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Israel's Rafah attack set Hamas talks 'backward', Qatar says

Israel's military operation in Rafah has "set us backward" in negotiations with Hamas, mediator Qatar said on Tuesday, adding that talks are at "almost a stalemate".

"Unfortunately things didn't move in the right direction and right now we are on a status of almost a stalemate. Of course, what happened with Rafah has set us backward," Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani told the Qatar Economic Forum.

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Right groups say Israel carried out at least 8 strikes on aid workers

Human Rights Watch says Israeli forces have carried out at least eight strikes on aid workers and their convoys, killing at least 15 people, including two children, since the start of the war in Gaza.

The New York-based rights group said in a report Tuesday that in each case the aid groups had provided their coordinates to Israeli authorities to ensure their safety. It says no advance warning was given before the strikes, which also wounded at least 16 people.

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Nearly half a million people flee fighting in Rafah and northern Gaza

Nearly half a million Palestinians have been displaced in recent days by escalating Israeli military operations in southern and northern Gaza, the United Nations says.

Palestinian officials say Israeli strikes in central Gaza killed at least 12 people overnight and into Tuesday.

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US calls on Iran to halt 'unprecedented' weapon transfer to Yemen's Houthis

The United States called on Iran on Monday to halt its transfer of an "unprecedented" amount of weaponry to Yemen's Houthi rebels, enabling their fighters to carry out "reckless attacks" on ships in the Red Sea and elsewhere.

U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the U.N. Security Council that if it wants to make progress toward ending the civil war in Yemen, it should collectively "call Iran out for its destabilizing role and insist that it cannot hide behind the Houthis."

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Palestinians mark 76 years of expulsion as larger catastrophe unfolds in Gaza

Palestinians on Wednesday will mark the 76th year of their mass expulsion from what is now Israel, an event that is at the core of their national struggle. But in many ways, that experience pales in comparison to the calamity now unfolding in Gaza.

Palestinians refer to it as the "Nakba," Arabic for "catastrophe." Some 700,000 Palestinians — a majority of the prewar population — fled or were driven from their homes before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel's establishment.

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Erdogan says over 1,000 Hamas members hospitalized in Turkey

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that "more than 1,000 members" of the Palestinian militant group Hamas were being treated in Turkish hospitals amid the ongoing war in Gaza.

Erdogan, a vocal critic of Israel's war in the Palestinian territory since Hamas' attacks on October 7, made the announcement to reporters, adding that he considered Hamas "a resistance organisation".

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Misery deepens in Gaza's Rafah as Israeli troops press operation

Aid workers are struggling to distribute dwindling food and other supplies to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by what Israel says is a limited operation in Rafah, as the two main crossings near the southern Gaza city remain closed.

The United Nations' agency for Palestinian refugees said 360,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah over the past week, out of 1.3 million who were sheltering there before the operation began, most of whom had already fled fighting elsewhere over the course of the 7-month war between Israel and Hamas.

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UK foreign secretary says halting arms sales to Israel would only strengthen Hamas

Halting arms exports to Israel is "not a wise path" and would only strengthen Hamas, Britain's foreign secretary said.

Asked whether the U.K. would follow the U.S. in threatening to cut the supply of offensive weapons to Israel if it carried out an attack on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, Foreign Secretary David Cameron said the two countries cannot be compared because unlike the U.S., Britain supplies a very small amount of Israel's weapons.

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Campus protests over Gaza war scaled down during US commencement exercises

Protests over the Israel-Hamas war have spread across U.S. university and college campuses in recent weeks, leading to disruptions and arrests. Some demonstrations extended into weekend graduation celebrations, although they were muted in comparison to the encampments and rallies that have roiled campuses and resulted in nearly 2,900 arrests of students and other protesters.

Most of the commencement exercises took place as scheduled and remained largely peaceful. Here is a look at some of the ceremonies that included protests:

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Netanyahu again vows to defeat Hamas, return all captives

Israel’s leaders commemorated Memorial Day on Monday, honoring Israel’s fallen soldiers and those killed in attacks on a holiday that was almost entirely absorbed by the ongoing war in Gaza.

The usually somber calendar event has been compounded by simmering public anger over the failures of Oct. 7, when Hamas fighters from Gaza broke into southern Israel and allegedly killed 1,200 people, the act that sparked the war. The holiday began Sunday evening and continues until nightfall on Monday.

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