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An Israeli strike flattened a high-rise in Gaza City Saturday — the second in as many days — after the military warned people to flee ahead of a planned offensive against the urban hub. Israel has been warning for weeks of a new assault on the territory's largest city, without issuing a timeline. It has stepped up air strikes and ground operations on the city's outskirts, sparking fears it could worsen already dire conditions. Saturday, Israeli aircraft dropped thousands of leaflets on western neighbourhoods calling on residents to evacuate, witnesses and an AFP journalist said. Nafez Anis, who has been living in a tent with his family in Gaza City, said he had read the leaflet, but was not planning on leaving. "Where should we go?" he told AFP. "We will wait, and when we see Israeli tanks approaching here, we will leave." Gaza civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that 55 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli fire during the day, including 18 near an aid distribution centre in the north. Saturday, the military struck a Gaza City high-rise, saying Hamas was using it "to monitor" Israeli troops and adding that it had taken "measures to mitigate harm to civilians". Witnesses identified the building as the Sussi residential tower and said it was destroyed. Hamas condemned the attack and denied using residential or civilian buildings for military purposes. The Israeli military has said it will target structures being used by Hamas, particularly tall buildings. It also issued an evacuation order for another high-rise Saturday, warning of an imminent strike and telling people to leave for the south. A military spokesperson had earlier called on residents to leave for Al-Mawasi, on the Mediterranean coast to the south. Israel first declared Al-Mawasi a safe zone early in the war, but has carried out repeated strikes on it since then, saying they targeted Hamas. Gaza City residents said they believed it made little difference whether they stayed or fled. "Some say we should evacuate, others say we should stay," said Abdel Nasser Mushtaha, 48. "But everywhere in Gaza there are bombings and deaths" he added, pointing, in particular, to the strikes on Al-Mawasi. "It no longer makes any difference to us," said his daughter Samia Mushtaha, 20. "Wherever we go, death pursues us, whether by bombing or hunger." Israel has faced mounting domestic and international pressure to end the nearly two-year war. Thousands demonstrated in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Saturday evening to call for a ceasefire and hostage release deal. In Tel Aviv, protesters unfurled a massive banner saying: "President Trump, save the hostages now!" Hamas agreed last month to a proposal for a temporary ceasefire and staggered hostage releases, but Israel has demanded the group release all the hostages at once, disarm and relinquish control of Gaza, among other conditions. The UN estimates nearly 1mn people remain in and around Gaza City, where it declared a famine last month. It has warned of a looming "disaster" if the assault proceeds. Israel's offensive has killed at least 64,368 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the UN considers reliable.

HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani received on Saturday a phone call from the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom (UK) Yvette Cooper.During the call, they discussed cooperation relations between the two countries and ways to support and strengthen them. HE Sheikh Mohammed congratulated Yvette Cooper on her appointment as Foreign Secretary, wishing her success in carrying out her duties.The call also discussed developments in the Gaza Strip and the occupied Palestinian territories, in addition to a number of issues of common concern.HE Sheikh Mohammed also stressed the need to intensify regional and international efforts to end the brutal war on the Gaza Strip, ensure the sustainable and unhindered flow of humanitarian aid to the Strip, and release prisoners and detainees.

The Israeli military destroyed a high-rise in Gaza City Friday, shortly after announcing it would target tall buildings identified as being used by Hamas ahead of its planned seizure of the urban hub.Despite mounting pressure at home and abroad to halt its nearly two-year offensive in Gaza, Israel has been calling up reservists, intensifying its bombardments and closing in on Gaza City ever since announcing its intention to capture the Palestinian territory's largest city.AFP footage showed the Mushtaha Tower in the city's Al-Rimal neighbourhood collapsing after a massive explosion at its base, sending a thick cloud of smoke and dust billowing into the sky.AFP photographs of the aftermath showed Palestinians inspecting the rubble and debris of the collapsed building.Gaza civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal accused Israel of carrying out "a policy of forced displacement against civilians" in its targeting of high-rise buildings.The agency said Israeli strikes in and around Gaza City killed at least 19 people, among at least 32 Palestinians killed across the territory Friday.A member of Hamas's political bureau, Izzat al-Rishq, said Israeli claims the group was operating in the high-rises were "nothing but flimsy pretexts and blatant lies."The UN estimates that nearly 1mn people live in Gaza City and its surroundings, an area where it last month declared a famine.

The State of Qatar condemned the statements made by the Israeli occupation's prime minister regarding his desire to displace Palestinians, describing them as a continuation of the occupation's policy of violating the rights of the Palestinian people, showing contempt for international laws and agreements, and reflecting its malicious attempts to undermine prospects for peace, particularly the two-state solution.The Ministry of Foreign Affairs affirmed in a statement Friday that the policy of collective punishment practiced by the occupation against Palestinians, including the ongoing brutal genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, its crimes in the West Bank, its violations of religious sanctities, its settlement expansion and Judaization plans for Jerusalem, and its restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid to civilians, will not succeed in forcing the Palestinian people to leave their land or in stripping them of their legitimate rights.The Ministry stressed the urgent need for the international community to stand firmly against the occupation's extremist and provocative policies, in order to prevent the cycle of violence in the region from continuing and spreading globally.The Ministry also reiterated that the only guarantee for achieving lasting peace in the Middle East is reaching a just and comprehensive solution to the Palestinian issue, in line with the Arab Peace Initiative and the two-state solution. This would ensure the establishment of an independent and viable State of Palestine along the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, and the enjoyment by the Palestinian people of their inalienable rights.

HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani met in Doha Friday with Kaja Kallas, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission.The meeting reviewed co-operation between Qatar and the European Union, as well as regional and international issues of common concern, particularly the developments in the Gaza Strip and the occupied Palestinian territories.During the meeting, HE Sheikh Mohammed stressed the importance of unifying regional and international efforts to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, ensure the protection of civilians, secure the release of prisoners and detainees, and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to alleviate the catastrophic conditions in the Strip.

Resolution backed by 86 percent of scholars who votedIsrael rejects accusations of genocide in GazaResolution calls for Israel to cease acts deemed genocidalThe world's biggest academic association of genocide scholars has passed a resolution saying the legal criteria have been met to establish Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, its president said on Monday. Eighty-six percent of those who voted among the 500-member International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) backed the resolution declaring Israel's "policies and actions in Gaza" had met the legal definition set out in Article II of the 1948 UN convention on genocide.Israel's Foreign Ministry called the statement disgraceful and "entirely based on Hamas' campaign of lies". Israel has in the past strongly denied that its actions in Gaza amount to genocide and says they are justified as self defence. It is fighting a case at the International Court of Justice in the Hague that accuses it of genocide.Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, after fighters from Hamas attacked Israeli communities, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages.Since then, Israel's military action has killed 63,000 people, damaged or destroyed most buildings in the territory and forced nearly all its residents to flee their homes at least once. A global hunger monitor relied on by the United Nations says parts of the territory are now suffering a man-made famine.The three-page resolution calls on Israel to "immediately cease all acts that constitute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza, including deliberate attacks against and killing of civilians including children; starvation; deprivation of humanitarian aid, water, fuel, and other items essential to the survival of the population; sexual and reproductive violence; and forced displacement of the population."It also states that the Hamas attack on Israel which precipitated the war constituted international crimes."This is a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide," the association's president, Melanie O'Brien, a professor of international law at the University of Western Australia who specialises in genocide, told Reuters."There is no justification for the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide, not even self defence," she added.The 1948 UN Genocide Convention, adopted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews by Nazi Germany, defines genocide as crimes committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such". It requires all countries to act to prevent and stop genocide.Since the genocide scholars' association was founded in 1994, it has passed nine resolutions recognising historic or ongoing episodes as genocides.The IAGS publishes a journal and holds regular international conferences of scholars studying genocide, and is considered the largest academic group in the field. Another group, the International Network of Genocide Scholars, also holds conferences and publishes a journal but does not issue similar resolutions.Ismail Al-Thawabta, head of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, welcomed the resolution's "prestigious scholarly stance", which he said "places a legal and moral obligation on the international community to take urgent action to stop the crime, protect civilians, and hold the leaders of the occupation accountable".Sergey Vasiliev, a professor of international law at the Open University in the Netherlands who is not a member of the association, told Reuters the resolution showed that "this legal assessment has become mainstream within academia, particularly in the field of genocide studies".Several international rights groups and some Israeli NGOs have already accused Israel of committing genocide. Last week hundreds of UN staff at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk wrote to ask him to explicitly describe the Gaza war as an unfolding genocide, according to a letter reviewed by Reuters.

A post-war plan for Gaza is circulating within President Donald Trump's administration that would see the US administer the war-torn enclave for at least a decade, the relocation of Gaza's population and its rebuilding as a tourist resort and manufacturing hub, the Washington Post reported Sunday.The Washington Post said that according to a 38-page prospectus it had seen, Gaza's 2mn population would at least temporarily leave either through "voluntary" departures to another country or into restricted areas within the territory during reconstruction. Reuters previously reported there is a proposal to build large-scale camps called "Humanitarian Transit Areas" inside — and possibly outside — Gaza to house the Palestinian population. That plan carried the name of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, a controversial US-backed aid group.Anyone who owns land would be offered a "digital token" in exchange for rights to redevelop their property, the Post reported, adding that each Palestinian who left would be provided with $5,000 in cash and subsidies to cover four years of rent. They would also be provided with a year of food, it added.The Post said the plan is called the "Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust, or GREAT Trust," and was developed by the GHF.GHF coordinates with the Israeli military and uses private US security and logistics companies to get food aid into Gaza. It is favoured by the Trump administration and Israel to carry out humanitarian efforts in Gaza as opposed to the UN-led system. In early August, the UN said more than 1,000 people have been killed trying to receive aid in Gaza since the GHF began operating in May 2025, most of them shot by Israeli forces operating near GHF sites.The White House and State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the plan to rebuild Gaza appears to fall in line with previous comments made by Trump.On February 4, Trump first publicly said that the US should "take over" the war-battered enclave and rebuild it as "the Riviera of the Middle East" after resettling the Palestinian population elsewhere.Trump's comments angered many Palestinians and humanitarian groups about the possible forced relocation from Gaza.

Israeli forces pounded the suburbs of Gaza City overnight from the air and ground, destroying homes and driving more families out of the area.Residents of Sheikh Radwan, one of the largest neighbourhoods of Gaza City, said the territory had been under Israeli tank shelling and airstrikes throughout Saturday and yesterday, forcing families to seek shelter in the western parts of the city.The Israeli military has gradually escalated its operations around Gaza City over the past three weeks, and on Friday it ended temporary pauses in the area that had allowed for aid deliveries, designating it a "dangerous combat zone"."They are crawling into the heart of the city where hundreds of thousands are sheltering, from the east, north, and south, while bombing those areas from the air and ground to scare people to leave," said Rezik Salah, a father of two, from Sheikh Radwan.Local health authorities said Israeli gunfire and strikes killed at least 30 people yesterday, including 13 who tried to get food from near an aid site in central Gaza. The Israeli military said it was not aware of casualties near humanitarian aid distribution points in central Gaza.An Israeli official said Netanyahu's security cabinet was to convene late yesterday to discuss the next stages of the planned offensive to seize Gaza City.A full-scale offensive is not expected to start for weeks. Israel says it wants to evacuate the civilian population before moving more ground forces in.Netanyahu confirmed yesterday that Israeli forces had targeted Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson of Hamas' armed wing. Defence Minister Israel Katz said that Abu Ubaida was killed. Two Hamas officials contacted by Reuters did not respond to requests for comment.Gaza health authorities said 15 people, including five children, were killed in the attack on a residential building in the heart of Gaza City.Abu Ubaida, also known as Hozayfa Al-Khalout, is a well-known figure to Palestinians and Israelis alike, close to Hamas' top military leaders and in charge of delivering the group's messages, often via video, for around two decades.On Saturday, Red Cross head Mirjana Spoljaric said an evacuation from the city would provoke a massive population displacement that no other area in the enclave is equipped to absorb, with shortages of food, shelter and medical supplies."People who have relatives in the south left to stay with them. Others, including myself, didn't find a space as Deir Al-Balah and Mawasi are overcrowded," said Ghada, a mother of five from the city's Sabra neighborhood.Around half of the enclave's more than 2mn people are presently in Gaza City. Several thousand were estimated to have left the city for central and southern areas of the enclave.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) confirmed Saturday that 660,000 children in the Gaza Strip are out of school for the third year in a row due to the ongoing war of annihilation waged by the Israeli occupation since Oct 2023. The war in Gaza is a war on children and must stop. Children must be always protected, UNRWA added in a statement. It reaffirmed the right of children to education, stressing that 660,000 children remain outside classrooms for the third consecutive year as a direct result of the war. In Gaza, children are at risk of becoming a lost generation due to the ongoing conflict, UNRWA stressed, calling for the importance of a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and allowing children to return to their schools and lives. Since the onset of the Gaza genocide, over 17,085 school students have been killed, along with over 1,261 college students. According to the latest figures of the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education for the period between Oct 7, 2023, and August 2025, over 25,213 school students have been wounded, along with 2,671 college students.

Fifteen Palestinians were martyred and others injured on Saturday in an Israeli occupation airstrike targeting displaced persons' tents in Al-Nasr and Al-Zaytoun neighborhoods in Gaza City.Local sources reported that Israeli occupation warplanes bombed tents for the displaced near the Youth and Sports Roundabout in Al-Nasr neighborhood, killing 11 people and injuring others. Four more people were martyred and others wounded in a separate strike on Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of the city.The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza announced yesterday that the death toll from the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, had risen to 63,025 martyrs, with 159,159 injured.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) stated that intensified Israeli military operations in Gaza City will expose around one million people to new forced displacement.The agency added in a post on the X platform Friday, that any further escalation would exacerbate suffering and push more Palestinian civilians toward catastrophe, amid existing famine.It pointed out that the ongoing Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip and evacuation orders are forcing entire families to leave their homes once again amid fear and destruction.Members of the UN Security Council, except the United States, called on Wednesday in a joint statement for an immediate, permanent, and unconditional ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, a significant increase in aid across the sector, and for Israel, the occupying power, to immediately and unconditionally lift all restrictions on the delivery of aid.They also called on Israel to immediately reverse its decision to take control of Gaza City.

The World Food Program (WFP) has warned that food aid currently reaching the Gaza Strip remains far from enough to avert widespread starvation.WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain said in a press statement that the organization is now able to deliver about 100 aid trucks per day into Gaza, compared with 600 trucks daily during a two-month ceasefire that ended in mid-March.She stressed that this amount is not nearly sufficient to ensure people are adequately nourished and protected from starvation.McCain, who visited Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis this week - including a clinic supporting children and pregnant and lactating women - highlighted persistent challenges in delivering aid to vulnerable populations deeper inside Gaza."What we saw was utter devastation. "It was basically flattened, and we saw people who were very seriously hungry and malnourished," McCain said.She added that the visit underscored the urgent need for sustained access across the Strip to consistently provide essential food supplies.A report released Friday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) - a global hunger monitoring body - found that about 514,000 people, nearly a quarter of Gaza's population, are already facing famine conditions in Gaza City and surrounding areas.The report also warned that famine could spread to the central and southern districts of Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis by the end of September.Israel dismissed the IPC report as "deeply flawed" and urged the body to retract it on Wednesday, reiterating its rejection of previous warnings as false and biased.