Israel launched its offensive in Gaza City, vowing to overwhelm a city already in ruins from nearly two years of war as thousands of Palestinians fled in vehicles strapped with mattresses and other belongings that clogged a coastal road. The operation into the largest Palestinian city escalated a conflict that has roiled the Middle East and likely pushed any ceasefire with Hamas farther out of reach.

Meanwhile a UN commission report on genocide claimed to present evidence it says shows that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. It says that Israel has breached the Genocide Convention that was passed in 1948. Next week at the UN General Assembly in New York, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Canada and others are due to join the majority of UN members by recognising the sovereignty of an independent Palestinian state. Genocide is defined in the 1948 convention, as the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group - in this case, Palestinians in Gaza.

China's coast guard accused a Philippine ship of deliberately ramming one of its vessels near the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. The Philippines denied it, saying China's forces used powerful water cannons that damaged its ship and injured a crew member. A Chinese coast guard statement said more than 10 Philippine government ships coming from various directions entered the waters around the shoal, which is called Huangyan island in Chinese. It said it deployed water cannons against the vessels.

The encounter came six days after China announced it was designating part of Scarborough Shoal as a national nature reserve. The Philippine government, which calls the shoal Bajo de Masinloc, filed a diplomatic protest. China and the Philippines have clashed repeatedly around outcroppings in the South China Sea, which China claims almost in its entirety. The two countries are among several that have competing claims to territory in the waters, which are of strategic importance and home to valuable fishing grounds.

A report from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates Syria will face a wheat shortfall of 2.73m tonnes this year, the equivalent of annual dietary needs for 16.25 million people. Without more food aid or the ability to import wheat, Syria's hunger crisis is set to worsen dramatically, warned Piro Tomaso Perri, FAO's senior programme officer for Syria. The same report showed rainfall has dropped by nearly 70%, crippling 75% of Syria's rain-fed farmland.

"Food insecurity could reach unprecedented levels by late 2025 into mid-2026," he said, noting that more than 14 million Syrians - six in 10 people - are already struggling to eat enough. Of those, 9.1 million face acute hunger, including 1.3 million in severe conditions, while 5.5 million risk sliding into crisis without urgent intervention. Farming families are already selling livestock to supplement lost incomes from wheat, reducing their number of daily meals, and there has been a rise in malnutrition rates among children and pregnant women.

Colombia's peace tribunal issued its first sentence on war crimes committed during decades of internal conflict, finding seven former leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, guilty of imposing policies that led to the kidnapping of 21,000 people. The court said that the rebel group kidnapped civilians for ransom to finance its operations, while also depriving soldiers and politicians of their liberty in hopes of exchanging them for imprisoned rebels.

For the next eight years, the former rebel leaders must work on projects to find the bodies of missing people and remove landmines from rural areas. They will also have to engage in symbolic acts of reparation with their victims. To ensure compliance, the seven leaders will follow a strict schedule and have their movements monitored with electronic devices. The court was created as part of the 2016 peace deal between the Colombian government and the FARC rebels.