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Crowds fleeing Khan Yunis after an Israeli evacuation order gave way to empty streets on Friday as Palestinian residents tried to escape a new Israeli military operation in Gaza's main southern area. "They threw leaflets at us, ordering us to evacuate", Reem Abu Hayya told AFP, referring to the flyers that Israeli forces drop from planes to order the evacuation of areas ahead of a military operation. The Khan Yunis area had already seen evacuation orders in late July, and heavy fighting that devastated the area earlier this year. "We don't know where we're going, and we have sick and disabled people with us. Where can we go?" Abu Hayya asked AFP as she stood on the street in front of a building reduced to a pile of rebar and broken concrete. In a besieged territory that has been consistently bombed over the past 10 months and where supplies enter with great difficulty, people carried all they could as they fled on Thursday. AFP journalists saw one y...

Sheikh Hasina, who quit as prime minister and fled Bangladesh, will be back in the country as soon as democracy is restored, his son Sajeeb Wazed Joy said on Thursday and blamed Pakistan's intelligence agency, ISI, for fuelling the ongoing unrest in the country. In an interview with PTI, Mr Joy said that although 76-year-old Sheikh Hasina would return to Bangladesh, it has not yet been decided whether she will be back as a "retired or active" politician. He also asserted that the members of the Sheikh Mujib (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman) family will neither abandon its people nor leave the beleaguered Awami League in the lurch. He expressed gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government for protecting his mother and appealed to India to help build international opinion and exert pressure to restore democracy in Bangladesh. "Yes, it is true that I had said she wouldn't return to Bangladesh. But a lot has changed in the last two days following continuous...

A goat, two elephants, three monkeys and one wolf. Four Banksy murals which have appeared in London this week have left many pondering the meaning behind the elusive street artist's latest work. It began with the mountain goat on Monday, appearing to be perched on a ledge with rocks falling off and depicted in Banksy's signature stencil style on a wall in Richmond, west London. Next came two elephant heads, peering out of two blocked out windows on the side of a house in affluent Chelsea, followed by three monkeys which appear to be hanging from a railway bridge near east London's Brick Lane. Photo Credit: Reuters The silhouette of a wolf, howling at the sky, appeared on a satellite dish atop a heavily graffitied building in Peckham, southeast London, on Thursday. Banksy has posted pictures of each on his Instagram account. London's Metropolitan Police said the satellite dish had been reported stolen within hours of being unveiled. Pictures in local media showe...

Advanced American F-22 stealth warplanes arrived in the Middle East on Thursday, the US military said, as Washington boosts its forces in the region ahead of an expected Iranian counterattack on Israel. The deployment is part of "force posture changes in the region to mitigate the possibility of regional escalation by Iran or its proxies," US Central Command said on social media, without specifying the number or exact location of the planes. The Pentagon said last week that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had ordered assets including additional warships and a fighter squadron to the region. Seven American personnel were wounded in a rocket attack in Iraq earlier this week that Washington blamed on an Iran-backed militia group. And Tehran and its allies are expected to launch an attack on Israel in retaliation for the killing of top Hamas and Hezbollah figures in strikes last week either blamed on or claimed by Israel. The killings are among the most serious in a series of...

Apple on Thursday changed its policy in the European Union to allow developers to communicate with their customers outside the app after the Commission charged the iPhone maker in June for breaching the bloc's tech rules. The Commission had said that under most of the business terms, Apple allows steering only through "link-outs", meaning that app developers can include a link in their app that redirects the customer to a web page where the customer can conclude a contract. Apple said developers will now be able to communicate and promote offers that are available anywhere, not just on their own website, from within their app. However, Apple will introduce two new fees - an initial 5% acquisition fee for new users and a 10% store services fee for any sales made by app users on any platform within the 12 months of the app installation. Currently, Apple charges three types of fees: a core technology fee for the less than 1% of apps, a reduced commission for all digital ...

Seen from the sky, with its turquoise waters stretching out into the desert expanses in the shape of a crescent, you can see why they call Lake Balkhash the "pearl of Kazakhstan". But pollution, climate change and its overuse are threatening the existence of one of the most unique stretches of water in the world. One side of the Balkhash -- the biggest lake in Central Asia after the Caspian Sea -- has salt water, but on the other it is fresh. In such a strange environment, rare species have abounded. Until now. "All the miseries of the Balkhash are right under my eyes," fisherman Alexei Grebennikov told AFP from the deck of his boat on the northern shores, which sometimes has salty water, sometimes fresh. "There are fewer and fewer fish, it's catastrophic, the lake is silting up," warned the 50-year-old. A dredger to clear the little harbour lay anchored, rusting and unused, off the industrial town of Balkhack, itself seemingly stuck in a Soviet t...

War-weary Gazans voiced concern on Wednesday after Hamas appointed Yahya Sinwar as its new supremo, fearing his past as the movement's military commander might hamper efforts for the ceasefire they yearn for. "We don't know how Hamas is thinking or what led them to choose Yahya Sinwar as their chief, especially when his whereabouts are unknown", 29-year-old Mohammad al-Sharif told AFP in the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah. "He is a fighter. How will negotiations take place?", asked the displaced man originally from Gaza City, adding: "We want nothing but the end of the war". Late on Tuesday, Hamas announced it had chosen Sinwar, 61, the man Israel says masterminded the October 7 attack that sparked the Gaza war, to replace Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in Tehran on July 31. Sinwar has not been seen since the attack on Israel, with many reports claiming he is operating from one of several underground tunnels in Gaza. Ibrahim Abu Daq...