Israel's army said Wednesday it took control of a vital Gaza-Egypt corridor it suspects aided weapons smuggling as the ground offensive against Hamas in the border city of Rafah intensified.
A military spokesman said about 20 tunnels were found in the area of the corridor, a claim rejected by Egypt which accused Israel of using allegations of tunnels under the border as cover for its Rafah offensive.
Former US presidential hopeful Nikki Haley has been photographed writing "Finish Them" on an Israeli shell as she toured sites near the northern border with Lebanon.
The photograph was posted on X on Tuesday by Danny Danon, a member of the Israeli parliament and former ambassador to the United Nations, who was accompanying Haley on her visit.
"'Finish Them'. This is what my friend the former ambassador Nikki Haley wrote," Danon said in his post that showed a kneeling Haley writing on a shell with a purple marker pen.
US President Joe Biden has no plans to change his Israel policy following a deadly weekend strike on Gaza's Rafah -- but is not turning a "blind eye" to the plight of Palestinian civilians, the White House said Tuesday.
Gazan health authorities said 45 people were killed as a blaze tore through a camp for displaced people following the Sunday strike by Israel.
But Washington does not believe that Israel's actions in Rafah amount to a full-scale operation that would breach Biden's "red lines," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
Israel's military offensive in Rafah is already taking a dire health toll in southern Gaza, and if it continues, "substantial" increases in deaths can be expected, a top WHO official warned Tuesday.
Since Israel launched its long-threatened Rafah incursion in early May, access to healthcare in Gaza's southernmost city has been devastated, said Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization's representative in the Palestinian territories.
Joe Biden's red lines over Israel's assault on Rafah have kept shifting, but the US president faces growing pressure to take a firmer stance after a deadly strike in the Gazan city.
Despite global outrage over the attack in which 45 people were killed, the White House insisted on Tuesday that it did not believe Israel had launched the major operation that Biden has warned against.
John Kirby, the US National Security Council spokesman, said that Biden had been consistent and was not "moving the stick" on what defined an all-out military offensive by key ally Israel.
Hundreds braved roads in Rafah in south Gaza Tuesday as they fled Israel's expanding ground assault, with increased shelling, tanks in the city centre, and forces positioned on higher ground.
"We are panicking and afraid," 40-year-old Ihab Zorob of west Rafah told AFP.
"Our children and wives haven't stopped crying. The bombing last night and throughout the morning has been intense and severe," he said.
"Seeing people flee has made us more afraid, so we've decided to seek shelter in Al-Mawasi (on the coast). Hopefully we'll find space there."
Three quarters of UN members recognise a state of Palestine, with major power France set to join them in September following an announcement Thursday by its President Emmanuel Macron.
The Israel-Hamas war, raging in Gaza since the Palestinian militant group's attack on October 7, 2023, has revived a global push for Palestinians to be given a state of their own.
The action breaks with the long-held view of Western powers that Palestinians can only gain statehood as part of a negotiated peace with Israel.
The world experience an average of 26 more days of extreme heat over the last 12 months that would probably not have occurred without climate change, a report said on Tuesday.
Heat is the leading cause of climate-related death and the report further points to the role of global warming in increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather around the world.
For this study, scientists used the years 1991 to 2020 to determine what temperatures counted as within the top 10 percent for each country over that period.
A civil defence official in Hamas-run Gaza said an Israeli strike on a displacement camp west of Rafah on Tuesday killed at least 21 people, after a similar strike that sparked global outrage.
Israel denied carrying out the latest reported strike, which occurred ahead of a UN Security Council meeting to discuss a Sunday strike which Palestinian officials said killed 45 people.
Despite mounting concerns over the civilian toll of its war on Hamas, Israel has shown no signs of changing course and international efforts aimed at securing a ceasefire remain stalled.
After Iran mourned president Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash, the nation's focus turns to the election for his successor, with the conservative camp seeking a loyalist to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The lead-up to the June 28 vote has opened the field to a broad range of hopefuls. The big question now is how many of them will have their candidacies approved by the Guardian Council, a conservative-dominated vetting body.
