The armed wing of Palestinian militant group Hamas released footage on Friday purporting to show two hostages seized on October 7, 2023 alive in Gaza City late last month.

The video shows one hostage in a car being driven through a neighborhood with destroyed buildings, calling on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to carry out a planned military offensive to conquer Gaza City.

Pope Leo XIV and his top diplomats thave old Israel's president that a two-state solution was the "only way out of the war," as the Vatican called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the release of all hostages and entry of humanitarian aid to famine-stricken Palestinians there.

The Vatican issued Thursday an unusually detailed statement following Leo's meeting with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who also met with the Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin and foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher. Herzog, for his part, said he had asked Leo to meet with families of the hostages, and called for intensified international efforts to secure their release.

Israel estimates that its imminent offensive on Gaza City would displace one million Palestinians, a senior military official said Wednesday, as Gaza's civil defense reported dozens killed across the territory.

In Jerusalem, meanwhile, hundreds of Israeli protestors took to the streets to call for a truce and hostage release deal after nearly two years of war.

Israel's defense minister vowed Thursday to inflict the biblical 10 plagues of Egypt on Yemen's Houthi rebels after they stepped up their missile attacks against Israel.

The United Arab Emirates on Wednesday warned that any Israeli move to annex the occupied West Bank would be a "red line," without specifying its possible impact on the landmark normalization accord between the two countries,

The warning came as Israel pressed ahead with the initial stages of its latest major offensive in famine-stricken Gaza City. Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip overnight and into Wednesday killed at least 31 people, according to local hospitals.

Construction work has intensified on a major new structure at a facility key to Israel's long-suspected atomic weapons program, according to satellite images analyzed by experts. They say it could be a new reactor or a facility to assemble nuclear arms — but secrecy shrouding the program makes it difficult to know for sure.

The work at the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center near the city of Dimona will renew questions about Israel's widely believed status as the Mideast's only nuclear-armed state.

Israel has launched a new spy satellite that defense officials described as a strategic cornerstone, saying it will strengthen their surveillance capacity across the Middle East in the years ahead.

Military officials and Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday that the satellite, launched late Tuesday, will enhance Israel's ability to collect images like the 12,000 gathered over Iran during a 12-day war earlier this year.

Amnesty International said Tuesday it had evidence of Syrian government personnel and affiliated fighters executing 46 members of the Druze minority during sectarian violence in July and demanded those responsible be held to account.

The bloodshed erupted on July 13 with clashes between Druze fighters and Sunni Bedouin but rapidly escalated, drawing in government forces and tribal fighters from other parts of Syria.

French judicial authorities have issued arrest warrants for ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad an six other top former officials over the bombardment of a rebel-held city in 2012 that killed two journalists, lawyers said Tuesday.

Marie Colvin, 56, an American working for The Sunday Times of Britain, and French photographer Remi Ochlik, 28, were killed on February 22, 2012 by the explosion in the eastern city of Homs, which is being investigated by the French judiciary as a potential crime against humanity.

Belgium will move toward recognizing a Palestinian state, the country's foreign minister said Tuesday, joining a growing list of countries preparing to take the step as Israel steps up its offensive in Gaza.

Maxime Prévot said Belgium's plans to recognize a Palestinian state will be announced at the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 9.