A strong earthquake rattled Afghanistan’s western province of Herat yesterday, forcing authorities to redeploy relief and rescue teams already in the field following a series of deadly quakes on Saturday.

Australian journalist Cheng Lei was deported from China yesterday after more than three years in detention on espionage charges widely seen as politically motivated.

Russia yesterday said its forces had strengthened their position on the frontline near Avdiivka, a day after Ukraine warned Moscow was stepping up strikes to encircle the eastern town.

Norway, which chairs an international donors group for Palestine, yesterday urged the international community to maintain its aid to Palestinians following the Hamas group’s attack on Israel.

Israeli border police shot dead two Palestinians in annexed east Jerusalem after they threw fireworks and rocks at fellow officers, the force said yesterday.

Israel is not conducting itself “like a state” in the Gaza Strip, Turkey’s president said yesterday, as Israel pounded the territory after a Hamas onslaught.

International medical NGOs issued a stark warning over the health and humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, which has been bombed by the Israeli military following Hamas’s weekend attack.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday said the explosion of violence between Israel and the Palestinians showed the US policy had failed in the Middle East and taken no account of the needs of the Palestinians.

Palestinians in Gaza say Israeli bombardment has been so heavy they feel they are living their own “Nakba,” the Arabic word for catastrophe that refers to the 1948 war of Israel’s creation that led to their mass dispossession.

A potential intervention by Tehran-backed Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah and uncertainty over the role played by Iran itself are risk factors that could push the unprecedented conflict between Israel and Hamas into a wider regional war, analysts say.

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.