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An Israeli airstrike on Saturday demolished the 13-floor building housing Qatar-based Al Jazeera television and American news agency The Associated Press in the Gaza Strip, AFP journalists said.

Israel “destroyed Jala Tower in the Gaza Strip, which contains the Al Jazeera and other international press offices,” Al Jazeera said in a tweet, with an AP journalist saying the army had warned the tower’s owner ahead of the strike.

Al Jazeera broadcast footage showing the building collapsing to the ground after the Israeli airstrike, sending up a huge mushroom cloud of dust and debris.

Jawad Mehdi, the owner of the Jala Tower, said an Israeli intelligence officer warned him he had just one hour to ensure the evacuation of the building.

In a phone call with the officer, AFP heard him beg for an extra 10 minutes to allow journalists to retrieve their equipment before leaving.

“Give us ten extra minutes,” he urged, but the officer on the other end of the line refused.

Wael al-Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza told AFP: “It’s terrible, very sad, to target the Al Jazeera and other press bureaux”.

Israel alleged its “fighter jets attacked a high-rise building which hosted military assets belonging to the military intelligence of the Hamas terror organisation”.

“The building also hosted offices of civilian media outlets, which the Hamas terror group hides behind and uses as human shields,” it said.

Israeli air and artillery strikes on Gaza since Monday have killed 139 people including 39 children, and wounded 1,000 more, health officials in the coastal enclave said.

Thirty people were sentenced to death in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) after a one-day trial for their role in anti-police violence marking the end of Ramadan in the capital.

A policeman was killed in Kinshasa on Thursday as rival Muslim groups fought over the right to mark the end of Ramadan at a major sports stadium.

AFP reports that lawyer Chief Tshipamba said 30 people were sentenced to death in a trial that started on Friday, a day after the violence took place. A recording of the proceedings confirmed the verdict.

The DRC has not carried out death penalties since a moratorium was introduced in 2003. Since then, death sentences have been commuted to life imprisonment.

The regional government said in addition to the police officer killed several people were hurt and one police vehicle was burned in the fighting outside the Martyrs’ Stadium.

Kinshasa police chief Sylvano Kasongo said about 40 people were wounded and 35 arrested.

Two rival factions have for years disputed the leadership of the DRC’s Comico Muslim federation. The two sides remain at odds and occasionally come to blows.

About 10 percent of the DRC’s population is Muslim, mostly concentrated in the country’s east.

But Kinshasa on the Congo River in the west of the vast central African country also traditionally sees mass celebrations for the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan in public squares and on major roads.

An Israeli air raid in Gaza City killed at least 10 Palestinians, mostly children, early Saturday in the deadliest single strike since the battle with Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers erupted earlier this week. Both sides pressed for an advantage as cease-fire efforts gathered strength.

The latest outburst of violence began in Jerusalem and has spread across the region, with Jewish-Arab clashes and rioting in mixed cities of Israel. There were also widespread Palestinian protests Friday in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces shot and killed 11 people.

The spiralling violence has raised fears of a new Palestinian “intifada,” or uprising at a time when there have been no peace talks in years. Palestinians were set to mark Nakba (Catastrophe) Day on Saturday when they commemorate the estimated 700,000 people who fled or were driven from their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation. That raised the possibility of even more unrest.

U.S. diplomat Hady Amr arrived on Friday as part of Washington’s efforts to de-escalate the conflict and the U.N. Security Council was set to meet Sunday. But Israel turned down an Egyptian proposal for a one-year truce that Hamas rulers had accepted, an Egyptian official said Friday on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations.

Since Monday night, Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel, which has pounded the Gaza Strip with strikes. In Gaza, at least 139 people have been killed, including 39 children and 22 women; in Israel, seven people have been killed, including a 5-year-old boy and a soldier.

Rocket fire from Gaza and Israel’s bombardment of the blockaded Palestinian territory continued into early Saturday when an airstrike on a three-story house in a refugee camp in Gaza City killed eight children and two women from an extended family.

Mohammed Hadidi told reporters his wife and five children had gone to celebrate the Eid al-Fitr holiday with relatives. She and three of the children, aged 6 to 14, were killed, while an 11-year-old is missing. Only his 5-month-old son Omar is known to have survived.

Children’s toys and a Monopoly board game could be seen among the rubble, as well as plates of uneaten food from the holiday gathering.

“There was no warning,” said Jamal Al-Naji, a neighbour living in the same building. “You filmed people eating and then you bombed them?” he said, addressing Israel. “Why are you confronting us? Go and confront the strong people!”

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Hamas said it fired a salvo of rockets at southern Israel in response to the airstrike.

A furious Israeli barrage early Friday killed a family of six in their house and sent thousands fleeing to U.N.-run shelters. The military said the operation involved 160 warplanes dropping some 80 tons of explosives over the course of 40 minutes and succeeded in destroying a vast tunnel network used by Hamas.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman, said the military aims to minimize collateral damage in striking military targets. But measures it takes in other strikes, such as warning shots to get civilians to leave, were not “feasible this time.”

Israeli media said the military believed dozens of militants were killed inside the tunnels. The Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups have confirmed 20 deaths in their ranks, but the military said the real number is far higher.

Gaza’s infrastructure, already in widespread disrepair because of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade imposed after Hamas seized power in 2007, showed signs of breaking down further, compounding residents’ misery. The territory’s sole power plant is at risk of running out of fuel in the coming days.

The U.N. said Gazans are already enduring daily power cuts of 8-12 hours and at least 230,000 have limited access to tap water. The impoverished and densely populated territory is home to 2 million Palestinians, most of them the descendants of refugees from what is now Israel.

The conflict has reverberated widely. Israeli cities with mixed Arab and Jewish populations have seen nightly violence, with mobs from each community fighting in the streets and trashing each other’s property.

Late on Friday, someone threw a firebomb at an Arab family’s home in the Ajami neighbourhood of Tel Aviv, striking two children. The 12-year-old boy was in moderate condition with burns on his upper body and the 10-year-old girl was treated for a head injury, according to the Magen David Adom rescue service.

In the occupied West Bank, on the outskirts of Ramallah, Nablus and other towns and cities, hundreds of Palestinians protested the Gaza campaign and Israeli actions in Jerusalem. Waving Palestinian flags, they trucked in tires that they set up in burning barricades and hurled stones at Israeli soldiers. At least 10 protesters were shot and killed by soldiers. An 11th Palestinian was killed when he tried to stab a soldier at a military position.

In east Jerusalem, an online video showed young Jewish nationalists firing pistols as they traded volleys of stones with Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah, which became a flashpoint for tensions over attempts by settlers to forcibly evict a number of Palestinian families from their homes.

On Israel’s northern border, troops opened fire when a group of Lebanese and Palestinian protesters on the other side cut through the border fence and briefly crossed. One Lebanese were killed. Three rockets were fired toward Israel from neighbouring Syria without causing any casualties or damage. It was not immediately known who fired them.

The tensions began in east Jerusalem earlier this month, with Palestinian protests against the Sheikh Jarrah evictions and Israeli police measures at Al-Aqsa Mosque, a frequent flashpoint located on a mount in the Old City revered by Muslims and Jews.

Hamas fired rockets toward Jerusalem late Monday, in an apparent attempt to present itself as the champion of the protesters.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Hamas will “pay a very heavy price” for its rocket attacks as Israel has massed troops at the frontier. U.S. President Joe Biden has expressed support for Israel while saying he hopes to bring the violence under control.

Hamas has fired some 2,000 rockets toward Israel since Monday, according to the Israeli military. Most have been intercepted by anti-missile defences, but they have brought life to a standstill in southern Israeli cities caused disruptions at airports and have set off air raid sirens in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Patrick Achi, the Prime Minister of Ivory Coast, has been admitted to hospital in Paris, France, over an undisclosed medical condition, according to reports.

The 65-year-old, a close aide of President Alassane Ouattara was named prime minister in March following the death of the country’s second prime minister in less than eight months.

Two sources close to Achi told Reuters news agency he was being treated for “severe fatigue” suffered since his appointment in March. Achi replaced Hamed Bakayoko, who died of cancer at 56. Bakayoko had replaced Amadou Gon Coulibaly, who died following cardiac issues in July 2020.

In the cases of both Gon Coulibaly and Bakayoko, government sources told reporters in the weeks before their deaths that they were suffering from fatigue.

Achi is seen as a potential successor to Ouattara, who won re-election to a third term in October 2020. Ouattara had designated Gon Coulibaly to be the ruling party’s candidate but decided to run after Gon Coulibaly died.

Achi is a key figure in discussions to resolve a large power generation deficit that has strained electricity supplies in urban areas for several weeks.

He visited France for health reasons last week but left prematurely to participate in discussions on the power problems, the sources said. He then returned to Paris on Tuesday, cancelling a tour of hydroelectric dams.

Achi will have routine examinations in Paris and rest for several days before returning to Ivory Coast, the sources said.

At least 12 people have been killed and more wounded in an explosion at a mosque on the outskirts of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, according to police.

Kabul police spokesman Ferdaws Faramarz said explosives had been placed inside the mosque before the three-day ceasefire, adding that authorities had opened an investigation.

“The death toll has jumped to 12 killed including the imam of the mosque and 15 others are wounded,” said Ferdaws Framurz, a spokesman for Kabul police, updating an earlier toll.

An image circulating on social media showed three bodies lying on the floor of the mosque, where there seemed to be minor damage.

The explosion happened a day after at least 11 people were killed in four separate incidents across Afghanistan that shattered the relative calm of the ceasefire agreed between the government and the Taliban.

Although there were no reports of direct fighting between the two warring sides as they observe the temporary ceasefire, roadside bombs continued to inflict casualties on civilians.

On Friday the United States had pulled out completely from a major southern airbase in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

US airstrikes were launched from the base just last week to help Afghan forces push back a major Taliban offensive.

Members of a factional Boko Haram sect, the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), formerly known as Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihād have distributed Ramadan welfare packages to some residents of Borno and Yobe states.

According to Sahara reporters, the package distributed by the insurgents included rice, beans, millet, maize, sugar, spaghetti and cash gif

“Imagine, they (insurgents) claimed that the gesture was aimed at assisting villagers to perform Ramadan fast and Sallah with ease and happiness, the same villagers they killed their friends and family members,” the source said.

A 2019 report by the International Crisis Group, a non-profit think tank, observed that ISWAP’s approach to recruiting new fighters proved effective.

Despite breaking away from the Abubakar Shekau-led Boko Haram faction in 2016, the population of its fighters had roughly doubled those of the latter according to estimates.

“Although its leadership has been largely ethnic Kanuri, ISWAP has recruited significantly among lacustrine communities, notably the ethnic Buduma, many of whom earn a living from fishing,” the group wrote.

The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) has made similar observations.

“As part of this approach, the ideological aspect of the crisis must be dealt with. The ability of the group to recruit is one of the biggest reasons for its expansion, and so a deeper understanding of its recruitment patterns and operating mechanisms is crucial,” ISS senior researcher Remadji Hoinathy warned in May 2019.

Often ISWAP exploits gaps in governance by trying to prove that it can provide essential services in the areas under its control.

Burkina Faso’s army on Tuesday said it had killed at least 20 “terrorists” and destroyed four of their positions in a combined operation in two northern regions badly hit by jihadist insurgents.

The operation was launched on May 5 in the Nord and Sahel regions, bringing together conventional and special forces, the air force and gendarmerie, a police unit that is under military command, it said in a statement.

Named Houne — Dignity in the Fula, or Peul, language — the operation is expected to last more than a month, a senior security source told AFP

“More than 20 terrorists have been neutralised” and four of their bases or positions have been destroyed, the source said, adding that communications equipment, weapons, ammunition and means of transport had also been seized.

The armed forces have made many announcements of similar operations in the past, but are failing to stem a mounting toll inflicted by the Sahel country’s five-year-old jihadist crisis.

Around 1,300 people have died and more than a million have fled their homes.

On Saturday, three civilians were killed in Tin-Akoff, in the Nord region, while three soldiers were hurt by a highway bomb in Mansila in the province of Yagha in the east.

A traditional court in Zimbabwe has summoned former first lady Grace Mugabe to answer to charges of “inappropriately” burying former President Robert Mugabe.

A chief now wants Mrs. Mugabe to exhume the body for reburial at a family gravesite where his mother, Bona, was buried.

Mr. Mugabe died aged 95 in Singapore in 2019, almost two years after he was toppled in a military coup after ruling Zimbabwe for 37 uninterrupted years.

He was buried at his homestead in Zvimba, a few kilometres from the capital Harare, with his family saying they wanted to respect his deathbed wish not to be buried at a shrine reserved for the heroes of Zimbabwe’s 1970s liberation war.

He reportedly said he did not want President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government to preside over his funeral because of the manner in which they removed him from office.

The government had started building a mausoleum where the country’s first black leader would have been buried before the dramatic falling-out.

Two years after Mr Mugabe was buried, the fight over his remains is still raging, with Chief Zvimba ordering his widow to appear before his traditional court next Thursday.

“You are facing charges of burying the late Robert Gabriel Mugabe at his homestead” reads the summons from the chief dated April 21, 2021.

“This is unheard of in Chief Zvimba’s area. At the same time, you are accused of abandoning Robert Gabriel Mugabe’s property, which is scattered nationwide. All properties of the late Robert Gabriel Mugabe are supposed to be kept at his homestead and handled in line with our traditions.

“I want you to rebury the late president in accordance with our traditions and in Zvimba at a place designated by the family and his late mother. These charges you are facing attract a fine of two cattle and a goat,” the chief said in his letter.

The chief said if Ms Mugabe fails to attend the hearing they will “proceed with the case and make an appropriate ruling if you don’t attend the village without seeking attention”.

A diary company that he started with his wife after grabbing some white-owned farms in the early 2000s is said to be struggling for survival.

President Mnangagwa’s government has denied accusations that is behind the push for the exhumation of Mr Mugabe’s remains.

Patrick Zhuwawo, one of Mr Mugabe’s nephews, told a South African television station on Wednesday that the Zimbabwean leader is pushing a political agenda against his predecessor’s family.

“He knows very well that Amai Mugabe is not well, she is out of the country. He knows that she is receiving treatment,” Mr Zhuwawo, an exiled former minister, said.

“He knows very well that she will not be able to attend and yet he sent one of his officers to be the head of the delegation that went to deliver the summons to someone that they know very, very well, will not be available,” he added.

Two people were killed while 15 others were wounded in a deadly shooting as crowds gathered at Sudan’s military headquarters to mark the anniversary of a violent confrontation that erupted two years ago.

AFP reports that a Sudanese medical rescue committee said the dead were shot as they gathered to celebrate their compatriots who were “martyred” in 2019, during a sit-in to force reforms in the security sector.

On Tuesday night, a group of Sudanese protesters and the families of those who had been killed held an Iftar in the vicinity of the army headquarters in commemoration of the second anniversary of the breakup of the sit-in at the army headquarters.

Hundreds of the protesters had “gone missing” in 2019 and the investigations conducted by the transitional government did not yield any prosecutions.

On June 3, 2019, (usually known as Ramadan 29), the Sudanese authorities dispersed a sit-in of protesters in front of the army’s general headquarters, which resulted in the killing of hundreds of demonstrators.

Following new violence, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok said culprits of the killings should be brought to justice. He described it as a “full-fledged crime” and pledged to open a speedy investigation.

Hamdok said in a statement after an emergency meeting held on Wednesday that “the slowness of the justice system in uncovering crimes and bringing criminals to trial has become an issue of concern” and that it violates the aspirations of those who demanded changes in administration two years ago.

The meeting was attended by the ministers of Defence, Interior and Justice, the director of the General Intelligence Service and the Attorney-General. They discussed the events on Tuesday evening.

“As part of our responsibility, we will call for urgent meetings for all components of the partnership to review and correct the path,” Hamdok announced on Twitter.

For its part, the Sudanese army announced the formation of an investigation committee to determine the circumstances of the events in the vicinity of the General Command.

The General Command of the Armed Forces issued a statement confirming that it had not issued any instructions to the forces protecting its perimeter to use live ammunition on citizens.

A statement published by the official Sudan News Agency, said that the General Command of the Armed Forces regretted the events that occurred during the marches and promised adequate investigations.

A Frenchman who claimed to be a journalist has been arrested in the Central African Republic after an arsenal of weapons was discovered in his home, Radio France Internationale reported on Tuesday.

A government spokesperson told the French news agency AFP that the man, who claimed to be a journalist, was detained in the capital Bangui on Monday.

According to humanitarian sources, the man had worked as a bodyguard for several organisations in the CAR, which is fighting an armed rebellion seeking to overthrow the government.

The man was detained with “huge amounts of weapons and ammunition”, the Russian national security adviser to President Faustin Archange Touadéra, Valery Zakharov, said on Twitter.

Russia has deployed hundreds of paramilitaries from the private security companies to the CAR to support government forces against rebel groups.

A diplomatic source told AFP the man had done “a short stint” in the army during his youth.

The CAR is one of the African countries that is troubled by armed violence caused by political instability.

The Central Africa nation has experienced conflict since 2013 when predominantly Muslim rebels known as Seleka removed former President Francois Bozize from power, plunging the country into violence and instability when their brutal rule gave rise to the anti-Balaka Christian militias.

This violence escalated in the run-up to last December’s presidential election as the Coalition of Patriots for Change (CPC) rebels, led by Bozize, launched a series of attacks nationwide and took control of some towns.

A surge in violence has forcibly displaced over 276,000 people within the country since mid-December. Thousands are seeking refuge in neighbouring countries, including Cameroon, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

According to the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), to meet the most urgent needs in 2021, humanitarian partners plan to assist 1.84 million people for which they will require US$444.7 million.

The agency said that in 2021, 2.8 million Central Africans, more than half of the population, will need humanitarian assistance and protection.