Headline
Israel-Hamas: US, UK, India Evacuate Citizens, Deaths Hit 2,700

…12 UN workers, 13 French Citizens killed
The United States, the United Kingdom, India and France are working to evacuate their citizens from Israel following the attacks by Hamas.
CNN reports that India’s charter flight scheduled to land in Tel Aviv on Thursday evening will collect approximately 230 Indian nationals. This was disclosed by a Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson, Arindam Bagchi, at a news conference on Thursday. The flight will “likely” return to India on Friday morning.
Nepal’s foreign ministry has so far evacuated 253 Nepali students who were in Israel, saying on X, formerly Twitter, that a flight carrying the students took off from Tel Aviv on Thursday.
Ten Nepali agriculture students were killed when Hamas attacked a kibbutz in southern Israel, Nepal’s Ambassador to Israel Kanta Rizal told CNN. Three students were injured in the attack and are recovering in a hospital, while one student remains missing, the ambassador added.
A plane carrying 110 Colombian nationals has also left Tel Aviv, according to the country’s foreign ministry on Thursday.
READ ALSO: Israel-Hamas War: US Secretary Of State Blinken Arrives In Jordan
12 UN workers killed
At least 12 people working with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency have been killed in Gaza since Saturday, a spokesperson for the UN’s secretary-general said on Thursday, as the humanitarian crisis there deepens.
CNN reports that all 12 of the UN workers killed were Palestinians, according to the spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, who disclosed this while speaking to reporters in New York on Thursday.
Hundreds of thousands have been displaced in Gaza following the war. Dujarric said mass displacement continues to rise across the Gaza Strip as Israel pounds the territory with airstrikes, climbing 30 per cent over the last 24 hours to reach more than 338,000. Of that figure, two-thirds are taking shelter in 92 schools run by the UNRWA.
Death toll hits 2, 700
According to Al Jazeera, the death toll in Gaza now stands at 1,417 people, while the number of people killed in Israel has reached 1,300.
Also, the Israeli army has bombarded the Gaza Strip with approximately 6,000 bombs containing 4,000 tonnes of explosives since Saturday’s Hamas attack, according to Al Jazeera.
READ ALSO: Israeli Airstrikes Kill 558 People In Gaza
Israel has said there would be no humanitarian exceptions to its siege of the Gaza Strip until Hamas frees all the hostages captured on Saturday.
Israeli minister had said there will be no electricity, fuel or humanitarian aid into Gaza until Hamas releases all captives taken in an unprecedented attack.
Officials in Gaza stated that the health system’s collapse has “truly begun” amid Israel’s heavy bombardment and “complete blockade”.
Meanwhile, the White House in the United States said Thursday it was working to organise charter flights to help US citizens leave Israel as the country reels from the massive attack by Hamas.
The number of Americans who have died after the Hamas terror attack in Israel now stands at 27, according to the White House.
READ ALSO: Israeli Forces Kill Two Palestinians In West Bank Raid
Meanwhile, 14 Americans are missing, said National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby on Thursday during the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington.
The US State Department had noted that the known death toll of US citizens in the violence had risen to “at least 22.”
“Beginning tomorrow (today), the United States government will arrange charter flights to provide transportation from Israel to sites in Europe,” said White House national security spokesman John Kirby.
According to France 24, Kirby added that officials were “still working through some of the details”.
UK evacuates nationals
The United Kingdom said it was set to fly British nationals out of Israel, with the first flight set to leave Tel Aviv later on Thursday, according to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
The UK government “will facilitate commercial flights to the UK to help British nationals wanting to leave Israel following the Hamas attack, the Foreign Secretary has announced,” the FCDO said in a news release according to CNN.
READ ALSO: Israel-Gaza War: Death Toll Rises Above 1,000 As Fighting Intensifies
Vulnerable British nationals “will be prioritised for these flights,” the FCDO added, advising that eligible people wait to be contacted and not make their way to the airport unless they are called.
A Rapid Deployment Team has also been sent to Israel to bolster the efforts of British consular officials, the FCDO said.
13 French citizens killed
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday vowed that France would do everything to ensure the release of the dozens of hostages held by Palestinian militant group Hamas after its attack on Israel.
“I want to say that we will do everything to ensure that these hostages, whatever their nationality, are released,” he said in an address to the nation, adding that France would work to this end both with “our partners” and the Israeli authorities, AFP reported.
The French president said that at least 13 French citizens were confirmed to have been killed in the attack by Hamas but 17 more “children and adults” were missing and “without doubt, some of them are held, hostage”.
“France will never abandon its children,” he said. Around 150 people are believed to be held hostage by Hamas.
Headline
Afghanistan-Pakistan Border Clashes Escalate After Alleged Air Strikes

Afghanistan’s Taliban forces launched armed reprisals against Pakistani soldiers along the shared border on Saturday, accusing Islamabad of carrying out air strikes on its soil, senior officials from several provinces said Saturday.
On Thursday, two explosions were heard in the Afghan capital and another in the southeast of the country. The following day, the Taliban-run defence ministry blamed the attacks on Pakistan, accusing its neighbor of violating its sovereignty.
“In retaliation for air strikes carried out by the Pakistani army on Kabul,” Taliban forces are engaged “in heavy clashes against Pakistani security forces in various areas” along the border, the Afghan military said in a statement.
Islamabad did not confirm that it was behind Thursday’s attacks, but called on Kabul “to stop harbouring the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) on its soil.”
READ ALSO:Taliban Attacks Kill 23 In Northwestern Pakistan
The TTP, trained in combat in Afghanistan and claiming to share the same ideology as the Afghan Taliban, is accused by Islamabad of having killed hundreds of its soldiers since 2021.
Taliban officials from Kunar, Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost, and Helmand provinces — all located on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan — confirmed that clashes were ongoing.
“This evening, Taliban forces began using weapons. We fired first light and then heavy artillery at four points along the border,” a senior official in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, bordering Afghanistan, told AFP.
“Pakistani forces responded with heavy fire and shot down three Afghan quadcopters suspected of carrying explosives. Intense fighting continues, but so far, no casualties have been reported,” he continued.
READ ALSO:US Threatens To Sanction Countries That Vote For Shipping Carbon Tax
– Uptick in violence –
In recent months, TTP militants have intensified their campaign of violence against Pakistani security forces in the mountainous areas bordering Afghanistan.
Islamabad accuses Afghanistan of failing to expel militants who use Afghan territory to launch attacks on Pakistan, an accusation denied by authorities in Kabul.
The TTP and its affiliates are behind most of the violence — largely directed at security forces.
READ ALSO:Afghanistan’s Taliban Release US Citizen
Earlier this year, a UN report said the TTP “receive substantial logistical and operational support from the de facto authorities”, referring to the Taliban government in Kabul.
Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told parliament on Thursday that several efforts to convince the Afghan Taliban to stop backing the TTP had failed.
“We will not tolerate this any longer,” Asif said. “United, we must respond to those facilitating them, whether the hideouts are on our soil or Afghan soil.”
Earlier Saturday, the TTP claimed responsibility for deadly attacks in several districts in northwest Pakistan that killed 20 security officials and three civilians.
AFP
Headline
Taliban Attacks Kill 23 In Northwestern Pakistan

The Pakistani Taliban on Saturday claimed responsibility for deadly attacks in several northwestern districts that killed 20 security officials and three civilians.
The attacks, which included a suicide bombing on a police training school, were carried out on Friday in several districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan.
Militancy has surged in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa since the withdrawal of US-led troops from neighbouring Afghanistan in 2021 and the return of the Taliban government in Kabul.
READ ALSO:Taliban Court Publicly Flogs Woman For Illicit Relationship, Running Away From Home
Eleven paramilitary troops were killed in the border Khyber district, while seven policemen were killed after a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into the gate of a police training school, which was followed by a gun attack.
Five people, including three civilians, were killed in a separate clash in Bajaur district, security officials told AFP on Saturday.
The Pakistani Taliban, the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP), claimed responsibility for the attacks in messages on social media. The group is separate from but closely linked with the Afghan Taliban.
The attacks came hours after Afghanistan’s Taliban government accused Pakistan of “violating Kabul’s sovereign territory”, a day after two explosions were heard in the capital.
READ ALSO:Taliban Order Closure Of Beauty, Hair Salons In Afghanistan
Pakistan did not say if it was behind the blasts in Kabul, but said it had the right to defend itself against surging border militancy.
Islamabad accuses Afghanistan of failing to expel militants using Afghan territory to launch attacks on Pakistan, an accusation that authorities in Kabul deny.
The TTP and its affiliates are behind most of the violence — largely directed at security forces.
Including Friday’s attacks, at least 32 Pakistani troops and three civilians have been killed this week alone in the border regions.
AFP
Headline
US Threatens To Sanction Countries That Vote For Shipping Carbon Tax

The United States on Friday threatened to impose sanctions and take other punitive action against any country that votes in favor of a carbon tax on maritime transportation to be implemented through a UN agency.
“We will fight hard to protect our economic interests by imposing costs on countries if they support” the Net Zero Framework, said a joint statement by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his counterparts at the departments of energy and transportation.
Members of the London-based International Maritime Organization (IMO) are set to vote next week on the adoption of the Net Zero Framework (NZF) agreement aimed at reducing global carbon emissions from the shipping sector.
READ ALSO:Woman Wanted Over Mutilation Of Boyfriend’s Genitals In US
Washington, however, described the proposal as imposing “a global carbon tax on the world.”
Since returning to power in January, US President Donald Trump has reversed Washington’s course on climate change, denouncing it as a “scam” and encouraging fossil fuel use by deregulation.
In the statement, Rubio, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the Trump administration “unequivocally rejects” the NZF proposal.
READ ALSO:US To Execute Man Convicted Of Rape, Murder Of Teen
They threatened a range of punishing actions against countries that vote in favor of the framework, including: visa restrictions; blocking vessels registered in those countries from US ports; imposing commercial penalties; and considering sanctions on officials.
“The United States will be moving to levy these remedies against nations that sponsor this European-led neocolonial export of global climate regulations,” the statement said.
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