Saudi Arabia — Arab Gulf and southeast Asian nations called Friday for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war and the entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The final statement of a summit hosted by Saudi Arabia also condemned “all attacks against civilians.”

Israel’s defense minister said Friday that after the country destroys the Hamas militant group, the military does not plan to control “life in the Gaza Strip”

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s comments to lawmakers were the first time an Israeli leader discussed its long-term plans for Gaza.

For Japanese author Haruki Murakami, the bloody conflict in the Gaza Strip is a horrendous example of how our world is divided by walls, both physical and metaphorical.

But while admitting he can only pray for peace now, he also feels confident that fiction, rather than offering an escape, can help us understand, and survive, increasingly perilous times.

Bayern Munich has decided not to sanction Noussair Mazraoui after the Morocco right back expressed support for Palestinians on social media.

The German club said Friday that it had a "detailed and clarifying conversation with Noussair Mazraoui this week" after the 25-year-old player reportedly shared several posts on Instagram in support of Palestinians and against terrorism, hate and violence.

Gale-force winds and floods struck several countries in Northern Europe as the region braced for more heavy rain on Friday. In Scotland, one person was reported dead after being swept into a river and authorities searched for a man thought to be trapped in his vehicle.

The gale-force winds are expected to hit hardest in the eastern part of Denmark's Jutland peninsula and the Danish islands in the Baltic Sea. But the northern part of the British Isles, southern Sweden and Norway, and northern Germany are also on the path of the storm, named Babet by U.K.'s weather forecaster, the Met Office.

Fifty years after the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the current crisis in the Middle East has the potential to disrupt global oil supplies and push prices higher. But don't expect a repeat of the catastrophic price hikes and long lines at the gasoline pump, experts say.

The Israel-Hamas war is "definitely not good news" for oil markets already stretched by cutbacks in oil production from Saudi Arabia and Russia and expected stronger demand from China, the head of the International Energy Agency said.

Israel bombarded the Gaza Strip early Friday, hitting areas in the south where Palestinians had been told to seek safety, and it began evacuating a sizable town near the country's border with Lebanon in a sign that a potential ground invasion of Gaza could trigger regional turmoil.

Palestinians reported heavy airstrikes in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, and ambulances carrying men, women and children streamed into the town's Nasser Hospital, Gaza's second largest, which is already overflowing with patients and people seeking shelter. The Israeli military said it had struck more than 100 targets across Gaza linked to the territory's Hamas rulers, including a tunnel and arms depots.

With tensions spiking in the Middle East, U.S. forces in the region are facing increasing threats as a Navy warship shot down missiles appearing to head toward Israel Thursday and American bases in Iraq and Syria were repeatedly targeted by drone attacks.

Later, a U.S. official said there had been a rocket attack early Friday morning on U.S. and coalition forces at a diplomatic support center near the Baghdad International Airport. Initial assessments indicated two rockets were fired, the official said, noting that one was intercepted by a counter-rocket system and the other struck an empty storage facility.

Denmark, Sweden and Norway have further tightened their travel advisories for Lebanon and cautioned against travel there until further notice.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said Thursday that Norway was “tightening the travel advice due to the serious security situation in the region. There are daily military actions on the border between Lebanon and Israel. This increases the risk throughout Lebanon.”

The military wing of Hamas said its members fired 30 rockets from south Lebanon into northern Israel Thursday, mainly targeting the towns of Nahariya and Shlomi.

Media reports said the rockets wounded three Israelis with one of the rockets slamming directly into a building in northern Israel.