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Russia bombarded Ukraine with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles in a large-scale overnight attack, officials said Friday, killing at least four people. For only the second time, it used a new hypersonic missile it says flies at 10 times the speed of sound and is unstoppable.

Ukraine's security service said it considered the use of the missile a war crime.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media that a Russian drone hit the Qatar embassy. He noted that Qatar has played a key role in mediating the exchange of prisoners of war.

The intense barrage and the launching of the nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile came days after Ukraine and its allies reported major progress toward agreeing on how to defend the country from further Moscow aggression if a peace deal is struck to end Russia's almost 4-year-old invasion.

Months of U.S.-led peace efforts have failed to stop the fighting, however. Zelenskyy says he has made significant progress on the terms of a possible peace settlement in talks with Washington envoys. But Moscow has given no public signal it is willing to budge from its demands.

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President Donald Trump on Friday ramped up his rhetoric on Greenland, saying the U.S. will take action to acquire the longtime ally.

“We are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not, because if we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland, and we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

The remarks come days after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that Trump could use the military to “pursue this important foreign policy goal.” That came on the heels of major European allies issuing in a joint statement saying they would “not stop defending” the values of sovereignty and Greenland’s territorial integrity.

Greenland is a semi-autonomous Danish territory that’s strategically important militarily and contains vast mineral wealth. The U.S. already has a military base on the island, and officials there have said they’d accept an expanded military presence.

Asked by a reporter Friday why he hasn’t accepted that offer, Trump said, “When we own it, we defend it. You don’t defend leases the same way. You have to own it.”

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Eleven-year-old Hamsa Housou lay dead on a cold metal table at the morgue in Al-Shifa hospital. Blood covered her face and the upper part of her striped pajamas as one of her relatives gently wiped her mouth and cheek with a damp cloth, crying as he did so. She had been asleep in her bed early Thursday morning when she was fatally struck by Israeli gunfire. Her family’s home in Jabaliya, west of the so-called yellow line, is in an area designated as safe.

“We were sleeping, and suddenly, around 5 a.m., there were bangs—loud bangs and shells,” Hamsa’s uncle, Aouni Housou, said, standing over her small body. “I live upstairs, and there was screaming. We ran downstairs and they said the girl had been injured. We went to see her and she was covered in blood.” It took half an hour for an ambulance to arrive. When they finally reached the hospital, Hamsa had died.

The eleven-year-old was just one of as many as 14 Palestinians, including five children, killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, according to an Al Jazeera toll. Since the so-called ceasefire went into effect on October 10, Israel has killed Palestinians in Gaza on an almost daily basis. The missile strikes, shootings, and shelling occur in areas both east of the yellow line, which Israeli troops are occupying as part of the initial agreement, and west of it, where the majority of Palestinians are crammed into less than half of Gaza’s territory. At least 425 Palestinians have been killed and over 1,200 wounded over the past three months of the “ceasefire”—a rate of nearly five Palestinians killed every day.

“Every night there is bombing, shooting, fire belts, robots. Every night. Shrapnel hits our home. What ceasefire? This ceasefire is just theater in front of the world. What caused them to kill her?” Housou said, pointing at his dead niece, unable to hold back the tears.

While much of the world’s attention has turned away from Gaza since the “ceasefire” took hold, the genocide has continued, with daily Israeli military attacks and heavy restrictions on life essentials, including medical supplies, food, building materials, and other items.

Over the course of a single day—overnight on Wednesday into Thursday evening—the Israeli military targeted residential homes, schools sheltering displaced Palestinians, and tent encampments. In Mawasi Khan Younis, an area close to the sea, two separate airstrikes killed four Palestinians in their tents on the beach, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Another Palestinian was killed when Israeli forces bombed a tent sheltering displaced people in the Al-Attar area of Khan Younis. In the Jabaliya refugee camp, two Palestinians were killed when Israeli forces struck the Abu Hussein School, which was sheltering several displaced families. In the Al-Tuffah neighborhood northeast of Gaza City, an Israeli airstrike slammed into a residential building, killing two and wounding five.

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Ukraine’s working group on preparing elections during a special or post-war period met for the second time on Thursday, Jan. 8, with the Central Election Commission (CEC) having prepared its proposals in advance.

The issue of holding elections in Ukraine is included among the 20 points of a peace plan developed between Washington and Kyiv.

Earlier, Ukraine’s parliament approved the creation of a cross-party working group tasked with drafting a one-off law regulating elections under martial law, amid growing domestic and international debate over how democratic processes can be preserved during Russia’s war.

Parliament Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk said the group’s goal is to develop a framework for holding what he described as “safe, democratic elections trusted by the entire world,” despite ongoing security risks.

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The top United Nations official on Thursday said the United States has a “legal obligation” to keep paying its dues that fund U.N. agencies after the White House announced that it is withdrawing support from more than 30 initiatives operated by the world body.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he regretted President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from 31 U.N.-related agencies, including the U.N.’s population agency and the U.N. treaty that establishes international climate negotiations. The U.S. will also depart from dozens of other global organizations or initiatives not affiliated with the U.N.

“As we have consistently underscored, assessed contributions to the United Nations regular budget and peacekeeping budget, as approved by the General Assembly, are a legal obligation under the UN Charter for all Member States, including the United States,” Stephane Dujarric, a spokesperson for Guterres, said in a statement.

He added that despite the announcement, the U.N. entities targeted will keep doing their work: “The United Nations has a responsibility to deliver for those who depend on us.”

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Israel has cleared the final hurdle before starting construction on a contentious settlement project near Jerusalem that would effectively cut the West Bank in two, according to a government tender.

The tender, which seeks bids from developers, would clear the way to begin construction of the E1 project.

The anti-settlement monitoring group Peace Now first reported the tender. Yoni Mizrahi, who runs the group’s settlement watch division, said initial work could begin within the month.

Settlement development in E1, an open tract of land east of Jerusalem, has been under consideration for more than two decades, but was frozen due to U.S. pressure during previous administrations.

The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank to be illegal and an obstacle to peace.

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