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Israel seizes Gaza's vital Rafah crossing, but the US says it isn't the full invasion many fear

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  • Israel is spying on Hezbollah commanders — and killing them one by one

    Israel has assassinated two dozen Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon since last fall amid an intelligence war employing cellphones, drones and fake rocks.

  • Analysis-Battered Hamas confounds Israel's bid to declare victory

    Senior figures in Israel's government have said it is closing in on its war aims of defeating Hamas militarily and the return of hostages seized on Oct. 7. After nine months of pummelling by one of the most powerful militaries in the Middle East, Hamas is much weakened from the force that carried out the cross-border attack on Israel on Oct. 7. Early in the war, Hamas propaganda videos showed well-drilled fighters in body armour and battle fatigues, their torsos wrapped with ammunition belts.

  • Harris 'will not be silent' on Gaza after tough talks with Netanyahu

    Kamala Harris signaled a major shift on US Gaza policy Thursday, with the presidential hopeful telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seal a peace deal and insisting she would not be "silent" on the suffering in the Palestinian enclave."As I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done," she said.

  • Scorn as Bangladesh PM weeps at train station damage

    Many said she did not appear to express the same level of sympathy towards those who had died.

  • Gang kills women and children in Papua New Guinea massacre - reports

    Police say a gang attacked three remote villages in Papua New Guinea, killing at least two dozen.

  • Israeli troops battle Palestinian fighters in Gaza city of Khan Younis

    Israeli troops battled Palestinian fighters in Khan Younis in southern Gaza and destroyed tunnels and other infrastructure, as they sought to suppress small militant units that have continued to hit troops with mortar fire, the military said on Friday. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said troops had killed around 100 Palestinian fighters since Israeli troops began their latest operation in Khan Younis on Monday, which continued as pressure mounted for a deal to halt the fighting. It said seven small units that had been firing mortars at the troops were hit in an air strike, while further south, in Rafah, four fighters were also killed in air strikes.

  • Why suspicions are surrounding Left-wing radicals over France rail line attack

    French intelligence sources hinted that the massive sabotage attack on rail lines leading to Paris on Friday may have been the work of Left-wing radicals.

  • Israeli military recovers five hostages' bodies in Gaza

    The remains of a teacher and four soldiers were found in an operation in Khan Younis on Wednesday.

  • Exclusive-Israel seeks changes to Gaza truce plan, complicating talks, sources say

    WASHINGTON/CAIRO (Reuters) -Israel is seeking changes to a plan for a Gaza truce and the release of hostages by Hamas, complicating a final deal to halt nine months of combat that have devastated the enclave, according to a Western official, a Palestinian and two Egyptian sources. Israel says that displaced Palestinians should be screened as they return to the enclave's north when the ceasefire begins, retreating from an agreement to allow civilians who fled south to freely return home, the four sources told Reuters. Israeli negotiators "want a vetting mechanism for civilian populations returning to the north of Gaza, where they fear these populations could support” Hamas fighters who remain entrenched there, said the Western official.

  • Maggots and worms released at Benjamin Netanyahu’s Washington hotel amid Gaza war protests

    Video posted on social media shows insects crawling inside Watergate Hotel in Washington DC

  • The bombshell legal ruling that made it impossible for Australia to delay sanctions against Israeli settlers

    Labor is ‘carefully considering’ the ICJ findings on the occupied Palestinian territories – and soon it will have to give its view

  • ‘We cannot remain silent about what we saw.’ US doctors who volunteered in Gaza demand ceasefire in letter to White House

    A group of 45 American doctors and nurses describe bloodshed in Gaza in an open letter to the White House, and demand immediate ceasefire.

  • Watch: Maggots dumped inside Netanyahu’s Washington hotel

    Pro-Palestine protesters have dumped thousands of maggots, mealworms and crickets inside the Washington hotel where Benjamin Netanyahu was staying.

  • Palestinian Olympic team greeted with cheers and gifts in Paris

    Palestinian Olympic athletes were greeted with a roar of a crowd and gifts of food and roses as they arrived in Paris on Thursday, ready to represent war–torn Gaza and the rest of the territories on a global stage. As the beaming athletes walked through a sea of Palestinian flags at the main Paris airport, they said they hoped their presence would serve as a symbol amid the Israel-Hamas war that has claimed more than 39,000 Palestinian lives. Athletes, French supporters and politicians in the crowd urged the European nation to recognize a Palestinian state, while others expressed outrage at Israel's presence at the Games after U.N.-backed human rights experts said Israeli authorities were responsible for “war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

  • Bangladesh PM surveys destruction as unrest recedes

    Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina wept on Thursday as she surveyed the destruction wrought by days of deadly unrest, as student leaders weighed the future of the protests that sparked the disorder. "We demand an apology from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to the nation for the mass murder of students," Asif Mahmud, one of the group's coordinators, told AFP.  "We also want the sacking of the home minister and education minister."

  • Bangladesh protest leaders taken from hospital by police

    Bangladeshi police detectives on Friday forced the discharge from hospital of three student protest leaders blamed for deadly unrest, taking them to an unknown location, staff told AFP. Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organising this month's street rallies against civil service hiring rules.Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that

  • How Biden’s Gaza pier project unraveled

    The first time President Joe Biden's administration considered ordering the U.S. military to build a floating pier off Gaza to deliver aid in late 2023, it was put on the backburner. The United States was under pressure to ease the humanitarian crisis in the war-torn Palestinian enclave, which had been worsened by Israel's closure of many land border crossings, and sea deliveries were seen as a possible solution. U.S. Admiral Christopher Grady, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a career Navy surface warfare officer, told a meeting that he was very concerned that the sea could become too rough for a pier to deliver humanitarian aid and laid out weather-related risks, a former U.S. official and a current U.S. official said.

  • Italy plans to return an ambassador to Syria to reflect new diplomatic developments, minister says

    Italy plans to send an ambassador back to Syria after a decade-long absence, the country’s foreign minister said, in a diplomatic move that could spark divisions among European Union allies. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, speaking in front of relevant parliamentary committees Thursday, announced Rome’s intention to re-establish diplomatic ties with Syria to prevent Russia from monopolizing diplomatic efforts in the Middle Eastern country. Moscow is considered a key supporter of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has remained in power despite widespread Western isolation and civilian casualties since the start of Syria’s civil war in March 2011.

  • Analyst: Netanyahu played to Republicans in U.S. Congress

    STORY: :: Netanyahu played to a Republican audience on his U.S. visit, this analyst says:: Khaled Elgindy:: Arlington, Virginia:: July 24, 2024“I think it was very much on brand and in character for Netanyahu, who after all, presides over the most right-wing government in Israel's history. So, he was speaking in very stridently, kind of stark black and white terms, there is good and there is evil. We are the forces of good. We and the United States and we are battling the forces of evil.""He did not mention the ceasefire, very notably, which, after all, the president and others in the U.S. administration have said repeatedly that this is an Israeli ceasefire proposal. And for the Israeli prime minister to make no mention of what should be his own government ceasefire proposal that has now been adopted by the U.N. Security Council is, was odd.”Also notably absent was Vice President Kamala Harris, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who would normally preside over the speech in her role as vice president.While dozens of Democrats boycotted his remarks and thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated nearby, Netanyahu dismissed criticism of an Israeli campaign that has devastated the Palestinian enclave and killed more than 39,000 of its residents, according to Gaza health officials.In his address Netanyahu sketched a vague outline of a plan for a "deradicalized" post-war Gaza and touted a potential future alliance between Israel and America's Arab allies.

  • Israeli right wing hits out at Kamala Harris as Netanyahu visit polarises opinion

    Amid anger at US vice-president’s call to end Gaza war, many families of hostages held by Hamas agree with her