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Israeli Bombardment Kills 29 People in Gaza, Rockets Fired into Israel

Palestinians inspect the rubble of a destroyed building following an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, 04 October 2024. (EPA)
Palestinians inspect the rubble of a destroyed building following an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, 04 October 2024. (EPA)
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Israeli Bombardment Kills 29 People in Gaza, Rockets Fired into Israel

Palestinians inspect the rubble of a destroyed building following an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, 04 October 2024. (EPA)
Palestinians inspect the rubble of a destroyed building following an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, 04 October 2024. (EPA)

Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 29 Palestinians on Friday, medics said, and sirens blared in southern Israel in response to renewed rocket fire from fighters in the Palestinian enclave.

The new rocket salvoes indicated that Hamas-led armed factions in Gaza are still able to fire projectiles into Israel despite a year-long Israeli aerial and ground offensive that has turned wide areas of the enclave into wasteland.

On Friday, the Israeli military said sirens sounded in southern Israel for the first time in around two months.

"Almost a year after Oct. 7, Hamas is still threatening our civilians with their terrorism and we will continue operating against them," it added, referring to the anniversary of Hamas' cross-border attack that touched off the Gaza war.

In Gaza City in north Gaza, Palestinian health officials said one Israeli aerial strike on a house killed at least seven people. Four people including two women and a baby were killed in the bombing of a home in the southern city of Khan Younis.

The rest were killed in airstrikes on several areas across the densely populated coastal enclave. Residents said Israeli forces operating in Gaza City's Zeitoun suburb and in Rafah, near the southern border with Egypt, blew up clusters of homes.

Israel's military says Hamas combatants use crowded, built-up residential neighborhoods as cover. Hamas denies this.

Israel media, reporting on the rocket fire, said one rocket was intercepted by air defense and another crashed in an open area. There were no reports of casualties or notable damage.

Palestinians in Gaza will mark the first anniversary of the war next week with little hope of an end to the fighting in the foreseeable future, even as Israel pursues a new ground incursion into Lebanon against Hamas' major Iranian-backed ally Hezbollah.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel almost a year ago in support of Hamas after the Palestinian movement staged the deadliest assault in Israel's history on Oct. 7, 2023.

The attack, in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed and over 250 taken hostage, ignited the war that has devastated Gaza, displacing most of its 2.3 million population and killing over 41,800 people, according to Gaza health authorities.

International diplomacy led by the United States has so far failed to clinch a ceasefire deal in Gaza. Hamas wants an agreement that ends the war while Israel says fighting can only end when Hamas is eradicated.

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Arab World

More Than Half of Sudan Needs Humanitarian Aid, Says NGO Chief

FILE PHOTO: Displaced Sudanese gather after fleeing El-Fasher city in Darfur, in Tawila, Sudan, October 29, 2025, in this still image taken from a Reuters' video. REUTERS/Mohamed Jamal/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Displaced Sudanese gather after fleeing El-Fasher city in Darfur, in Tawila, Sudan, October 29, 2025, in this still image taken from a Reuters' video. REUTERS/Mohamed Jamal/File Photo
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More Than Half of Sudan Needs Humanitarian Aid, Says NGO Chief

FILE PHOTO: Displaced Sudanese gather after fleeing El-Fasher city in Darfur, in Tawila, Sudan, October 29, 2025, in this still image taken from a Reuters' video. REUTERS/Mohamed Jamal/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Displaced Sudanese gather after fleeing El-Fasher city in Darfur, in Tawila, Sudan, October 29, 2025, in this still image taken from a Reuters' video. REUTERS/Mohamed Jamal/File Photo

More than half of Sudan's population is in need of humanitarian aid, the head of the Danish Refugee Council told AFP, as fighting ravages the northeast African nation.

Since breaking out in April 2023, the war between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced nearly 12 million and triggered one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

"We see a situation where more than 30 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance. That is half of the population of Sudan," Danish Refugee Council Secretary General Charlotte Slente told AFP by phone this week after a visit to a border region in neighboring Chad.

"The suffering we see is unimaginable."

Sudan had a population of around 50 million people in 2024, according to the World Bank.

The aid official's comments came after a field visit to an area in Chad that borders Sudan's western Darfur region, which has seen fierce fighting of late.

Violence has escalated dramatically in recent weeks, with the RSF seizing control of the key town of El-Fasher -- the army's last stronghold in Darfur -- after an 18-month siege and reports of atrocities multiplying.

"There are violations that cross all international humanitarian laws," she added.

Slente said the NGO had seen evidence of mass killings and sexual violence in Sudan.

"We see detentions, we see abductions, forced displacement and torture," she said.

She accused the international community of not doing enough.

"Statements have a very limited impact both on the ongoing humanitarian needs on the ground, and they have not been able to stop the violence," she said.

She warned that there were other cities still under siege that were not receiving the same level of attention.

The town of Babanusa, the last army stronghold in West Kordofan state, has been under siege for several months, as have North Kordofan state capital El-Obeid and South Kordofan's Kadugli and Dilling.

"The international community must stop managing the consequences of this conflict and must start preventing the atrocities," said Slente.

Arab World

Iraq Tribal Clashes Kill Eight

Iraq's tribes have once again become one of the most powerful actors in the rural and oil-rich south. (AFP)
Iraq's tribes have once again become one of the most powerful actors in the rural and oil-rich south. (AFP)
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Iraq Tribal Clashes Kill Eight

Iraq's tribes have once again become one of the most powerful actors in the rural and oil-rich south. (AFP)
Iraq's tribes have once again become one of the most powerful actors in the rural and oil-rich south. (AFP)

Tribal clashes over agricultural land in central Iraq have killed eight people and injured another nine, a security official in Wasit province told AFP on Saturday.

The dispute broke out early in the morning in the village of Kheshan between members of a Bedouin tribe, the official said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media, AFP reported.

"Eight people were killed and another nine injured," the official said, adding they were all involved in the fighting.

Security forces have surrounded the area, though skirmishes have not yet ceased.

Tribal feuds are common in Iraq, a war-scarred country awash with weapons where petty rows can turn into deadly clashes.

Tribes wield significant influence and often operate under their own moral and judicial codes, and they possess huge caches of arms.

Iraq has only recently begun to regain a sense of stability after decades of violence that followed the 2003 US-led invasion that ousted long-time ruler Saddam Hussein. 

Arab World

UN Security Council Calls for End to Houthi Attacks

Armed tribesmen participate in an anti-Israel gathering mobilizing more fighters, in Sanaa, Yemen, 05 November 2025. (EPA)
Armed tribesmen participate in an anti-Israel gathering mobilizing more fighters, in Sanaa, Yemen, 05 November 2025. (EPA)
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UN Security Council Calls for End to Houthi Attacks

Armed tribesmen participate in an anti-Israel gathering mobilizing more fighters, in Sanaa, Yemen, 05 November 2025. (EPA)
Armed tribesmen participate in an anti-Israel gathering mobilizing more fighters, in Sanaa, Yemen, 05 November 2025. (EPA)

The UN Security Council on Friday called for an end to cross-border and maritime attacks by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi militants and urged member states to beef up efforts to implement an arms embargo against them.

In a resolution renewing sanctions against the militants, the Council condemned the attacks and demanded an end to all such actions, "including those against infrastructure and civilian targets."

The text was adopted in a 13-0 vote, with permanent members China and Russia abstaining.

Targeted sanctions were extended until November 14, 2026, including a freezing of assets and travel bans currently in place against about 10 people, most of them high-ranking Houthi officials and the militia as a whole.

The text says that sanctions could now affect those who launch cross-border attacks from Yemeni territory using ballistic and cruise missile technology, or attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden.

Member states were asked to "increase efforts to combat the smuggling of weapons and components via land and sea routes, to ensure implementation of the targeted arms embargo."

The Houthis, who hail from Yemen's rugged north, have controlled large swathes of the country, including the capital Sanaa, for more than a decade.

The militants have frequently launched attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea.

The UN text called on the panel of experts tasked with monitoring the application of the embargo to present a report to the Council by mid-April with recommendations on the sale and transfer to Yemen of "dual-use components and precursor chemicals" that could fall into Houthi hands.

Council members also want the report to offer advice on improving information sharing on vessels suspected of carrying arms in violation of existing sanctions.

"The resolution will support the council's ability to monitor and therefore deter violations of the arms embargo," Britain's interim UN envoy James Kariuki said.

But several member states, notably the United States and France, lamented that the Council had not gone farther.

"We regret that the text adopted was not more ambitious and does not reflect the deterioration of the situation in Yemen over the past year," said France's deputy envoy Jay Dharmadhikari.

But veto-wielding China and Russia kept the council from further strengthening the sanctions.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, triggered by the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas, the Houthis have increased the number of missile and drone attacks on Israeli soil and on ships in the Red Sea, claiming those actions were carried out in solidarity with Palestinians.