJ's decision and called for the international community to "hold Israel accountable" for "violations" of international law.

"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...

Washington, United States -- A US Navy warship shot down a missile Friday that was fired at it by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have carried out two months of attacks on international shipping, the military said. US and British forces have launched two rounds of joint strikes aimed at reducing...

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.

TRIPOLI, LIBYA - The flood that devastated Libya's eastern port city of Derna last year has impacted up to 1.5 million people and will require $1.8 billion for reconstruction, according to a new report. On September 10, Storm Daniel hit the east coast of Libya, causing floods that collapsed two dams...

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...

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...

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...

The expulsion followed joint strikes by the United States and Britain against the Houthis aimed at ending the group's attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, threatening global trade. The United States has launched multiple further strikes and on Tuesday carried out a second set...

The conflict has claimed more than 13,000 lives, according to a conservative estimate by the ACLED analysis group, on which the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) bases its assessment. Millions of people have been displaced. But "according to intelligence sources, between 10,000-15,000 people were killed in El Geneina...

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....

"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...

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...

"International tourism is expected to fully recover pre-pandemic levels in 2024, with initial estimates pointing to 2.0 percent growth above 2019 levels," the Madrid-based agency said in a statement. Figures for last year showed that 1.3 billion tourists travelled abroad, 44 percent higher than in 2022 and 88 percent of...

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...

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...

Emergency medical team coordinator Sean Casey said that during some five weeks he spent in Gaza, he saw hospital patients "every day with severe burns, with open fractures waiting hours or days" for treatment. "They would often ask me for food or water -- that demonstrates the level of desperation...

Once flush with humanitarian aid following the US-led invasion of the country, funding to Afghanistan has plummeted since the Taliban returned to power in mid-2021, in part over the many restrictions imposed on women. The poorest are left with distressing choices: fall into debt, take their kids out of school...

Israel had four divisions operating in Gaza before Monday's announced withdrawal, though it was unclear how many soldiers were involved in the pullout. The war broke out after Hamas fighters launched an unprecedented attack and Israel responded by bombarding the territory by land, sea and air, killing more than 24,000...

The paramilitary leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo has been touring African capitals in a boost to his diplomatic standing. Rejecting the invitation from east African bloc IGAD to a summit in Uganda, Sudan's army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan insisted: "The events in Sudan are an internal matter."

Britain, the United States and eight allies said the strikes aimed to "de-escalate tensions". But Iran and other governments condemned the Western action or warned that unrest could worsen. The UN Security Council was due to hold an emergency meeting on the strikes on Friday, days after adopting a resolution...

Andrea De Domenico, head of the UN aid agency OCHA's office in the occupied Palestinian territories, described how detailed coordination was required with a network of checkpoints, and "the Israelis have systematically, or quasi-systematically, refused" to let them through. In recent days, he said the agency had had three missions...

A world away from the death and destruction in Gaza and Israel, robed lawyers battled it out over technical legal arguments in the Peace Palace in The Hague. South Africa argues Israel is breaking its commitments under the UN Genocide Convention, a treaty signed in 1948 in the wake of...

The International Energy Agency said that the renewable energy capacity added to energy systems went up 50 percent in 2023, touching almost 510 gigawatts, with solar PV accounting for three-quarters of additions worldwide. Nearly 200 nations at the COP28 summit last month agreed to transition away from fossil fuels.

"Delivering humanitarian aid in Gaza continues to face nearly insurmountable challenges," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference. "Intense bombardment, restrictions on movement, fuel shortages, and interrupted communications make it impossible for WHO and our partners to reach those in need."