Israel hammered the Gaza Strip from the air, sea and land yesterday as the offensive in the Palestinian territory showed no sign of abating, with Hamas saying it was pulling out of truce talks.

Israeli forces pulled back from parts of Gaza City overnight, after a fierce, week-long offensive that met with Hamas resistance, leaving dozens of dead and wrecked homes and roads in the Palestinian enclave’s biggest urban area, rescuers said yesterday.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said US President Joe Biden and his administration are complicit in what he called Israeli war crimes and violations of international law in the Gaza conflict, and he called for sanctions against Israel.

Residents of Gaza City were trapped in houses and bodies lay uncollected in the streets under an intense new Israeli assault yesterday, even as Washington pushed for a peace deal at talks in Egypt and Qatar.

Israeli forces launched more deadly strikes across Gaza yesterday, according to medical sources and the military, which said it targeted Hamas members operating from inside a UN agency building.

The Taliban government’s morality police will play an increasing role in enforcing religious law in Afghanistan, according to a UN report published yesterday that accused them of creating a “climate of fear”.

A war monitor said two people were killed yesterday in an Israeli strike on a vehicle belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah group in the Damascus countryside near the Lebanese border.

The recent deaths of several more children from malnutrition in the Gaza Strip indicate that famine has spread throughout the enclave, a group of independent human rights experts mandated by the United Nations said yesterday.

Gaza City residents fled under Israeli fire as tanks thrust deeper into the heart of the city yesterday, the second day of a stepped-up military offensive that Hamas said could jeopardise ceasefire talks.

Saudi Arabia has sentenced a teacher to 20 years in prison over critical social media posts, Human Rights Watch and the convicted man’s brother said yesterday.

Israeli forces bombarded Gaza City early yesterday and columns of tanks advanced into the heart of the city from different directions in what residents said was one of the heaviest attacks in the Palestinian territory since the start of the offensive.

Afghan authorities have slashed the salaries of women government workers who have been forced to stay at home since the Taliban seized power, the finance ministry said yesterday.

Hundreds of trucks loaded with food and water have been stranded on a scorching Egyptian road, some for nearly two months, awaiting permission to deliver the much needed humanitarian supplies to Gaza.

Hamas is waiting for a response from Israel on its ceasefire proposal, officials from the group said yesterday, five days after it accepted a key part of a US plan aimed at ending the offensive in Gaza now in its tenth month.

Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian will be sworn in before parliament in early August as the Islamic republic’s ninth president, state media reported yesterday.

Tank tracks still fresh on his field in southern Gaza’s coastal area of Al-Mawasi, Nedal Abu Jazar lamented the damage offensive has wrought on his trees and crops.

Iran’s reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian yesterday won a runoff presidential election against ultraconservative Saeed Jalili, the interior ministry said.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it launched more than 200 rockets and explosive drones at Israeli military positions yesterday as tensions have soared amid the almost nine-months-old offensive raging in Gaza.

Israel has approved its biggest land seizure in the occupied West Bank in more than three decades, a move criticised by activists yesterday as detrimental to Palestinian peace hopes.

Many Palestinians were seeking shelter yesterday after fleeing their homes in southern Gaza and complained of water shortages as Israel pressed on with its military offensive in the densely populated enclave.