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Israeli military urges Gaza City residents to leave

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The Israeli military on Saturday said Palestinians in Gaza City should leave for the south, as its forces advance deeper into the enclave’s largest urban area.

Israeli forces have been carrying out an offensive on the suburbs of the northern city for weeks after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the military to capture it, Reuters reported.

Netanyahu says Gaza City is a Hamas stronghold and capturing it is necessary to defeat the Palestinian Islamist militants, whose October 2023 attack on Israel sparked the war.

The assault threatens to displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians sheltering there from nearly two years of fighting. Before the war, around a million people, nearly half of Gaza’s population, lived in the city.

Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote on X that residents should leave the city for a designated coastal area of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, assuring those fleeing that they would be able to receive food, medical care and shelter there.

The designated area was a “humanitarian zone”, Adraee said.

On Thursday, the military said it had control over almost half of the city. It says it controls about 75% of all of Gaza.

Many of those in Gaza City were displaced earlier in the war only to later return. Some residents have said that they refuse to be displaced again.

The military has been carrying out heavy strikes on the city for weeks, advancing through outer suburbs, and this week forces were within a few kilometres of the city centre.

Netanyahu, backed by right-wing coalition allies, ordered the capture of Gaza City against the advice of Israel’s military leadership, according to Israeli officials. Despite its hesitation, the military has called up tens of thousands of reservists to support the operation.

The war in Gaza has increasingly left Israel diplomatically isolated, with some of its closest allies condemning the campaign that has devastated the small territory.

ALL-OR-NOTHING DEAL

Palestinian militants took 251 hostages into the enclave after its cross-border attack on southern Israeli communities on October 7, 2023 that killed about 1,200 people.

More than 64,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, local health authorities say, with much of the enclave reduced to ruins and its residents facing a humanitarian crisis.

There are also growing calls within Israel, led by families of hostages and their supporters, to end the war in a diplomatic deal that would secure the release of the remaining 48 captives.

Israeli officials believe 20 of the hostages are alive.

Netanyahu is pushing for an all-or-nothing deal that would see all of the hostages released at once and Hamas surrendering.

Israeli military officials say they have killed many of Hamas’ key leaders and thousands of its fighters, reducing the Palestinian militant group to a guerrilla force.

Hamas has offered to release some hostages for a temporary ceasefire, similar to terms that were discussed in July before negotiations mediated by the U.S. and Arab states collapsed.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington was in “very deep” negotiations with the Palestinian militants.

Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades but today controls only parts of the enclave, has long said it would release all hostages if Israel agreed to end the war and to withdraw all its forces from Gaza.

Most of the hostages who have been freed were released through diplomatic negotiations mediated by the United States and Arab states. Israel and Hamas have accused each other of negotiating in bad faith since the breakdown of the last talks in July.

Defence Minister Israel Katz on Friday said the military operations in Gaza would intensify until Hamas accepted Israel’s conditions for ending the war: releasing the hostages and disarming. Otherwise, the group would be destroyed, he said.

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Suspected suicide bombing at police station kills at least 14 in Pakistan, officials say

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At least 14 people were killed in a suspected suicide bombing outside ​a police station in northwestern Pakistan on ‌Sunday, a rescue group and a regional police official said, as the country battles widening insurgencies.

The explosion took place ​in the Kabal area of Swat, a district ​in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Reuters reported.

A pro-police rally of ⁠local residents was taking place in the same ​area on Sunday, but it was not immediately ​clear whether the rally was the intended target.

Fida Hussain, a regional police official, said the victims included five police officers and ​eight civilians. The 14th person was believed to ​be the suicide bomber, he told Reuters.

At least 18 people ‌were ⁠wounded, according to a police statement. It said an operation had been launched to arrest anyone who may have assisted the attack.

Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif ​in a statement ​expressed “deep grief ⁠and sorrow over the suicide blast”.

 

 

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Bomb carried by woman kills three, injures 21 near Moscow restaurant, authorities say

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A homemade bomb carried by a woman killed three people and injured at least 21 in an explosion near an upscale restaurant in central Moscow ​on Saturday evening, the authorities said.

The explosion occurred just before 2000 ​local time close to an Italian restaurant located in one ⁠of Moscow’s seven Stalin-era skyscrapers at Kudrinkskaya Square, the police said, Reuters reported.

Russia’s Anti-Terrorism Committee said that ​an unidentified woman had tried to get into the restaurant but was stopped by ​a security guard, the state RIA news agency reported.

It said the woman, the security guard and a customer at the Balzi Rossi Italian restaurant had been killed in the ​blast that followed.

Those injured received wounds of varying seriousness, the police said.

Russia’s state ​RIA news agency released video of heavily armed law enforcement officers at the scene, which ‌had ⁠been closed off to the public.

The authorities did not name those killed or injured nor did they say who they thought might have been responsible.

More than four years into a full-scale war with Ukraine, Russia’s FSB security service said earlier ​this year that authorities would step ​up protection for ⁠high-ranking military officials after a series of assassinations and attempted killings it blamed on Kyiv.

The Kommersant daily newspaper cited its ​own sources as saying that the bomb had been intended ​to maim ⁠and kill guests who were enjoying themselves on the restaurant’s summer terrace outside.

It suggested that the bomb had been set off by someone else remotely and ⁠that the ​woman carrying it may not have known ​that it was an explosive device.

The restaurant’s website said the venue had been closed on Saturday for ​a private event.

 

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Trump says he will hold off on fresh Iran attack in hope of quick deal

The Saudi crown prince spoke to Trump, a White House official told Reuters, but did not provide details.

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U.S. President Donald Trump said ​late on Saturday he would hold off on a fresh attack on Iran as long as a deal could be reached quickly to halt Iran’s nuclear ‌ambitions and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Reuters reported.

Iran and “other Middle Eastern Countries” asked for a time to complete a deal that would lead to “the Immediate, Complete and Total” reopening of the Strait and “an end to Iran’s nuclear threat,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Based on this request, I have agreed, for the future benefit of the WORLD and, likewise, the survival of a successful and prosperous Iran, to cancel the attack, subject ​to being able to rapidly make a DEAL.”

Israel “joins me in this commitment,” Trump wrote. Israel did not immediately make a public statement on the issue.

Iran warned the U.S. this ​weekend against any “adventurous action” and said it would retaliate decisively if American forces followed through on Trump’s threats of fresh attacks on Iranian targets.

Iranian ⁠Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi’s comments in separate phone calls on Saturday with senior Turkish, Pakistani and Saudi officials came just hours after Kuwait’s army said it destroyed hostile drones launched by ​Iran against several vital facilities.

Speaking to Pakistan’s Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Araqchi said Iran would respond decisively to any “aggression” and discussed the consequences ​of “destabilizing actions” by the U.S., as well as prospects for heightened regional insecurity, according to Araqchi’s Telegram account.

Araqchi later told Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan that any attacks by the U.S. and Israel or participation by regional countries in such actions would be met with a “proportionate response.” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke to Trump on Saturday and “expressed concern and asked for clarity” about U.S. plans for Iran, ​a U.S. official told Axios.

The Saudi crown prince spoke to Trump, a White House official told Reuters, but did not provide details.

Nournews, a media outlet affiliated with Iran’s top security body, ​said on Saturday that U.S. attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure would prompt Iranian strikes on oil fields in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the gas fields of Qatar and ‌Israel, saying, “all ⁠will be burned to ashes.”

At a cabinet meeting on Friday at the Camp David retreat, Trump said he believed U.S. negotiators, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, could still reach a deal with Iran, read the report.

But Trump also said he was losing faith in the Iranians, saying, “They break their word so often” — a claim Tehran has frequently leveled at Washington — and said he would be “hitting them.”

Oil prices have stayed high since U.S. and Israeli forces started the war with strikes on Iran on February 28. Trump has ​argued that his stated goal of keeping ​Iran from gaining nuclear weapons justifies higher fuel ⁠costs in the near term, but the economic pain has put political pressure on him to find a way to end the war.

Benchmark Brent crude futures rose 24% in July, and analysts polled by Reuters expect prices to rise further this year.

The risk of Iranian attacks has deterred ​most shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, an important conduit for global energy supplies, since the start of the conflict, sending shockwaves through ​the world economy.

A government ⁠facility in northern Kuwait and civilian property belonging to a company on Bubiyan Island were hit on Saturday, with falling shrapnel causing material damage but no casualties, the Kuwaiti army said.

Adding to the energy industry’s concerns, Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen recently began threatening the Bab el-Mandeb, the strait at the other end of the Red Sea from the Suez Canal, another export route for Saudi ⁠crude.

The United Kingdom ​Maritime Trade Operations said on Saturday it had received reports of two maritime incidents off Oman, including one ​in which a tanker was struck by an unknown projectile that damaged the engine room. In the other incident, the master of a tanker reported seeing a large splash and an explosion close to the vessel, though no ​damage was reported.

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