DUBAI: Renewed fighting in Gaza after a week-long truce has brought back a “nightmarish situation” for the Palestinian territory, the head of the Red Cross said.
Speaking on the sidelines of the UN’s COP28 climate talks in Dubai, Robert Mardini said “people are at a breaking point, hospitals are at a breaking point, the whole Gaza Strip is in a very precarious state.”

LONDON: A weeklong humanitarian pause in Gaza provided some respite for Palestinians in the beleaguered enclave. But the situation remains overwhelmingly bleak and, after the resumption of combat on Friday, potentially catastrophic.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israel on Thursday it must account for the safety of Palestinian civilians before resuming any military operations in Gaza, where the temporary truce allowed the exchange of captives held by Hamas for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military has published a map of what it called “evacuation zones” in the Gaza Strip, after international demands to create safe areas where civilians can shelter from devastating bombardments.
A truce pausing fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Palestinian territory expired on Friday, and hostilities resumed immediately, with Israeli forces bombarding several areas.
The map, which is in Arabic and zoomable on the military’s website, divides the Gaza Strip into hundreds of numbered sectors.

NEW YORK: At the request of Sudanese authorities, the UN Security Council on Friday ended the world body’s political mission in the African country ravaged by more than seven months of fighting between two rival generals.

Taking note of a letter from Khartoum demanding an immediate end to the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS), the Security Council adopted a resolution terminating its mandate as of Sunday.

Fourteen of the council’s 15 members adopted the resolution, while Russia abstained.

DUBAI: Jordan’s king said on Friday that war was making the threats from climate change even worse in the Gaza Strip.
King Abdullah II told the UN’s COP28 climate talks in Dubai that “we cannot talk about climate change in isolation from the humanitarian tragedies unfolding around us.”
He said: “In Gaza, over 1.7 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes. Tens of thousands have been injured or killed in a region already on the front lines of climate change.”