Medical charity Medecins du Monde Wednesday accused Israel of violating international law with drone strikes on a building housing one of its offices in war-torn Gaza that killed eight people, none of them staff.The France-based aid group said in a statement the attack on Tuesday “constitutes a serious violation of international humanitarian law, which protects both civilian populations and humanitarian organisations operating in conflict zones”.The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.”Yesterday morning, at around 11:00 am local time, a building in Deir el-Balah housing a Medecins du Monde office was attacked by drones,” the aid group said.Its staff had not been present as they had been off as part of the Eid al-Adha holiday, it added.”At least eight people were killed in the bombardment. All were on the last floor of the building,” it said, without providing more details on those killed.”Medecins du Monde had informed the Israeli military of the presence of its office, which had officially been declared ‘deconflicted’, or shielded from Israeli military attacks under humanitarian coordination agreements,” it said.”However, as during previous Israeli attacks, the team received no forward warning that would have allowed it to evacuate the building or take measures to protect anyone inside,” it added.Several other non-governmental organisations as well as Palestinians displaced by the war are based in the same area, it said.- Risk of famine: UN -Israel is facing mounting pressure to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, whose entire population the United Nations has warned is at risk of famine.Medecins du Monde last month, after more than two months of a total blockade on Gaza, accused Israel of using hunger as “a weapon of war” in the Palestinian territory.Israel recently allowed some deliveries to resume through the newly formed, US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.But the United Nations refuses to work with it, citing concerns over its practices and neutrality.Dozens of people have been killed near GHF distribution points since late May, according to Gaza’s civil defence agency. It said Israeli forces killed 31 people waiting for aid early on Wednesday.Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7, 2023 attacked Israel, resulting in the deaths of 1,219 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says the retaliatory Israeli military offensive has killed at least 54,981 people, the majority civilians. The United Nations considers these figures to be reliable.Out of 251 taken hostage during the Hamas attack, 54 are still held in Gaza including 32 the Israeli military says are dead.

An 11-year-old Palestinian boy who survived an Israeli air strike in Gaza last month, which killed his father and nine siblings, was due to arrive in Italy Wednesday for treatment.Adam and his mother, paediatrician Alaa al-Najjar, were due to fly to Milan in northern Italy on Wednesday evening alongside his aunt and four cousins, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said.”Adam will arrive in Milan and will be admitted to the Niguarda (hospital), because he has multiple fractures and he will be treated there,” Tajani told Rtl radio.A plane carrying Palestinians in need of medical care is scheduled to land at 7:30 pm (1730 GMT) at Milan’s Linate airport, according to the foreign ministry.Adam had a hand amputated and suffered severe burns across his body following the strike on the family house in the city of Khan Yunis on May 23.His mother was at work when the bomb hit the house, killing nine of her children and injuring Adam and his father, doctor Hamdi al-Najjar, who died last week.Al-Najjar, who ran to the house to find her children charred beyond recognition, told Italy’s La Repubblica daily: “I remember everything. Every detail, every minute, every scream.””But when I remember it’s too painful, so I try to keep my mind focused entirely on Adam,” she said in an interview published Wednesday ahead of their arrival.Asked by his mother during the interview to describe his hopes, Adam said he wanted to “live in a beautiful place”.”A beautiful place is a place where there are no bombs. In a beautiful place the houses are not broken and I go to school,” he said, according to La Repubblica.”Schools have desks, the kids study their lessons but then they go play in the courtyard and nobody dies.”A beautiful place is where they operate on my arm and my arm works again. In a beautiful place my mother is not sad. They told me that Italy is a beautiful place,” he said.Al-Najjar said she has packed the Koran, their documents and Adam’s clothes.”I am heartbroken. I am leaving behind everything that was important to me. My husband, my children, the hospital where I worked, my job, my patients,” she said.”People are dying of hunger. If not of hunger, of bombs. We would just like to live in peace,” she told the daily.Adam is one of 17 children being brought to Italy on Wednesday from Gaza along with relatives, Tajani said.The October 7, 2023, Hamas attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says at least 54,981 people, the majority civilians, have been killed in the territory since the start of the war. The UN considers these figures reliable.

Iran on Wednesday hanged a man convicted of killing seven people, including a 10-year-old boy, during nationwide protests in 2022 but human rights groups said he was the victim of a wrongful conviction.Abbas Kurkuri, also known as Mojahed Kurkur, was hanged at dawn in Sheiban prison in the western city of Ahvaz, the Norway-based Iran Human Rights and Hengaw groups said. His execution was reported by the Iranian judiciary’s Mizan Online website which said he had been convicted by a Revolutionary Court of the capital offences of “corruption on earth” and “waging war against God”.He had been arrested more than two years previously over the deaths in November 2022 at the height of the nationwide protests sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurd detained for an alleged breach of Iran’s strict dress code for women. He was accused of opening fire with a military weapon in the town of Izeh northeast of Ahvaz in an attack that left seven people dead, including 10-year-old Kian Pirfalak, whose death sparked outrage at the time.At his trial, Kurkuri confessed to the charges and said he had been “under the influence of social media”, Mizan said.But human rights groups said his confession, which was broadcast by Iranian state media and re-published by Mizan on Wednesday, had been obtained under duress and accused the authorities of framing him to take the blame away from the security forces.- ‘Tsunami’ of executions -“During his detention, Korkor endured severe torture and was denied access to legal counsel,” said Hengaw, adding that Pirfalak’s mother had said at her son’s funeral that it was security personnel who fired at their vehicle.It noted that the execution had taken place on what would have been the boy’s birthday.IHR director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam described the execution as “an extrajudicial killing”.”The Islamic republic authorities attempted to blame him for the murder of 10-year old Kian Pirfalak by forcing confessions under torture,” he said.He said the hanging of Kurkuri, a member of Iran’s Bahktiari minority, was the latest in a “tsunami” of executions in Iran, with convicts currently being put to death at a rate of four a day.According to IHR, at least 569 people have been hanged in Iran so far this year.Nobel Peace laureate Narges Mohammadi, currently on leave from her own prison sentence, said Kurkuri had been “brutally tortured in solitary confinement (and) falsely accused of Kian’s murder based on fabricated claims by interrogators and the regime’s judiciary”.Amnesty International said he was convicted after a “grossly unfair sham trial marred by torture-tainted ‘confessions’ obtained while he was subjected to enforced disappearance”.The London-based group said its investigations had showed “plainclothes security officials used unlawful lethal force during protests in Izeh and fatally fired live ammunition at the child”.”Authorities immediately blamed ‘terrorists’, but the boy’s family repeatedly refuted these claims publicly and attributed the responsibility to the authorities.”Over 550 people were killed in the authorities’ crackdown on the protests, according to the IHR’s figures. The authorities emphasise that members of the security forces also lost their lives.Kurkuri’s execution comes a day after Iran hanged nine men convicted of plotting to carry out attacks in 2018 on behalf of the Islamic State group.Iran is the world’s second most prolific executioner after China, according to human rights groups including Amnesty International.