Major oil and gas companies such as Aramco, ExxonMobil and Shell could have paid for their share of the damage caused by climate change and still earned trillions of dollars in profit, researchers said on Thursday.

Their conclusions were released ahead of the UN's COP28 climate negotiations later this month in Dubai, where developing countries not responsible for most carbon emissions are expected to push for governments and firms to pay more for their role in global warming.

Rights group Amnesty International on Thursday accused Qatar of "continuing failure" on workers' rights as the first anniversary of the Gulf state's hosting of the 2022 World Cup approached.

Following Qatar's successful bid to hold the first World Cup in the Middle East, and during the tournament, the gas-rich emirate faced a barrage of criticism over its human rights record and treatment of migrant workers.

The UN human rights chief on Thursday highlighted allegations of serious rights violations in the Israel-Hamas war that he said needed "full accountability".

Volker Turk said "extremely serious allegations of multiple and profound breaches of international humanitarian law, whoever commits them, demand rigorous investigation and full accountability".

Israel renewed its military operation Thursday at Gaza's largest hospital, targeting what it said was a Hamas command centre hidden beneath thousands of patients, medics and displaced people.

"Tonight we conducted a targeted operation into Shifa hospital," said Major General Yaron Finkelman, the head of army operations in Gaza. "We continue to move forward."

Both Israel and its top ally the United States say Hamas has built in tunnels below the Al-Shifa complex, which has become a focal point in the war.

Many in the majority-Jewish Canadian town of Hampstead worried about the potential for unrest tied to the Israel-Hamas war, but residents of the small Quebec community have been startled by the scale of the outbreak of anti-Semitic incidents in recent weeks.

Lorne W., who preferred not to give his last name, told AFP he is "very, very, very much" concerned about the sudden uptick in hate directed at the province's Jewish community, which is one of the oldest and most populous in Canada.

A group of young Israelis in Cyprus sang loudly, laughed and shouted in joy as a rainbow appeared -- but each of them was there because they had suffered overwhelming trauma.

"We look happy, but inside we are... not," said Tamar, 23, a survivor of the October 7 Hamas attacks, pressing her fingertips to her heart as she struggled to find the right words.

Telling her story was too difficult, she said, "because other people, they can't understand".

Labour leader Keir Starmer was hit by a string of resignations from his frontbench in the House of Commons on Wednesday night, after facing a rebellion from his MPs over his refusal to back a ceasefire in Gaza.

The vote calling for the ceasefire was defeated by 293 votes to 168, but eight of Starmer's frontbenchers resigned from the frontbench after supporting the amendment.

Labour MPs had been ordered to abstain on the vote and were told instead to back Starmer's position calling for longer "humanitarian pauses" rather than a ceasefire.

Domestic policy concerns are leading US officials willfully to ignore Israeli "war crimes" -- and to stifle dissent over arming the country -- a former senior State Department staffer who quit in protest told AFP Wednesday.

Josh Paul caused a stir in Washington when he resigned last month, one of the more high profile protests at US policy from within the State Department.

Iranian authorities on Wednesday released the prize-winning rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh after she spent more than two weeks in prison, her husband said.

Nasrin Sotoudeh, 60, was arrested at the funeral on October 29 in Tehran of Armita Garawand, 17, who activists say was fatally beaten by the Tehran morality police.

Sotoudeh, who has spent much of the past decade in and out of prison serving a myriad of sentences in cases linked to her activism, was after her arrest moved to Qarchak women's prison outside Tehran and subsequently to Evin prison in the capital.

Blocked roads, armed raids, sabotaged wells: rural Palestinians in the occupied West Bank say they have faced increased harassment from Israeli settlers since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

In Imran Nawaja's village, the access road has been obstructed by huge stones since the start of the war, put there either by settlers or the army, the Palestinian said.

"The Israeli army wanted to reopen the road, but the settlers came to prevent it," said a stunned Nawaja, a 46-year-old farmer from Susya, close to Hebron in the south of the West Bank.