LONDON/TULKARM/VATICAN: More than 50 members of the same family have been killed in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza during Israel’s military campaign there, the Palestinian foreign minister said on Wednesday.

“Only this morning, from the Qadoura family in Jabalia, 52 people have been wiped out completely, killed,” Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki said on the sidelines of a briefing by Arab and Muslim foreign ministers in London.

“I have the list of the names, 52 of them, they were wiped out completely from grandfather to grandchildren.”

BEIRUT: Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned Wednesday that the scope of the Gaza war would expand unless a truce between Israel and Hamas lasts, in an interview as he visited Beirut.
“If this cease-fire starts tomorrow, if it does not continue… the conditions in the region will not remain the same as before the cease-fire and the scope of the war will expand,” Amir-Abdollahian told the Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen television channel, according to Iran’s Fars news agency.

KHAN YUNIS, Palestinian Territories: The bodies of dozens of unidentified people were buried on Wednesday in a mass grave at a cemetery in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.
Wrapped in blue tarpaulin, the bodies were lowered on stretchers, some of them stained with blood, into a sandy pit that was gradually enlarged by a digger. Some were the size of children.
“As these martyrs had no one to say goodbye to, we dug a mass grave to bury them. They are unknown martyrs,” Bassem Dababesh of the emergency committee at the religious affairs ministry told AFP.

HODEIDAH, Yemen: The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen warned allies of Israel Wednesday that their shipping in the Bab Al-Mandab Strait at the entrance to the Red Sea is a “legitimate target.”
The warning comes after the Houthis on Sunday seized an Israel-linked cargo vessel, opening a new dimension in the Gaza war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
Helicopter-borne troops seized the Galaxy Leader and its 25 international crew days after the Houthis threatened to target Israeli shipping because of the war.

CAIRO: Midway through a recent evening in Cairo, a worker cleaned tables in an empty McDonald’s restaurant. Branches of other Western fast-food chains in the Egyptian capital also appeared deserted.

All have been hit by a boycott campaign over Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Western brands are feeling the impact in Egypt and Jordan, and there are signs the campaign is spreading in some other Arab countries including Kuwait and Morocco.