Jerusalem (AFP) - The UN warned Thursday it was running out of funds to house families in Gaza, as it doubled its estimate of the number of homes damaged or destroyed in this summer's war with Israel.

"Unless the situation changes urgently, we will run out of funds in January, meaning we will not be able to provide rental subsidies to many affected families nor provide the support required to carry out repairs," said Robert Turner, the operations director for the UNRWA Palestinian refugee agency.

He said more than 96,000 homes were damaged or destroyed in the 50-day war, more than twice the UN's original estimate.

Based on satellite imagery and preliminary field work immediately after the war, "we estimated about 42,000 refugee family shelters had been affected by the war," he said.

"We now know that over 96,000 homes were damaged or destroyed."

Turner said more than 7,000 homes were completely lost, affecting some 10,000 families. An additional 89,000 homes were damaged, about 10,000 of them severely.

UNRWA has estimated $720 million (585 million euros) will be needed to provide rental subsidies to families with no alternative shelter, to rebuild destroyed homes and repair damaged ones.

However, only some $100 million has been pledged.

Without additional funds, "tens of thousands of refugee families will find themselves with inadequate shelter and no support during the hardest months of winter," Turner said.

The conflict between Israel and Hamas-led Gaza militants, which ended on August 26, killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and 73 people on the Israeli side, mostly soldiers.

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U.S. general: Islamic State fight to take at least three years

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two senior Islamic State group leaders were killed in U.S. and coalition airstrikes in northern Iraq over the last week, U.S. officials said Thursday, as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel approved new orders for several hundred troops to deploy to Iraq to train Iraqi forces.

According to one of the U.S. officials, airstrikes killed a key deputy of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State militants, and one of al-Baghdadi's military chiefs. A third militant, described as a mid-level leader, was also killed.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the identification details publicly. According to one official, the names of those killed were Haji Mutazz, al-Baghdadi's deputy; Abd al (or Abdul) Basit, the military chief; and Radwin Talib.

Words of the deaths came after Hagel signed orders Wednesday for the first group of U.S. troops to go to Iraq as part of the administration's recent decision to deploy 1,500 more American forces to the country. The troops are to advise and train Iraqi forces.

Also Thursday, President Barack Obama spoke with Iraq Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, commending him for his efforts to create an inclusive government and build a united Iraqi front to combat the Islamic State militants. Obama also reiterated the U.S. commitment to train and assist the Iraqi military, provide weapons and equipment and continue to launch airstrikes against the militants.

The top U.S. commander for the mission in Iraq and Syria said Thursday the next wave of American troops will begin moving into Iraq in a couple of weeks, and cautioned that it will take at least three years to build the capabilities of the Iraqi military.

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U.S. Marine snipers from the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, take cover during a gun battle with …

Army Lt. Gen. James Terry, who is leading the U.S. campaign to defeat Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, said the challenge is to get Iraqi units trained and back into the fight so they can plan operations to regain contested areas such as Mosul.

He said that while there has been progress in halting the militants' charge across Iraq, "I think what we must do, especially inside of Iraq, is continue to build those (Iraqi) capabilities. I think you're at least talking a minimum of three years."

The Iraqi army wants to launch a counteroffensive to retake Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq, and the U.S. probably would help. While there have been some concerns that Iraq's military may not be ready yet for such an ambitious operation, Hagel said last week that the U.S. is working with senior Iraqi leaders on preparations.

"Part of the planning has to be how you generate force to do operations," Terry told reporters. The question, he said, is "how do you get into a place where you can generate some capability, pull some units back so that you can make them better, and then now start to put those against operations down the road?"

He declined to say when a Mosul operation might be launched. There have been fewer details and more limited media access to U.S. military operations in Iraq this time than during the eight years of war that ended in 2011. U.S. officials say it's because the military is there only to advise and assist the sovereign Iraqi government.

There were two airstrikes Wednesday near Mosul and two near Tal Afar in northern Iraq, according to the U.S.-led Combined Joint Task Force.

There are currently about 1,700 U.S. troops in Iraq, and President Barack Obama has authorized up to 3,000. More than 1,000 U.S. troops are expected to be deployed in the coming weeks to increase the effort to advise and assist Iraq units at the higher headquarters levels and also to conduct training at several sites around the country.

Terry offered an optimistic view of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government's progress in working more with the Sunni tribes.

The deep sectarian divide fueled the advances of the Islamic State militants across Iraq earlier this year as grievances led some to align with the extremists. U.S. officials have stressed that ongoing coalition assistance hinges in part on whether the Iraqi government becomes more inclusive.

The U.S. and Iraqi governments have proposed creating a national guard program that would arm and pay tribesmen to fight. Terry said that as the Iraqis conduct more combat operations in Sunni strongholds such as Anbar, there will be more opportunities to bring tribal members into the fight.

He said the national guard effort is starting and he is optimistic the Iraqi government will approve legislation needed for the program to move forward.

The air and ground attacks late Thursday and Friday followed an eight-hour killing spree on Tuesday of 148 people, including more than 130 children, at a military school in Peshawar.

Many Pakistanis saw the massacre as an incomparable horror and called for the government to retaliate. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the school attack, saying it was justified to inflict pain on the Pakistani military in retribution for attacks that had killed Taliban fighters’ children and family members.

Among the militants killed in Pakistan’s retaliatory strikes early Friday was a group of 32 fighters. They were ambushed in the Khyber tribal region’s Tirah valley as they headed toward the Afghan border, the Associated Pressquoted the Pakistani military as saying.

The Khyber Agency borders Peshawar. That city and North Waziristan are the two main areas of northwest Pakistan where the military has conducted operations against a variant of Taliban forces dating to last June. In Pakistan they are sometimes known as the "bad Taliban," since they are hostile to the Army, which they see as in cahoots with the West and the US.

On Friday morning, troops killed 18 more militants during a "cordon and search operation" in Khyber, the military said. …

In the southern province of Baluchistan, Pakistani security forces killed a seniorPakistani Taliban leader along with seven of his associates in three separate pre-dawn raids, said a tribal police officer, Ali Ahmed.

Army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif late Thursday signed death warrants of six "hard core terrorists" convicted and sentenced to death by military courts, the army said.

The show of resolve in battling the militants comes as a debate rages in Pakistan over "bad Taliban” and “good Taliban," the latter being seen as cooperative regarding Pakistani aims and interests in projecting power and influence in Afghanistan.

Amid the public outcry over the massacre, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifdeclared "there is no difference between good Taliban and bad Taliban" and vowed to redouble military efforts "to clean this region of terrorism," the Los Angeles Times reported.

But the challenges were immediately evident as Pakistan's anti-terrorism court on Thursday granted bail to Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the suspected mastermind of the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. The court decision came over the objections of a prosecutor, signaling the deep division in the army and political establishment over whether to break ties with the militants, who for years have been a cornerstone of the country's security policy, or make more use of them.

"There's reason to be skeptical of Sharif's statements because he's not the man in charge," said Raza Rumi, a Pakistan expert and senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington. It was the army chief of staff, Gen. Raheel Sharif, no relation to the prime minister, who rushed to Afghanistan after the Peshawar attack to call for the handing over of Pakistani Taliban leaders believed to be living on Afghan soil, Rumi said.

Taha Siddiqui, a correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, wrote this week that in Pakistan, popular sentiment against the United States is so strong, and a hard-line religious ideology so widespread, that the impact of the school attack on public opinion may wane.

Yet even after one of the most horrific slaughters of the innocent in Pakistani history, it is questionable whether the public is ready to entirely abandon its support of militancy – or a deeply populist view that the basic cause of the attacks stem from US and Western interference. …

The Pakistani Taliban, which quickly claimed responsibility for the attack, have long presented themselves as sympathetic and devout fighters subject to US drone attacks and unscrupulous Pakistani officials.

Several analysts say the incident will likely soon be forgotten, noting popular influences in the media that include conservative Islamists arguing that the real issue is Pakistan’s alliance with the West in what they depict as a fight against Islam.

Flames engulf a seven-story downtown apartment complex under construction in Los Angeles, California December 8, 2014. REUTERS/Gene Blevins

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A construction fire that gutted an entire city block of downtown Los Angeles and caused up to $30 million in damages was an act of arson, authorities said on Thursday.

Los Angeles Fire Department officials have previously said the blaze, one of the largest structure fires in the city's recent history, was likely arson but no suspects have been arrested or charged.

The conflagration erupted at about 1:30 a.m. on Dec. 8 and quickly destroyed a seven-story luxury apartment complex under construction near the junction of two freeways. Firefighters whose station is located next door to the scene opened their doors to find the entire block-long site engulfed in flames.

The heat was so intense it ignited three floors of an adjacent office high-rise and blew out windows in that building and two others. No one was injured, but road closures in the area brought downtown morning traffic to a virtual gridlock.

"Investigators recovered sufficient evidence to eliminate all known potential accidental causes and determine that the fire was intentionally set," the Los Angeles Fire Department and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said in a joint statement after searching 75,000 square feet (7,000 square meters) of debris.

The two agencies declined to reveal what they had found at the scene that pointed toward arson, citing the ongoing criminal investigation, but said they had conducted interviews throughout the community and sent potential evidence to the ATF's national laboratory for analysis.

The ATF and fire department said two men seen in videotaped footage of the fire were not considered suspects or persons of interest, but investigators wanted to interview them nonetheless.

In one video clip taken by a freelance news camera crew just after the blaze started, a man in a jacket and ball cap is seen strolling casually down the sidewalk along a chain-link fence bordering the blazing construction site.

He appears to touch the fence as if to see how hot it is, and starts to try climbing over it, before two firefighters pull him off the fence and escort him away.

The man subsequently wandered away without being interviewed by authorities, ATF spokesman Thomas Mangan previously said. He said the firefighters who had grabbed him "had their hands full" at the time.

A second unidentified man wearing a football jersey was caught on surveillance camera footage walking along the same street shortly before the flames erupted.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)