Hamas released two Israeli citizens on Monday, according to multiple sources, amid growing pressure to secure the release of hundreds of hostages taken by the Gaza-based militant group during its brutal October 7 terror attack on Israel.

“I can confirm that my mother Yochi [Yocheved] Lifshitz was one of two hostages released to the Red Cross this evening. While I cannot put into words the relief that she is now safe,” daughter Sharone Lifschitz said in a statement.

She said she remained focused on securing the release of her father, still believed to be in captivity.

Multiple sources named Nurit Cooper as the second hostage freed on Monday.

The militant group’s fighters killed more than 1,400 people that day, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in what was the most deadly attack by militants in Israel’s 75-year history and revealed a staggering intelligence failure by the country’s security forces.

In response, Israel has bombarded Gaza, which Hamas controls, killing more than 5,000 people and injured more than 15,000 in just over two weeks, according to Palestinian health officials. The blasts have leveled entire neighborhoods, including schools and mosques, and devastated the already insufficient health care system.

The women were abducted from their homes in Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, a statement from Israel’s prime minister’s office said. Their spouses – Cooper’s 85-year-old husband Amiram and Lifshitz’s 83-year-old husband Oded – were kidnapped alongside them and are still held by Hamas, it added.

The statement praised the efforts that led to the release of the two women on Monday, thanking Egypt and the Red Cross for their assistance. “The IDF and the security forces have worked hard in the last few days in all channels to bring about their release and to overcome the many difficulties set by Hamas,” the office’s spokesperson said in a statement.

Hamas confirmed two hostages were released following Qatari and Egyptian mediation in a statement Monday. “[We] released the two detainees… bearing in mind that the enemy has refused since last Friday to receive them,” Hamas spokesperson Abu Obaida said. “We have decided to release them for compelling humanitarian and health reasons.”

The development follows Hamas’ release of two American hostages — Judith Tai Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter Natalie Raanan – last week. A Hamas spokesperson at the time claimed that the two US hostages had been released “for humanitarian reasons” and to “prove to the American people and the world” that claims made by the United States government “are false and baseless.”

Uptick in strikes

Israel has recently widened its offensive against Hamas and its regional enemies, intensifying its bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip, striking Hezbollah cells in Lebanon and targeting the occupied West Bank.

Hundreds were killed in Gaza after sustained aerial assaults on Monday morning, according to the health ministry in the isolated enclave, which is controlled by Hamas.

Overnight strikes killed at least 28 people and injured dozens of others in the southern city of Rafah, the Palestinian Ministry of Interior in Hamas-controlled Gaza said early Tuesday (local time). In earlier statements, the ministry said Israeli airstrikes also hit houses in other parts of Gaza overnight, including Beit Lahia in the north and Khan Younis in the south.

A small number of relief aid trucks have been allowed to cross from Egypt into Gaza since the weekend, but relief agencies warn that the current rate of delivery will do little to address the needs of 2 million people living in the enclave.

Israel is preparing for a “multilateral operation” on Hamas from the “air, ground and sea,” Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant said Monday. After touring the Ashdod Navy base, Gallant released a video statement instructing Israel’s soldiers to “get ready.”

A number of foreign nationals were among those kidnapped by Hamas, including people from the US, Mexico, Brazil and Thailand.

Information about the status, location and identity of all the hostages remains scarce. Some have been identified by families who recognize them from online videos, sparking desperate pleads for their return.

US President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have flocked to Israel amid growing pressure on world leaders.

In a statement on Friday, Hamas said it was working with mediators in Egypt, Qatar and other “friendly countries” to release foreign nationals.

Aid trickles into the enclave

A total of 34 trucks filled with desperately needed aid traveled into Gaza from Egypt over the weekend. But none carried fuel supplies, which is vital for running hospitals and treating water in the isolated territory. Israel has said fuel would be purloined by Hamas.

A further 20 trucks crossed Rafah into Gaza on Monday, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). But UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric warned that the current aid provisions reaching Gaza were “a drop in the bucket.”

“No fuel means no functioning water desalination. No fuel also means that humanitarian partners will have to focus almost their entire aid delivery operation on transporting water. It also means no bakeries and no hospitals,” the OCHA statement declared.

Aid workers and international leaders warned that the supplies were insufficient to combat the “catastrophic” humanitarian situation in Gaza, while the Palestine Red Crescent Society said it is a “drop in the ocean” of what is needed.

As the situation in the strip gets increasingly dire, doctors in Gaza hospitals are being forced to operate without morphine or painkillers due to shortages, according to Leo Cans from Doctors Without Borders.

“We currently have people being operated on without having morphine. It just happened to two kids,” said the head of mission in Jerusalem for the group also known as Médecins Sans Frontières.

Medical professionals have also described “catastrophic” conditions at one central Gazan hospital as electricity and fuel supplies run out and crippled medical facilities rapidly become overwhelmed with casualties.

“It’s impossible for any hospital in the world to admit this number of injured,” he said.

At another Gaza hospital, doctors have warned that most of the critically ill infants relying on ventilators in the neonatal unit will die if the electricity supply is interrupted.

“If the electricity is stopped, there will be catastrophic events inside this unit,” said Dr. Fu’ad al-Bulbul, head of the neonatal department Unit at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, in a video released by the Health Ministry in Gaza.

“We can save only one [or] two babies but, we cannot save all babies.”

Gaza residents: Nowhere is safe

Over the weekend, Israel called once again for civilians to leave northern parts of the strip – a warning that was condemned by the World Health Organization and which the Palestinian Red Crescent said amounted to a “death penalty for patients.”

Large plumes of smoke were seen rising from the Gaza skyline after Israeli airstrikes on the strip, a live feed on Al-Jazeera showed. Reuters showed a large smoke cloud rising from Gaza and seen from southern Israel.

The bombs hit buildings in Rafah, Khan Younis, central Gaza and Gaza City, including homes, the Palestinian Interior Ministry in Gaza said. The IDF said on Monday that it struck 320 “terror targets” in Gaza, including tunnels and “dozens of operational command centers” belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

“They want us all dead, they are whipping Gaza, this has nothing to do with a war against Hamas,” one resident of Jabalia, Mahmoud, said.

“My mother is paralyzed, she refuses to evacuate and says there is no safe place,” he said.

Another resident of Jabalia, Mohammad Salama, said he lost 18 family members in a strike on Monday morning, mostly women and children.

“There are no terrorists here, I swear on all my family members that I lost today, it’s only innocent civilians,” Salama said.

On Sunday, Hamas and Israeli forces engaged in limited clashes inside Gaza – in what is believed to be one of the first significant skirmishes on the ground inside the strip since the Islamist militants’ October 7 attack on Israel that killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians.

An IDF soldier was killed and three others were wounded during an operation in the area of Kibbutz Kissufim near Gaza on Sunday, according to IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari. Earlier, Hamas said its fighters had destroyed two Israeli military bulldozers and a tank in an ambush near the Gazan city of Khan Younis, forcing Israeli troops to retreat without their vehicles.

The United States and its allies have urged Israel to be strategic and clear about its goals during any ground operation in Gaza, warning against a prolonged occupation and placing an emphasis on avoiding civilian casualties, although the past two weeks have seen more people killed in Gaza than during any previous conflict with Israel.

The mounting death toll has sparked growing protests across the Middle East and further afield as social media fills with imagery of the devastation Gazans are living through.

On Sunday, US President Joe Biden made a flurry of calls to world leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, about the ongoing conflict and amid efforts by US officials seeking to keep it from widening.

The White House said Netanyahu and Biden “affirmed there will now be a continued flow” of humanitarian assistance to Gaza during their call.

Wider conflict

As Israel readies its troops around Gaza, its military has also been engaged in flare-ups elsewhere, with increasing violence in the occupied West Bank and on its northern border with Lebanon.

The IDF has launched a series of raids and arrested dozens of alleged Hamas members in the West Bank since the attack on Israel earlier this month.

Two Palestinians were killed after Israeli forces raided the Jalazoun refugee camp near Ramallah on Monday, according to a statement by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The Monday raid brings the total of those killed since October 7 in the occupied West Bank by both the IDF and Israeli settlers to 95, the ministry said.

On Sunday, the IDF launched an airstrike on the Al-Ansar mosque in the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin, which it said was being used by militant groups to plan for “an imminent terror attack.”

It would not say whether the strike came from a jet, in what would be the first fighter jet strike in the West Bank in nearly two decades.

Meanwhile, late Sunday and into Monday, the IDF said it struck cells belonging to the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, an Iran-backed paramilitary movement, on the Lebanese side of the border, which it said had planned to launch attacks on Israel.

Netanyahu warned Sunday that if Hezbollah decides to enter the war, it will be crippled “with a force [it] cannot even imagine.”

This story is developing and will be updated.

Women across Iceland – including the prime minister – will go on strike Tuesday as part of a campaign pushing for greater gender equality in the country.

This will be the seventh time that women in Iceland strike in the name of gender equality, campaign organizers said on their official website. The first strike took place on October 24, 1975.

“On 24 October, all women in Iceland, including immigrant women, are encouraged to stop work, both paid and unpaid. For the whole day, women (and non-binary people) will strike, to demonstrate the importance of their contribution to society,” organizers said.

The strike, which is known as the “Women’s Day Off” or “Kvennafrí” in Icelandic, hopes to raise awareness about the “systemic” wage discrimination and gender-based violence faced by women in Iceland, according to organizers.

Icelandic Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir told Icelandic news site Iceland Monitor on Friday that she will not work on the strike day and expects other female members of government to do the same “in solidarity with Icelandic women.”

“As you know, we have not yet reached our goals of full gender equality and we are still tackling the gender-based wage gap, which is unacceptable in 2023. We are still tackling gender-based violence, which has been a priority for my government to tackle,” Jakobsdóttir said.

Her government had previously committed to eradicating the gender pay gap by 2022.

Icelandic employers have historically gotten behind the strikes and not prevented or docked the pay of employees who participate, according to organizers.

This year’s strike has the backing of the country’s largest federation of public workers unions, the Federation of the Public Workers Union in Iceland (BSRB), the Icelandic Nurses’ Association and the Icelandic Association of Women’s Associations, among others.

Organizers are drawing particular attention to the plight of immigrant women whose “invaluable” contribution to Icelandic society they say is “rarely acknowledged or reflected in the wages they receive.

Organizers have called on men to show their support for women striking by “taking on additional responsibilities” in home and at work which will enable female and non-binary partners/ colleagues to strike.

Meanwhile, the Icelandic government is focused on a recently launched research project into the wage disparity between professions traditionally dominated by men versus those dominated by women, according to Jakobsdóttir.

“We are looking at how these jobs are different… because we estimate that the difference in wages that exists is due to this,” Jakobsdóttir said.

Lunar dust collected by Apollo 17 astronauts in the 1970s has revealed that the moon is 40 million years older than previously believed.

After landing on the moon on December 11, 1972, NASA astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt collected rocks and dust from the lunar surface. A new analysis of that sample detected zircon crystals and dated them to 4.46 billion years old. Previous estimates put the moon, formed by a massive celestial collision, at 4.425 billion years old.

The findings were published Monday in the journal Geochemical Perspectives Letters.

“These crystals are the oldest known solids that formed after the giant impact. And because we know how old these crystals are, they serve as an anchor for the lunar chronology,” said senior study author Philipp Heck, Robert A. Pritzker Curator for Meteoritics and Polar Studies at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, in a statement.

The early days of our solar system — when Earth was still forming and growing in size — were chaotic, with rocky bodies often colliding in space. During that time more than 4 billion years ago, a Mars-size object crashed into Earth, flinging off a large rocky piece that became the moon, according to the researchers. But scientists have struggled to precisely date this pivotal event.

The energy from the impact of the Mars-size object hitting Earth melted the rock that would eventually form the moon’s surface.

“When the surface was molten like that, zircon crystals couldn’t form and survive. So any crystals on the Moon’s surface must have formed after this lunar magma ocean cooled,” said Heck, who is also the senior director of the museum’s Negaunee Integrative Research Center and a professor in the department of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago.

“Otherwise, they would have been melted and their chemical signatures would be erased.”

High-tech atomic analysis

Previous research by study coauthor Bidong Zhang, assistant researcher in the department of Earth, planetary, and space sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, had suggested that determining the age of the crystals within the lunar dust might reveal the moon’s actual age as well.

Zhang and fellow coauthor Audrey Bouvier, professor of experimental planetology at Bayreuth University in Germany, approached Heck and lead study author Jennika Greer, a research associate in Earth sciences at the University of Glasgow, to take a nanoscale look at the crystals using an advanced technique to determine their chemical composition and pinpoint the moon’s age.

This research marks the first use of the analytical method of dating the crystals with atom probe tomography and was carried out using instruments at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, according to the study authors.

“In atom probe tomography, we start by sharpening a piece of the lunar sample into a very sharp tip, using a focused ion beam microscope, almost like a very fancy pencil sharpener,” said Greer, who was a doctoral candidate at the Field Museum and the University of Chicago when she worked on the study. “Then, we use UV lasers to evaporate atoms from the surface of that tip. The atoms travel through a mass spectrometer, and how fast they move tells us how heavy they are, which in turn tells us what they’re made of.”

The analysis showed how many uranium atoms within the zircon crystals experienced radioactive decay. Elements can transform if their atoms contain an unstable configuration of protons and neutrons, causing some of them to decay — such as how uranium decays to become lead. By tracking how long this process takes, scientists can determine the age of something by comparing the ratio of uranium to lead atoms.

“Radiometric dating works a little bit like an hourglass,” Heck said. “In an hourglass, sand flows from one glass bulb to another, with the passage of time indicated by the accumulation of sand in the lower bulb. Radiometric dating works similarly by counting the number of parent atoms and the number of daughter atoms they have transformed to. The passage of time can then be calculated because the transformation rate is known.”

‘The oldest bit of the Moon’

The research team used lead isotopes within the lunar dust sample to determine that the crystals were 4.46 billion years old, indicating that the moon must also be at least that old.

“It’s amazing being able to have proof that the rock you’re holding is the oldest bit of the Moon we’ve found so far,” Greer said. “It’s an anchor point for so many questions about the Earth. When you know how old something is, you can better understand what has happened to it in its history.”

Although the lunar samples were returned to Earth more than 50 years ago, it has taken time to develop the technology needed to conduct such a detailed analysis of the crystals. This is why NASA has waited to unseal some of the pristine samples collected during the Apollo era until recent years, allowing for more insights into our planet’s natural satellite using the most advanced methods.

“The Moon is an important partner in our planetary system,” Heck said. “It stabilizes the Earth’s rotational axis, it’s the reason there are 24 hours in a day, it’s the reason we have tides. Without the Moon, life on Earth would look different. It’s a part of our natural system that we want to better understand, and our study provides a tiny puzzle piece in that whole picture.”

The battle to decide who will run crisis-wracked Argentina is heading to a run off vote next month between left wing candidate Sergio Massa and far right libertarian Javier Milei, according to data released by Argentina’s National Electoral Chamber after the first round of voting on Sunday.

After polls closed Massa received the highest number of votes – 8,877,325, accounting for 36.33% of the total, data revealed. Milei received 7,373,876 votes – roughly 30.18%.

Third place candidate Patricia Bullrich got 23.82% and conceded defeat late Sunday night.

Each is vying for the nation’s trust at a moment of widespread disillusionment with the country’s elite and its management of the country.

The results have highlighted a strong showing for the government coalition supporting Massa, who is currently Economic Minister as Argentina finds itself in the most serious financial crisis of the last twenty years.

Turnout was over 75%, with more than 25 million Argentinians casting their ballots and over 90% of votes had been counted, the election body said.

“It has been a model day of Argentine democracy,” Julio Vitobello, general secretary of the presidency, said at a presser on Sunday night.

Inflation in Argentina has soared to 138%, Reuters reports, piling pressure on ordinary people trying to manage the cost of living.

“It’s so hard. Each day things costs a little more, it’s like always racing against the clock, searching and searching,” Laura Celiz told the news agency last month, she shopped on the outskirts of capital Buenos Aires. “You buy whatever is cheaper in one place and go to the next place and buy something else.”

After casting his vote in Buenos Aires on Sunday, current president Alberto Fernández celebrated the nation’s democracy on the social media platform X.

“I call on every Argentine to defend it and decide the future of the country at the polls,” he wrote.

Boasting lengthy experience in national politics, she recently has worked to refresh her image to appeal to younger voters, uploading viral challenges to YouTube and making reference in interviews to her relationship with her cousin, singer Fabiana Cantilo.

Massa, who is in the current government, balances a heavy ministerial portolio including inflation control, soybeans (the country’s main export) and Argnetina’s relationship with the International Monetary Fund.

He has been trying to position himself as a more pragmatic voice from the left, compared to the current government coalition, and has worked to distance himself politically from Argentina’s high-profile vice-president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner – without alienating her power base.

Unlike his main rivals, political upstart Milei offers little governmental experience and promises to upend Argentina’s existing economic structures. For his supporters, Milei’s promises of overhaul have been seductive.

Milei, a former financial analyst and self-described “anarcho-capitalist” who wields a chainsaw at rallies, has suggested a raft of radical changes: dollarizing Argentina, slashing public subsidies and eliminating the ministries of culture; education; environment; and women, gender, and diversity.

To win in the first round of voting, a presidential candidate must obtain more than 45% of all votes or a minimum of 40% and at least a 10-point lead over the second-place candidate.

Argentina’s next president will take office in December and will begin a 4-year term.

A teenage Iranian girl who fell into a coma after she was allegedly assaulted by the country’s morality police for not wearing a headscarf is “brain dead,” state-aligned media said.

Armita Geravand, 16, was hospitalized with head injuries following the alleged assault at a Tehran metro station earlier this month, according to activists, just weeks after Iran passed draconian legislation imposing much harsher penalties on women who breach the country’s already strict hijab rules.

“Follow-ups on the latest health condition of Armita Geravand indicate that her condition of being brain dead seems certain despite the efforts of the medical staff,” the state-aligned Tasnim news agency reported Sunday, without providing a source for the information.

Earlier in October, the Norway-based Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, which focuses on Kurdish rights, said Geravand was “assaulted” by morality police and fell into a coma. Another opposition network, IranWire, said Geravand was admitted to the hospital with “head trauma.”

“This request resulted in an altercation with the morality police officers physically assaulting Geravand. She was pushed, leading to her collapse,” Shekhi said.

Iranian authorities have denied the allegations, saying Geravand was hospitalized due to an injury caused by low blood pressure.

Geravand’s friends and family have echoed those denials in interviews with state media, though it is unclear if they were coerced into doing so. UN officials and rights groups have previously accused Iranian authorities of pressuring families of killed protesters to make statements supportive of the government narrative.

Iran’s parliament in September passed a so-called “hijab bill” on the wearing of clothing – which if violated can carry up to 10 years in prison – following the first anniversary of mass protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini.

Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, died last September after being detained by the regime’s infamous morality police, allegedly for not abiding by the country’s conservative dress code.

Reporters jailed

On Sunday, Iranian authorities jailed two journalists who first covered Amini’s death.

Niloofar Hamedi, who worked for the reformist Shargh newspaper, was sentenced to a total of 13 years in prison on charges including “cooperating with the hostile government of the United States,” and “collusion to commit crimes against the country’s security,” state-run Mizan news reported.

Elaheh Mohammadi, who worked for reformist newspaper Ham-Mihan, was sentenced to a total of 12 years in prison on similar charges, according to Mizan.

Last year, Iranian intelligence accused Hamedi of using her role as a journalist as cover to stir dissent.

Hamedi’s husband, Mohammad Hossein Ajorloo, said the verdict had been announced on her birthday.

“These verdicts are a (wrong response) to honest and honorable efforts on the parts of Niloofar and Elaheh. We hope these sentences will be overturned and Niloofar and Elaheh will be released as soon as possible,” he posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Sherif Mansour, Middle East and North Africa program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, said the convictions “are a travesty and serve as a stark reminder to the erosion of freedom of speech and the desperate attempts of the Iranian government to criminalize journalism.”

Days after the United States’ shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East, which culminated in President Joe Biden’s historic wartime visit to Israel, China has started its own diplomatic hustling in a region teetering on the brink of a wider conflict.

Zhai Jun, Beijing’s special envoy to the Middle East, has embarked on a whirlwind tour of the region aimed at promoting peace talks between Israel and Hamas – even though Beijing still refuses to condemn or even name the Palestinian militant group in any of its statements.

Zhai has traveled to Qatar and attended a peace summit in Egypt, calling for a ceasefire, humanitarian access to Gaza and reiterating China’s support for a two-state solution. It is unclear if he will visit Israel, as Beijing has provided no details of the trip.

But brokering peace is a tall order, especially for a country with little experience or expertise in mediating such a long-running, intractable conflict – in a deeply divided region where it lacks a meaningful political and security presence.

Few experts in or familiar with the Middle East expect Zhai’s trip will lead to any concrete deliverables in peacemaking.

Instead, they view it as a chance for China to tilt the global balance of power further in its favor as the strategic competition with the US heats up.

Beijing is seeking to use the diplomatic mission to shore up its position as a champion of the Arab world and the Global South, which has long been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and dissatisfied with the American-led world order, experts say.

“China is looking to play a diplomatic role by calling for calm and de-escalation and – at the same time – showing strong support for Palestine,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House.

“This should be seen sort of opportunistically… China doesn’t have a huge track record of success in trying to be a neutral broker in this conflict. So the most that China can do is offer symbolic diplomatic support.”

Jonathan Fulton, an Abu Dhabi-based senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, said Zhai’s mission will be to “demonstrate China’s solidarity with Arab causes” and to promote “a different vision for the region than the US does.”

“China wants to be seen as an active, responsible great power, but it doesn’t really have the depth of engagement in the region that results in a leading position,” he added.

‘Weakening Western order’

The spiraling crisis is widening a chasm in the global geopolitical landscape – a divide which has already been sharpened by Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

That division was on full display last week. Hours before Biden landed in Israel to show solidarity with America’s closest ally in the Middle East, Chinese leader Xi Jinping hosted his “old friend” Vladimir Putin in Beijing and hailed the deepening political trust between their countries.

The two autocrats held detailed discussions on the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, according to Putin, who described them as “common threats” that brought Russia and China closer together.

“Since the war in Ukraine, this alignment has become increasingly obvious. We could call it an axis that is designed to strategically align against the US and US interests globally,” said Vakil, from Chatham House.

“You can include Iran in this relationship too. They have this broad objective of weakening the Western order, and it tactically plays out in the region.”

This tactical alignment is already playing out on the ground. One of the first meetings the Chinese envoy had upon touching down in the Middle East was with his Russian counterpart.

“China and Russia share the same position on the Palestinian issue,” Zhai told Mikhail Bogdanov, Putin’s special envoy for the Middle East and Africa, in Qatar on Thursday.

The position held by Beijing and Moscow cuts a stark contrast to that of Washington, which has thrown its weight behind Israel and dispatched two aircraft carrier strike groups to deter other regional actors from joining the conflict.

China, which had sworn a “zero-tolerance” approach to Islamist militancy by detaining ethnic Uyghurs en masse in its far western region of Xinjiang, has not explicitly condemned Hamas for its terror attacks on Israel – neither has Russia, which had its own history of suppressing political Islam within its own borders.

But both have vocally criticized Israel for its retaliation to the Hamas attacks.

China’s foreign minister accused Israel of going “beyond the scope of self-defense,” while Russia’s UN envoy compared Israel’s relentless shelling of Hamas-controlled Gaza to the brutal siege of Leningrad during World War II.

“There’s a huge difference between the American approach and the Chinese and Russian stance right now,” said Li Mingjiang, an associate professor of international relations at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

Russian and Chinese state media have already blamed US policy for the escalating conflict, and as the situation in Gaza deteriorates, Beijing and Moscow will only become even more critical of the US approach, Li said.

Pro-Palestinian stance

China’s pro-Palestinian stance dates back decades and is rooted in revolutionary ideology. In the era of Mao Zedong, the founder of Communist China, Beijing armed and trained Palestinian militant groups as part of its Cold War support for national liberation movements.

After the country’s reform and opening following Mao’s death in 1976, however, China adopted a more pragmatic foreign policy. While it continued to offer political support for the Palestinian cause and became one of the first countries to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state in 1988, Beijing also warmed to Israel and established formal diplomatic relations with the Jewish state in 1992.

Over the past decade, Chinese investment and trade with Israel skyrocketed, especially in the technology sector. In 2017, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed his country and China as a “marriage made in heaven.”

Throughout their economic cooperation, however, China has upheld its political support for the Palestinians, voting in favor of them and against Israel at the United Nations whenever conflicts flared.

Part of that is due to pragmatic interests.

About half of China’s oil imports come from Arab states, which also account for more than 20 votes at the UN – potentially helpful for Beijing when it comes to issues like defending its treatment of Uyghurs.

“China’s view of the Middle East is that Israel is never going to split from the US side, and that means being critical to Israel is going to curry favor with a large bloc of Arab countries,” said the Atlantic Council’s Fulton.

Mediator role

It is not the first time China has expressed an interest in resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Beijing’s aspirations to be a mediator started as early as the 2000s, but remained largely symbolic. China did put forward several vague proposals and invited politically insignificant Palestinian and Israeli figures for talks in Beijing – but those efforts did not lead anywhere.

This time around, experts do not expect the result to be much different, despite China’s recent success in brokering a rapprochement between rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia.

While China’s involvement in the Middle East has grown, its interests there remain primarily economic – and its relations with regional players largely transactional, experts say.

“Beijing possesses little leverage over Hamas and has limited historical involvement in the Arab-Israel conflict. By distancing itself from Israel after the terrorist attack, Beijing has further undermined its influence in Tel Aviv,” said Zhao Tong, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

It also remains to be seen whether China will be willing or able to leverage its close relationship with Iran – which funds and arms both Hamas and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah – to deescalate the war and prevent it from spilling over into a broader conflict.

“I think China certainly is prevailing on Tehran to exercise restraint,” said Vakil with Chatham House. “I personally think the Iranians intend to exercise restraint unless things get out of hand. I don’t think that Iran wants to be involved in a broader regional conflict – so their interests are aligned.”

But while Arab countries may give Zhai a warm reception, few would take Beijing’s peace proposals seriously, Vakil said.

“I don’t think that Middle Eastern states are looking to China to come in and build a diplomatic process (for peacemaking). They are aware of the limitations of what China has on offer,” she said.

“I think there’s very little China can do beyond trying to showcase diplomacy. China doesn’t have the ability to manage the conflict or deescalate this conflict.”

A second convoy of desperately needed aid entered Gaza on Sunday as Israel widened its offensive against Hamas and its regional enemies, intensifying airstrikes on the besieged enclave, targeting the occupied West Bank and striking Hezbollah cells in Lebanon.

The bombs hit buildings in Rafah, Khan Younis, central Gaza and Gaza City, including homes, the Palestinian Interior Ministry in Gaza said. The IDF said on Monday that it struck 320 “terror targets” in Gaza overnight, including tunnels and “dozens of operational command centers” belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The Israeli siege and near-constant bombing of Gaza in response to the October 7 murder and kidnap rampage by Hamas has leveled entire neighborhoods, including schools and mosques, and devastated the already insufficient health care system.

As the situation in the besieged strip gets increasingly dire, doctors in Gaza hospitals are being forced to operate without morphine or painkillers due to shortages, according to Leo Cans from Doctors Without Borders.

“We currently have people being operated on without having morphine. It just happened to two kids,” said the head of mission in Jerusalem for the group also known as Médecins Sans Frontières.

“We have a lot of kids that are unfortunately among the wounded, and I was discussing with one of our surgeons, who received a 10-year-old yesterday, burnt on 60% of the body surface, and he didn’t end up having painkillers,” Cans continued.

“There is no justification at all to block these essential medicines to reach the population.”

Medical professionals have also described “catastrophic” conditions at one central Gazan hospital as electricity and fuel supplies run out and crippled medical facilities rapidly become overwhelmed with casualties.

“It’s impossible for any hospital in the world to admit this number of injured,” he said.

At another Gaza hospital, doctors have warned that most of the critically ill infants relying on ventilators in the neonatal unit will die if the electricity supply is interrupted.

“If the electricity is stopped, there will be catastrophic events inside this unit,” said Dr. Fu’ad al-Bulbul, head of the neonatal department Unit at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, in a video released by the Health Ministry in Gaza.

“We can save only one [or] two babies but, we cannot save all babies.”

Life-saving medicines to keep preterm babies alive are perilously low and the exhausted medical team is overwhelmed with the number of sick babies, he said.

A small glimmer of hope to alleviate some of the suffering came in the form of two separate humanitarian convoys over the weekend, crossing the Rafah border crossing with Egypt with at least 34 trucks carrying food, water, medicine and medical supplies.

However, the trucks did not bring in fuel, which is vital for running hospitals and treating water in the isolated territory, according to United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) spokesperson Juliette Touma. Israel has said that fuel would be purloined by Hamas.

Aid workers and international leaders have warned that the supplies are insufficient to combat the “catastrophic” humanitarian situation in Gaza that is home to more than 2 million people. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said it is a “drop in the ocean” of what is needed.

Rising death toll

As of Sunday, Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 4,651 people in Gaza, including more than 1,900 children, according to the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza. At least 14,245 people have been wounded, it added.

That toll is expected to rise as Israel’s military ramps up its aerial bombardment of Gaza.

Over the weekend, Israel called once again for civilians to leave northern parts of the strip – a warning that was condemned by the World Health Organization and which the Palestinian Red Crescent said amounted to a “death penalty for patients.”

IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi told commanders Saturday that the military is preparing to “enter the Gaza Strip” and “destroy Hamas operatives and infrastructures,” but offered no timeline for the possible ground offensive.

On Sunday, Hamas and Israeli forces engaged in limited clashes inside Gaza – in what is believed to be one of the first significant skirmishes on the ground inside the strip since the Islamist militants’ October 7 attack on Israel that killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians.

An IDF soldier was killed and three others were wounded during an operation in the area of Kibbutz Kissufim near Gaza on Sunday, according to IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari. Earlier, Hamas said its fighters had destroyed two Israeli military bulldozers and a tank in an ambush near the Gazan city of Khan Younis, forcing Israeli troops to retreat without their vehicles.

‘No ceasefire’

The United States and its allies have urged Israel to be strategic and clear about its goals during any ground operation in Gaza, warning against a prolonged occupation and placing a particular emphasis on avoiding civilian casualties, although the past two weeks has already seen more people killed in Gaza than during any previous conflict with Israel.

The mounting death toll has sparked growing protests across the Middle East and further afield as social media fills with imagery of the devastation Gazans are living through.

On Sunday, US President Joe Biden made a flurry of calls to world leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, about the ongoing conflict and amid efforts by US officials seeking to keep it from widening.

The White House said Netanyahu and Biden “affirmed there will now be a continued flow” of humanitarian assistance to Gaza during their call.

The official said they were “not aware” of US calls for a delay to the Gaza ground operation. The official added that both Israel and the US want all the hostages released “as quickly as possible” but said “humanitarian efforts cannot be allowed to impact the mission to dismantle Hamas.”

Wider conflict

As Israel readies its troops around Gaza, its military has also been engaged in flare ups elsewhere, with increasing violence in the occupied West Bank and on its northern border with Lebanon.

Late Sunday and into Monday, the IDF said it struck cells belonging to the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, an Iran-backed paramilitary movement, on the Lebanese side of the border, which it said had planned to launch attacks on Israel.

Netanyahu warned Sunday that if Hezbollah decides to enter the war, it will be crippled “with a force [it] cannot even imagine.”

The occupied West Bank has seen Israeli raids and the arrest of dozens of alleged Hamas members.

On Sunday, the IDF launched an airstrike on the Al-Ansar mosque in the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin, which it said was being used by militant groups to plan for “an imminent terror attack.”

It would not say whether the strike came from a jet, in what would be the first fighter jet strike in the West Bank in nearly two decades.

Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic descriptions

The bodies of three children lie on a steel tray inside what appears to be a Gaza hospital morgue, one leg of their trousers pushed up to reveal writing in black ink on their skin.

He said parents were worried that “anything could happen,” and no one would be able to identify their children.

“This means that they feel they are targeted at any moment and can be injured or martyred,” Al Masri added.

The black ink is a small sign of the fear and desperation felt by parents in the densely populated enclave as Israel continues to pound it with relentless airstrikes in retaliation for the October 7 Hamas attacks.

The supervisor of the room at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital where dead bodies are washed described Sunday as “an exceptional day.”

“What we noticed today is that many parents writing the names of their children on their legs so they can get identified after airstrikes and if they get lost. This is a new phenomenon that just started in Gaza.”

“Many of the children are missing, many get here with their skulls broken … and it’s impossible to identify them, only though that writing do they get identified.”

Over the last two weeks hundreds of children have been pulled from the wreckage of pancaked buildings hit by airstrikes in what is one of the most densely populated places in the world, many of them made unrecognizable by their injuries.

With Israel continuing its “complete siege” of the impoverished territory and crucial supplies running dangerously low, doctors in Gaza hospitals have been forced to operate without painkillers, according to Doctors Without Borders.

“In terms of pain management, it’s not happening. We currently have people being operated on without having morphine. It just happened to two kids,” Cans said. “We have a lot of kids that are unfortunately among the wounded, and I was discussing with one of our surgeons, who received a 10-year-old yesterday, burnt on 60% of the body surface, and he didn’t end up having painkillers.”

“There is no justification at all to block these essential medicines to reach the population,” Cans continued.

He also acknowledged “terrible” reports that Gazan parents have resorted to writing their childrens’ names on their limbs in the event that either they or the children are killed. He added that colleagues had told him families were sleeping in the same room as “they want to live together or die together.”

Health workers have also started seeing the impact of fuel shortages. “Fuel is essential for the water plants in order to desalinate to water … If you don’t have fuel, you don’t have quality water,” Cans said, adding many were now drinking untreated water, leading to outbreaks of diarrhea.

In a video released by Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health on Sunday. Dr. Fu’ad al-Bulbul, head of the neonatal department unit at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, warned that most of the infants under his care would perish if fuel runs out.

“If the electricity is stopped, there will be catastrophic events inside this unit. Most of the babies depending on ventilators will die because we can save only one, two babies, but we cannot save all babies,” Al-Bulbul said in the video.

His department houses 45 incubators and predominantly cares for preterm babies resulting from high-risk pregnancies.

By Sunday, his hospital had run out of surfactant and caffeine citrate Al-Bulbul said, both commonly used to relieve breathing issues in preterm babies.

Most infants are critically ill and his exhausted medical team has worked 18 straight days, he added.

Hospitals in crisis

More than 300 people sought help at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, Gaza after Israel dropped bombs nearby Saturday night into Sunday, said Dr. Iyad Issa Abu Zaher, the hospital’s director general.

The situation has become “catastrophic,” he added.

“It’s impossible for any hospital in the world to admit this number of injured. There is no room or hospital beds for these injuries. The injured are at the door of operation theater rooms and on top of each other, each waiting their turn for an operation,” he lamented.

Israel declared a “complete siege” of Gaza two weeks ago in response to Hamas’ attack, bombarding the enclave with airstrikes and shutting off the entire population’s access to food, water and power.

At least 1,400 people, most of them civilians, were killed in the Hamas assault, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and more than 200 were taken hostage.

The death toll in Gaza since October 7 has risen to more than 4,650 with more than 14,245 wounded, according to the Ministry of Health in the enclave, where half the 2.2 million population is under 18.

Hospitals have since faced tremendous challenges, from caring from the overwhelming number of injured, to accessing life-saving medical supplies as bombs rain down and generators run perilously low on fuel.

The first convoys of aid trucks were allowed into Gaza from Egypt over the weekend, but none of the 34 vehicles that passed through the Rafah crossing were carrying fuel supplies.

The territory normally receives 455 aid trucks per day, the United Nations said, which means 7,280 trucks should have arrived in those 16 days. In other words, Gaza has received half of 1% – one two-hundredth – of the amount of aid it normally gets.

Humanitarian groups have also stressed that what was delivered over the weekend was nothing close to what’s needed.

“It is only a small beginning and far from enough,” the World Health Organization said in a statement Saturday.

On Sunday, the UN agency aiding Palestine refugees cautioned that its fuel reserves would run out in three days.

Impossible to evacuate

Israel has repeatedly warned residents to evacuate the northern part of Gaza ahead of an expected ground incursion by the Israeli military.

The Palestinian Red Crescent says that the Israeli military issued three evacuation orders on Friday for the Al-Quds hospital, which is treating more than 400 patients and providing shelter for around 12,000 displaced civilians.

Farsakh said that 24 hospitals, including the Al-Quds, are under the threat of “being bombed at any second due to Israeli evacuation orders.”

The Al-Quds Hospital’s administration also said the Israeli army had repeatedly contacted them demanding the immediate evacuation of the hospital in preparation for a nighttime airstrike.

Asked for comment, the IDF responded by saying that it requested residents in the northern area of the Gaza Strip to evacuate “in order to mitigate civilian harm.”

“Hamas intentionally embeds its assets in civilian areas and uses the residents of the Gaza Strip as human shields,” the IDF statement added.

At least six people were killed and 16 others injured after a Russian missile strike on a postal terminal in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, officials have said.

Russian forces fired two missiles from the Belgorod region, near the Ukrainian border, at “a building belonging to a logistics company located in the Kharkiv region” on Saturday, according to Dmytro Chubenko, the spokesperson for the Kharkiv region prosecutor’s office.

Chubenko added that search and rescue operations were ongoing and that the identities of the victims were still being established.

“Terror and murder will not get Russia anywhere. Terrorists will end up facing justice for everything they have done,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

The United States Ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, called the deadly attack on the postal office in Kharkiv “horrific.”

“Again, overnight horrific images of Russian violence against civilians in Ukraine – a missile attack on a postal office in Kharkiv killed 6 people and seriously injured more. The Kremlin’s disregard for life is for all the world to see. The United States stands with Ukraine to hold Russia accountable,” Brink posted on social media Sunday.

Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, was liberated from Russian occupation by Kyiv’s troops last year, but has been the target of frequent aerial assaults by Moscow.

Russian troops are battling to push westwards towards Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, while also hitting several regions with missile attacks.

Separate Russian airstrikes on the town of Beryslav, in the southern Kherson region, killed an elderly woman on Friday morning, the head of Kherson region military official Oleksandr Prokudin wrote in a post on Telegram.

“The occupiers launched four guided aerial bombs at Beryslav. An 80-year-old woman sustained severe injuries in her own house. The woman died on the spot from her injuries,” he said in a Telegram post. Seven people were injured due to the strikes, he said.

Over the last week, a secret delivery of long-range American ATACMS missiles weapons has aided Ukraine’s long-stalled counteroffensive, while Ukrainian troops appeared to have crossed the Dnipro River into the Russian-occupied Kherson region, according to pro-Kremlin military bloggers.

The mountain chicken frog was once so abundant in Dominica, with thousands found across the island, that it became a national delicacy, supposedly tasting of chicken. Now, a new survey has found only 21 left in the Caribbean island nation.

The species’ population has declined over 99% since 2002 when Chytridiomycosis struck, according to the Zoological Society of London, or ZSL. Chytridiomycosis is a fungal infectious disease that affects more than 500 frog species across the world.

The species once lived across seven Caribbean islands, but researchers believe that Dominica is the last place on Earth where the frogs can be found in the wild today, according to a news release from the ZSL.

The survey was conducted over 26 nights by a research team with the Mountain Chicken Recovery Programme, a project made up of 10 European and Caribbean conservation institutes with a goal to see healthy populations of the frog back in Dominica and Montserrat by 2034.

The research team spent hundreds of hours searching for the chicken frog during the months of July and August. The survey found 23 frogs, but two of those were dead on the road, said Andrés Valenzuela Sánchez, a research fellow in wildlife health with ZSL who was involved with the survey.

The international collaboration on the survey and efforts to save the mountain chicken frogs were inspiring for Sánchez. “But at the end, as we found so few animals, it was kind of sad as well. … The situation of the species in nature is even worse than what we thought before the survey.”

Frog considered critically endangered

Otherwise known as the giant ditch frog, the amphibian is one of the largest frogs in the world, weighing in at over 2 pounds (almost 1 kilogram) with a length of up to 8 inches. At night, the male’s reedy croaks used to reverberate throughout the rainforests and could be heard from more than 200 meters (656 feet) away, Sánchez said.

Now, the rainforests are quieter without the distinctive sound.

“We want to bring this sound back to our island, for our people,” Dominica ecologist Jeanelle Brisbane said in the ZSL news release. “It’s devastating that future generations may never hear this iconic soundscape which defines our island.”

After the spread of the deadly disease in 2002, the frog was classified as critically endangered with the Red List, Sánchez said, but it has faced threats for even longer than that, particularly from hunting — due to humans and other predators such as cats — as well as environmental issues.

“Sadly, we’re finding the frogs closer and closer to busy roads as they search for water, due to our rivers being so dry due to the changing climate in Dominica,” Brisbane said in the release.

Efforts to conserve the frogs

Chytrid disease has caused 90 extinctions of species within the past 50 years, according to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute. Currently, no vaccine exists, but there is hope, said Alyssa Wetterau Kaganer, a postdoctoral associate with the Cornell Wildlife Health Lab who studies the disease. She was not involved with the survey.

“There is innovative research going on all around the world as stellar scientists explore different frog immunity, genetics, microbiome, and environmental treatment options,” Kaganer said via email.

“Moreover, the frogs themselves provide hope for a bright future; even species that have been particularly hard-hit by chytrid like the mountain chicken frog have individual animals that survive long periods of time in landscapes where the fungus is found — these individuals may provide the key to understanding how to best fight the fungus.”

The research team was discouraged to find the devastatingly low number of frogs in Dominica — it had expected to find at least 50, Sánchez said. A captive breeding program across several institutions, including London Zoo, a ZSL conservation zoo, featured an initial 50 frogs that now have offspring, Sánchez said.

During the survey, the team with ZSL took mouth swabs of the resident frogs found in Dominica and plan to study these for any evidence of the remaining frogs developing resistance to the fungus.

How to help the frogs

Some frogs are better equipped against the disease than others, Kaganer said. Certain frog species, such as the American bullfrog, according to the Amphibian Ark organization, have immune defenses that are fully tolerant of the disease, and others live in environments that the fungus has a hard time growing in, Kaganer said.

Often, the chytrid fungus is spread by human activity, Kaganer said, such as transporting infected animals or disposing of animal products or waste into the environment. It can even be spread through the tread in footwear.

“There are many things that people can do to prevent the spread of chytrid and help protect frogs,” Kaganer said in an email. “One great option is by taking care to clean footwear after spending time outdoors; take a minute to scrub all the mud out of your boot treads before you head home. … Just make sure to safely dispose of the waste!”

Financially supporting or volunteering with local conservation institutions and other organizations that prioritize biosecurity — measures that aim to prevent the spread of harmful diseases to animals in the wild — can also be crucial to conserving this frog species and others, Kaganer said.