Gaza was largely cut off from the outside world yesterday as Israel rained more bombs from the air and suggested its long-promised ground offensive in the Palestinian enclave was underway.

A dig in northern Iraq has unearthed a 2,700-year-old alabaster sculpture of the winged Assyrian deity Lamassu, which was found largely intact despite its large dimensions.

Six people were lightly injured when two drones struck an Egyptian Red Sea resort on the border with Israel on Friday, the army said.

An Iranian high school student died yesterday, nearly a month after falling into a coma in disputed circumstances on the Tehran metro, media in the Islamic republic said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday called Western powers “the main culprit” behind the Israeli army’s “massacre” of Palestinians in Gaza.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry released a statement yesterday condemning any ground operations by Israeli forces that may threaten the lives of Palestinian civilians.

Kazakhstan said yesterday that 32 people were killed in a fire in yet another deadly accident in a mine owned by ArcelorMittal, with over a dozen still missing, in the Central Asian country’s worst disaster in years.

The UN yesterday warned that “many more will die” in Gaza from catastrophic shortages as Israeli air and ground forces stepped up operations in the Palestinian enclave.

Projectiles hit two Egyptian Red Sea towns yesterday, sources and officials said, injuring six people and showing the risk of regional spillover from the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Israel said its ground forces had made a big push into Gaza overnight to attack “Hamas targets” as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was still preparing for a ground invasion that could be one of several.

Hundreds of Palestinian journalists have had to flee south from Gaza City and work in fear for their lives in appalling conditions as Israeli air raids pound the territory.

Israel has agreed to delay an expected invasion of Gaza for now so that the United States can rush missile defences to the region to protect its troops there, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing US and Israeli officials.

AFP, DohaThe foreign ministers of Turkey and Qatar yesterday accused the international community of “double standards” in its reaction to escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

With so many bodies, Palestinians in Gaza are burying the unidentified dead in mass graves, with a number instead of a name, residents say. Now some families are using bracelets in the hope of finding their loved ones should they be killed.

The White House on Monday said Iran was in some cases “actively facilitating” rocket and drone attacks by Iranian-backed proxy groups on US military bases in Iraq and Syria, and President Biden has directed the Department of Defense to brace for more and respond appropriately.

Doctors in Gaza say patients arriving at hospitals are showing signs of disease caused by overcrowding and poor sanitation after more than 1.4 million people fled their homes for temporary shelters under Israel’s heaviest-ever bombardment.

More than 700 Palestinians were killed in overnight Israeli air strikes, Gaza’s health ministry said yesterday, the highest 24-hour death toll since Israel began a bombing campaign to crush Hamas members who stunned the country with a deadly October 7 attack.

Six people, including two children, were killed yesterday in Russian strikes on a displacement camp in Syria’s northwest, the country’s last main rebel bastion, a war monitor said.

An elderly Israeli hostage who was released by Hamas overnight said she had been beaten by the group’s members when she was abducted and taken to Gaza on October 7, but was then treated well during her two-week captivity in the Palestinian enclave.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said yesterday that more than 5,000 people have been killed in the besieged Palestinian enclave since Israel launched its withering bombing campaign more than two weeks ago.