Israel yesterday again carried out deadly air strikes on north Gaza, where the UN calls conditions “apocalyptic”, as Lebanon’s Hezbollah intensified rocket fire near Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv, on Israel’s second front.

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump enter the final weekend of the most tense US presidential campaign of modern times with a flurry of swing-state rallies that will test their stamina –- and ability to persuade the country’s last undecided voters.

The United States said on Friday it would deploy B-52 bombers, fighter jets, refuelling aircraft and Navy destroyers to the Middle East, in a readjustment of military assets as the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group prepares to leave the region.

The deadliest flash floods in Spain’s modern history have killed at least 211 people and dozens were still unaccounted for, four days after torrential rains swept the eastern region of Valencia, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said yesterday.

India yesterday denied home minister Amit Shah had plotted to target Sikh activists on Canadian soil and said it had officially rebuked Ottawa over the “absurd and baseless” allegation.

Indian security forces killed three suspected militants in two separate firefights in disputed Kashmir, the army and a senior police official said yesterday.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said yesterday that the United States and Israel will “undoubtedly receive a crushing response” for what they do against his country, state media reported.

In the Christian town of Deir al-Ahmar, Hassan Noun has pitched his tent in a church courtyard after fleeing Israeli air strikes in the eastern Lebanese region of Baalbek.

Russia unleashed its latest overnight drone strike on Ukraine, targeting the capital Kyiv in an attack that lasted into midday and wounded at least one person, city officials said yesterday.

Nearly 200,000 people in western Japan were urged to evacuate yesterday as authorities warned of landslides and floods, while the remnants of a tropical storm trickle over the country.

US election winners are typically declared by major media outlets who analyze vote counts provided by election officials. While candidates sometimes declare victory before those calls are made, it is unusual to do so before the winner is at least arguably apparent.

With political heat reaching a boil ahead of Election Day November 5, Trump faced criticism for violent rhetoric targeting a high-profile Republican supporter of Harris, who lambasted him for the provocative attack

Lebanon's health ministry said 52 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on Friday in the country's east, attacks for which the Israeli army had not issued evacuation warnings

"Should Iran, its partners, or its proxies use this moment to target American personnel or interests in the region, the United States will take every measure necessary to defend our people," Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder said in a statement

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 10 people, mostly civilians, were killed in strikes on Syria’s Qusayr region bordering Lebanon, where Israel said it hit Hezbollah weapons depots.

Prospects of a ceasefire between Israel and its foe Hamas ran aground yesterday as Israeli airstrikes killed at least 64 people, most of them women and children, in the Gaza Strip, according to medics in the Palestinian enclave.

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris warned voters on Thursday that Republican Donald Trump and his allies would scale back healthcare programmes if he wins the White House and said his comments at a Wednesday rally were offensive to women.

At least seven people including five school students were killed and 23 injured in a blast in southwestern Pakistan yesterday, a police official said.

A Russian former employee of the US consulate in Russia’s Far Eastern city of Vladivostok has been sentenced to four years and ten months in prison for “secret collaboration with a foreign state”, Russian agencies said yesterday.

The United States and Russia are very close to engaging in “direct military conflict,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned in an interview published yesterday in a Turkey daily, just days ahead of a US presidential election.