Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was sending a team to Qatar Sunday for talks on a truce and hostage release in Gaza, after Hamas said it was ready to start negotiations "immediately".
But Netanyahu, who is due to meet with President Donald Trump in Washington on Monday, said the Palestinian Islamist group's proposals for changes to a draft US-backed ceasefire deal were "unacceptable".
UN rights expert Francesca Albanese on Thursday denounced companies she said "profited from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid, and now genocide", in a report that provoked a furious response from Israel.
Some of the companies named in her report also raised objections.
Albanese presented her report, investigating "the corporate machinery sustaining the Israeli settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians", to the UN Human Rights Council.
US President Donald Trump this week urged the Palestinian militant group Hamas to seize the opportunity for a 60-day truce in Gaza, saying Israel had agreed to the proposal.
After almost 21 months of devastating fighting in the Palestinian territory and following a speedy resolution to Israel's 12-day war with Iran, Trump's exhortations have reignited hopes for a third ceasefire in the Gaza war.
Young children wandered through the charred shell of what had been a school sheltering displaced Palestinians on Thursday, after a pre-dawn Israeli strike killed 15 people there according to the civil defence agency.
Tattered clothes hung from the blackened exterior of the building in western Gaza City, as rubble still smouldered below in the morning light.
Bloodstains dotted the ground strewn with the remnants of daily life. Clothing, metal chairs, tins of food and part of an electric fan lay amongst the wreckage, AFP footage showed.
Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to bring home all the hostages still held by militants in war-stricken Gaza, where the civil defence agency said 73 people were killed Thursday in his country's ongoing offensive.
Netanyahu has come under strong pressure to get the hostages back after US President Donald Trump said Israel had agreed to a 60-day ceasefire with Palestinian militant group Hamas that could lead to their release.
Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Thursday said a multi-billion-dollar mega-dam on the Blue Nile that has long worried neighbouring countries is complete and will be officially inaugurated in September.
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), launched in 2011 with a $4-billion budget, is considered Africa's largest hydroelectric project stretching 1.8 kilometres (just over one mile) wide and 145 metres (475 feet) high.
On the drought-stricken plains of Morocco's Chtouka region, cherry tomato farms stretch as far as the eye can see, clinging to life through a single, environmentally contentious lifeline: desalination.
"We wouldn't be here without it," said Abir Lemseffer, who manages production for the tomato giant Azura.
Severe drought driven by climate change has gripped the North African country since 2018, leaving Azura's 800 hectares (2,000 acres) of farms entirely dependent on desalinated water.
But the technology comes at a high cost -- both financially and environmentally.
An assault by Israeli settlers on soldiers in the occupied West Bank drew condemnation from across the political spectrum, including an unusual rebuke from far-right ministers who typically support the settlement movement.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, considered the two most hardline members of the ruling coalition, called for the perpetrators to be held accountable.
Iran officially suspended its cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog on Wednesday, a move the United States described as "unacceptable".
It came after last month's 12-day conflict between Iran and Israel, which saw unprecedented Israeli and US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities and sharply escalated tensions between Tehran and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday vowed to eradicate Hamas, even as the Palestinian militant group said it was discussing new proposals from mediators for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The Israeli leader had yet to comment on US President Donald Trump's claim that Israel had backed a plan for a 60-day truce in its offensive against Hamas in the war-ravaged territory.
But a week ahead of talks scheduled with Trump in Washington, he vowed to "destroy" Hamas "down to their very foundation".
