Seven members of the same family were killed in an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza on Sunday, medical officials said, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken travels to Israel to push for a ceasefire and hostage deal.

At least seven people were killed, including six children and their mother, in an Israeli airstrike on a home in Deir al-Balah on Sunday, according to the Al-Aqsa hospital. The children’s father was injured, a hospital spokesperson said.

“What did they do to deserve this?” he added. “What resistance did they have?”

As the war rages in Gaza, Blinken is traveling to Israel to, in the words of a senior administration official, “continue to stress the importance of getting this [deal] done.”

The fresh strike in Gaza comes just a day after an Israeli strike killed at least 15 people, all from the same famly, in the al-Zawayda area of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. Nine children were among those killed, according to Gaza Civil Defense.

In a statement Sunday, the Israeli military said forces continue to operate in Khan Yunis and Dir al-Balah. It said the military struck “targets in the area from which the launches were fired toward Nirim (Friday) and destroyed loaded launchers in the area of Khan Yunis.”

The Israeli military had ordered new evacuation orders in north Khan Younis and east Deir al-Balah on Friday, further reducing the boundaries of the Israeli-designated humanitarian zone.

Palestinians in Gaza have faced a stream of evacuation orders. According to the UN, since October of last year, more than 80% of the Gaza Strip has been subjected to such orders, severely impacting the local population’s access to essential services and shelter.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza – launched following the Hamas attacks of October 7 – has killed more than 40,000 people and reduced much of the territory to rubble. Adding to Gazans’ woes, doctors this week detected the first case of polio in Gaza in 25 years.

Peace efforts accelerate

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to arrive in Israel later on Sunday amid urgent efforts to finalize an elusive Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal.

A new ceasefire plan drawn up by the US, Qatar and Egypt was presented on Friday following two days of high stakes talks in Doha. Mediators have been stepping up efforts amid fears of Iranian retaliation for the assassination of a Hamas leader in Tehran.

Blinken’s visit has become an established pattern from the top US diplomat of traveling for in-person meetings to project high-level public pressure around the need for an agreement. He will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior figures on Monday.

The senior administration official would not say how the US intends to pressure the Israeli government to take the deal.

“Think it is apparent that a deal would not only be in the interest of the Israeli people, but would also help alleviate some of the suffering in Gaza. We’re going to raise all of these issues directly,” they told the press traveling with Blinken.

US officials including President Joe Biden have expressed fresh optimism of finalizing a ceasefire agreement. However, Hamas has dismissed the progress, with a senior official from the militant group telling the BBC that mediators were “selling illusions.”

According to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, the Israeli negotiating team is still cautiously optimistic about reaching a ceasefire-hostage deal. A statement from the PMO on Saturday said there was “hope that the heavy pressure” on Hamas from the United States and mediators will “allow a breakthrough in negotiations.”

More than 20 people were injured after a Ferris wheel at a music festival in Germany caught fire on Saturday evening.

Images show two carriages of the ride on fire as smoke billows into the air at the Highfield Festival near the city of Leipzig.

According to a statement from Saxony police, the ride caught fire shortly after 9 p.m. local time, for reasons that are still unclear.

Four people suffered from burn injuries due to the incident, the statement said, while another was treated for injuries from falling.

According to the statement, 18 people including first responders, police officers and others on the ride came into contact with smoke and were taken to hospitals for medical treatment.

Police have launched an investigation. The scene of the incident has been cordoned off.

German rapper Ski Aggu was performing onstage at the festival when the Ferris wheel caught fire. He later took to his Instagram stories to write that he was “dismayed and shocked” over the night’s events.

He added that he was told in his ear that he should “not cancel the show under any circumstances” but rather maintain dialogue with the crowds to avoid any mass panic.

Paetongtarn Shinawatra, a scion of Thailand’s most famed and divisive political dynasty, won the endorsement of the king on Sunday to officially become the country’s new prime minister.

Her appointment follows a series of twists and turns in Thai politics over the past week, during which the Constitutional Court ousted Srettha Thavisin, her predecessor from the same Pheu Thai party.

The country’s youngest ever prime minister at 37 years old, Paetongtarn is the daughter of ousted former leader Thaksin Shinawatra. She becomes Thailand’s second woman prime minister, after her aunt – and Thaksin’s sister – Yingluck Shinawatra.

On Sunday, King Maha Vajiralongkorn’s approval was read to her by the secretary of the House of Representatives at Pheu Thai headquarters in the capital Bangkok.

Paetongtarn got down on her knees and paid homage to a portrait of the king, before giving a short speech thanking him.

“The king has appointed me as the prime minister of Thailand. This is the highest honor and pride in my life,” she said after the endorsement.

“I, my family and the Pheu Thai party greatly appreciate His Majesty’s kindness. I am determined to perform my duties with my loyalty and honesty for the benefit of the nation and the people,” she added.

She is expected to appoint her 35-member cabinet and will lead the ministers in swearing an oath before the king.

Last week, the Constitutional Court ruled Srettha breached ethics rules by appointing to his cabinet a lawyer – and Thaksin aide – who had served prison time.

Srettha’s dismissal was the latest blow to the Thaksin-backed Pheu Thai, which has frequently run afoul of Thailand’s conservative establishment – a small but powerful clique of military, royalist and business elites.

On Friday, the Thai parliament voted Paetongtarn into the role after she was nominated as the sole candidate by Pheu Thai’s ruling coalition to replace Srettha.

She was one of three prime ministerial candidates for the Pheu Thai party ahead of national elections in May, and made international headlines when she gave birth just two weeks before the vote.

Thaksin is one of Thailand’s most influential figures. His economic and populist policies enabled him to build a political machine that has dominated the country for the past two decades despite his ouster in a 2006 coup.

Paetongtarn’s appointment adds another twist to a years-long saga that has shaken up the kingdom’s already turbulent political landscape.

Political parties allied to Thaksin have struggled to hold on to power, having been forced out in the past due to coups or court decisions.

Yingluck was removed from office before the military seized power in a 2014 coup, and Thaksin went into self-imposed exile in 2006 for more than 15 years to escape corruption charges after the military toppled his government.

The telecoms billionaire and former owner of Manchester City Football Club returned to Thailand from exile in August last year.

A volcano has erupted following a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck off Russia’s east coast, spurting a column of ash miles into the air, according to state-run media.

The Shiveluch volcano is around 280 miles from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a coastal city with a population of about 180,000 that lies in Russia’s eastern region of Kamchatka.

“According to visual evaluations, the ash column is rising as high as 8 kilometers (5 miles) above the sea level,” TASS reported Sunday morning local time, adding the volcano had released a gush of lava.

There are no reports of people injured, TASS said.

According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), the quake’s epicenter was about 55 miles from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and had a depth of about 30 miles.

No “major damage” was caused by the quake, TASS reported, however, “buildings are now being examined for potential damage, with special attention paid to social facilities.”

The Russian Emergencies Ministry did not issue a tsunami warning due to the tremor, TASS reported.

Earlier, the US Tsunami Warning System had warned that “hazardous tsunami waves from this earthquake are possible within 300km [approx 186 miles] of the epicenter along the coasts of Russia.”

The safety situation at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is deteriorating after a drone strike on a nearby road, the United Nations’ energy watchdog warned Saturday.

The plant, in southern Ukraine, has been under Russian control since March 2022.

“Yet again we see an escalation of the nuclear safety and security dangers facing the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. I remain extremely concerned and reiterate my call for maximum restraint from all sides and for strict observance of the five concrete principles established for the protection of the plant,” the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a press release Saturday.

The power plant informed the IAEA that a drone struck just outside the plant’s protected area near the “essential cooling water sprinkler ponds and about 100 meters from the Dniprovska power line, the only remaining 750 kilovolt line providing a power supply to (the power plant),” an IAEA statement said.

The IAEA team visited the area and reported that the damage seemed to have been caused by a drone. There were no casualties and no damaged equipment, but the road was damaged between the two main gates to the plant.

Russian state media outlet TASS claimed that staff at the power plant had accused Ukraine of the drone strike.

“At 7 a.m. Moscow time, the Ukrainian drone dropped a shell on the road that runs along the power units outside the perimeter. Personnel use this road all the time. No one was injured, but once again a direct threat to the safety of personnel and the plant was created,” it said.

Ukraine has not yet publicly commented on the strike. However, Russia and Ukraine have blamed previous incidents at the plant on each other.

Last weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russian forces started a fire at the plant, showing a video of a large plume of smoke coming out of one of the towers on the plant’s territory, but several Russian officials said Ukraine was behind the incident.

The IAEA team reported Saturday that there has been heavy military activity in the area for the last week.

“A significant fire at one of the (Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant) cooling towers earlier this week resulted in considerable damage, although there was no immediate threat to nuclear safety,” the IAEA added.

There were also air raid alarms and drone attacks at the Khmelnytskyy, Rivne and South Ukraine nuclear power plants, as well as at the Chernobyl site, according to the IAEA.

“Nuclear power plants are designed to be resilient against technical or human failures and external events including extreme ones, but they are not built to withstand a direct military attack, and neither are they supposed to, just as with any other energy facility in the world,” Grossi said. “This latest attack highlights the vulnerability of such facilities in conflict zones and the need to continue monitoring the fragile situation.”

Grossi added that he was willing to visit the Zaporizhzhia plant.

Meanwhile, TASS reported that Grossi had also been invited to visit a nuclear power plant in Kursk, the region of southern Russia where Ukrainian forces have launched a growing incursion.

“An invitation to visit the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant and its satellite city of Kurchatov in the nearest future has been relayed to the head of the IAEA. It is an uncommon, but a very timely and important step,” Russian Permanent Representative to international organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov said on his Telegram channel Saturday.

Andrii Kovalenko, head of the Countering Disinformation Center of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, said on Friday that “Russia may be preparing a nuclear provocation. Their scenario of accusing us of terrorism and an offensive on the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant did not work, and now they are lying about a ‘dirty bomb’ and our possible provocation.”

Russia is scrambling to shore up its defenses more than a week into Ukraine’s shock, lightning attack across the border on the southern Kursk region.

A sizeable trench has been dug across countryside near the town of Selektsionnyi, around 45 kilometers (about 28 miles) from the border, in Kursk, satellite imagery showed. Online job adverts for trench diggers have emerged. “Payment every week,” promised one.

But after months on the backfoot, losing ground in grinding battles in their own territory, just how were the Ukrainians able to catch Moscow by surprise and penetrate the Russian homeland?

First: superb operational security. Nothing about the operation leaked. Based on videos from the ground and satellite imagery of their advance, the troop movements almost seemed like an exercise or a defensive reinforcement.

The force was built up under cover of thick summer foliage along the rural roads of Sumy region, in northeast Ukraine. Experienced, battle-hardened units were brought up or diverted from other areas. Units such as the 82nd Air Assault Brigade, which had until recently been fighting in nearby Kharkiv region, were pulled into the mission to breach the border, according to multiple videos and social media accounts.

Among the detailed preparations was precise intelligence on the readiness and ability of Russian units on the border, and the number of obstacles that lay ahead, from minefields to tank traps. There weren’t many.

Ukrainian forces also used detailed knowledge of the geography to launch the attack, using forest belts for cover and roads for speed. It was only in the last days before the incursion began that commanders were briefed on the mission.

“The key, in terms of Ukraine’s success, [was that] they managed to penetrate Russian territory quite easily with little to no resistance. It was a complete surprise for the Russians, and it demonstrates that Russian intelligence services really failed to foresee any sort of Ukrainian incursion into the region,” said Seskuria.

Having established weak points in Russian defenses, the first Ukrainian units stormed into Kursk on the afternoon of August 6.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that Ukrainian forces had taken control of Sudzha – the first official confirmation that the troops, which have been in the town since last Wednesday, had captured it.

The town is an important transit point for gas supples from Russia to Europe via Ukraine. Satellite images showed a gas terminal at a nearby border point in ruins.

In their charge across the border, Ukrainians have used fast, resilient western-made armored vehicles: Strykers and Marders. Small mobile groups of special forces swiftly fanned out to dozens of locations as the Russian military scrambled to assess the strength of the assault.

Key to their success: air defenses and supporting artillery, as well as jamming to prevent the Russian military from communicating. Thermal protection for their body armor also helped soldiers evade heat-detecting drones.

Within hours of crossing the border, the Ukrainians were close to Sudzha. Many of its residents were sent scrambling on hair-raising escapes, some cursing the Russian military for abandoning them.

As the operation unfolded, Ukrainian soldiers posted video of themselves in front of village signs before vanishing, part of a parallel campaign of psychological warfare.

“I think that has a great value in terms of information warfare because these images, videos that we see … that is a really good morale boost for Ukrainians,” said RUSI’s Seskuria.

Rather than confront Russian units head-on, advanced Ukrainian units bypassed them, cutting them off. The Russian military command struggled to keep up with where the threat was emanating from.

The head of Ukraine’s armed forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Thursday that Ukrainian forces had captured 1,150 square kilometers (about 444 square miles) of territory and 82 settlements since the start of the surprise incursion.

More than a week after the incursion began, the Ukrainians were still probing for weaknesses, consolidating their hold on a band of territory 35 kilometers (about 22 miles) deep – even providing Russian civilians with emergency food aid.

“[Ukraine’s] strategic aim would be to divert Russian forces from offensive operations in the Donetsk oblast, where Russians have been making some advances in the recent months… that would be an obvious intention, to ease the military pressure in Ukraine.”

Seskuria added that Ukraine’s recent activity might provide Ukraine with “a better negotiating position when it comes to any sort of peace talks in the future.” Indeed Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to Zelensky, said the incursion was aimed at persuading Russia to enter a “fair negotiation process.”

Russian military bloggers are apoplectic about the lack of readiness and the slow response to the incursion.

The Russian Defense Ministry insisted this week it was repelling Ukrainian advances and taking prisoners, but Russia’s reinforcements were struggling to retake ground, outmaneuvered and hit with missiles and artillery.

“The offensive is culminating, and the battleground is stabilizing. Nonetheless, the Ukrainian military has already secured operational depth. If they can set robust defensive positions … they can stay inside Russian territory for a long time,” he said.

Kursk would be Ukraine’s “crown jewel” when negotiating an end to the conflict, Kasapoğlu added, if Kyiv manages to hold on to the seized territory.

Lizzy Yee, Paul Murphy, Avery Schmitz and Isaac Yee contributed reporting.

A blaze has broken out at London’s historic Somerset House with more than 100 firefighters at the scene working to contain it.

Smoke could be seen rising over central London from the building’s roof. Firefighters are working from a crane to fight the fire.

Around 125 firefighters and 20 fire engines have been deployed, according to the London Fire Brigade.

The crews are fighting flames located in part of the building’s roof, the fire brigade said in a statement, with two of the brigade’s 32-meter (nearly 105 foot) ladders being used.

The cause of the fire is not yet known, the statement said, and Somerset House has been closed to the public whilst the fire is being tackled.

The complex was first built in the 1500s, though it was demolished and rebuilt in the 1700s.

The house gets its name from Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, who built it as a palace for himself in 1547. The Duke was executed at the Tower in London a few years later, and ownership of his palace passed to the Crown.

In 1604, the Treaty of London was signed within the building, ending the 19-year Anglo-Spanish War. It later served as the headquarters for the parliamentary army during the English Civil War, and narrowly escaped burning in the Great Fire of London in 1666.

Somerset House is now the host of creative events and exhibitions. It is home to the Cortauld Gallery, which counts works by Manet, Van Gogh, and Monet among those in its collection. Kings College London has its school of law in the complex’s east wing.

It has served as a versatile filming location and can be spotted in the backdrops of films and TV shows like ‘Downton Abbey,’ ‘Love Actually,’ and ‘X Men: First Class.’

On Saturday, it said a dance battle was supposed to be held in the building’s open air courtyard, with “a day of dance and breaking showcases, workshops, live DJs and a big outdoor party, all culminating in a head-to-head dance battle between the four corners of London.”

“All staff and public are safe and the site is closed,” Somerset House said in a statement on its website. “The London Fire Brigade arrived swiftly and we’re working very closely with them to control the spread of the fire,” it added.

This story has been updated with additional information.

A fistfight broke out in Turkey’s parliament on Friday when an opposition deputy was attacked after calling for his colleague, jailed on charges of organizing anti-government protests but since elected an MP, to be admitted to the assembly.

Video footage showed MPs for the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) rushing in to punch Ahmet Sik, a member of the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TIP), at the lectern and dozens more joining a melee, some trying to hold others back. Blood spattered the white steps of the speaker’s podium.

Can Atalay was sentenced to 18 years in 2022 after being accused of trying to overthrow the government by allegedly organizing the nationwide Gezi Park protests in 2013 with philanthropist Osman Kavala, also now jailed, and six others. All deny the charges.

Despite his imprisonment, Atalay was elected to parliament in May last year to represent the TIP. Parliament stripped him of his seat, but on Aug. 1 the Constitutional Court declared his exclusion null and void.

“We’re not surprised that you call Can Atalay a terrorist, just as you do everyone who does not side with you,” Sik told AKP lawmakers in a speech.

“But the biggest terrorists are the ones sitting in these seats,” he added.

The deputy parliament speaker declared a 45-minute recess after the fistfight.

The TIP also called for Atalay’s release from prison.

Though not often, brawls are not unheard-of in Turkish parliament. In June, AKP lawmakers scuffled with pro-Kurdish DEM Party MPs over the detention and replacement of a DEM Party mayor in southeast Turkey for alleged militant links.

An Israeli strike has killed at least ten people – all of them Syrian nationals – in Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese Ministry of Health said in a statement Saturday morning.

A woman and her two children are among the dead, according to the ministry.

The strike also wounded at least five, two of which are in critical conditions. They include three Syrians, one Sudanese and one Lebanese, the ministry said. Two of the Syrians are in critical condition and undergoing surgery at a nearby hospital.

The Israeli military said it struck a Hezbollah weapons storage facility in the area of Nabatieh overnight.

The death toll from the strike is one of the largest in southern Lebanon since Israel launched its war on Gaza following the Hamas attacks of October 7 that killed around 1,200 people.

Hezbollah and Israeli forces have been exchanging almost daily cross-border fire since Israel launched its war on the enclave, which has killed over 40,000 Palestinians in ten months.

Tensions between Lebanon and Israel deepened further late last month when an Israeli strike on Lebanese capital Beirut killed the top military commander for Hezbollah, Fu’ad Shukr. The next day, Israel is widely believed to have assassinated Hamas’ political leader in Tehran. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in that incident.

Given Lebanon’s proximity to Israel as its direct neighbor to the north, Hezbollah could act with little to no notice, one of the sources said — which is not true of Iran.

On Friday hostage and truce talks ended and are due to resume next week. International mediators presented a new proposal intended close the remaining gaps of disagreement between Israel and Gaza.

Russia is “rapidly approaching” a key military hub in eastern Ukraine, a local official has said, as Moscow continues its advances despite Kyiv’s surprise gains in its enemy’s Kursk region.

While Pokrovsk is not a major city – about 60,000 people lived there before the war and many have left since the start of the full-scale invasion – it serves as a key hub for the Ukrainian military thanks to its easy access to Kostiantynivka, another military center.

Ukrainian troops use the road connecting the two to resupply the front lines and evacuate casualties toward Dnipro.

Serhii Dobriak, head of the Pokrovsk city military administration, urged the community there to evacuate without delay.

“The enemy is rapidly approaching the outskirts of Pokrovsk,” he said in a Telegram post on Thursday.

His warning is proof that Moscow has not relented in its attack on other parts of Ukraine, despite Kyiv’s successful incursion across the border over the past week, a major development after two-and-a-half years of open conflict.

Ukraine said it has captured more than 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) of Russian territory since the start of its surprise assault, forcing tens of thousands of Russians from their homes.

On Friday, Ukraine officials said its military, already some 35 kilometers into Russian territory, is still advancing “in some areas from 1 to 3 kilometers.”

Russia appears to have diverted several thousand troops from frontline fighting in occupied Ukraine in order to address the territorial loss in the Kursk region.

But according to Dobriak, the enemy is “almost right up close” to Pokrovsk, Ukraine’s key logistics and military hub that has become the focus of the Russian offensive in the Donetsk region.

“They are a bit more than 10 kilometers (about 6.2 miles) from the outskirts of Pokrovsk,” he said, adding that the situation “is only getting worse.”

For months, Russia has been stretching Ukrainian defenses across the entire front line, trying to capture as much territory as possible before new Ukrainian recruits and fresh batches of Western weapons start arriving on the battlefield.

The gains made by Russia have been largely incremental – the front line has barely moved in the past few months – but the recent advance toward Pokrovsk has Ukraine and its allies worried.

The city’s capture would bring Russian President Vladimir Putin closer to his goal of seizing all of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Kostiantynivka is the southernmost part of a belt of four Ukrainian cities – with Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk – that form the backbone of Ukraine’s defenses of the region, so any progress of Russian troops toward the city is significant.

Officer of Ukraine’s 59th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade Serhii Tsehotskyi told Ukrainian national broadcaster Suspilne on Friday that Ukraine’s incursion into Russia had not led to a decrease in Moscow’s attacks in the Donetsk region.

He said Russian attempts to advance do not stop “for a minute,” and “the battles continue around the clock.”

“Taking into consideration the events in the Kursk region, they (the Russian forces) are trying to do everything in order to be successful at least somewhere,” he said.

Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi acknowledged Friday that “intense fighting” is taking place in the cities of Pokrovsk and Toretsk.

The US-based Institute for the Study of War said Thursday that Russian forces are “maintaining their relatively high offensive tempo” in Donetsk, “demonstrating that the Russian military command continues to prioritize advances in eastern Ukraine even as Ukraine is pressuring Russian forces within” the Kursk region.