A top U.N. official said that hard-hit northern Gaza was now in "full-blown famine" after more than six months of war between Israel and Hamas and severe Israeli restrictions on food deliveries to the Palestinian territory.

Cindy McCain, the American director of the U.N. World Food Program, became the most prominent international official so far to declare that trapped civilians in the most cut-off part of Gaza had gone over the brink into famine.

Israel this week briefed Biden administration officials on a plan to evacuate Palestinian civilians ahead of a potential operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah aimed at rooting out Hamas militants, according to U.S. officials familiar with the talks.

The officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly and requested anonymity to speak about the sensitive exchange, said that the plan detailed by the Israelis did not change the U.S. administration's view that moving forward with an operation in Rafah would put too many innocent Palestinian civilians at risk.

Syria's defense ministry on Friday said eight soldiers had been injured in Israeli air strikes near Damascus.

On Thursday night, "the Israeli enemy launched air strikes from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting a site near Damascus... injuring eight soldiers," the ministry said in a statement.

Israel and Hamas appear to be seriously negotiating an end to the war in Gaza and the return of Israeli captives. A leaked truce proposal hints at compromises by both sides after months of stalemated talks.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week praised Israel for offering what he described as significant concessions and saying "the time is now" for Hamas to seal the deal. Hamas leaders, meanwhile, say they are reviewing the proposal in a "positive spirit" and sending a team to Egypt in the coming days to continue the talks.

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh said on Thursday the Palestinian militant group was studying a proposal for a truce in the nearly seven-month war raging in Gaza with a "positive spirit."

In a call to Egypt's intelligence chief Abbas Kamel, Haniyeh said he "appreciated the role played by Egypt, and stressed the positive spirit of the movement in studying the ceasefire proposal," according to a statement on Hamas' official website.

If the war in Gaza stopped today, it would still take until 2040 to rebuild all the homes that have been destroyed in nearly seven months of Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives in the territory, according to United Nations estimates released Thursday.

“Every additional day that this war continues is exacting huge and compounding costs to Gazans and all Palestinians” said United Nations Development Program Administrator Achim Steiner.

Hamas on Thursday was considering the latest proposal for a cease-fire with Israel that the United States and other mediators hope will avert an Israeli attack on the Gaza town of Rafah. But chances for the deal are entangled with the question of whether Israel can accept an end to the war without reaching its stated goal of destroying Hamas.

The stakes in the cease-fire negotiations were made clear in a new U.N. report that said if the war in Gaza stops today, it will still take until 2040 to rebuild all the homes that have been destroyed by nearly seven months of Israeli bombardment and ground offensives in the territory. It warned that the impact of the damage to the economy will set back development for generations and will only get worse with every month fighting continues.

Police removed barricades and began dismantling a pro-Palestinian demonstrators' fortified encampment early Thursday at the University of California, Los Angeles, after hundreds of protesters defied police orders to leave, about 24 hours after counterprotesters attacked a tent encampment on the campus.

Police detained a handful of people on campus, their wrists in zip ties. The action came after officers spent hours threatening arrests over loud speakers if people did not disperse. Hundreds of people had gathered on campus, both inside a barricaded tent encampment and outside of it in support.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has announced his government will break diplomatic relations with Israel effective Thursday in the latest escalation of tensions between the countries over the Israel-Hamas war.

Petro again described Israel's siege of Gaza as "genocide." He previously suspended purchases of weapons from Israel and compared that country's actions in Gaza to those of Nazi Germany.

President Joe Biden is staying mum about student protests and police crackdowns as Republicans try to turn campus unrest over the war in Gaza into a campaign cudgel against Democrats.

Tension at colleges and universities has been building for days as some demonstrators refuse to remove encampments and administrators turn to law enforcement to clear them by force, leading to clashes that have seized attention from politicians and the media.