By May Angel

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel's military kept up its assault on Gaza City and the wider Gaza Strip on Saturday, dismantling underground shafts and booby-trapped structures in attacks that killed at least 60 Palestinians, according to Gazan health authorities.

The assault came as 10 countries, including Australia, Belgium, Britain and Canada, are scheduled to formally recognise an independent Palestinian state on Monday, ahead of the annual leaders' gathering at the U.N. General Assembly next week.

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Olivia Le Poidevin

GAZA (Reuters) - For a decade, Palestinian bank worker Shady Salama Al-Rayyes paid into a $93,000 mortgage on his flat in a tall, modern block in one of Gaza City's prime neighbourhoods. Now, he and his family are destitute, after fleeing an Israeli demolition strike that collapsed the building in a cloud of black smoke and dust.

US President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened Afghanistan with unspecified punishment if the Taliban-controlled country did not "give Bagram Airbase back."

"If Afghanistan doesn't give Bagram Airbase back to those that built it, the United States of America, BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN!!!" the 79-year-old leader wrote on his Truth Social platform.

The vague threat came just days after he raised the idea of the United States retaking control of the base while on a state visit to the United Kingdom.

(Reuters) -Argentine President Javier Milei will meet with his U.S. counterpart, Donald Trump, on Tuesday as part of his trip to New York, the South American country's presidential press office reported on Saturday.

Milei, who maintains an international policy aligned with the United States and Israel, will also meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, which will be held next week in New York.

By Gram Slattery

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Pentagon officials sat down with a group of European diplomats in late August and delivered a stern message: The U.S. planned to cut off some security assistance to Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, all NATO members bordering Russia.

More broadly, Pentagon official David Baker told the group, according to an official with direct knowledge of the comments, Europe needed to be less dependent on the U.S. Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. military would be shifting its attention to other priorities, like defense of the homeland.

DUBAI (Reuters) -President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Saturday that Iran would overcome any reimposition of sanctions through a so-called "snapback" process, after the U.N. Security Council voted not to permanently lift sanctions on Tehran.

"Through the 'snapback' they block the road, but it is the brains and the thoughts that open or build the road," Pezeshkian said in remarks carried by state television.

VIENNA (Reuters) -Austrian oil, gas and chemicals group OMV has fired an executive over allegations of spying for Russia and a Russian diplomat has been summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Vienna as a result of the affair, news magazine Profil reported.

Profil magazine said the OMV employee allegedly attracted attention through meetings with a Russian diplomat suspected by Western intelligence services of being an agent of Russia's domestic intelligence service FSB.

The director of Al-Shifa hospital was on duty Saturday marshalling the facility's response to Israel's assault on Gaza City when two victims killed in a strike were delivered to the ward: his brother and his sister-in-law.

"I was shocked and devastated to see the bodies of my brother and his wife," said Mohammed Abu Salmiya, who was working in the emergency department of the territory's main hospital at the time.

French President Emmanuel Macron scored a major diplomatic coup by declaring his intention to recognise a Palestinian state, but the move risks drawing bitter retaliation from Israel while not providing concrete benefits to the Palestinians, analysts and sources say.

An elderly British couple released by the Taliban authorities after almost eight months in detention in Afghanistan arrived back in the UK on Saturday, telling the press that they feared "we would never be released".

Peter Reynolds, 80, and his wife Barbie, 76, arrived on a flight from the Qatari capital Doha, where they had stayed for medical checks following their release on Friday.