Iranian authorities have released on bail a popular rapper jailed for more than a year over supporting nationwide protests sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death in custody.

Iraq’s powerful pro-Iranian armed group Kataeb Hezbollah has denounced as “ridiculous” sanctions unveiled this week by the United States over recent attacks on US troops in Iraq and Syria.

Ministers from Arab and Islamic countries will visit China today on the first stop of a tour aims at ending the war in Gaza, Saudi Foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said.

A Hamas health official said more than 80 people were killed yesterday in twin strikes on a northern Gaza refugee camp, including a UN school used as a shelter for people displaced by the Israel-Hamas war.

Five countries, including South Africa and Bangladesh, on Friday called for an International Criminal Court investigation into the Israel-Hamas war that has left thousands of people dead, its chief prosecutor said.

UN aid deliveries to Gaza were suspended again yesterday due to shortages of fuel and a new communications shutdown, deepening the misery of thousands of hungry and homeless Palestinians as Israeli troops battled Hamas in the enclave.

Israeli troops yesterday advanced in their campaign to destroy Hamas in Gaza, fighting gun battles and taking control of a key port a day after a raid on the territory’s main hospital.

Israeli soldiers yesterday raided and combed through Gaza's main hospital in an offensive against Hamas, raising fears for thousands of patients and other civilians trapped inside.

Israeli forces, some wearing facemasks and firing guns into the air, raided early yesterday Gaza’s biggest hospital which was packed with thousands of Palestinian patients and displaced people, in the army’s battle against Hamas.

Gaza’s main hospital buried 179 dead patients in a “mass grave”, said the director of the hospital.

Iranian authorities urged young schoolchildren and many civil servants in the capital Tehran to stay at home today due to a spike in air pollution levels.

Israeli tanks took up positions at the gates of Gaza City’s main hospital yesterday, the primary target in their battle to seize control of the northern half of the Gaza Strip, where medics said patients including newborns were dying for lack of fuel.

An internal US State Department dissent memo accused President Joe Biden of “spreading misinformation” about Israel’s war against Hamas, according to Axios.

On foot, by horse-drawn cart and clinging to the sides of overcrowded trucks, Palestinians fled southwards through Gaza to escape Israeli air strikes, telling of their fear, despair and bitter sense of abandonment.

Major hospitals remained cut off yesterday as Israel pressed on with its offensive in north Gaza where doctors said thousands of Palestinians were trapped in dire conditions.

Israeli fighter jets pounded Hezbollah hideouts in southern Lebanon with air strikes yesterday, after an incoming anti-tank missile wounded Israeli civilians near the border, the army said.

Who will govern Gaza when Israel’s military offensive against Hamas ends? After five weeks of fighting, the answer remains shrouded in confusion.

Two premature babies died due to power cuts at Gaza’s largest hospital, Physicians for Human Rights Israel said yesterday, citing doctors there, as fighting rages around the Al-Shifa complex.

Israeli air strikes hit three Gaza hospitals and a school yesterday, killing at least 22 people, and a ground battle was under way at another hospital, Palestinian officials said, as Israel’s forces took on Hamas in the heart of the enclave.

Israeli forces fought Hamas fighters among ruined buildings in the north of the Gaza Strip yesterday, inching their way closer to two big hospitals as the plight of civilians in the besieged Palestinian territory worsened.