Airstrikes keep pounding Gaza as death toll rises to 1,100; more than 1,200 killed in Israel

Israel bombed Gaza overnight ahead of a potential ground assault against Hamas while US President Joe Biden condemned the Palestinian militant group's surprise attack as "sheer evil" and issued a warning seemingly aimed at its Iranian backers

Stories of the conflict between Hamas and Israel as they happen

The death toll from five days of ferocious fighting between Hamas and Israel rose sharply overnight as Israel kept up its bombardment of Gaza Wednesday after recovering the dead from the last communities near the border where Palestinian militants had been holed up.

Gaza is a coastal strip of land that lay on ancient trading and maritime routes along the Mediterranean shore. Held by the Ottoman Empire until 1917, it passed from British to Egyptian to Israeli military rule over the last century and is now a fenced-in enclave inhabited by over 2 million Palestinians

Hamas is holding Israeli soldiers and civilians hostage and has threatened to execute a captive for each home in Gaza hit without warning, but despite Israel razing sections of Gaza and more airstrikes overnight there was no indication Hamas had carried out its threat.

China has released Australian journalist Cheng Lei after more than three years in detention, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Wednesday, adding she was now back in Melbourne

Over 260,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip, as heavy Israeli bombardments from the air, land and sea continue to hit the Palestinian enclave.

Thousands have died and the toll was continuing to climb dramatically five days after Palestinian militants launched a surprise attack on Israel, which has responded with massive shelling of Gaza

NASA is set to reveal on Wednesday the first images of the largest asteroid sample ever collected in space, something scientists hope will yield clues about the earliest days of our solar system and perhaps the origins of life itself.

Israel calls last week's devastating attack by Hamas its 9/11 moment. The secretive mastermind behind the assault, Palestinian militant Mohammed Deif, calls it Al Aqsa Flood

More than 1,200 Israelis have been killed in the Israel-Hamas conflict, an Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson said Wednesday, up from 1,000 previously reported

A magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck western Afghanistan on Wednesday, hitting an area where more than 2,000 people were killed after a series of similar tremors on the weekend

Over 260,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip, as heavy Israeli bombardments from the air, land and sea continue to hit the Palestinian enclave, the United Nations said

Israel said it recaptured Gaza border areas from Hamas fighters as the war’s death toll passed 3,000 yesterday, the fourth day of fierce fighting since the Islamist group launched a surprise attack.

Twenty-nine people were killed and dozens wounded in a military strike on a camp for displaced people in northern Myanmar, a spokesman for an ethnic rebel group that controls the area told AFP yesterday.

Russian forces were trying to encircle the eastern frontline Ukrainian town of Avdiivka yesterday, an official said, adding it was being heavily bombed.

Pakistan’s Islamabad High Court (IHC) Chief Justice Aamer Farooq on Monday issued notices to former army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa, ex-spymaster Faiz Hamid and two journalists, in response to a petition seeking legal proceedings for allegedly flouting Official Secrets Act.

Israel’s total siege of the Gaza Strip, depriving civilians of goods essential for survival, is banned under international law, the United Nations human rights chief said yesterday.

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler told Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas he was working to prevent “an expansion” of conflict after the surprise Hamas attack on Israel, Saudi state media said early yesterday.