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.

The head of the World Health Organisation appealed to Israel “in the name of humanity” not to launch an assault on Rafah, where most of Gaza’s population is sheltering.

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. 

Twenty-one people were killed and 11 injured in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province on Sunday when a bus collided with a tanker and a motorbike, a provincial official said

Efforts towards a truce in the Israel-Hamas war appeared to rekindle yesterday after a new proposal from the Palestinian militant group which also called for more aid into Gaza, where the first food shipment by sea reached shore.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office yesterday said he had approved the military’s plan for an operation in Rafah, where most of war-battered Gaza’s population has sought refuge. 

Efforts yesterday grew to get more aid into the war-devastated Gaza Strip, where the UN warns of famine and desperate residents have stormed relief shipments.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said one of its warehouses in war-ravaged Gaza was hit yesterday, amid mounting efforts to bring food to the besieged Palestinian territory.

A Spanish charity ship taking food aid to Gaza left the Mediterranean island of Cyprus yesterday in hopes of opening a maritime corridor to the war-ravaged Palestinian territory. 

The first day of Ramadan arrived yesterday like others for Palestinians in war-ravaged Gaza: stalked by famine and disease, shivering in tents and threatened by bombs more than five months into Israel’s offensive in the Palestinian territory.   

Deadly fighting raged in Gaza yesterday between Israeli forces and Hamas, with no truce in sight as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan neared and a dire humanitarian crisis gripped the besieged Palestinian territory.

Tomorrow will mark the first day of Ramadan in Saudi Arabia after the crescent moon was sighted in the country this evening

The war in Gaza has “ruptured any sense of a shared humanity,” the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross said yesterday.

Two young women were arrested in Tehran after the publication of a video in which they danced to celebrate the coming of the Persian New Year, Iranian media said yesterday.

An international effort led by the United States gathered pace yesterday to get desperately needed humanitarian relief into Gaza by sea, in the latest bid to counter overland access restrictions blamed on Israel as it battles Hamas militants.

Israel will push on with its offensive against Hamas, including into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, despite growing international pressure to stop, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday.

An Israeli tank crew killed a Reuters reporter in Lebanon in October by firing two shells at a clearly identified group of journalists and then “likely” opened fire on them with a heavy machine gun in an attack that lasted 1 minute and 45 seconds, according to a report into the incident published yesterday.

Talks on a ceasefire and hostage exchange between Israel and Hamas were at an impasse yesterday, as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza deepened and a merchant vessel was on fire after an attack in the Red Sea.