The United States said Tuesday that Israel was not violating US law on the level of aid entering Gaza even as aid agencies said it was still not enough.

Israel had announced the opening of an additional aid crossing into Gaza, just hours before the deadline set by outgoing President Joe Biden's administration to improve the humanitarian conditions in Gaza or risk a cut to military assistance.

Gaza has been in the grips of a dire humanitarian crisis since the outbreak of war following Hamas's unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.

Rocket fire from Lebanon on Tuesday killed two residents of the northern Israeli city of Nahariya, the municipality said.

This is "a difficult and painful evening in Nahariya", the municipality said in a statement, naming the two men as Ziv Belfer, 52, and Shimon Najam, 54.

"The two were pronounced dead on the spot, near a warehouse that received a direct hit," it added.

AFP images showed black smoke rising from a fire in the warehouse.

Dor Vakinin, a first responder at the scene following the attack, said emergency teams arrived "quickly" to provide assistance.

The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog warned Tuesday that "the margins for manoeuvre are beginning to shrink" on Iran's nuclear programme ahead of an important trip to Tehran.

"The Iranian administration must understand that the international situation is becoming increasingly tense and that the margins to manoeuvre are beginning to shrink, and that it is imperative to find ways to reach diplomatic solutions," Rafael Grossi, told AFP in an interview at the COP29 climate summit in Baku.

Lebanon said Israeli strikes killed 33 people across the country on Tuesday, among them many who had been displaced by the intensified conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

The attacks targeted not only known Hezbollah strongholds such as the southern suburbs of Beirut, but also areas where the Iran-backed group has not traditionally had a presence.

The health ministry said a strike on a town in the Chouf region south of Beirut killed at least 15 people, revising a previous toll upwards from 12.

A day after Israeli warplanes flattened their building, Lebanese residents helped rescuers scour the rubble for survivors, still reeling from the rare strike in the country's far north.

The bombing killed at least eight people in Ain Yaacoub, one of the northernmost villages Israel has struck, far from Lebanon's war-ravaged southern border.

"They hit a building where more than 30 people lived without any evacuation warning," said Mustafa Hamza, who lives near the site of the strike. "It's an indescribable massacre."

Leaders of nations beset by climate disasters appealed Tuesday at the COP29 summit for greater urgency in fighting global warming, while others defended fossil fuels and their right to exploit them.

More than 75 leaders are expected to speak over two days in Baku, but the heads of many top polluting nations are giving the crunch UN climate talks in the Azerbaijan capital a miss.

The conference comes at the end of what scientists say is almost certainly the hottest year on record, with warming driven mainly by burning coal, oil and gas.

Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler on Monday called on Israel to respect Iran's sovereignty and refrain from attacking Iranian soil, highlighting warming ties between the Middle East rivals.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told a summit of Arab and Muslim leaders that the international community should oblige Israel "to respect the sovereignty of the sisterly Islamic Republic of Iran and not to violate its lands".

Sunni Muslim-majority Saudi Arabia and Shiite-majority Iran have often found themselves on opposing sides of regional conflicts including Syria's.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on Monday rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state as a "realistic" goal, after Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas reiterated his commitment to a "sovereign" country.

"I don't think this position is realistic today and we must be realistic," the newly appointed minister said in response to a question about the creation of a Palestinian state in exchange for a normalisation of ties between Israel and Arab countries.

Hezbollah said on Monday that the Israeli military has been incapable of occupying even a single village in Lebanon since launching cross-border ground operations six weeks ago.

Israeli troops on September 30 began what the military called "localised and targeted raids" against Hezbollah in Lebanon's southern border area, a week after escalating air strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.

The Paris climate agreement's goals "are in great peril" and 2024 is on track to break new temperature records, the United Nations warned Monday as COP29 talks opened in Baku.

The period from 2015 to 2024 will also be the warmest decade ever recorded, the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a new report based on six international datasets.

WMO chief Celeste Saulo said she was sounding the "red alert".

"It's another SOS for the planet," she told reporters in Baku.