ROME: The UN World Food Programme or WFP has warned that crucial supplies were running dangerously low in the Gaza Strip after Israel imposed a total blockade on the territory.

“It’s a dire situation in the Gaza Strip that we’re seeing evolve with food and water being in limited supply and quickly running out,” said Brian Lander, the deputy head of emergencies at WFP, which is based in Rome.

TEL AVIV/WASHINGTON: The United States said on Thursday that Iran would not gain access any time soon to $6 billion in Iranian funds parked in a Qatar bank last month as part of a prisoner exchange and that Washington retained the right to completely freeze the account.
The question of Iranian access to the funds has been in the spotlight since Iran-backed Palestinian Hamas militants attacked Israel on Saturday, killing more than 1,300 people and taking scores of hostages back to the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

LONDON: Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf, whose wife’s parents are trapped in Gaza, has asked UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly to call for a ceasefire in the war between Hamas and Israel, so that civilians can leave the war zone.

In a letter to Cleverly, Yousaf urged him to use the good relationship between the UK and Israel to request a humanitarian corridor be established that will allow civilians to flee through the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt.

MOSCOW/ANKARA: Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the US on Wednesday of inflaming the Middle East by sending an aircraft carrier group to the region, saying “compromise solutions” were needed and that he hoped common sense would prevail.

The Kremlin chief has called the explosion of violence between Israel and the Palestinians a vivid example of the failure of US policy in the Middle East, which he says has taken no account of the needs of the Palestinians.

DUBAI: As the Israeli military intensifies attacks on Gaza in retaliation for the unprecedented weekend assault on southern Israel by militants of the Palestinian group Hamas, there are growing fears of a wider, multi-sided conflict erupting in the Middle East.