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AFP

  • Hamas receives new Gaza truce plan: Palestinian official

    Hamas receives new Gaza truce plan: Palestinian official

    CAIRO, Egypt: Hamas negotiators in Cairo have received a new proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza, a Palestinian official said Monday, with the prime minister of key mediator Qatar also in Egypt to push for a truce.

    Efforts by mediators Egypt and Qatar, along with the United States, have so far failed to secure a lasting ceasefire in the ongoing war, which over more than 22 months has created a dire humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

    The Palestinian official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said that the latest proposal from mediators “is a framework agreement to launch negotiations on a permanent ceasefire”, calling for an initial 60-day truce and hostage release in two batches.

    The official said that “Hamas will hold internal consultations among its leadership” and with leaders of other Palestinian factions to review the text.

    A source from Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant faction that has fought alongside Hamas in Gaza, told AFP that the plan involved a “ceasefire agreement lasting 60 days, during which 10 Israeli hostages would be released alive, along with a number of bodies”.

    Out of 251 hostages taken during Hamas’s October 2023 attack that triggered the war, 49 are still held in Gaza including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.

    According to the Islamic Jihad source, “the remaining captives would be released in a second phase, with immediate negotiations to follow for a broader deal” for a permanent end to “the war and aggression” with international guarantees.

    The source added that “all factions are supportive of what was presented” by the Egyptian and Qatari mediators.

    Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, visiting the Rafah border crossing with Gaza on Monday, said that Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani was visiting “to consolidate our existing common efforts in order to apply maximum pressure on the two sides to reach a deal as soon as possible”.

    Alluding to the dire humanitarian conditions for the more than two million people living in the Gaza Strip, where UN agencies and aid groups have warned of famine, Abdelatty stressed the urgency of reaching an agreement.

    “The current situation on the ground is beyond imagination,” he said.

  • Iran president heads to Armenia for talks on US-backed corridor

    Iran president heads to Armenia for talks on US-backed corridor

    TEHRAN: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian headed to Armenia on Monday for talks on a planned corridor linking Azerbaijan with its exclave near the border with Iran, part of a peace deal signed at the White House.

    “The (possible) presence of American companies in the region is worrying,” Pezeshkian said before departing on a pre-planned trip that also includes a visit to Belarus.

    “We will discuss it (with Armenian officials) and express our concerns,” he added, according to footage broadcast on state television.

    The land corridor, dubbed the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP), is part of a deal signed earlier this month in Washington between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

    Under the agreement, the United States will hold development rights for the proposed route, which would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave, passing near the Iranian border.

    Iran has long opposed the planned transit route, also known as the Zangezur corridor, fearing it would cut the country off from Armenia and the rest of the Caucasus while bringing potentially hostile foreign forces close to its borders.

    Since the deal was signed, Iranian officials have stepped up warnings to Armenia, saying the project could be part of a US ploy “to pursue hegemonic goals in the Caucasus region.”

    On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described it as a “sensitive” issue, saying Tehran’s main concern is that it could “lead to geopolitical changes in the region.”

    “They (Armenian officials) have assured us that no American forces … or American security companies will be present in Armenia under the pretext of this route,” he told the official IRNA news agency.

    Earlier this month, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader said Tehran would not allow the creation of the planned corridor, warning that the area would become “a graveyard for Trump’s mercenaries.”

  • Amnesty says Israel deliberately starving Gaza’s Palestinians

    Amnesty says Israel deliberately starving Gaza’s Palestinians

    Rights group Amnesty International on Monday accused Israel of enacting a “deliberate policy” of starvation in Gaza, as the United Nations and aid groups warn of famine in the Palestinian territory.

    Israel, while heavily restricting aid allowed into the Gaza Strip, has repeatedly rejected claims of deliberate starvation in the 22-month-old war.

    In a report citing testimonies of displaced Palestinians and medical staff who treated malnourished children, Amnesty said that “Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip.”

    The group accused Israel of “systematically destroying the health, well-being and social fabric of Palestinian life”.

    “It is the intended outcome of plans and policies that Israel has designed and implemented, over the past 22 months, to deliberately inflict on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction — which is part and parcel of Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” Amnesty said.

    The report is based on interviews conducted in recent weeks with 19 displaced Gazans sheltering in three makeshift camps as well two medical staff in two hospitals in Gaza City.

    Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military and foreign ministry did not immediately comment on Amnesty’s findings.

    In April, Amnesty accused Israel of committing a “live-streamed genocide” against Palestinians by forcibly displacing Gazans and creating a humanitarian catastrophe in the besieged territory, claims that Israel dismissed.

  • Zelensky, European leaders head to US for talks on peace deal terms

    Zelensky, European leaders head to US for talks on peace deal terms

    WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said reclaiming Crimea or entering NATO were off the table for Ukraine, as President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Washington for Monday talks aimed at ending the war with Russia.

    Zelensky, who has repeatedly rejected territorial concessions, will meet Trump in Washington on Monday, accompanied by European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and other leaders.

    The meeting comes on the heels of a summit between Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, which failed to yield a ceasefire breakthrough but produced promises from both leaders to provide “robust security guarantees” to Ukraine.

    Zelensky was not invited to the Alaska meeting, after which Trump pivoted to the long-held Russian position that a ceasefire was not needed before a final peace deal.

    “President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight,” Trump posted on his social media platform. “Remember how it started. No getting back Obama given Crimea (12 years ago, without a shot being fired!), and NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE. Some things never change!!!”

    Trump and Zelensky are expected to meet one-on-one before being joined by a cohort of European leaders on Monday, according to the White House schedule.

    Along with von der Leyen, NATO chief Mark Rutte and the leaders of Britain, Finland, France, Germany and Italy will be present.

    It will be the first time Zelensky visits Washington since a bust-up with Trump and Vice President JD Vance in February when the two men berated the Ukrainian leader for being “ungrateful.”

    On Sunday night, after arriving in Washington, Zelensky said: “We all share a strong desire to end this war quickly and reliably.”

    Security guarantees

    Since the Oval Office row in February, Trump has grown more critical of Putin and shown some signs of frustration as Russia repeatedly stalled on peace talks.

    But Washington has not placed extra sanctions on Moscow and the lavish welcome offered to Putin in Alaska on his first visit to the West since he invaded Ukraine in 2022 was seen as a diplomatic coup for Russia.

    Speaking in Brussels on the eve of his visit to the United States, Zelensky said he was keen to hear more about what Putin and Trump discussed in Alaska.

    He also hailed Washington’s offer of security guarantees to Ukraine as “historic.”

    Trump said he spoke to Putin about the possibility of a NATO-style collective defense guarantee for Ukraine.

    The promise would be outside of the framework of the Western military alliance that Ukraine wants to join and which is seen as an existential threat by Russia.

    French President Emmanuel Macron said European leaders would ask Trump “to what extent” Washington is ready to contribute to security guarantees for Ukraine.

    Discussion on land

    Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said Moscow had made “some concessions” regarding five Ukrainian regions that Russia fully or partially controls, and said that “there is an important discussion with regard to Donetsk and what would happen there.

    “That discussion is going to specifically be detailed on Monday,” he said, without giving details.

    Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 following a sham referendum and did the same in 2022 for four Ukrainian regions — Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia — even though its forces have not fully captured them.

    A source briefed on a phone call between Trump and European leaders on Saturday told AFP that the US leader was “inclined to support” a Russian demand to be given territory it has not yet captured in the Donbas, an area that includes the Donetsk and Lugansk regions and which has seen the deadliest battles of the war.

    In exchange, the source cited Trump as saying, Moscow would agree to “freeze” the front line in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where Russian forces hold swathes of territory but not the regional capitals.

    Russia has until now insisted that Ukraine pull its forces out of all four regions as a precondition to any deal.

    ‘Capitulation’

    There is concern in Europe that Washington could pressure Ukraine to accept Russia’s terms.

    “For peace to prevail, pressure must be applied to the aggressor, not the victim of aggression,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Sunday.

    Macron said: “There is only one state proposing a peace that would be a capitulation: Russia.”

    Zelensky has repeatedly pushed back against ceding territory, but said he is ready to discuss the issue in the context of a trilateral summit with Trump and Putin.

    Trump has raised the possibility of such a meeting, but Russia has played down the prospect.

    Moscow’s forces have been advancing gradually but steadily in Ukraine, particularly in the Donetsk region.

    Russian attacks on Kharkiv killed three people and wounded dozens more, Ukrainian authorities said Monday, while a separate overnight attack on the Sumy region near the border wounded two others.

  • Hurricane Erin restrengthens as it lashes Caribbean with rain

    Hurricane Erin restrengthens as it lashes Caribbean with rain

    WASHINGTON: Hurricane Erin restrengthened into a Category 4 storm late Sunday, with forecasters warning it is expected to intensify and grow in size in the coming days as it lashes Caribbean islands with heavy rains that could cause flash floods and landslides.

    The first hurricane of what is expected to be a particularly intense Atlantic season, Erin briefly strengthened into a “catastrophic” Category 5 storm before its wind speeds weakened.

    Forecasters do not currently expect it to make landfall along its expected course, but tropical storm warnings are in effect for the southeast Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands.

    Hurricane Erin was located about 130 miles (205 kilometers) east of Grand Turk Island at 11:00 pm Atlantic Standard Time (Monday 0300 GMT), with maximum sustained winds of 130 miles (215 kilometers) per hour, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC).

    “The core of Erin is expected to pass to the east and northeast of the Turks and Caicos Islands and the southeastern Bahamas overnight into Monday,” the NHC said in its latest report.

    The North Carolina Outer Banks, Bermuda and the central Bahamas were advised to monitor Erin’s progress.

    Hurricane Erin had reached the highest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale just over 24 hours after becoming a Category 1 storm, a rapid intensification that scientists say has become more common due to global warming.

    It could drench isolated areas with as much as six inches (15 centimeters) of rain, the NHC said.

    “Some additional strengthening is expected over the next 12 hours followed by gradual weakening,” the agency said.

    “However, Erin is forecast to continue increasing in size and will remain a large and dangerous major hurricane through the middle of this week,” it added.

    The NHC also warned of “locally considerable flash and urban flooding, along with landslides or mudslides.”

    Climate hazard

    In San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, fishermen cast their rods into the storm-swollen waters of a local river on Sunday, AFP images showed.

    Earlier last weekend, surfers rode the swells along the island’s coast before the storm approached.

    Areas of Puerto Rico — a US territory home to more than three million people — saw flooded roads and homes.

    Swells generated by Erin will spread to the Bahamas, Bermuda and the US and Canadian east coast in the coming days, creating “life-threatening surf and rip currents,” the NHC said.

    While meteorologists have expressed confidence that Erin will remain well off the United States coast, they said the storm could still cause dangerous waves and erosion in places such as North Carolina.

    The Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June until late November, is expected to be more intense than normal, US meteorologists predict.

    Several powerful storms wreaked havoc in the region last year, including Hurricane Helene, which killed more than 200 people in the southeastern United States.

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — which operates the NHC — has been subject to budget cuts and layoffs as part of US President Donald Trump’s plans to greatly reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy, leading to fears of lapses in storm forecasting.

    Human-driven climate change — namely, rising sea temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels — has increased both the possibility of the development of more intense storms and their more rapid intensification, scientists say.

  • Games industry in search of new winning combo at Gamescom 2025

    Games industry in search of new winning combo at Gamescom 2025

    The global games industry gathers for the vast Gamescom trade fair in Cologne this week, with hopes that upcoming heavy-hitters like “GTA VI” can help the industry escape its doldrums.

    Tuesday’s opening night event will show off major releases slated for the months ahead, with the starring role going to “Black Ops 7” — the new instalment in the sprawling “Call of Duty” saga.

    Trade visitors will have Wednesday to peruse the stands and make connections, before tens of thousands of enthusiastic gamers are unleashed on the vast salon from Thursday to Sunday.

    Last year’s Gamescom drew almost 335,000 people to the Cologne exhibition centre, where studios lay on vast stands with consoles or PCs offering hands-on play with the latest releases.

    Nintendo is back in 2025 after staying away last year, surfing on record launch sales for its Switch 2 console.

    And Microsoft’s Xbox gaming division will show off new portable hardware expected to be released towards the end of the year.

    Sony, the Japanese giant behind the PlayStation, has opted out this time around.

    The mood is mixed for the roughly 1,500 exhibitors attending this year, as major publishers have recently steered back into profitability but the job cuts seen over the past two years continue.

    In early July, Microsoft said it would lay off around 9,000 people, with hundreds leaving game studios like “Candy Crush” developer King and several games cancelled, including “Perfect Dark” and “Everwild”.

    – Battle for attention –

    “The industry is consolidating quite a bit” after the bumper years when Covid-19 lockdowns created a captive audience, said Rhys Elliott of specialist games data firm Alinea Analytics.

    Around 30,000 workers have lost their jobs since early 2023, according to tracking site Games Industry Layoffs — more than 4,000 of them so far this year.

    Revenue in the global games market should hold steady at just under $190 billion this year, data firm Newzoo has forecast.

    The number of players and hours spent with the medium are stable while an ever-expanding number of titles are jostling for attention.

    And with leviathans like “Roblox” or “Fortnite” swallowing the attention of hundreds of millions of monthly users, “everyone’s fighting for a smaller share of that pie,” said Circana expert Mat Piscatella.

    Read more: Robots race, play football at China’s ‘robot Olympics’

    The need to find new audiences has pushed Microsoft’s Xbox, the biggest games publisher in the world, to switch strategy, increasingly offering its titles on competing console makers’ hardware.

    “They’ve had really great success on the PlayStation platform. Sony is making a bunch of money on that too,” Piscatella said

    “It’s a little bit of a win-win all the way around.”

    Some PlayStation games are making the trip in the opposite direction, with “Helldivers 2” the first to be made available on Xbox as well as the traditional PC port.

    – Success on a budget –

    Shoring up sales is vital in an era where the cost of developing high-spec “AAA” games has mounted into the hundreds of millions of dollars — exposing studios to massive risk should their games not perform as hoped.

    But several breakout hits have recently shown that lower-budget games can still win over players with gameplay, story and art style, such as four-million-selling French turn-based battler “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33”.

    “There’s a realisation you don’t need to spend masses of money to deliver a high-quality game that can appeal broadly and so everyone is rushing towards that model,” said Christopher Dring, founder of industry website The Game Business.

    But “for every ‘Clair Obscur’ success story, there are 10 games that fail to find an audience at all,” Piscatella pointed out.

    “It’s hyper-competitive for those products outside of that big sphere” and smaller developers must fight hard for the funding they need to get games to market.

    Nor is the cult-hit trend likely to displace the mega-budget mastodons.

    Analysts predict that Rockstar Games’ vast “Grand Theft Auto VI” could notch up the biggest launch for any entertainment product in history.

    That might be the juice the flagging industry needs to regain some of its mojo.

  • Seven killed in latest Ecuador pool hall shooting

    Seven killed in latest Ecuador pool hall shooting

    Gunmen shot dead at least seven people at a pool hall in the Ecuadoran city of Santo Domingo, police said Sunday, in the country’s latest gruesome massacre amid soaring gang violence.

    “Seven people died from gunshot wounds” at a pool hall in the nightlife district of Santo Domingo, about 150 kilometers (93 miles) west of the capital Quito, national police said in a WhatsApp group with reporters.

    Purported security camera footage of the massacre circulating online showed several attackers wearing black masks open fire on two men standing at the entrance to the pool hall, sending pedestrians scrambling away.

    The gunmen then entered the hall and continued shooting, fleeing before a police vehicle approached.

    AFP has not yet independently verified the footage.

    A similar pool hall massacre took place last month in the southwestern tourist city of General Villamil Playas, leaving at least nine dead.

    Once considered a bastion of peace in Latin America, Ecuador has been plunged into crisis after years of expansion by transnational cartels that use its ports to ship drugs to the United States and Europe.

    Drug trafficking organizations have been multiplying in Ecuador, where the homicide rate rose from six per 100,000 residents in 2018 to 38 per 100,000 in 2024.

  • Air Canada suspends plan to resume flights as union vows to continue strike

    Air Canada suspends plan to resume flights as union vows to continue strike

    Air Canada on Sunday suspended its plan to resume flights over a strike by flight attendants that has effectively shut down the airline and snarled summer travel for its passengers around the world.

    The announcement came despite the country’s industrial relations board ordering an end to the strike by around 10,000 flight attendants, which had prompted the airline to say it would resume flying on Sunday.

    “Air Canada… has suspended its plan to resume limited flying by Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge,” citing a decision by the union representing the workers to continue with striking, despite the government directive.

    “The airline will resume flights as of tomorrow evening,” the flag carrier said in a statement.

    Earlier, the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) “directed Air Canada to resume airline operations and for all Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge flight attendants to resume their duties by 14:00 EDT on August 17, 2025,” the airline said.

    Air Canada cabin crew walked off the job early Saturday after rejecting an updated contract proposal.

    Hours later, Canada’s labor policy minister, Patty Hajdu, invoked a legal provision to halt the strike and force both sides into binding arbitration.

    “The directive, under section 107 of the Canada Labour Code, and the CIRB’s order, ends the strike at Air Canada that resulted in the suspension of more than 700 flights,” the Montreal-based carrier said.

    The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which is representing the workers, sought wage increases as well as to address uncompensated ground work, including during the boarding process.

    In a statement on Sunday, CUPE’s Air Canada unit said the strike would continue.

    “CUPE National President Mark Hancock made it loud and clear that our members will NOT be returning to work until such time as the government orders Air Canada back to the bargaining table where we can reach an attempted agreement that our members can vote on,” it said.

    “We will not have our rights and protections removed.”

    The union urged passengers not to go to the airport if they had a ticket for Air Canada or its lower-cost subsidiary Air Canada Rouge.

    CUPE earlier slammed the Canadian government’s intervention as “rewarding Air Canada’s refusal to negotiate fairly by giving them exactly what they wanted.”

    “This sets a terrible precedent,” it said.

    The union also pointed out that the chairwoman of CIRB, Maryse Tremblay, previously worked as legal counsel for Air Canada.

    Tremblay’s ruling on whether to end the strike was “an almost unthinkable display of conflict-of-interest,” the union posted on Facebook.

    On Thursday, Air Canada detailed the terms offered to cabin crew, indicating a senior flight attendant would on average make CAN$87,000 ($65,000) by 2027.

    CUPE has described Air Canada’s offers as “below inflation (and) below market value.”

    In a statement issued before the strike began, the Business Council of Canada warned an Air Canada work stoppage would exacerbate the economic pinch already being felt from US President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

    Canada’s flag carrier counts around 130,000 daily passengers and flies directly to 180 cities worldwide.

  • European leaders to join Zelensky in Trump meeting

    European leaders to join Zelensky in Trump meeting

    European leaders will join Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on a Monday visit to Washington to see President Donald Trump in a collective bid to find a way to end to Moscow’s invasion, with the US offering security guarantees for Kyiv.

    The meeting follows a summit in Alaska between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that failed to yield any breakthrough on an immediate ceasefire that the US leader had been pushing for.

    Trump, who pivoted afterwards to say he was now seeking a peace deal, on Sunday posted “BIG PROGRESS ON RUSSIA. STAY TUNED!” on his Truth Social platform, without elaborating.

    Trump’s Russia envoy Steve Witkoff said on Sunday that Trump and Putin had agreed in their summit on “robust security guarantees” for Ukraine.

    But Zelensky, on a Brussels visit on Sunday hosted by European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, rejected the idea of Russia offering his country security guarantees.

    “What President Trump said about security guarantees is much more important to me than Putin’s thoughts, because Putin will not give any security guarantees,” he said.

    Von der Leyen hailed the US offer to provide security guarantees modelled on — but separate from —  NATO’s collective security arrangement, known as Article 5.

    “We welcome President Trump’s willingness to contribute to Article 5-like security guarantees for Ukraine, and the coalition of the willing, including the European Union, is ready to do its share,” von der Leyen said.

    Hopes for ‘productive meeting’ 

    Trump’s pivot to looking for a peace deal, not a ceasefire, aligns with the stance long taken by Putin, and which Ukraine and its European allies have criticised as Putin’s way to buy time with the intent of making battlefield gains.

    Zelensky also said he saw “no sign” the Kremlin leader was prepared to meet him and Trump for a three-way summit, as had been floated by the US president.

    The leaders heading to Washington on Monday to appear alongside Zelensky call themselves the “coalition of the willing”.

    They include British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron,, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, and von der Leyen.

    Also heading to Washington will be Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Finnish President Alexander Stubbs, who get on well with Trump.

    On Sunday they all held a video meeting to prepare their joint position.

    Speaking to US broadcaster CNN, Witkoff said: “I’m hopeful that we have a productive meeting on Monday, we get to real consensus, we’re able to come back to the Russians and push this peace deal forward and get it done.”

    US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking to NBC on Sunday, warned of “consequences” — including the potential imposition of new sanctions on Russia — if no peace deal is reached on Ukraine.

    Territorial ‘concessions’

    European leaders have expressed unease from the outset over Trump’s outreach to Putin, who has demanded Ukraine abandon its ambitions to join the EU or NATO. They were excluded from Trump’s summit with Putin.

    Witkoff, in his CNN interview, said the United States was prepared to provide “game-changing” security guarantees to Ukraine as part of a process that would involve territorial “concessions”.

    According to an official briefed on a call Trump held with Zelensky and European leaders as he flew back from Alaska, the US leader supported a Putin proposal that Russia take full control of two eastern Ukrainian regions in exchange for freezing the frontline in two others.

    Putin “de facto demands that Ukraine leave Donbas,” an area consisting of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in eastern Ukraine, which Russia currently only partly controls, the source said.

    In exchange, Russian forces would halt their offensive in the Black Sea port region of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine, where the main cities are still under Ukrainian control.

    Several months into its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia in September 2022 claimed to have annexed all four Ukrainian regions even though its troops still do not fully control any of them.

    “The Ukrainian president refused to leave Donbas,” the source said.

    Meanwhile, the conflict in Ukraine rages on, with both Kyiv and Moscow launching attack drones at each other Sunday.

  • Israeli drone strike on Gaza hospital kills seven

    Israeli drone strike on Gaza hospital kills seven

    Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes and gunfire killed at least 18 Palestinians on Sunday, including seven people shot dead while waiting to collect food aid.

    Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that seven people were killed in an Israeli drone strike that hit a hospital courtyard in Gaza City, in the territory’s north.

    There was no comment from the Israeli military, which is preparing a broader offensive in Gaza City and has sent ground forces to the city’s Zeitun neighbourhood in recent days.

    After more than 22 months of war, UN-backed experts have warned of widespread famine unfolding in Gaza, where Israel has drastically curtailed the amount of humanitarian aid it allows in and convoys have been repeatedly looted.

    Witnesses on Sunday reported Israeli air strikes across the Gaza Strip overnight and into the morning.

    Bassal said four people were killed in a strike that hit a tent sheltering displaced Palestinians in the southern area of Khan Yunis.

    The civil defence spokesman said Israel continues its intense bombardment of Gaza City’s Zeitun, where troops have carried out a ground operation for the past week.

    He said there were many casualties, but civil defence crews were facing “enormous difficulties reaching those trapped under the rubble” due to the ongoing violence and lack of equipment.

    Israel on Saturday hinted at an approaching call to push civilians from Gaza City ahead of the new offensive demanded by the security cabinet.

    A defence ministry statement said that “as part of the preparations to move the population from combat zones to the southern Gaza Strip for their protection, the supply of tents and shelter equipment to Gaza will resume.”

    Hamas later slammed the move, saying the announcement was part of a “brutal assault to occupy Gaza City”.

    On the ground on Sunday, Bassal said six people were killed by Israeli gunfire near an aid distribution point in the south.

    Another person was killed near an aid site in central Gaza, Bassal added, with a nearby hospital saying the body had been taken there.