Israeli warplanes and tanks pounded southern Gaza overnight and yesterday and the UN said aid distribution to Palestinians facing hunger had largely stopped because of the intensity of fighting.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels yesterday claimed responsibility for a missile strike on a Norwegian-flagged tanker a day earlier off Yemen’s coast.

Environmental campaigners are losing faith in the UN-led COP climate process after signs that a phase-out of fossil fuels may not be agreed in Dubai, a leading activist said yesterday.

Aid trucks stalled at the Gaza border, hospitals treating missing limbs: UN Security Council envoys visiting Egypt on Monday encountered the fallout of the Israel-Hamas war, days after the United States vetoed a ceasefire resolution.

Fighting between Israel and Hamas intensified across Gaza yesterday, and Palestinians and international relief agencies said public order was disintegrating as hunger spread, fuelling fears of a mass exodus to Egypt.

A draft of a potential climate deal at the COP28 summit yesterday offered various options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but stopped short of the full “phase out” of fossil fuels many nations have demanded.

Egyptians began voting on Sunday in a presidential election set to hand Abdel Fattah al-Sisi a third term in power, as the country grapples with an economic crisis and a war on its border with Gaza

A small minority of countries at UN climate talks are blocking a growing consensus to phase out fossil fuels, at-risk Vanuatu’s climate change minister told AFP yesterday.

Polling stations opened yesterday for Egyptians to vote in a presidential election overshadowed by war in neighbouring Gaza and with little doubt the incumbent Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will secure a third term.

Iran has reinforced its air defence capabilities by adding combat drones equipped with air-to-air missiles to its arsenal, state media reported yesterday.

The Iranian people will ultimately overcome authoritarianism imposed by a government that has lost legitimacy and public support, Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi said from prison in a speech read by her children yesterday.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels threatened to attack any vessels heading to Israeli ports unless food and medicine were allowed into the besieged Gaza Strip.

The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees has accused Israel of laying the groundwork for the mass expulsion of Gazans across the territory’s border into Egypt.

Israel pounded the Gaza Strip from north to south yesterday in an expanded phase of its two-month-old war against Hamas, after the United States wielded its UN Security Council veto to shield its ally from a global demand for a ceasefire.

The family of Mahsa Amini have been banned from travelling to France to collect a top rights prize awarded posthumously, their lawyer said yesterday.

13 Security Council members voted in favor of a brief draft resolution, put forward by the UAE, while Britain abstained

COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber yesterday urged countries to get out of their comfort zones and work together to reach agreement before the two-week summit ends.

Israel sharply ramped up strikes on the Gaza Strip, pounding the length of the Palestinian enclave and killing hundreds in a new, expanded phase of the war that Washington said veered from Israeli promises to do more to protect civilians.

Israeli TV appeared to show Thursday scores of stripped Palestinian men sitting on a Gaza street in military custody, with a London-based news outlet saying one of its journalists was among them.

The US embassy in Baghdad was attacked with two salvos of rockets yesterday morning but there were no casualties, an embassy spokesperson said.