Syria has “strongly condemned” Israeli attacks on several sites in and around Homs city in the west of the country and around the coastal city of Latakia.
The Israeli air strikes in the early hours of Tuesday represent “a blatant violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic”, the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
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The ministry also described the Israeli attacks as “a direct threat” to Syrian security and regional stability, the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) said.
SANA did not provide details on the size of the attacks on Homs and Latakia, or possible casualties following the strikes.
The United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said that Israeli warplanes attacked a Syrian air force base in Homs, where locals heard huge explosions, though there were no initial reports of casualties.
In Latakia, Israeli fighter jets attacked a military barracks, and locals reported that ambulances were heard rushing to the scene of the strikes, though there were also no initial reports of casualties in that attack.
Israel’s continuing and unprovoked attacks on Syria are “part of a series of aggressive escalations pursued by Israel against Syrian territory”, and the government rejects “any attempts to undermine its sovereignty or harm its national security”, the Foreign Ministry said in its statement.
The ministry also called on the international community, particularly the United Nations Security Council, to take a “clear and firm stand to put an end” to the Israeli attacks, which the ministry said are a “flagrant violation” of international law and the principles of the UN Charter, SANA said.
According to the SOHR, Israel has carried out almost 100 attacks so far this year, including 86 strikes from the air and 11 attacks by Israeli ground forces, leading to the destruction of some 135 sites in the country and the killing of 61 people.
In just the period between December 8, 2024 – the date of the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus – and December 31, 2024, Israel carried out more than 500 air attacks on targets across the country.
While Israel had for years waged a secretive campaign of aerial bombardment against Syria’s military infrastructure, its attacks on its neighbour have ramped up since the war on Gaza and the fall of the al-Assad regime.
In late August, six Syrian soldiers were killed in an Israeli drone strike on Damascus , which came a day after a ground incursion into Syrian territory by Israeli troops.
Rupert Murdoch’s family has reached a deal to end the years-long succession battle over the mogul’s media empire.
The deal, announced by News Corp on Monday, will see eldest son Lachlan Murdoch take control of a sprawling media portfolio that includes Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, and The Times.
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The agreement helps ensure that Murdoch’s media properties will retain their conservative bent long after the 94-year-old patriarch’s death.
Under the settlement, Lachlan, who is widely viewed as more aligned with his father’s conservative views than his siblings, and his two younger sisters, Grace and Chloe, will be beneficiaries of a new family trust that has a controlling stake in Fox Corporation and News Corp.
The deal stipulates that the trust will be in place until 2050.
Voting rights will rest “solely” with Lachlan, 54, who has served as chairman of News Corp and CEO of Fox since his father stepped down from the day-to-day running of the businesses in 2023.
Lachlan’s three oldest siblings, James, Elizabeth and Prudence, will relinquish their stakes in an existing family trust, receiving an equal split of the equity sales.
Under the deal, the three elder siblings will be subject to a “long-term standstill agreement” barring them from acquiring shares of News Corp and Fox Corporation and “taking certain other actions with respect to the companies”.
US media estimated the payout for the three siblings at about $3.3bn.
“News Corp’s board of directors welcomes these developments and believes that the leadership, vision and management by the Company’s Chair, Lachlan Murdoch, will continue to be important to guiding the Company’s strategy and success,” News Corp said in a statement.
The settlement caps a saga that has captivated political and media circles, and drawn comparisons with the plot of HBO’s award-winning drama Succession.
“Rupert Murdoch has built his reputation on being aggressive in securing what he wants, and he wanted Lachlan Murdoch to control both Fox Corp and News Corp,” Lynne Vincent, an associate professor of management at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management, told Al Jazeera.
“Not surprisingly, that is what is going to happen. Rupert Murdoch is very effective at getting what he wants.”
Vincent said Lachlan Murdoch’s control of the media portfolio would ensure “business as usual” at the outlets.
“From what we know, Lachlan Murdoch’s views and values are very similar to Rupert Murdoch’s,” she said.
“From an organisational perspective, this provides Fox Corp and News Corp with a sense of stability, which might be appealing to some stakeholders.”
The legal fight over Rupert Murdoch’s succession plans erupted in 2023, when the Australian-born mogul sought to change the structure of the family trust to give full control of his companies to Lachlan after his death.
James, Elizabeth and Prudence, who stood to inherit equal control of the companies along with Lachlan, took their father to court to block the bid.
Russian attacks killed four people and injured 10 in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Governor Vadym Filashkin said in a post on Telegram on Monday.
Two people were killed and one person was injured as Russian forces launched 449 strikes on 17 settlements in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, Governor Ivan Fedorov said.
Ukrainian forces launched a “massive” drone attack on Russian-occupied Donetsk, killing two civilians, Russia’s state TASS news agency reported, citing local officials.
Ukrainian forces recaptured the village of Zarichne in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported in a post on Facebook.
Russian forces attacked a thermal power generation facility in the Kyiv region overnight, causing localised blackouts and gas outages, Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy said.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it detained a citizen of Azerbaijan, alleging he was working with Ukraine to conduct reconnaissance missions for possible attacks on government buildings in Russia’s cities of Yessentuki and Stavropol.
The Russian Ministry of Defence said that its forces shot down 195 Ukrainian drones and two aerial bombs in a 24-hour period, TASS reported.
Sanctions
The European Union’s plan for new sanctions against Russia is being closely coordinated with the United States, EU Council President Antonio Costa said.
Costa’s remarks came as the EU’s top sanctions official, David O’Sullivan, visited Washington, DC, with a team of experts, to discuss possible coordinated sanctions.
The Kremlin responded to the EU announcement, saying sanctions would not force Russia to change course in the war.
“No sanctions will be able to force the Russian Federation to change the consistent position that our president has repeatedly spoken about,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Kremlin reporter Alexander Yunashev.
Politics and diplomacy
The Czech Republic will expel a Belarusian diplomat it has accused of espionage, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. “We will not tolerate the abuse of diplomatic cover for secret service activities,” the ministry said in a post on X.
The Czech counterintelligence service said that, together with Romanian and Hungarian services, it had “broken up a Belarusian intelligence network being built in Europe”.
A German government spokesperson said that Russia’s “ongoing escalation of the war” on Ukraine shows that Russian President Vladimir Putin “does not want to negotiate”, and the war “can only be stopped by enabling Ukraine to maintain its defence and not allowing Putin to succeed”.
Nepal has lifted a ban on social media platforms following mass protests and the killing of 19 people in clashes with security forces, a government minister said.
Cabinet spokesman and Minister of Communication and Information Technology Prithvi Subba Gurung said early on Tuesday that the government had rolled back the social media ban imposed last week.
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“We have withdrawn the shutdown of the social media. They are working now,” Gurung told the Reuters news agency.
At least 19 people were killed and more than 100 were injured in clashes with Nepalese security forces after thousands of young people took to the streets on Monday to protest against corruption and the government’s ban on social media platforms.
The government had blocked 26 social media sites, including WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Israel and India have signed a bilateral investment agreement to expand mutual trade during far-right Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich’s trip to the South Asian country, which deepened its ties with Israel under Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The agreement, signed in New Delhi by Smotrich and Indian Minister of Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitharaman, aims to boost trade and investment flows between the two countries. Sitharaman stressed the need for greater collaboration in “cybersecurity, defence, innovation and high-technology”.
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The deal marked “an important strategic step for our joint vision”, said Smotrich, who has been sanctioned by several Western countries for his links to illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
“The agreement reached today between Israel and India reflects our economic growth, innovation and mutual prosperity,” he wrote on X.
“This agreement will open new opportunities for investors in both countries, strengthen Israeli exports, and provide businesses with the certainty and tools to grow in one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing markets.”
India’s Ministry of Finance described the deal as a “historic milestone”, adding that it will foster cooperation in “fintech innovation, infrastructure development, financial regulation, and digital payment connectivity”.
Bilateral trade stood at $3.9bn in 2024, while current mutual investments are worth about $800m, according to official figures. But the bulk of the trade between the two countries is in the domain of defence and security, with New Delhi being Israel’s largest weapons buyer.
Last year, Indian firms also sold Israel rockets and explosives during Israel’s war on Gaza, an Al Jazeera investigation revealed.
A woman holds a placard denouncing India’s supply of weapons to Israel, during a protest in New Delhi on June 1, 2024 [Altaf Qadri/AP Photo]
The agreement comes as New Delhi moves closer to Israel, even as Israel faces growing political isolation over its genocidal war on Gaza. India was one of the first countries to reach out to Israel after the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel led by Hamas, condemning it as “an act of terror”.
Indian authorities have cracked down on pro-Palestine protests, even criminalising them in some cases, while allowing pro-Israel rallies.
India still supports the so-called two-state solution for the resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but it has abstained from several United Nations resolutions that have been critical of Israeli rights violations against Palestinians.
In 2024, India also abstained from a UN General Assembly vote calling for an “immediate, unconditional and permanent” ceasefire in Gaza.
Indians make up the largest group of foreign students in Israel, while Israeli construction companies have sought permission to hire up to 100,000 Indian workers to replace Palestinians whose permits were revoked after Israel launched its brutal war on Gaza in October 2023.
India has also refused to condemn Israel’s war on Iran, and declined to support the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s (SCO) condemnation of Israeli attacks. But after United States President Donald Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on India, which took effect late last month, New Delhi this month signed an SCO declaration that condemned the US-Israeli bombing of Iran.
India has also moved to mend its ties with rival China, in a setback for years of US policy using New Delhi as a counterweight to Beijing.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened Palestinians in Gaza City to “leave now”, as the United Nations human rights chief condemned Israel for what he described as the “mass killing” of civilians and deliberate obstruction of lifesaving aid.
Volker Turk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, accused Israel on Monday of committing “war crime upon war crime” and said the scale of devastation in Gaza was “shocking the conscience of the world”.
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He added that Israel “has a case to answer before the International Court of Justice (ICJ)”, pointing to the court’s ruling in January that obliged Tel Aviv to prevent acts of genocide.
Turk’s appeal to end the “carnage in Gaza” came as Israeli forces continued their destruction of Gaza City, the largest urban centre in the enclave, ahead of their plans for a ground invasion of the city.
The Palestinian Civil Defence said that Israeli strikes have levelled more than 50 buildings across Gaza since Sunday morning, while another 100 have been partially damaged. Spokesman Mahmoud Basal accused Israel of deliberately hitting residential blocks next to encampments of displaced families, destroying more than 200 tents in the last 24 hours.
He said that rescue teams are continuing to pull people from the rubble in Gaza City’s Tuffah neighbourhood after Israeli bombs flattened buildings in the az-Zarqa district. Mosques and sport grounds were also targeted, he added.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said it was “heartbreaking to watch these high-rise towers in Gaza City falling one after another due to the systematic tactics of the Israeli military”.
“It’s not just a building that’s been destroyed – it’s the services that come with it, services that are crucial for people trying to live their lives after nearly two years of war.”
Dozens killed, famine deepens
Local hospitals told Al Jazeera that at least 52 Palestinians were killed on Monday alone, with 32 of them in Gaza City. The Ministry of Health reported six more deaths, including two children, from starvation and severe malnutrition in the besieged enclave, where Israel routinely blocks or bombs aid.
Among those killed in Israel’s bombardment on Monday was Osama Balousha, a Palestinian journalist, medics said.
Palestinian officials say that nearly 250 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began – all of them Palestinian, as Israel bars foreign reporters from entering. It is the deadliest conflict for media workers in modern history.
The Israeli military said that four of its soldiers were also killed when a roadside bomb detonated under a tank in northern Gaza.
Palestinians inspect the site of a collapsed residential building, shortly after it was hit in an Israeli air strike, in Gaza City, September 8, 2025 [Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters]
‘Humanitarian areas’ under fire
Israel issued new evacuation threats on Monday, releasing maps warning Palestinians to leave a highlighted building and nearby tents on Jamal Abdel Nasser Street in Gaza City or face death. It told residents to move to the so-called “humanitarian area” in al-Mawasi, a barren stretch of coast in southern Gaza.
But al-Mawasi itself has been repeatedly bombed, despite Israel insisting it is a safe zone. At the start of the year, about 115,000 people lived there. Today, aid agencies estimate that more than 800,000 – nearly a third of Gaza’s population – are crammed into overcrowded makeshift camps.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanches echoed the UN’s condemnation of Israel and announced new measures against the country.
He said Spain would block ships and aircraft carrying weapons to Israel from using its ports or airspace, expand humanitarian aid to Palestinians, and ban imports of goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements.
“We hope that they will serve to add pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government to alleviate some of the suffering that the Palestinian population is enduring,” Sánchez said in a televised address.
He added that anyone directly involved in what he said was a “genocide” would be banned from entering Spain.
Hamas open to ceasefire as violence spreads to West Bank
Meanwhile, Hamas said it was ready to “immediately sit at the negotiating table” after receiving proposals from the United States for a ceasefire and release of captives.
US President Donald Trump declared he had issued his “last warning” to Hamas to accept a deal. Axios, citing an unnamed source, reported that the US plan includes a staged Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, “subject to the new government in Gaza’s ability to impose security’.
Hamas dismissed this as a trap, saying that the condition effectively grants Israel veto power over how and when the withdrawal happens.
The war also spilled into the occupied West Bank on Monday, after Palestinian gunmen killed six people and wounded dozens more near an illegal settlement. The attackers were shot dead by an Israeli soldier and a civilian.
In response, Israeli forces sealed off checkpoints between occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, while troops raided nearby Palestinian villages, including Qatana, Biddu, Beit Inan and Beit Duqu.
Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Amman, Jordan, said such raids were part of Israel’s “collective punishment” policy.
“It is the collective punishment that takes place every time. The villages are raided, the roads are blocked, the checkpoints are completely shut down, family members are arrested and, ultimately, the family home is demolished,” she said.
In Jenin, two 14-year-old boys – Mohammad Sari Omar Masqala and Islam Abdel Aziz Noah Majarmah – were confirmed killed during the Israeli raids. Wissam Bakr, the director of Jenin Government Hospital, said that Masqala died from his wounds hours after the Jerusalem attack.
Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti said that Israel uses such attacks as pretexts for escalation.
“Attacks on Palestinian cities and towns in the occupied West Bank are a pattern that exists without any attacks,” he said. “It’s just that they [Israel] use such a moment to justify and escalate collective punishment acts against Palestinians.”
