The violence showed no sign of abating on Sunday, as Israel made the single deadliest airstrike yet on Gaza in the weeklong bombing campaign, and the number of rockets fired at Israel from Gaza approached 3,000. The Israeli bombing in Gaza City killed at least 33 people, including 12 women and eight children, and wounded […]

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israel has faced the highest-ever rate of rocket attacks on its territory during its latest confrontation with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas that controls Gaza, the army said on Sunday (May 16). Since Monday, armed groups in Gaza have fired about 3,000 rockets towards Israel, surpassing the pace during an escalation in […]

BRUSSELS (AFP) – European Union foreign ministers will hold urgent video talks on the escalating fighting between Israel and the Palestinians on Tuesday (May 18), the bloc’s foreign policy chief said. “In view of the ongoing escalation between Israel and Palestine and the unacceptable number of civilian casualties, I am convening an extraordinary VTC (video […]

KABUL (AFP) – The terrorist group Islamic State or ISIS claimed it carried out this week’s attack on a mosque on the outskirts of the Afghan capital that left 12 worshippers dead, Site Intelligence Group reported. The explosion happened inside a mosque in Shakar Darah district of Kabul province during Friday prayers and shattered the […]

GAZA CITY, PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES (AFP) – An Israeli air strike Saturday (May 15) demolished the 13-floor building housing Qatar-based Al Jazeera television and American news agency The Associated Press in the Gaza Strip, AFP journalists said. Israel “destroyed Jala Tower in the Gaza Strip, which contains the Al Jazeera and other international press offices,” Al […]

GAZA/JERUSALEM (NYTIMES) – In a 28-second video, which was posted to Twitter this week by a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip appeared to launch rocket attacks at Israelis from densely populated civilian areas. At least that is what Mr Netanyahu’s spokesman, Ofir Gendelman, said the video […]

GAZA CITY — The taxi was loaded with everything the family would need for Eid al-Fitr, a holiday of feasts and cookies and new clothes that Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have transfigured this year into a time of swooping drones and fear. In their four suitcases, the al-Hatu family — mother, father, son, daughter — […]

Instagram removed some posts and restricted access to other content that used hashtags related to the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem after mistakenly associating the name with a terrorist organization, according to an internal company message. The error, acknowledged by Facebook, which owns Instagram, added a new irritant to the crisis roiling Jerusalem and spreading elsewhere […]

JERUSALEM (NYTIMES) – When the guns are talking, Israel’s domestic political strife typically goes silent. When the country is on the brink of war, the opposition usually rallies around the government. Not this time. As the conflict with Gaza wrought more death and destruction on Wednesday (May 12) – and as an intense surge of […]

The violent confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli security forces at the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem this month reflect its significance as part of one of the most contested pieces of religious territory in the Holy Land. Here are some basics on the mosque compound, from its importance over the centuries for three major religions to […]