Israeli forces pounded areas in the central Gaza Strip overnight, killing three people and wounding dozens of others, according to medics, while tanks deepened their invasion into Rafah in the south, residents said yesterday.

The death toll from this year’s hajj has exceeded 1,000, an AFP tally said yesterday, more than half of them unregistered worshippers who performed the pilgrimage in extreme heat in Saudi Arabia.

Fears of a regional war rose yesterday after Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement said none of Israel would be spared in a full-blown conflict, and Israel said it had approved plans for a Lebanon offensive.

The death toll from this year's hajj has exceeded 1,000, an AFP tally said on Thursday, more than half of them unregistered worshippers who performed the pilgrimage in extreme heat in Saudi Arabia

Friends and family searched for missing hajj pilgrims yesterday as the death toll at the annual rituals, which were carried out in scorching heat, surged past 900.

Israeli forces may have repeatedly violated the laws of war and failed to distinguish between civilians and fighters in the Gaza conflict, the UN human rights office said yesterday.

Israel is ready for an “all-out war” in Lebanon and has plans approved for an offensive targeting Hezbollah, officials said.

Israel bombed and shelled Gaza yesterday, witnesses and first responders said, with fallout from the war bringing a resurgence of tensions to the Lebanon border and Yemen.

Israeli strikes hit Gaza yesterday as truce talks with Hamas failed to progress and tensions surged on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.

More than 1.5 million Muslims will begin the annual hajj pilgrimage in the Saudi holy city of Makkah today.

A merchant ship caught fire after being attacked off Yemen, a British maritime security agency said yesterday, following months of attacks in the area by Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

More than half of Gaza’s agricultural land, crucial for feeding the territory’s hungry population, has been degraded by conflict, satellite images analysed by the United Nations show.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah said yesterday it had launched rockets and weaponised drones at nine Israeli military sites in a coordinated attack, ramping up hostilities on Lebanon’s southern border for the second consecutive day.

Israeli tanks advanced deeper into the western area of Rafah, amid one of the worst nights of bombardment from air, ground, and sea, forcing many families to flee their homes and tents under darkness, residents said yesterday.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said yesterday that Hamas had proposed numerous changes, some unworkable, to a US-backed proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza, but that mediators were determined to close the gaps.

A fire in Kuwait killed 49 people, all Indian nationals, when it ripped through a building housing nearly 200 foreign workers yesterday, the government said.

A merchant ship issued a distress call after being struck in the Red Sea off Yemen, a security firm said yesterday, in what appeared to be the latest attack by Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

Violence against children in armed conflicts reached “extreme levels” in 2023, particularly in Gaza and Sudan, according to a forthcoming UN report obtained by AFP on Tuesday.

No Bangladeshi casualties were reported in the fire that broke out at a hostel in Mangaf, southern Kuwait, early today, which killed at least 41 people, according to the Bangladesh Embassy in Kuwait

At least 35 people were killed in a building fire in the city of Mangaf in southern Kuwait, the country's state media reported on Wednesday