Israeli troops battled Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip yesterday, with no sign of a let-up in the offensive despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an “immediate ceasefire”.

The United Nations Security Council demanded an immediate ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas yesterday as Israeli forces carried out new airstrikes in Gaza and laid siege to two hospitals.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees has said that Israel had definitively barred it from making aid deliveries in northern Gaza, where the threat of famine is highest.

A Chinese-owned oil tanker was attacked off Yemen Saturday by ballistic missiles fired by Houthi rebels, who have intensified strikes on Red Sea shipping, the US military said.

Sameh Makki’s soup kitchen is barely 100 metres from the market, but it can take two hours to make the journey through Sudan’s war-torn streets, often through hails of bullets.

Israeli forces besieged two more Gaza hospitals yesterday, pinning down medical teams under heavy gunfire and forcing the evacuation from one hospital of most patients and displaced people sheltering there, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

Deep differences exist between Hamas and Israel in negotiations for a Gaza truce, an official from the Palestinian group with knowledge of the talks said.

US forces conducted self-defense strikes against three Houthi underground weapons storage facilities in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, US Central Command (Centcom) said on Friday.

A long line of blocked relief trucks on Egypt’s side of the border with the Gaza Strip where people face starvation is a moral outrage, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said during a visit to the Rafah crossing yesterday.

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday that only an expansion of land crossings into Gaza could help prevent famine in the densely populated Palestinian enclave.

The United States has circulated for the first time a draft UN resolution calling for an “immediate” ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, as warnings grow of famine in besieged Gaza.

Satellite images analysed by the United Nations Satellite Centre show that 35 percent of the Gaza Strip’s buildings have been destroyed or damaged in the Israel offensive in the Palestinian enclave.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken embarked on a Middle East mission yesterday as strain showed in the relationship between President Joe Biden’s administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Torrential rains lashed a tent camp for displaced people in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, where frightened Palestinian children can no longer distinguish between thunder and Israeli bombardment.

In the Middle East, you can't escape Ramadan, so it's not unusual for non-Muslims to take part in the Muslim holy month there. It's a different story in Christian-majority countries, but that may now be changing

Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid for Gaza may amount to a starvation tactic that could be a war crime, the United Nations human rights chief said yesterday.

Efforts to hammer out a temporary truce in Gaza intensified yesterday after months of offensive that have devastated the Palestinian territory and pushed hundreds of thousands to the brink of famine.

Israeli raids hit warehouses storing weapons for the Lebanese Hezbollah group in Syria yesterday, a war monitor said, as a Syrian military source said air defences had intercepted several missiles.

Food shortages in parts of the Gaza Strip have already far exceeded famine levels, and mass death is now imminent without an immediate ceasefire and surge of food into areas cut off by fighting, the global hunger monitor said yesterday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Sunday to send ground forces into Gaza’s southern Rafah city despite international fears for the fate of Palestinian civilians sheltering there.