SC rejects pleas seeking 100% cross-verification of EVM votes with VVPAT slips | Verdict highlights

Israel has announced the launch of a new ground onslaught in Gaza City, with rescuers saying military aggression has killed at least 30 people across the Palestinian territory since dawn.

In Gaza City, the Israeli military said ground troops had begun pushing into the Shejaiya neighborhood to expand the so-called "security zone" there, claiming that civilians had been allowed to evacuate the area. 

Initial reports, however, said a Palestinian woman and her daughter were just killed in an Israeli artillery shelling on displaced people in Shejaiya.

Gaza's civil defense agency said Israeli military aggression had killed at least 30 people in the Palestinian territory since dawn, adding that the toll was "not final".

A single Israeli strike on Khan Yunis killed at least 25 people, a medical source at the southern city's Nasser Hospital said. 

"The situation is very dangerous, and there is death coming at us from every direction," Elena Halas told AFP reportedly via text message, adding that she and her family were trapped in her sister's house in Shejaiya.

Israel has pushed since the collapse of a short-lived truce in the war to seize territory in Gaza. Simultaneously, it has escalated attacks on Lebanon and Syria, with a strike in the south Lebanese city of Sidon killing a Hamas commander along with his son on Friday. 

Minister of military affairs Israel Katz had said on Wednesday that Israel would bolster its military presence inside the Gaza Strip to "seize large areas that will be incorporated into Israeli security zones", without specifying how much territory.

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military was dividing Gaza and "seizing territory" to force Hamas to free the remaining captives seized in the October 2023 operation inside southern settlements. 

Netanyahu has said his regime is working closely with the US to implement President Donald Trump's plan to displace Gazans.

Latest air raids have targeted Gaza City, as well as Beit Lahia, Rafah, and Khan Yunis, killing dozens of people and injuring several others.

On Thursday, hundreds of thousands of fleeing Gazans sought shelter in one of the biggest mass displacements of the war, as Israeli forces advanced into the ruins of the city of Rafah. 

A day after declaring their intention to capture large swathes of the crowded territory, Israeli forces pushed into the city on Gaza's southern edge which had served as a last refuge for people fleeing other areas for much of the war.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza said on Thursday that 112 Palestinians were killed by Israeli airstrikes, with at least 70 of those deaths taking place in Gaza City, in the north of the strip. 

Gaza's civil defense agency said women and children were among the dead, while six people were still unaccounted for in the strike on Dar al-Arqam School in the al-Tuffah neighborhood, northeast of Gaza City, including a pregnant woman who was expecting twins. 

Beit Hanoun Mayor Mohammad Nazek Al-Kafarna was one of the victims of the Israeli strike that hit the school on Thursday.

The Health Ministry said on Thursday that 1,163 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since Israel resumed intense bombing on March 18, bringing the overall death toll since the war began to 50,523.

The usurping entity accepted longstanding negotiation terms by the Hamas resistance group under a Gaza ceasefire, which began on January 19.

On March 18, however, Israel unilaterally broke the truce and resumed its relentless bombing of Gaza.

Rafah, a city along the border of the Gaza Strip and Egypt, has entirely been “wiped off the map” by Israel’s brutal campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing, says the Gaza government media office.

The media office said Sunday in a statement on X that the southern city of Gaza has entirely been demolished to make way for Israel to turn it into a “closed military operations zone."

The statement said Israel’s military forces have been carrying out “horrific massacres against defenseless civilians” in Rafah, creating a “full-fledged humanitarian disaster.”

According to the officials, Israeli forces have destroyed over 90% of homes—more than 20,000 buildings in Rafah.

All of the historical buildings, archaeological sites, museums, modern homes, the civilian infrastructure, the shops, cafes, restaurants, hospitals, schools, and universities have been demolished.

The officials said the regime's forces have also demolished 22 of 24 water wells, including a large water treatment plant and facility that was built 25 years ago by the Canadian government.

“Tens of thousands of families” are now without safe drinking water, and over 85% of the sewage system has been destroyed, raising fears of disease outbreaks, said the statement.

At least 12 medical centers are out of service, including Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital, which was reportedly blown up by an explosive robot.

Rafah is “uninhabitable,” now, the media office said.

The Israeli military’s goal, it said, is to “empty the land of its people and alter its geographic and demographic features.”

Rafah, a city that was built over 3,300 years ago, had a population of 171,889. As recently as February, 1.4 million Palestinians took shelter there as a result of Israel’s forced displacement of the population in northern parts of the besieged enclave.

The city, which was once designated as a "safe zone" by Israel's military, has now been reduced to rubble. The regime's military has now seized the ruins of Rafah and ordered every survivor out, to expand its "security buffer zone" along Gaza's borders.

A 7.7 magnitude earthquake, and an aftershock of 6.8, hit central Myanmar at 12.50pm (local time) Friday. The epicentre was 16km northwest of the city of Sagaing, and at a depth of 10km, the United States Geological Survey said. 20 deaths have been reported - in Myanmar so far - by local media.

Deaths have also been reported from a mosque in Mandalay city, which collapsed while people were inside, praying and a university building in which a fire broke out. And a 1,000-bed hospital in Myanmar capital Naypyidaw has become a "mass casualty area", news agency AFP said.

The Myanmar junta has declared an 'emergency' and has appealed for international aid.

Tremors were felt as far away as northern Thailand, where some metro and rail services were suspended in Bangkok. Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra is holding an "urgent meeting" to review the crisis and she too has declared a state of 'emergency' in the capital city.

China's Yunnan province also reported strong tremors; the China Earthquake Networks Center said the magnitude was 7.9. And mild tremors were also reported from Kolkata in Bengal and parts of Manipur, where tremors of 4.4 magnitude were recorded as well as Dhaka and Chattogram in Bangladesh.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said India is ready to offer any assistance needed. "Praying for the safety and wellbeing of everyone," he posted on X. "... have asked our authorities to be on standby."

Terrifying videos on X showed buildings shaking in Bangkok and other cities, with people running onto the streets in panic. "I heard it... I was sleeping in the house and then I ran as far as I could in my pyjamas out of the building," Duangjai, a resident of popular tourist city Chiang Mai, told AFP.

One particularly horrifying video showed water from an infinity pool falling over the edge.

And another showed an under-construction skyscraper in Bangkok's Chatuchak neighbourhood collapsing. According to reports, 43 workers have been trapped amid the debris.

"When I arrived to inspect the site, I heard people calling for help, saying help me," Worapat Sukthai, deputy police chief of Bang Sue district, told AFP. "We estimate that hundreds of people are injured but we are still determining the number of casualties."

In Myanmar, an old bridge over the Irrawaddy River and some residential buildings having collapsed, with images from Mandalay (around 24km from Sagaing) suggesting more people may be trapped.

Other videos showed extensive damage to the airport in Mandalay and to a monastery near the city of Taunggyi, in Myanmar's Shan State that is on the border to Thailand.

Earthquakes are relatively common in Myanmar, where six strong quakes of 7.0 magnitude or more struck between 1930 and 1956 near the Sagaing Fault, which runs north to south through the country.

A powerful 6.8-magnitude earthquake, in the ancient capital Bagan in central Myanmar, killed three people in 2016, also toppling spires and crumbling temple walls at the tourist destination.

The impoverished nation has a strained medical system, especially in its rural states.