Gaza's civil defence agency said the Israeli military issued evacuation calls Wednesday as it heavily bombarded the northern town of Beit Lahia as part of an intensive two-month operation.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Basal said the military used loudspeakers on drones to tell displaced people sheltering in a school to leave, while also firing tank shells at the area.

The army's "aerial and artillery" fire forced thousands to flee Beit Lahia via Salah al-Din road, Gaza's main north-south axis, he told AFP.

Iranian authorities on Wednesday freed Nobel peace prize winner Narges Mohammadi from prison for three weeks on medical grounds, a move supporters decried as "too little too late" and the UN said needed to be transformed into an unconditional freedom.

The release of the 2023 Nobel winner meant her Paris-based family could speak to her for the first time in two years. But supporters warned that in three weeks she is set to go back to Tehran's Evin prison.

President Emmanuel Macron completed his state visit to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday as France's government faced being ousted in a no-confidence vote.

Macron flew out after viewing the ancient AlUla heritage site, a cornerstone of the conservative country's nascent tourism industry, at the end of his three-day tour.

The first French state visit to Saudi Arabia since 2006 came against the backdrop of a major political crisis that threatens to force out the minority government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier.

Israeli settlers on Wednesday wounded a Palestinian and set buildings on fire while raiding two villages in the occupied West Bank after a nearby settlement outpost was evicted by Israeli forces, Palestinian and Israeli sources said.

"Israeli civilians entered the village of Beit Furik" east of the Palestinian city of Nablus, the Israeli army said, adding that they "set property on fire, and hurled stones".

Local authorities told AFP the attacks took place early on Wednesday morning.

Human Rights Watch criticised the treatment of migrant workers on construction projects in Saudi Arabia Wednesday ahead of the expected confirmation of the kingdom's hosting of the 2034 World Cup.

The New York-based rights group reported working conditions it said amounted to "forced labour", even on high-profile megaprojects at the heart of Saudi's ambitious Vision 2030 economic reform programme.

Near gaping holes where walls used to be, workers at a centre for women and children in south Beirut assess the damage after a nearby Israeli strike devastated their facility.

It's "going to take us a lot to have our centre running again", said Zeina Mohanna from Lebanese charity Amel Association International, lamenting the space had ended up as "collateral damage".

She said she was "astonished" at the extent of the destruction after the strike hit the building across the street in south Beirut's impoverished Hay al-Sellom neighbourhood.

Iran has released Nobel Peace laureate Narges Mohammadi, jailed since November 2021, for three weeks on medical grounds, her lawyer posted on social media.

Over the past quarter century, Mohammadi, 52, has been repeatedly tried and jailed for her vocal campaigning against Iran's widespread use of capital punishment and its mandatory dress code for women.

"Based on the advice of the examining doctor, the public prosecutor suspended the jail sentence against Narges Mohammadi for three weeks and she was released from prison," Mostafa Nili said on X.

Award-winning Syrian photographer Anas Alkharboutli, who worked for German press agency DPA, was killed Wednesday in an air strike near the Syrian city of Hama, his employer said.

"Our photographer Anas Alkharboutli, who documented the civil war in Syria in a unique visual language, has been killed in an air strike near the Syrian city of Hama. Anas was just 32 years old," DPA said in a statement.

"All of us at DPA are in shock and deeply saddened by the death of Anas Alkharboutli," editor-in-chief Sven Goesmann said in the statement.

The UN's cultural organisation added Aleppo's famous soap to its intangible cultural heritage list Tuesday with Syria's second city again wracked by war.

Artisans have brewed olive and laurel oil in large pots for some 3,000 years in the city -- which fell to Islamist-led rebels last week -- allowing the mixture to cool before cutting it into blocks, and stamping them by hand.

Syrian rebels on Wednesday encircled the key central city of Hama "from three sides", a war monitor said, despite a counteroffensive launched by government forces to retain control of the city.

Hama is strategically located in central Syria and, for the army, it is crucial to safeguarding the capital and seat of power Damascus.

The fighting around Hama follows a lightning offensive by Islamist-led rebels who in a matter of days wrested swathes of territory, most significantly Syria's second city Aleppo, from President Bashar al-Assad's grasp.