At least 22 Palestinians, including two young children, are among the latest deaths in Israel’s round-the-clock bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip, adding to the 72 Palestinians killed over the last 24 hours, medical sources have said.
Ten of those who were killed since dawn on Thursday were in Gaza City, where Israeli forces are currently conducting a siege and launching daily strikes on residential buildings as they prepare a major offensive against the Palestinian group Hamas.
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The Times of Israel, citing Israeli military figures, reported that a total of 200,000 Palestinians have already been forced out of Gaza City in recent weeks, in an operation described by rights group Amnesty International on Wednesday as “unlawful and inhumane”.
In an Israeli attack early on Thursday, two Palestinians were killed, including an infant, and several others injured after tents sheltering displaced people were hit near Yarmouk Street in Gaza City.
Another Palestinian child was killed after Israeli forces opened fire in the Bureij camp in central Gaza, a source from al-Awda Hospital told Al Jazeera.
Sources from al-Awda and al-Mahmoudiyah hospitals also reported early on Thursday several deaths and injuries following Israeli shelling of Shujayea district east of Gaza City.
Further south, at least four Palestinians waiting for aid were killed in two separate incidents in Rafah, while one person was killed in Israeli shelling northwest of Khan Younis.
Earlier, Palestinian authorities and medical sources reported at least 72 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza within a 24-hour period on Wednesday.
These figures bring the number of people killed in Israeli attacks since the start of the war to at least 64,718, with 163,859 wounded, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
‘Further compounding genocidal conditions’
Israel accelerated its military campaign on Wednesday, with the army attacking dozens of homes in areas of Gaza City in an attempt to push Palestinians out of the area.
The escalation is accompanied by direct and repeated Israeli warnings to leave Gaza City.
In a statement on Wednesday, Amnesty International urged Israel to “immediately rescind” the mass displacement order, calling it “cruel” and “unlawful”, while warning it it “further compounds the genocidal conditions of life” that Israel is inflicting on Palestinians.
“Amnesty International has repeatedly and unequivocally stated that forcibly displacing Palestinians within the Gaza Strip or deporting them violates international humanitarian law and constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity,” the statement said.
Heba Morayef, a senior Amnesty official for the Middle East, said the Israeli order “is a devastating and inhuman repeat” of the mass displacement order issued for all of North Gaza in October 2023.
Amnesty said some of those who are trying to flee since the order was issued were unable to do so because they cannot afford transport costs, or fit into the small area designated by Israel for evacuation.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said people are making their way from the area to the southern and central areas of the Strip, “but some people are coming back because they are unable to find a place to stay”.
“So as of this moment, there is no safe place in Gaza, including the ‘humanitarian zone’ designated by Israel. The journey itself, from north to south Gaza, has become a matter of life or death.”
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said it will remain in Gaza City, despite the Israeli order.
In a statement published on X by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the UN organisation said it is “appalled” by Israel’s order, saying the evacuation zone “has neither the size nor scale of services” required to support the displaced people.
“This catastrophe is human-made, and the responsibility rests with us all,” the statement said, while calling for an “immediate ceasefire” and for upholding international humanitarian law.
A woman pushes a man in a wheelchair as Palestinians, displaced by the Israeli military offensive, take shelter in a tent camp on Thursday [Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters]
Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot dead when giving a talk at Utah Valley University on Wednesday in the latest example of ‘political violence’ in the US. President Trump ordered flags to fly at half-mast for the controversial 31-year-old.
Spanish Sports Minister Pilar Alegria has said Israeli teams should be banned from sport in the same way that Russian sides broadly were in 2022 after the country invaded Ukraine, highlighting a “double standard”.
The presence of a team named Israel-Premier Tech at the Vuelta a Espana cycling grand tour has led to huge protests in Spain. The Spanish government has described Israel’s offensive in Gaza as “a genocide”.
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Israel-Premier Tech is a private outfit owned by billionaire Israeli-Canadian property developer Sylvan Adams, not a state team, but has been hailed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for refusing to quit the Vuelta despite vehement protests.
“It is difficult to explain and understand that there is a double standard,” Alegria told Spanish radio station Cadena SER.
“Given that there has been such a massacre, a genocide, such an absolutely terrible situation we are living through day-by-day, I would agree that the international federations and committees should take the same decision as in 2022,” she added.
“No team, no club from Russia participated in an international competition, and when the individuals participated, they did it under a neutral flag and without a national anthem.”
Alegria said she would like Vuelta organisers to block Israel-Premier Tech from competing, but accepted that such a decision could only be taken by the cycling world governing body, UCI.
Various stages of the Vuelta have been affected by protests, with stages 11 and 16 shortened during racing, while Thursday’s stage 18 time trial has also been cut short in advance for security reasons.
Alegria said she hopes the race can be completed, with Sunday’s final stage heading into Madrid expected to be targeted by various protests.
“It would not be good news if the race cannot finish,” said Alegria.
“However, what we’re seeing these days with the protests is, in my opinion, logical,” she added.
“[The protests] are a clear representation of what the people feel, sport cannot be distanced from the world that surrounds it.”
Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s left-wing coalition government has taken one of Europe’s strongest pro-Palestinian stances, straining ties with Israel.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive in October 2023 in retaliation for an unprecedented cross-border attack led by the Palestinian group Hamas, which resulted in the deaths of 1,139 people, most of whom were civilians.
Israel’s bombardment has killed at least 64,600 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Ministry of Health in Hamas-run Gaza.
“[Israeli forces] have killed more than 60,000 people; children, babies [are] starving to death, hospitals destroyed,” added Alegria.
Ukraine reclaimed 62sq km (24sq miles) of territory last month, its commander in chief revealed on Monday, contradicting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent claim to be advancing “in all directions”.
“The month in which the occupiers hoped for their breakthroughs and made maximum efforts for this became the month with comparatively the smallest territorial gains by the enemy in recent times,” Oleksandr Syrskii, commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, claimed on his Telegram messaging service channel.
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Most of the gains were in Donetsk, Ukraine’s eastern region, where fighting has been intense for most of the war.
Russian forces there have been gunning for the towns of Dobropillia and Pokrovsk, but lost ground in both directions.
Towards Dobropillia, Russia captured 13.5sq km (5.21sq miles), but lost 25.5sq km (10sq miles), said Syrskii. “In the Pokrovsk direction, their gain was 5sq km (1.9sq miles), while our troops regained control over 26sq km (10sq miles),” Syrskii said.
He added that Ukrainian troops gained another 4sq km (1.5sq miles) on other sectors of the front.
(Al Jazeera)
Across the entire front, Russia made estimated gains of 499sq km (190sq miles) in August, said the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, but its losses contradict Putin’s recent claim in Beijing that all Russian troops in Ukraine were “advancing successfully, at different speeds”.
“Despite spreading propaganda … the Russians suffered blows,” said Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation.
Dnipro Group of forces spokesman Oleksiy Belskyi, whose unit is defending Pokrovsk, said on Saturday that Russia was concentrating armoured vehicles and drones, and redeploying experienced units in preparation for a new offensive.
Although Russian advances have picked up some speed since the spring, last week Russia claimed to have captured only one village, Novoselivka in Dnipropetrovsk.
It also claimed to have “neutralised” a Ukrainian attempt to land reconnaissance troops on an island in the Dnipro River Delta.
Russian assaults have come at great cost.
Syrskii estimated Russian casualties since the beginning of the year at 299,210.
He described Ukrainian tactics as “containing the enemy and inflicting the maximum possible losses on them”.
Russia escalates drone attacks
Unable to win the war with ground assaults, Russia has sought to break Ukraine’s morale with long-range drone attacks on its rear cities. During the week of September 4-10, it unleashed a total of 1,811 drones and 63 missiles. Ukraine said it downed 87 percent of the drones and half the missiles.
Russia escalated this tactic overnight on Sunday with the largest such attack of the war, when 810 drones and decoys targeted Kyiv, along with 13 missiles.
Ukrainian Premier Yulia Svyrydenko said the cabinet offices had been struck for the first time, and photographed herself in front of the smouldering ruin.
“For the first time, the government building – its roof and upper floors – has been damaged due to a hostile attack,” she wrote on Telegram.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed to have targeted its biggest ever drone attack against drone manufacturing sites in and around Kyiv, “where long-range drones had been manufactured, assembled, repaired, stocked, and launched”, as well as “airbases in the central, southern, and eastern parts of Ukraine”.
Russia denies targeting civilians and claims to be aiming at military targets, even if those are sometimes nestled in urban spaces.
One of its attacks on Tuesday killed 24 retirees who were queueing up to collect their monthly pensions in the town of Yarova in Donetsk.
A new air defence ‘format’
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday told Ukrainians that nearly half the drones in the Kyiv strike were decoys sent “to complicate the situation” in air defence, and called the shooting down of several ballistic missiles “a significant achievement”.
Ukraine’s military intelligence has estimated for some time now that the Russian drone production – already at 90 a day – aims to deliver strike packages of more than 1,000 drones and missiles to overwhelm Ukrainian defences, and has been strategising on how to counter the threat.
On September 4, Zelenskyy referred cryptically to “a certain format” of air defence that he and French President Emmanuel Macron had discussed for the first time.
“If we receive a positive signal from the United States, since technically much in this format of air defence depends on them – if we receive that positive signal, we will be glad to share this information,” Zelenkyy said.
A Ukrainian think tank, Price of Freedom, has proposed an air defence plan whereby 120 European aircraft would patrol Ukraine’s western skies, allowing its air force to focus more effectively on defensive and offensive operations in the contested eastern airspace. It was unclear if Zelenskyy was referring to this plan.
(Al Jazeera)
That same day, Syrskii said, “We are creating a layered system to counter enemy ‘Shaheds’ and ‘Gerans’,” referring to Russia’s kamikaze and decoy drones, respectively. “Our joint task is to form more such crews, train more fighter operators, and provide them with more effective means of destruction and radars.”
That new air defence “format” received renewed importance on Wednesday, when an estimated 19 drones crossed over into Polish airspace, forcing NATO to mobilise Polish F-16s, Dutch F-35s and Italian airborne early warning and control (AWACS) planes for the first time to shoot them down.
For the first time, also, NATO’s Article 4 was invoked in the context of the Ukraine war by Polish Premier Donald Tusk. The article says “Parties will consult together, whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.”
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said the airspace violation was “an act of aggression that created a real threat to the security of our citizens”, and called it “unprecedented”.
Russian opposition newspaper Verstka recorded six occasions when a drone strayed into Polish airspace during the war. “It is unlikely that such a number of drones could have all entered into Polish airspace by accident or as a result of a technical or operator error,” said the ISW.
Ukraine’s deep strikes
Ukraine has been developing long-range strike capabilities as a means of leverage to bring Russia to the negotiating table.
On Friday, Ukrainian drones hit the Ryazan refinery, one of Russia’s four largest, putting its primary processing unit out of action. The same refinery was struck on August 2 and August 28.
Ukraine also claimed to have struck two S-300 air defence vehicles in the Kaluga region.
On Sunday, drones struck an oil pumping station in Russia’s Bryansk region, near Naitopovichi. “The facility is of strategic importance for transporting oil products from Belarusian refineries to the Russian Federation,” said Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces.
On the same day, Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces (SSO) said they had struck the Ilsky refinery on the Russian border territory of Krasnodar Krai and destroyed its primary oil-refining complex.
Residents hide in a shelter during a Russian drone attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, on September 7, 2025 [Thomas Peter/Reuters]
Brovdi said drones also struck and severely damaged Transneft’s Vtorovo oil pumping station in Penkino, in the Vladimir region.
Two days later, Ukraine’s military intelligence said two oil and two gas pipelines had been damaged, also in the Penkino area.
Ukraine has been conducting many of these strikes with domestically built drones, which carry small payloads of less than 100kg (220lb).
Last month, it unveiled mass production of the Flamingo, a 3,000km- (1,900-mile-)range cruise missile carrying a warhead of more than a tonne, and may have begun testing it on the battlefield.
On September 4, the Flamingo’s manufacturer, Fire Point, also revealed two ballistic missiles under development – the FP-7 with a 200km (124-mile) range and 150kg warhead, and the FP-9 with a 855km (1,860-mile) range and 800kg payload.
Ukraine’s allies have already entered into joint production of drones.
On September 3, Denmark said Fire Point would build a rocket fuel plant for the Flamingo near the Danish Air Force base at Skrydstrup.
On Tuesday, UK Defence Secretary John Healy said he would fund the production of “thousands of long-range drones” in the UK for Ukraine, and German defence minister Boris Pistorius said he was allocating $350m to launch a new deep strike initiative by purchasing long-range drones from Ukrainian companies and giving them to Ukraine’s armed forces – a model of assistance pioneered by Denmark.
Twenty-six of Ukraine’s allies on September 4 committed military resources to a peacekeeping force that would operate behind Ukrainian front lines after a ceasefire.
Zelenskyy described it as a “security system”.
“We are preparing strength – on the ground, in the air, and at sea,” he said.
Nepal’s army is resuming talks with protesters to pick an interim leader for the Himalayan nation, after violence that removed the government of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, according to an army spokesperson.
Soldiers were patrolling the quiet streets of the capital Kathmandu for a second day on Thursday following the worst protests in decades, triggered by a social media ban that authorities rolled back after deadly protests this week.
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Nepal’s President Ramchandra Paudel meanwhile said he is seeking an end to the crisis engulfing the country.
“I am consulting and making every effort to find a way out of the current difficult situation in the country within the constitutional framework,” Paudel said in a statement. “I appeal to all parties to be confident that a solution to the problem is being sought as soon as possible to address the demands of the protesting citizens.”
Paudel also urged Nepalis to “practice restraint and cooperate to maintain peace and order in the country”.
Army spokesperson Raja Ram Basnet told the Reuters news agency earlier on Thursday that “initial talks are on and would continue today,” referring to the discussions on an interim leader. “We are trying to normalise the situation slowly.”
Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride, reporting from Kathmandu, said “there is an uneasy calm here on the streets.
“It does feel like an uneasy standoff at times because things are still extremely tense” as crowds gather routinely in front of the military headquarters before being pushed back by soldiers, he added.
Former Chief Justice Sushila Karki, right, in a photo from 2017 [File: Niranjan Shrestha/AP]
Frontrunner Karki
Former Chief Justice Sushila Karki, who was Nepal’s first woman appointed to the job in 2016, is reportedly the frontrunner for interim leader, with her name suggested by many of those leading the protests.
“We see Sushila Karki for who she truly is – honest, fearless, and unshaken,” said Sujit Kumar Jha, 34, a supporter of the agitation. “She’s the right choice. When truth speaks, it sounds like Karki.”
Karki, 73, has given her consent, but efforts are being made to find a constitutional route to appoint her, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
However, there were some differences over her candidature among the protesters, who were seeking to reach a unanimous decision, another source said.
Kathmandu Mayor Balen Shah, an independent politician who is popular among the young protesters, and several others have voiced support for Karki, but divisions within both the protest camp and mainstream parties leave Nepal’s political future unclear.
KP Khanal, an activist who was at the forefront of the protest, said many young demonstrators like him, who have not been invited to the talks, are watching developments cautiously.
“Nothing is looking clear. We were together during the peaceful protest, but the situation has changed after we dispersed,” he said.
Hope for ‘political solution’
The next big question, said Al Jazeera’s McBride, is whether an interim government can be formed and what it will look like.
“A lot of the groups that have led these protests … don’t necessarily see eye to eye and work together,” said McBride. “Some of them are in open conflict with each other, so it’s [a] difficult [situation] but the military is trying to facilitate this dialogue to lead to an interim government.”
The situation on the ground is “very tense; it could go either way at the moment”, said McBride. “The hope is that there will be a political solution to this situation.”
Shops, schools and colleges stayed shut in Kathmandu and surrounding areas, but some essential services had resumed.
A nationwide curfew first imposed on Tuesday night will remain in place until Friday.
Despite the extension, the army has eased restrictions to allow smoother movement for essential service workers.
In a statement issued late on Wednesday, it said domestic and international air travellers would also be permitted to move freely upon showing their tickets.
The death toll from the protests had risen to 31 by Thursday, local media reported. According to the Forensic Medicine Department at the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, where dead bodies of protesters have been taken for postmortem, preliminary identities of 25 victims have been established so far. The identities of the remaining six deceased, one of whom is a woman, are not yet known, local English daily Kathmandu Post reported.
The demonstrations that rocked Nepal this week are popularly referred to as the “Gen Z” protests, since most participants were young people voicing frustration at the government’s perceived failure to fight corruption and boost economic opportunities.
