The Palestinian Authority temporarily halted operations of Qatar's Al Jazeera television in the territory including its broadcasts, citing the network's dissemination of "inciting material," the Palestinian news agency WAFA said on Wednesday.

The culture, interior and communications ministers made the decision jointly because the channel broadcast material that was "deceiving and stirring strife," WAFA said without providing details on the subject matter, Reuters reported.

The order said the decision was temporary but did not specify an end date.

The Palestinian Authority criticised Al Jazeera last week over its coverage of the weeks-long standoff between Palestinian security forces and militant fighters in the Jenin camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Al Jazeera denounced Wednesday's decision as "an attempt to discourage it from reporting spiraling events in the occupied territories," according to a statement.

It called on the Palestinian Authority to rescind the decision and allow its journalists to report freely from the West Bank without intimidation.

The decision was not expected to be implemented in Hamas-run Gaza where the Palestinian Authority does not exercise power.

Fatah, the faction that controls the Palestinian Authority, said the broadcaster was sowing division in "our Arab homeland in general and in Palestine in particular". It encouraged Palestinians not to cooperate with the network.

The Israeli military in September raided Al Jazeera's bureau in the West Bank city of Ramallah and ordered it shut.

Israel in May issued an order barring the channel from operating and broadcasting in the country, saying it posed a threat to Israeli security. A court subsequently upheld the ban.

The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on entities in Iran and Russia, accusing them of attempting to interfere in the 2024 U.S. election, Reuters reported.

The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement the entities - a subsidiary of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and an organization affiliated with Russia's military intelligence agency (GRU) - aimed to "stoke socio-political tensions and influence the U.S. electorate during the 2024 U.S. election".

"The Governments of Iran and Russia have targeted our election processes and institutions and sought to divide the American people through targeted disinformation campaigns," Treasury's Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Bradley Smith, said in the statement.

"The United States will remain vigilant against adversaries who would undermine our democracy."

Russia's embassy in Washington said in a statement to Reuters: "Russia has not and does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, including the United States."

"As President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stressed, we respect the will of the American people. All insinuations about 'Russian machinations' are malicious slander, invented for use in the internal political struggles in the United States," the spokesperson added.

Iran's mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment, read the report.

Republican Donald Trump was elected president in November, beating Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and capping a remarkable comeback four years after he was voted out of the White House.

The Treasury said the Cognitive Design Production Center planned influence operations since at least 2023 designed to incite tensions among the electorate on behalf of the IRGC.

The Treasury accused the Moscow-based Center for Geopolitical Expertise (CGE) of circulating disinformation about candidates in the election as well as directing and subsidizing the creation of deepfakes.

The Treasury said CGE also manipulated a video to produce "baseless accusations concerning a 2024 vice presidential candidate." It did not specify which candidate was targeted.

The Moscow-based center, at the direction of the GRU, used generative AI tools to create disinformation distributed across a network of websites that were designed to look like legitimate news outlets, the Treasury said.

It accused the GRU of providing financial support to CGE and a network of U.S.-based facilitators in order to build and maintain its AI-support server and maintain a network of at least 100 websites used in its disinformation operations, Reuters reported.

CGE's director was also hit with sanctions in Tuesday's action.

An annual U.S. threat assessment released in October said the United States sees a growing threat of Russia, Iran and China attempting to influence the elections, including by using artificial intelligence to disseminate fake or divisive information.

Israeli attacks on hospitals in Gaza have devastated the Palestinian enclave's health system and raised serious concerns about Israel's compliance with international law, the U.N. Human Rights Office said in a report on Tuesday.

The 23-page report, documenting various attacks between Oct. 12, 2023, and June 30, 2024, concluded that since the Hamas attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the conduct of hostilities in Gaza had had severe consequences on Palestinians' access to medical attention, Reuters reported.

"The destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza, and the extent of killing of patients, staff, and other civilians in these attacks, is a direct consequence of the disregard of international humanitarian and human rights law," it said.

Daniel Meron, Israel's permanent representative to the U.N. in Geneva, described the report's data as fabricated. He said on X that Israel operates in accordance with international law, would never target innocent civilians, and accused Hamas of using Gaza hospitals for what he called "terror activity".

The Israeli military has accused Hamas of using hospitals as command centres for military operations and said that people Israel has detained at the facilities were suspected militants.

The U.N. report alluded to such arguments but said not enough information had been made public to substantiate them, read the report.

Israel has in the past few days conducted operations against hospitals in Gaza that drew criticism from the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) among others.

The report said deliberately directing attacks against hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are, provided they are not military objectives, would be war crimes.

It also warned that a systemic pattern of rights abuses against civilians could constitute crimes against humanity.

Israel has consistently rejected such suggestions.

The U.N. said that responding to its report, the Israeli government said its military had taken extensive measures to mitigate civilian harm and minimize disruption, including providing aid and evacuation routes, and setting up field hospitals.

In a statement, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, said: "As if the relentless bombing and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza were not enough, the one sanctuary where Palestinians should have felt safe in fact became a death trap."

Hamas killed 1,200 people and abducted 251 to Gaza in its attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to Israeli tallies.

More than 45,500 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's subsequent campaign against Hamas in Gaza, Palestinian health officials say.