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World leaders issued statements of condemnation and condolence on Tuesday after an explosion killed hundreds at a hospital in Gaza City, a staggering loss of civilian life in Israel’s 10-day-old war with Hamas that rapidly became enmeshed in competing assertions of blame. Virtually all stressed the horrific nature of the devastation. But governments across the Middle East took up the Gazan health authorities’ claim of an Israeli airstrike, rejecting the Israeli military’s later assertion that a failed rocket launch by Palestinian Islamic Jihad was to blame. Some of those governments, including that of Iran, said the United States and other…

Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an armed group based in Gaza, was blamed by the Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday night after hundreds of people were reported killed by a strike at Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.The Israeli military said the blast was caused by a rocket fired by the group that malfunctioned after launching. The Gazan health authorities said the blast had been caused by an Israeli airstrike.What is Islamic Jihad?The second-largest armed group in Gaza, Islamic Jihad has often been eclipsed by the larger Hamas organization, which has controlled and governed Gaza since 2007.Islamic Jihad was founded in the…

Once a day since 1939, CBC Radio in Canada has broadcast a message familiar to generations of Canadians.“The beginning of the long dash indicates exactly 1 o’clock Eastern Standard Time” is how it went in its most recent iteration. Several short beeps and then a long tone followed. At that moment, not a second before or a second after, it was 1 p.m. in Toronto. (And noon in Winnipeg, 10 a.m. in Vancouver — and, delightfully, 2:30 p.m. in Newfoundland.)But the “long dash,” as the announcement is known, is no more. It was broadcast for the final time on Oct.…

It boiled down to a choice between two different visions of the future: one dominated by nationalism, traditional Catholic norms and the defense of Polish sovereignty; the other by promises to “bring Poland back to Europe” and the liberal democratic values espoused by the European Union.In the end, after a long, vicious election campaign in a highly polarized country, opponents of the nationalist governing party, Law and Justice, won a clear majority of seats in a pivotal general election held on Sunday, according to final official results Tuesday.That victory opened the way for a potentially drastic shift away from Poland’s…

Just days after the assault by Hamas ignited a new war in the Middle East, shipments of American weapons began arriving in Israel: smart bombs, ammunition and interceptors for the Iron Dome missile-defense system. When President Biden meets in Israel on Wednesday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, more military aid is a likely topic.The conflict between Israel and Hamas is just the latest impetus behind a boom in international arms sales that is bolstering profits and weapons-making capacity among American suppliers.The surge in sales is providing the Biden administration with new opportunities to tie the militaries of other countries more…

Hamas released a video late Monday of Mia Schem, one of the nearly 200 people believed to be held hostage in Gaza after the group launched a cross-border assault on Israel nine days ago.The 60-second video — the first released by the group to show any of the hostages — begins with Ms. Schem, 21, receiving medical treatment for a wound above her right elbow and shows her arm being wrapped in bandages by a person off-camera.The next images are of Ms. Schem, who disappeared from the site of a music festival where at least 260 people were killed, speaking…

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken hurried into a bunker as air raid sirens wailed in Tel Aviv on Monday, in the most dramatic moment of a whirlwind — and unusually chaotic — Middle East tour for America’s top diplomat.After his second visit to Israel in five days, Mr. Blinken was scheduled to land in Amman, Jordan, on Monday night, but he ended up stuck in a marathon overnight negotiation session in Tel Aviv, and his next destination was uncertain. A trip originally scheduled for two days has now extended into its sixth, with 10 stops and counting.For an official…

A suspect in the killing of two Swedish nationals in Brussels on Monday evening, in what officials called an act of terrorism, was fatally shot by the police on Tuesday morning after an overnight search, the office of Belgium’s public prosecutor said.The suspect, a man whose name was not released, died in a hospital, the prosecutor’s office said. A weapon was found at the scene after the man was shot, according to the interior minister.Belgium’s justice minister, Vincent Van Quickenborne, said on Tuesday that the suspect, a Tunisian man who was living in the country illegally, had been known to…

When the Salvor, a U.S. Navy rescue and salvage ship, pulled into a port in India’s southeast this summer, the job at hand was patching up the aging vessel. But there was a bigger mission, too: opening another door for a U.S. military trying to stretch out across the Indo-Pacific and counter Chinese power.The Navy ship was the third in a year to arrive at Kattupalli, an industrial hamlet north of Chennai with a state-of-the-art shipyard. And this time, the visit marked the start of a five-year ship repair agreement — a tangible step toward defense cooperation for two nations…