One minute, Haya Shabaka was brewing tea in her sister Abeer’s Gaza City home. The next, she and her relatives were plunged into darkness, said Abeer Shabaka, who was in the other room when an Israeli strike hit their building on Dec. 6.

“I felt that we were all underground,” Abeer recounted. “I heard my mother scream, but I did not know where she was. I saw Haya. She looked like she was asleep.”

Abeer said she screamed and screamed until help came, and was eventually pulled from the rubble. Her mother and sister are still buried underneath.

“I wish I had been killed with them,” Abeer said. The Israeli military said it was targeting a gathering of militants.

Without their bodies, or confirmation of their deaths, their family was unable to register them with Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

They remain uncounted.

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The European Union's top court ruled Friday that every member country must recognize official changes to gender identity acquired elsewhere within the 27-nation political and economic bloc.

Legal experts say the ruling will boost protections for transgender people in the region.

The decision followed a case brought by a dual British-Romanian national named Arian Mirzarafie-Ahi. Mirzarafie-Ahi was registered at birth in Romania as female, then moved to Britain and obtained legal recognition of his male gender identity. Romanian authorities later refused Mirzarafie-Ahi's attempts to update his identity documents.

"Gender, like a first name, is a fundamental element of personal identity," the European Court of Justice said in a news release on its ruling.

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The EU rarely moves ahead on international matters without the U.S., particularly involving major conflicts, but it hopes this decision will encourage others to come forward.

EU envoys have been working this week on a proposal to provide Ukraine with a loan package worth up to 35 billion euros ($39 billion).

“Crucially, this loan will flow straight into your national budget,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv last week. “It will provide you with significant and much-needed fiscal space. You will decide how best to use the funds, giving you maximum flexibility to meet your needs.”

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A Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian missile facility early Wednesday threw up towering fireballs visible from space and thundering detonations that triggered earthquake monitors.

Even by the standards of this incendiary conflict, video showing the blasts north of Moscow was remarkable.

Officials on both sides said it was the result of a large Ukrainian drone attack on Toropets, a town in the Tver region around 230 miles from the Russian capital. Russian state media has previously reported that the military was building an arsenal for storing missiles and other explosives there.

Speaking to reporters early Wednesday, Tver Gov. Igor Rudenya said that all drones in the region were shot down and that there was a fire on the ground as a result of debris from a downed drone. As he spoke, loud explosions could be heard in the background.

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The administration of United States President Joe Biden says it is preparing a large aid package for Ukraine in the coming weeks as a debate continues over whether Ukrainian forces should be allowed to use Western-supplied weapons to strike farther inside Russia.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Saturday that Washington is working on a “substantial” round of further assistance for Kyiv and Biden will meet his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, this month.

“I do think we need a comprehensive strategy for success in this war, and that is what President Zelenskyy says he is bringing,” Sullivan said in remarks delivered via videolink at the Yalta European Strategy conference in Ukraine’s capital.

“So we are very much looking forward to sitting down and talking that through, and President Biden is eager for that conversation,” he said.

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