Saudi Arabia is hosting Arab leaders and Iran's president for two summits this weekend on the ongoing war in Gaza, which is raising fears of a regional escalation.
The emergency meetings of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation come after over one month of Israeli bombardment has killed more than 10,000 people in Gaza, many of them children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Israeli air strikes pounded Gaza City Thursday as soldiers battled street-by-street with Hamas militants, and tens of thousands of Palestinians desperate for safety fled their homes southwards in the besieged territory.
After more than a month of intense bombardment, hundreds of thousands of people remain trapped in a "dire humanitarian situation" in urban battle zones without enough food and water, the United Nations said.
The parents of Omer Neutra, a dual national US-Israeli soldier, are counting on President Joe Biden to bring their son home as he is believed to be one of hundreds of hostages seized by Hamas in its attack from Gaza last month.
They have had no word about him since their ordeal, and that of the other hostage families, began on October 7.
"We feel we live in a separate universe than most of you," his father Ronen Neutra told AFP in an interview.
A US senator said Wednesday that it is "vital" for Israel to carry out a more targeted offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip to limit civilian casualties.
Chris Murphy, a Democrat on the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stressed that Israel has every right to defend itself from aggression, and that he opposes a ceasefire as it would give Hamas, the Islamist group responsible for the attacks against Israel, time to "regroup."
A US senator said Wednesday that it is "vital" for Israel to carry out a more targeted offensive in the Gaza Strip to limit civilian casualties.
"I think that the civilian death toll has been too high, and a more surgical approach would be important and vital," Chris Murphy, a Democratic member of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told AFP in an interview.
"I am concerned that if Israel's strategy and end goal is to defeat Hamas, then this pace of civilian casualties, which certainly comes with a moral cost, also comes with a strategic cost."
US warplanes carried out a strike on an Iran-linked weapons storage facility in eastern Syria on Wednesday in response to attacks against American personnel, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
It is the second time in roughly two weeks that the United States has targeted a location in Syria it said was tied to Iran, which supports an array of armed groups that Washington blames for a spike in attacks on its forces in the Middle East.
Yemen's Huthi rebels shot down an American MQ-9 Reaper drone, a senior US defense official said Wednesday, confirming an earlier claim by the Iran-backed group.
The Huthis -- who have downed an American drone before -- said the MQ-9 was spying as part of US support for Israel in its war against Hamas.
"A US military MQ-9 remotely-piloted aircraft was shot down off the coast of Yemen by Huthi forces," the official said.
The Huthis -- who seized Yemen's capital Sanaa in 2014 and control large swathes of the country -- claimed the shootdown earlier in the day.
"I believed in peace with Gaza, but I was mistaken," said Avida Bachar, a resident of kibbutz Beeri near the Gaza Strip, speaking from his hospital bed.
Bachar lost his wife and son in the bloody October 7 attack by Hamas, the single deadliest event in Israel since the country's creation in 1948.
"We must destroy the enemy because if we don't we have no possible future," Bachar, who is in his fifties, told AFP.
Gaza City's suburbs began to appear after about 30 minutes of navigating broken roads. We were approaching the focal point of the fight between Israel and Hamas in the territory.
On Wednesday, AFP was embedded with Israeli soldiers, and witnessed the devastation of a month of war at first hand. Our still and video images were submitted to the Israeli military censor for approval.
Security was at a maximum for the incursion which lasted a few hours, and was organised for several representatives of the foreign media covering the Israel-Hamas war.
Brazilian police said Wednesday they arrested two people for involvement in plotting "terrorist attacks" in the country, which Israel's Mossad spy agency said were backed by Lebanese militant group Hezbollah against Israeli and Jewish targets.
Federal police said they had detained two suspects in Sao Paulo in an operation to "disrupt the preparation of terrorist attacks and secure evidence on the possible recruitment of Brazilians to carry out extremist acts in the country."
