Asia

The Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt reopened Monday to allow the evacuation of foreigners, dual nationals and wounded Palestinians from the territory being shelled by Israeli forces, the Hamas government said. The terminal was opened for three days on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday last week to allow dozens of wounded Palestinians and…

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday that Washington was working "very aggressively" to substantially expand the amount of aid reaching trapped civilians in Gaza. Blinken held 2.5 hours of one-on-one talks in Ankara with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan that focused on ways to relieve the humanitarian toll of the Israel-Hamas war.…

Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi has begun a hunger strike in her Iranian prison in protest at limits on medical care for her and other inmates, as well as the obligation for women to wear the hijab in the Islamic republic, her family said on Monday. Veteran rights activist Mohammadi, 51, currently held in…

A knife-wielding Palestinian assailant stabbed and seriously wounded a female Israeli soldier before being shot dead in annexed east Jerusalem on Monday, police said. Separately, the Palestinian health ministry said Israeli forces killed a young Palestinian man and seriously injured three others in the town of Halhul, in the south of the occupied West Bank.…

The Israeli army said Monday it had arrested the prominent 22-year-old Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi during a raid in the occupied West Bank. "Ahed Tamimi was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence and terrorist activities in the town of Nabi Salih" near the city of Ramallah, an army spokesman told AFP. "Tamimi was transferred to…

Chinese leader Xi Jinping will welcome Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to Beijing on Monday, a high-water mark in their nations' ties following years of tensions that cut billions of dollars in trade. Beijing is Canberra's biggest trading partner, but relations plummeted in 2020 after Australia's then-conservative government barred Chinese tech giant Huawei from 5G…

Filipino widow Agatha Ando has learned to laugh again in the decade after Super Typhoon Haiyan smashed into the central Philippines, killing more than 6,000 people and leaving millions homeless. Fierce winds tore apart houses and toppled trees as tsunami-like waves whipped up by the storm obliterated mostly poor coastal communities on November 8, 2013.…

Israel on Monday pounded Gaza with "significant" strikes with soldiers battling Hamas forces in the besieged territory, ignoring ceasefire calls by UN aid agencies who condemned surging civilian deaths in the month-long conflict. Israeli troops and Hamas fighters engaged in house-to-house combat in densely populated Gaza, where the war has sent 1.5 million people fleeing…

A senior Chinese diplomat has urged Myanmar to "cooperate" in maintaining stability on their shared border, Beijing said Monday, after armed groups fighting the junta seized a strategic trading outpost. Assistant Foreign Minister Nong Rong visited Myanmar from Friday to Sunday, Beijing said, holding talks with senior junta officials on clashes the UN said have…

Three Palestinians were killed Sunday by Israeli forces in the West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said, as violence flares in the occupied territory since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Two men, aged 22 and 20, were killed "in an attack by Israeli occupation forces on Abu Dis", a suburb of annexed east Jerusalem…

Israel pressed its war to crush Hamas on Sunday nearly a month after the worst attack in the country's history, as the Palestinian group said strikes on a central Gaza refugee camp killed dozens. Fighting continues to rage in densely populated Gaza, despite calls for a ceasefire from Arab countries and desperate civilians after 30…

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said at least 15 people were killed Saturday when a UN school sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinians was hit by an Israeli strike.