PARIS — Thomas Bach who led the International Olympic Committee through a decade of controversy, rising national tension and stunning sport, will step aside after his term ends in 2025.

The IOC President announced Saturday he will not consider an extension that would allow him to stay in office longer. During a speech, Bach, age 70 of Germany, said the Olympic movement would be “best served by a change in leadership.”

The IOC governs both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, the two largest international sport festivals in the world. The current Summer Olympics close on Sunday in Paris.

Some IOC board members had urged Bach to seek a waiver to the term limit that requires him to step aside, but on Saturday Bach rejected that idea.

“In order to safeguard the credibility of the IOC we all…have to respect the high standards of good governance which we have set for ourselves,” Bach said.

Bach took over as head of the IOC in 2013. His tenure has often been controversial.

Under his leadership, the IOC allowed Russia to continue competing in the Olympics – albeit without flying the national flag or playing the national anthem – despite a doping scandal that erupted after the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver (L) and IOC President Thomas Bach speak during Saturday’s men’s gold medal basketball game between France and United States.

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He led the Olympic movement through a Summer and a Winter Games marred by the Covid pandemic. Many critics believed those Games should have been canceled.

During the current Summer Games, Bach threatened to revoke the Salt Lake City Winter Games scheduled for 2034 if the U.S. doesn’t end investigations and criminal probes into the operations of the World Anti-Doping Agency, which is charged with policing the use of performance enhancing drugs during the Olympics and other events.

In a speech in Paris last month, Bach also raised alarm about he future of the Olympic movement in an increasingly polarized world.

“The trends are unfortunately clear,” Bach said. “Decoupling of economies, narrow self-interest trumping the rule of law. In this new world order, cooperation and compromise are sadly considered disparaging terms.”

Before his tenure as leader of the IOC, Bach competed in the 1976 Summer Games in fencing, where he won a gold medal.

The IOC is expected to vote on a new President for the organization next March in Athens, with Bach stepping aside in June 2025. Bach said his goal was to “ensure a smooth transition, to hand over the steering wheel of our ship to my best possible successor.”

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An Israeli air strike tore through a Gaza City shelter housing displaced Palestinians on Saturday morning, killing around 100 people, according to authorities in the Hamas-run enclave.

The strike on the Al Taba’een school in the Daraj Tuffah neighbourhood came during dawn prayers, according to eyewitnesses, with videos on social media showing masses of bodies in a makeshift hall.

If confirmed, the death toll would make it one of the deadliest Israeli attacks since the start of the Gaza war, which is now entering its 11th month.

Local authorities in Gaza City called it a “massacre”, as emergency personnel worked to locate and evacuate the injured from the rubble.

Taisir al-Tanna, a surgeon at the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City where many of the victims of the attack were taken, said: “There are lots of dangerous injuries. This has been a very bloody day.”

He said he had carried out several amputations, including operating on at least four children.

The Israeli military on Saturday confirmed it had struck the school, saying that it was targeting a “Hamas command and control centre” within which militants were taking cover and planning attacks.

“Numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and intelligence information,” the Israeli military said in a statement, adding that the shelter for civilians displaced by the fighting was located in a mosque adjacent to the school.

Over the past month, the Israeli military has stepped up its attacks on schools across the Gaza Strip, arguing that Hamas militants are using civilian shelters as operational hubs and the displaced people there are “human shields”.

At least 19 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants were killed in the strike, the Israel Defense Forces later said. It disputed the death toll reported from inside Gaza. 

“The strike was carried out using three precise munitions, which, according to professional analysis, cannot cause the amount of damage that is being reported by the Hamas-run Government Information Office in Gaza,” the IDF said.

A spokesperson for the US National Security Council said it was “deeply concerned” about the reports of civilian casualties and was asking Israel for “further details”.

“We know Hamas has been using schools as locations to gather and operate out of, but we have also said repeatedly and consistently that Israel must take measures to minimise civilian harm,” the NSC said in a statement. “This underscores the urgency of a ceasefire and hostage deal, which we continue to work tirelessly to achieve.”

According to health authorities in the shattered enclave, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since the conflict began. It was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel which killed 1,200 people, according to official Israeli figures. Some 250 Israelis and foreign nationals were taken to Gaza as hostages during the assault, of whom more than 100 remain in captivity.

Saturday’s strike came as the US, Egypt and Qatar made a renewed push for a deal in Gaza that would halt the fighting and bring the Israeli hostages home.

The three countries, which have been trying to mediate between Israel and Hamas for months, issued a statement calling for both sides “to resume urgent discussions in Doha or Cairo to close remaining gaps” and “commence implementation of the deal without further delay”.

A meeting was mooted for next Thursday, although its prospects remain unclear. The US and its allies view a ceasefire-for-hostages deal as the only way to de-escalate regional hostilities.

Israel on Saturday remained on edge, awaiting an attack by Iran and the Lebanon-based Hizbollah movement in retaliation for two recent assassinations targeting senior militant leaders.

An Israeli air strike killed top Hizbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut late last month, while a few hours later, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, was slain in Tehran. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for Haniyeh’s assassination.

The administration of US President Joe Biden is racing to avoid a full-blown war and moving additional military assets, including battleships and fighter jet squadrons, to the region.

In a call with Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant on Friday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that “escalation is in no party’s interest”.

According to a statement released by the US State Department, Blinken “reiterated the urgent need to reach a ceasefire in Gaza that would secure the release of hostages, allow a surge of humanitarian assistance, and create the conditions for broader regional stability”.

Additional reporting by Heba Saleh in Cairo and Felicia Schwartz in Washington

Politico reports that it was sent communications from inside the Trump campaign, including Sen. J.D. Vance’s (R-OH) 271-page vetting file, allegedly by an Iranian hacker.

The outlet said that it has been receiving anonymous emails containing internal communications from the Trump campaign. The campaign acknowledged the authenticity of the communications on Saturday, accusing “foreign sources hostile to the United States,” for leaking them.

“These documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our Democratic process,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told Politico. “On Friday, a new report from Microsoft found that Iranian hackers broke into the account of a ‘high ranking official’ on the U.S. presidential campaign in June 2024, which coincides with the close timing of President Trump’s selection of a vice presidential nominee.”

“Another Iranian group, this one connected with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, sent a spear phishing email in June to a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign from the compromised email account of a former senior advisor,” the Microsoft report stated. “The email contained a link that would direct traffic through a domain controlled by the group before routing to the website of the provided link.”

“Within days of this activity, the same group unsuccessfully attempted to log into an account belonging to a former presidential candidate,” the report added.

Politico reported that on July 22 it began receiving emails from an AOL account only identified by the moniker “Robert” that contained internal communications from the Trump campaign.

One email contained a 271-page report on Vance entitled “POTENTIAL VULNERABILITIES.” Robert told Politico they had a “variety of documents from [Trump’s] legal and court documents to internal campaign discussions,” and when pressed for how they obtained them, Robert responded, “I suggest you don’t be curious about where I got them from. Any answer to this question, will compromise me and also legally restricts you from publishing them.”

This is by no means a first for Trump. In 2020, a hacker hacked his X account by guessing his password, ‘maga2020!’

Trump has also allegedly been the target of an Iranian assassination plot which resulted in a Pakistani man named Asif Merchant, with ties to the Islamic Republic, being charged by the DOJ on Wednesday.