International news from Thursday, January 2nd, 2025

Investigators in New Orleans were searching on Thursday for what motivated a US Army veteran flying an IS flag from his truck to plough into a crowd of New Year's revelers, killing 15 people and injuring 30 more before dying in a shootout with police.

An Israeli airstrike killed at least 10 Palestinians in a tent encampment sheltering displaced families in the southern Gaza strip early on Thursday, medics said.

Ten people were injured in a mass shooting in the New York City borough of Queens late on New Year's Day, the New York Police Department said in a news briefing early on Thursday.

South Korean police on Thursday raided the offices of Jeju Air and the operator of Muan International Airport as part of the probe into the fatal crash of a Boeing 737-800 plane that killed 179 people. 

A high-ranking Syrian delegation arrived in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday on the first foreign visit by the country's new rulers since they ousted president Bashar al-Assad last month, state media said.

The population of Gaza has fallen 6 per cent since the war with Israel began nearly 15 months ago as about 100,000 Palestinians left the enclave while more than 55,000 are presumed dead, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).

Former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who had often taken an independent line against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government allies, said on Wednesday he was resigning from parliament.

A man shot dead 12 people in a rampage in a small town in Montenegro before dying from self-inflicted injuries early on Thursday, authorities said, in one of the tiny Balkan nation's worst mass killings.

A Tesla Cybertruck exploded in flames outside the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas on Wednesday, killing the driver and injuring seven others, and the FBI was investigating whether the blast was an act of terrorism, officials said.

Chinese government hackers breached the US Treasury office that administers economic sanctions, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, identifying targets of a cyberattack Treasury disclosed earlier this week.