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Hezbollah reveals military muscle in clashes with Israel

Hezbollah has gradually revealed its military capabilities in 10 months of cross-border clashes with Israel, analysts say, including footage of purported underground missile facilities released Friday amid fears of all-out war.

The Lebanese Shiite Muslim movement, armed and financed by Iran, has traded near-daily fire with Israeli forces in support of its ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war.

Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since the start of the Gaza war in October

Palestinian village in shock after attack by Israeli settlers

The Israeli settlers who attacked Hassan Arman's village of Jit in the occupied West Bank had a simple aim, he says: "To burn, kill, or destroy" -- all of which took place that night.

Residents hid in fear while dozens of settlers ransacked their northern village late on Thursday, burning homes and cars, until eventually a young Palestinian man was shot dead.

Arman, whose car was destroyed by fire during the attack, said he had "never seen anything like it" in Jit as he opened the charred door of his vehicle.

A girl comforts the mother of a Palestinian man killed during an attack by Jewish settlers on the village of Jit in the occupied West Bank

Gaza records first polio case in 25 years as UN urges vaccinations

Gaza has recorded its first polio case in 25 years, the Palestinian health ministry said on Friday, after UN chief Antonio Guterres called for pauses in the Israel-Hamas war to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children.

Tests in Jordan confirmed the disease in an unvaccinated 10-month-old from the central Gaza Strip, the health ministry in Ramallah said.

According to the United Nations, Gaza, now in its 11th month of war, has not registered a polio case for 25 years, although type 2 poliovirus was detected in samples collected from the territory's wastewater in June.

UN agencies want two seven day pauses in the Gaza war so they can vaccinate 640,000 children against polio, which has been detected in the territory's waste water

Israel FM says expects allies to attack Iran if it strikes

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Friday his country expected support from foreign allies "in attacking" Iran if it strikes Israel, comments deemed "inappropriate" by France's visiting top diplomat.

Iran and its regional allies have vowed retaliation for high-profile killings late last month blamed on Israel, including an attack in Tehran that killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, which Israel has not claimed responsibility for.

Israel's top diplomat Israel Katz (C) holds hands with his French and British counterparts, Stephane Sejourne (R) and David Lammy, in Jerusalem

Gaza's overwhelmed undertakers stack 'graves on top of graves'

Undertakers are working like bricklayers in a Gaza cemetery, piling cinder blocks into tight rectangles, side by side, for freshly dug graves.

More than 10 months into the Gaza war, so many bodies are arriving at the cemetery in Deir el-Balah that the men, working in the hot sun, hardly have space to bury them.

"The cemetery is so full that we now dig graves on top of other graves, we've piled the dead in levels," says Saadi Hassan Barakeh, leading his team of gravediggers.

Palestinian gravedigger Saadi Hassan Barakeh say he has been burying the dead for 28 years, but has never been so busy amid the Gaza war

'It's scary': Israeli frontline city in dark over port blast risks

The smell of fuel wafts from storage tanks to Dovi Sonny's apartment -- a long-time irritant, and now a major worry after Hezbollah revealed that the facility in northern Israel was in its sights.

Sonny, 66, has no idea what would happen should a rocket hit one of the towering circular containers about 100 metres (yards) from his building in Haifa.

He, like everyone else in the port city, just 30 kilometres (less than 20 miles) from the Lebanese border, has been left in the dark about the risks from the industrial area -- and so fears the worst.

The Israeli city of Haifa is home to an oil refinery, a commercial port, and an oil storage facility

Hamas rejects 'new' Gaza truce conditions as Biden says deal closer than ever

Hamas said Friday it rejected "new conditions" in a Gaza ceasefire proposal that US-led mediators presented during two days of talks in Qatar.

Diplomatic efforts have so far failed to alleviate the suffering endured over more than 10 months of war, but US President Joe Biden insisted after the latest round of talks that "we are closer than we have ever been".

He is sending US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Israel this weekend to push the latest proposal, the State Department said.

In scorching weather, a boy walks through a puddle of sewage water surrounded by mounds of garbage and rubble in Jabalia, northern Gaza -- health workers say diseases are spreading

'I wanted the job': Sudanese woman defies Libya patriarchy as mechanic

Wrench in hand, Asawar Mustafa, a female Sudanese refugee in Libya, inspects an oil filter in the women-only section of a garage in western Libya, where being a mechanic is considered a man's role.

That hasn't deterred the 22-year-old whose main concern until recently was survival, having fled the war in Sudan with her family and abandoned her last year of studies in pharmacy.

"At first, the experience was a bit difficult," said Asawar, who came to Libya with her four sisters, mother and brother, who works in the men's section at the same garage.

Asawar Mustafa fled the deadly violence of the war raging in her home country of Sudan, eventually arriving in Libya where she became a car mechanic

French foreign minister says Gaza truce 'necessary' for regional peace

French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said Thursday from Beirut that a cease-fire in Gaza was "necessary" for peace in the region including Lebanon, as talks resumed in Qatar aiming to end the conflict.

"We are all worried about the regional situation," Sejourne said after meeting parliament speaker Nabih Berri, an ally of Lebanon's Hezbollah group.

France "supports Lebanon, and in this context and in the context of regional peace, we hope for the ceasefire... in the Gaza Strip, which... will be necessary to guarantee peace in the region," he said.

Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati (R) meets with France's Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne in Beirut

Abbas tells Turkish parliament he will go to Gaza

Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas told a special session of the Turkish parliament on Thursday that he would travel to Gaza.

He was speaking as health ministry officials in the Hamas-run territory said the death toll from Israel's assault there had passed 40,000 people.

"I have decided to go to Gaza with other brothers from the Palestinian leadership," Abbas said to applause from Turkish lawmakers.

Abbas is based in Ramallah in the West Bank, and Gaza Strip is controlled by Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Abbas heads the Fatah Palestinian movement, a rival to Hamas