US Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed Wednesday to Israel in a show of solidarity after a bloody attack by Hamas, with Washington closing ranks with its ally that has launched heavy retaliation on the Gaza Strip.
Blinken was set to arrive Thursday for a lightning visit in which he is likely to see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has vowed an unrelenting response to what he called the Islamist militants' "savagery."
The UN Human Rights Council voted Wednesday to set up an independent fact-finding mission to probe alleged rights abuses in Sudan's brutal fighting.
"There is ... an urgent need to investigate and gather evidence of human rights violations and abuses and violations of international law, no matter where in Sudan they were committed, by whom they were committed," Britain's ambassador Simon Manley said, bringing forward the proposal on behalf of several countries.
The draft resolution was only narrowly passed, with Sudan fuming at the plan.
Turkish bombardment has damaged more than half of Kurdish-held northeast Syria's power and oil infrastructure, dealing a blow to its energy-dependent economy, the Kurds' top commander said.
Mazloum Abdi, who heads the Kurdish-led, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), also criticised Washington for failing to do more to prevent the strikes, during an interview with AFP in the northern city of Hasakeh.
On October 5, Turkey launched a bombing campaign in Syria's northeast after it said militants who were behind an attack in Ankara came from and were trained in Syria.
The European Union's most senior officials held a solemn tribute Wednesday for the Israelis killed in Hamas attacks, and issued their most stark condemnation yet of the Palestinian militant group.
Attending a minute's silence in front of the European Parliament in Brussels, the president of the assembly Roberta Metsola made it clear she believes the killings were motivated by anti-Semitism.
"October 7 is a day that will go down in global infamy," she said, referring to Saturday's Hamas assault.
The health of a 16-year-old Iranian girl who has been in coma since an alleged assault on the Tehran metro has "deteriorated" in hospital, local media reported Wednesday.
According to the state news agency IRNA, Armita Garawand fainted because of low blood pressure.
But a Kurdish-focused rights group has alleged that she was hurt in a clash with female police officers on the network, for allegedly violating Iran's strict dress code for women.
President Joe Biden urged Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday to follow the rules of war after the Israeli prime minister vowed to destroy Hamas following the Palestinian militants' brutal attack.
The 80-year-old president, who has dispatched a US aircraft carrier to the region in a show of support for Israel, also warned Hamas-backer Iran to "be careful."
Biden told a gathering of US Jewish community leaders at the White House that the attacks on Israel in which 1,200 people were killed was the "deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust."
Cyprus has received 160 foreign nationals airlifted to the island from Israel on a Portuguese military transport plane, with Austria also permitted to operate rescue flights, officials said Wednesday.
Portugal has undertaken three flights from Tel Aviv to Larnaca Airport with a C-130 military transport aircraft to carry their nationals trapped in Israel.
One flight landed Tuesday night, while another two were conducted on Wednesday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Theodoros Gotsis told the Cyprus News Agency.
Confronted with the war raging between Israel and Hamas, Arab countries which have normalised relations with Israel in recent years have been forced to balance diplomacy with fiercly pro-Palestinian Arab public opinion.
But as analysts predict a long and violent response from Israel in Gaza, the position faced by those nations is expected to become increasingly troublesome.
In the wake of the Palestinian militants' surprise attack into southern Israel, the United Arab Emirates condemned the kidnapping of Israeli hostages in a break with other regional players.
A potential intervention by Tehran-backed Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and uncertainty over the role played by Iran itself are risk factors that could push the unprecedented conflict between Israel and Hamas into a wider regional war, analysts say.
For now, there is no indication of an impending offensive by Hezbollah against Israel, despite growing border tensions.
Iran, officially at least, has insisted it has no involvement in the Palestinian militant group's assault on Israel.
Qatar has agreed to supply France's TotalEnergies with natural gas for 27 years, its state energy company announced on Wednesday.
Qatar will supply 3.5 million tonnes of gas a year under the deal, QatarEnergy said, following two agreements with Total last year for a share of the Gulf state's huge North Field gas expansion project.
