Foreign
Israel Flattens Gaza City High-Rise As It Tells Residents To Flee
An Israeli strike flattened a high-rise in Gaza City on Saturday — the second in as many days — after the military warned people to flee south to a “humanitarian zone” ahead of a planned offensive to capture the area.
Israel has been warning for weeks of a new assault on the territory’s largest urban centre, without issuing a timeline.
It has stepped up air strikes in the area and operations on the city’s outskirts despite calls to abandon the plan, which has sparked widespread fears it could worsen already-dire humanitarian conditions.
On Saturday, the military announced it struck a Gaza City high-rise, saying “Hamas terrorists installed intelligence gathering equipment and positioned observation posts in the building in order to monitor” Israeli troops, adding it had taken “measures to mitigate harm to civilians”.
Witnesses identified the building as the Sussi residential tower and said it was destroyed, with video shared by Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz showing the roughly 15-storey structure buckling to the ground in a cloud of dust and smoke.
“We’re continuing,” Katz said in the post, after having shared a video the previous day of another Gaza City high-rise being destroyed.
The military has said that in the coming days it will target structures deemed to be used by Hamas, particularly tall buildings.
It also issued an evacuation order for another high-rise on Saturday, warning of an imminent strike and telling people to leave to the south.
A military spokesperson had earlier called on residents to leave the city for Al-Mawasi, along the southern coast, where the army said humanitarian aid and medical care would be provided.
“Take this opportunity to move early to the (Al-Mawasi) humanitarian zone and join the thousands of people who have already gone there,” spokesman Avichay Adraee said on social media.
Israel first declared Al-Mawasi a safe zone early in the war, but has carried out repeated strikes on it since, saying it targeted Hamas fighters hiding among civilians.
Gaza City residents said they believed it made little difference whether they stayed or fled.
“Some say we should evacuate, others say we should stay,” said Abdel Nasser Mushtaha, 48, a resident of the city’s Zeitun neighbourhood now sheltering in a tent in the Rimal area.
“But everywhere in Gaza there are bombings and deaths. For the past year-and-a-half, the worst bombings that caused massacres of civilians have been in Al-Mawasi, this so-called humanitarian zone,” he added.
“It no longer makes any difference to us,” said his daughter Samia Mushtaha, 20. “Wherever we go, death pursues us, whether by bombing or hunger.”
– US in ‘deep negotiation’ –
Israel has faced mounting domestic and international pressure to end the nearly two-year war in Gaza.
Its foe Hamas agreed last month to a proposal for a temporary ceasefire and staggered hostage releases, but Israel has demanded the militant group release all the hostages at once, disarm and relinquish control of Gaza, among other conditions.
At the White House on Friday, President Donald Trump said the United States was in talks with Hamas over the captives being held in Gaza.
“We’re in very deep negotiation with Hamas,” said Trump. “There could be some (hostages) that have recently died, is what I’m hearing. I hope that’s wrong, but you have over 30 bodies in this negotiation.”
Militants took 251 hostages during the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the war. The Israeli military says 47 remain in Gaza, including 25 believed to be dead.
“We said let them all out right now, let them all out, and much better things will happen for them,” said Trump. “But if you don’t let them all out, it’s going to be a tough situation, it’s going to be nasty.”
– ‘Disaster’ –
The UN estimates nearly one million people remain in and around Gaza City, where it declared a famine last month. It has warned of a looming “disaster” if the assault proceeds.
The vast majority of Gaza’s population of more than two million people have been displaced at least once during the war.
Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,368 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations considers reliable.
Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defence agency or the Israeli military.
Dozens of envoys from across the world walked out of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the UN on Thursday in protest at the Israeli leader.
Delegates jeered and booed, while Netanyahu’s own team stood and applauded, and the speaker of the session shouted for order.
“If there are any other moral cowards who haven’t left this hall, please do so now,” Netanyahu said.
Some attendees and delegation members walk out as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during the 81st United Nations General Assembly at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, on September 24, 2026. (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP)
The hall, sparsely filled earlier in the session, gradually filled up before Netanyahu’s speech.
The Palestinian delegation had called in a memo for other missions to join their own act of protest.
Netanyahu called the Israeli youths who target Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank “juvenile delinquents” during a speech Thursday to the United Nations.
“What (the media) cover is a handful of young juvenile delinquents, about 150 in number, who go or throw stones, who chop down olive trees,” Netanyahu said.
“I can’t stand that. I won’t stand for vigilantism.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on September 24, 2026. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP)
He called Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a “tyrant” during a speech at the UN on Thursday, accusing Ankara of harboring Hamas militant leaders.
“The latest country to become a super spreader of antisemitic lies (is Turkey)… Erdogan is a tyrant. He also hosts the Hamas terror chiefs,” he said.
The Prime Minister also claimed that “many Jews” no longer feel safe in New York since leftist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s election.
“Since you were elected mayor of this city, many Jews no longer feel safe in New York,” he said.
“You falsely, repeatedly accuse Israel of genocide.”
AFP
An adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has warned that Tehran could expand the ongoing Middle East conflict to the Indian Ocean if the United States launches further attacks.
Yahya Rahim Safavi, a senior adviser to the Iranian leader, issued the warning on Thursday in a video released by Iran’s Fars news agency.
“Since the conflict has spread from the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea, it is possible that, in response to more war, the front will expand even further, reaching the Indian Ocean and perhaps beyond,” Safavi said.
The warning comes amid heightened tensions around strategic waterways in the region.
Yemen’s Houthis, who are fighting Saudi-backed government forces, recently took control of the Red Sea coastline, strengthening their hold around the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait, which connects Asia and Europe through the Suez Canal.
Iran has long provided military support to the Houthis but has denied any direct involvement in the Yemen conflict.
The Islamic Republic has also closed the Strait of Hormuz, off its southern coast, in retaliation for US-Israeli strikes that triggered the current Middle East war at the end of February.
Iran and the United States are now contesting control of the strategic waterway, through which a substantial portion of the world’s oil and gas supplies passed before the conflict began.
Iranian officials had previously warned that the geographic scope of the conflict could be widened if US strikes against Tehran resumed.
However, Thursday’s statement is the first time an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader has explicitly mentioned the Indian Ocean as a potential new theatre of the conflict.
The Indian Ocean is home to the strategic US-British military base at Diego Garcia, located nearly 4,000 kilometres from Iran.
Meanwhile, Iranian and US officials held talks in New York this week on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly as part of efforts to bring the conflict to an end.
Iran has said it is reviewing US response to its proposal to end war.
A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Tehran is reviewing the United States’ response to its proposal to end hostilities, but many differences remain between the Iranian and U.S. positions as diplomacy continues.
Reopening the Strait of Hormuz and lifting the U.S. naval blockade on Iran were discussed during indirect talks with the U.S. Tuesday, the official said.
Tehran previously said it could reopen the Strait of Hormuz within a week if the U.S. eased military pressure and lifted its blockade of Iranian ports.
Iran’s chief national security advisor Mohsen Rezaee wrote in a post the country is tiring of negotiations.
“Iran’s new diplomacy will not return to the past. We will force America to respect the rights of the Iranian nation and act according to the conveyed conditions; otherwise, the Strait of Hormuz will not be opened,” he wrote. “Enough with negotiations, take action.”
Iranian spokespeople say Iran and the U.S. met for two hours of mediated discussion during the United Nations General Assembly.
During the discussion, Iran repeated its conditions for opening the Strait of Hormuz.
The U.S. Army announced the death of an active-duty servicemember Wednesday who was supporting overseas operations in Qatar.
Capt. Bianca C. Wilkerson, 37, of Virginia, died on Sept. 18 as a result of a noncombat-related incident, according to a release. She was posthumously promoted to major.
The incident is under investigation.
U.S. representatives left the room as Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian addressed the United Nations General Assembly Wednesday.
“Yesterday, the United States President described us as terrorists. We have been the victims of terrorism,” Pezeshkian said. “Those who are terrorists and train and protect terrorists describe us as such.”
He says America has hit civilian populations and neighborhoods, including schools, and argued Iran has only defended itself. He compared America and Israel’s war with Iran to Israel’s actions in Gaza, calling for justice for Palestine.
“In Gaza, over 80,000 innocent civilians have been murdered, brutally murdered. They are committing genocide, then they label others as terrorists. We only seek to live independently,” he said. “We cannot speak of peace while ignoring Palestine. Lasting peace in West Asia is impossible without justice for Palestine.”
He said the bombing of Iranian cities will not go unanswered.
Trump tells NewsNation ‘we’ll see’ on whether to ‘annihilate’ Iran
Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said he warned the EU of “severe long-term consequences of facilitating and supporting Israeli-U.S. war crimes” in Gaza and Iran.
“That major folly aside, [NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte] should know by now that groveling never satisfies a bully,” he wrote in a post.
Iran spokesperson accuses Trump of ‘war crime’; Trump threatens to ‘annihilate’ country during UN speech
Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei accused Trump of an “unforgivable war crime” associated with Iranian schoolchildren who he says were killed in a Feb. 28 missile attack by American forces.
“They should have been here today, bright-eyed and joyful, celebrating the start of a new school year. Instead their slain bodies lie buried in the earth,” Baqaei wrote in a post with a video of the children. “The Iranian people will never forget these angelic faces. They will never forgive their killers.”
He criticised Trump’s speech at the UN General Assembly, during which the president said he was weighing whether to “annihilate” Iran if Tehran doesn’t agree to a deal, despite ongoing talks.
“The government whose president mockingly flouts international law from the UN podium bears responsibility for this unforgivable war crime. All who stood silent and looked away share in that responsibility,” Baqaei wrote.
Iran’s armed forces have dismissed Trump’s comments as propaganda and said the country is prepared to deliver “more severe, crushing and unpredictable blows” if attacked.
Two casualties in Strait of Hormuz cargo vessel strike: UKMTO
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations UKMTO says a cargo vessel was struck by an “unknown projectile” in the Strait of Hormuz Wednesday, “leaving it on fire and adrift.” Authorities are investigating.
All crew were evacuated and two casualties were reported.
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