Israel attacks central Gaza, orders evacuation minutes before bombardment

Israel has ramped up attacks on the Gaza Strip in recent days, with overnight raids pounding central Gaza, leaving families with only minutes to evacuate.

On Friday night, the Israeli strikes hit several Palestinian neighborhoods and blocks in central Gaza, forcing residents to shelter and triggering panic among civilians.

The escalation comes as Israel continues a broader military buildup in Gaza, with more evacuation orders.

This time, however, the Israeli army was reportedly giving Palestinians as little time as five minutes to leave their homes, barring them from taking basic belongings.

"I looked around and saw everything destroyed. It was an enormous missile that wiped out the entire residential block. Even the vehicles were thrown into the air. That jeep was blown from here, another vehicle landed in the neighboring house, and another home was completely destroyed," said Ibrahim Hamada, an eyewitness.

"The war is still going on -- there is no ceasefire at all. The bombardment brings back memories of destruction and death. It reminds us that Israel is continuing on this path of devastation until the last person in Gaza is gone. That is the message we feel they are sending us," said Hanaa Halawa, a displaced Palestinian.

"We were sitting safely at home when we received a phone call from the Israeli military ordering us to evacuate the residential block. We rushed out without being able to take anything except our phones. When we came back, we found the entire area completely destroyed, as you can see," said Baraa Matar, another displaced Palestinian.

According to data released by the Gaza Health Ministry on Thursday, Israeli military operations in the strip had resulted in 1,127 deaths and 3,643 injuries since the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire took effect in Oct 2025.

Israel attacks central Gaza, orders evacuation minutes before bombardment

Nobel Laureate Omar Yaghi has vowed to tackle larger challenges by using artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to make new materials, as he joined China's Tsinghua University, one of China's most prestigious universities.

Yaghi, the 2025 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, left his faculty post at the University of California, Berkeley and joined Tsinghua University on a full-time basis in July 2026.

In his appointment ceremony address, Yaghi said that in choosing Tsinghua, he is ready to begin again, not to slow down, not to repeat what has been done, but to pursue science with more energy, intensity, and ambition than ever before.

In an interview with China Media Group aired on Friday, the professor explained what "beginning again" means to him.

"Begin again means to address an even larger challenge than I've addressed before and this larger challenge has to do with how do we change the way we do research, can we exemplify that by combining AI, robotics and making new materials. But in the meantime, we are communicating to our discipline, in this case, chemistry, material science, that there's a new way to do science, there is a new way to make great discoveries. So the discoveries that we make here impact the world and they are done for the world," he said.

Nobel laureate says he aims to tackle larger challenges by combining AI, robotics