Middle East

The Lebanese group Hezbollah says it has launched drone attacks on Israeli bases north of the city of Acre in retaliation for the killing of one of its fighters, marking the deepest attack into Israeli-occupied territories since the Gaza war began.

North Korean officials are making a rare visit to Iran, the state-run KCNA news agency has reported. The last time officials from Pyongyang made a publicly announced trip to Tehran was in 2019.

The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has warned half of Gaza’s population – estimated to be some 2.3 million people – are starving as Israel keeps pounding the encircled enclave.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has drawn attention to the “recent escalation of violence in multiple areas” of the occupied West Bank, with hundreds of Palestinians having been killed.

United Nations leaders have demanded a “clear, transparent and credible” investigation after mass graves containing the bodies of hundreds of men and women were discovered on the grounds of two major hospitals in the Gaza Strip that were previously under assault by the Israeli military.

Abu Obaida, the spokesperson of Hamas’ military wing Al Qassam Brigades, has urged continued attacks on the Zionist regime in his first video message in nearly 2 months, marking 200 days of the Israel war on Gaza.

Doha is yet to decide whether it will shut Hamas’ office in Qatar's capital, as it questions both the Palestinian group and Israel’s commitment to reach a hostage-ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip, the foreign ministry spokesperson has stated.

The US Senate on Tuesday passed a package to provide billions in aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, sending the legislation to President Joe Biden’s desk to become law after a rocky six months of political battles.

Israel looks ready to escalate its devastating war on the Gaza Strip after stationing troops and vehicles at nearby army bases and outposts just outside the enclave, according to satellite imagery obtained and assessed by Al Jazeera’s Sanad verification unit.

Emergency workers have recovered at least 35 more bodies from a mass grave within the Nasser medical complex in southern Gaza after the Israeli army withdrew from the neighborhood earlier this month.

At least 350 healthcare workers have been killed and 520 others injured in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, when the Israel-Hamas conflict escalated, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health Tlaleng Mofokeng has stated.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has stated Washington is looking into allegations of human rights abuses by Israel in its war on the besieged Gaza Strip. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel's carnage in Gaza over the past seven months.

Tel Aviv has not provided "any supporting evidence" to back up allegations that the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees employees are members of the armed groups that attacked Israel on 7 October, a review led by the former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna has revealed.

Israeli leaders planned a “much more extensive counterstrike on Iran” after Tehran launched a drone and missile barrage on Israel last weekend, but were pressured to pare down the operation by the US and its allies, the New York Times has claimed in a report.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid has urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to step down, following the resignation of the military intelligence chief over failures to predict the Hamas military operation on October 7, 2023.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan began a rare visit to Iraq on Monday aiming to reset rocky bilateral relations with a raft of deals covering energy, trade and security cooperation against Kurdish PKK militants.

The public opinion poll by Israel’s Yediot Ahronoth media outlet and the Institute for Freedom and Responsibility of Reichman University suggests 85 percent of Israelis have little or no trust in their government.

World military expenditure increased by 6.8% in 2023 year-over-year and reached a new record high of $2,443 billion, with the three largest spenders being the US, China and Russia, according to new data published on Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The killing of Palestinian children “needs to stop”, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has stressed.

A poll conducted for Israel’s Channel 13 shows 68 percent of respondents say that they do not believe in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement that Israel was “one step away from victory” in Gaza.

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani has strongly condemned the massacre and mass burial of civilians in the besieged Gaza Strip by Israeli soldiers as blatant examples of genocide and war crimes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the Israeli military will increase “pressure” on Hamas in a bid to secure the release of captives in the Gaza Strip. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's onslaught against the besieged enclave since early October last year.

At least 485 Palestinians have been killed and 4,900 others injured in attacks by the Israeli army and illegal settlers in the occupied West Bank since last October, the Health Ministry has announced.

Palestinian civil defence crews have uncovered a mass grave inside the Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza’s Khan Younis, with 180 bodies recovered so far, Al Jazeera has reported.

New United States military aid to Israel is an aggression against the Palestinian people, the Palestinian leadership has announced.