Middle East

Ireland and Norway are both moving closer to recognising Palestinian statehood, leaders of the two countries expressed separately after meetings with Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who also champions the move.

More than 250 humanitarian and human rights organizations worldwide have called for ending weapons transfers to Israel amid the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip.

Israel has so far in 2024 announced a record amount of West Bank as "state-owned" land, a move that could see a rapid expansion in settlement construction in the occupied territories.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi spoke to the head of the political bureau of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, on the phone on Friday and expressed condolences over the death of his sons and grandchildren in an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip.

A total of 33,545 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip since last October, the health ministry in the enclave reported on Thursday.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock discussed the tensions in the Middle East with her Iranian counterpart Hossein Amirabdollahian over the phone on Thursday.

Tel Aviv is preparing for "scenarios" in locations other than Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said during a visit to an Israeli airbase on Thursday.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced the country's armed forces have unleashed a wave of powerful high-precision strikes on Ukrainian energy and oil facilities across the country. The attack was carried out in retaliation for recurring strikes on Russian territory, Moscow claimed.

The spokesman for the Houthi military announced Yemeni forces have carried out four operations against Israeli and US vessels off the coast of Yemen in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza.

David Satterfield, appointed as Gaza humanitarian envoy by the US government, has told a forum organised by the American Jewish Committee that most, “if not all”, of Gaza’s 2.2 million people are facing famine.

The promised Iranian retaliation for the Israeli strike on Tehran’s consulate in Damascus is likely in the next 24-48 hours, anonymous US officials told Bloomberg on Wednesday.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has stated an Israeli attack that killed the sons and grandchildren of the leader of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, was another sign of the Zionist regime’s savagery.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron has stated US President Joe Biden is “rightly pressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a pause in fighting  in the Gaza Strip to allow for more humanitarian aid.

US President Joe Biden has vowed that Washington's commitment to defend Israel against Tehran was “ironclad” as concerns rose in the United States that a “significant” Iranian strike could happen within days, in retaliation for the bombing of Iran’s consular building in Syria's Damascus that saw the killing of seven Iranian military advisors.

Iranian and Saudi foreign ministers have called for an immediate end to ongoing Israel’s crimes against Palestinians particularly in the Gaza Strip.

An Israeli air raid on Gaza city killed three sons and three grandchildren of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh on Wednesday.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has called on Muslim countries to cut their economic relations with the Zionist regime.

More than 60,000 Palestinians offered Eid al-Fitr prayer at Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem on Wednesday, but there was no festive atmosphere, instead the whorshippers mourned the victims of Israel's ongoing war on the Gaza Strip.

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) has strongly denounced the Israeli airstrike on the consular section of the Iranian Embassy in the Syrian capital city of Damascus, describing the attack as heinous and a blatant violation of international law.

Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has one again shone light on the suffering of the Palestinian people amid the incessant Israeli aggression, saying Gaza is on top of all other issues in the Islamic world.

Baghdad and Washington held talks on ending the presence of U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq, the Iraqi military has announced.

UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron has confirmed London will not suspend arms exports to Israel after the killing of seven aid workers in an airstrike on Gaza last week, as he insisted the UK would continue to act within international law.

The United Nations has noted ongoing difficulties in the distribution of aid within the Gaza Strip while re-emphasizing that a possible Israeli military operation in Rafah "would have disastrous humanitarian consequences".

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has stressed putting an end to the Israeli regime’s months-long genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is a human and religious responsibility for the Islamic countries.

US President Joe Biden has called Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach to the war in the Gaza Strip a “mistake”, piling on his criticism of the Israeli leader one week after the White House threatened to alter its support.