As temperatures fall in Gaza, displaced Palestinians living in makeshift shelters with little food or warm clothes fear the approaching winter, the second since the war began.

"We did not expect that another winter would pass while we are still under war," Salah Abu al-Jabeen told AFP on Wednesday.

Originally from the north of the Gaza Strip, the 32-year-old is living in an overcrowded makeshift camp in the central Gaza city of Nuseirat.

"We need to replace the tent covers because they have deteriorated from the summer sun," she said.

Israeli strikes on Wednesday pounded Lebanon's Tyre, an ancient coastal city which boasts a UNESCO World Heritage site, leaving swathes of its centre in ruins.

The raids, among the worst since the start of the Israel-Hezbollah war last month, hit the "heart of Tyre", said Rana, a resident who asked to only use her first name over security concerns.

"The whole city shook," said Rana, after fleeing to the seafront following an Israeli military warning for people to evacuate much of Tyre's centre in the morning.

Turkey said it launched strikes on Kurdish militants in Iraq and Syria Wednesday after blaming them for an attack that killed five people at a defence firm near Ankara.

A further 22 people were wounded in the attack, which the government said was "very likely" carried out by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Hours later, "an air operation was carried out against terrorist targets in the north of Iraq and Syria," the defence ministry said in a statement.

A "doomsday vault" in the Arctic designed to safeguard the world's plant diversity has received a new deposit of thousands of seed samples, including Palestinian ones amid war and hunger in Gaza, it said on Wednesday.

Opened in 2008, the Global Seed Vault offers a safety net in case of natural catastrophe, war, climate change, disease or manmade disasters.

More than 30,000 samples from a record 23 organisations in 21 countries were deposited in the vault in Norway's Svalbard archipelago on Tuesday, the Crop Trust, one of the project's partners, said on Wednesday.

Not far from Beirut's heavily bombed southern suburbs, Jaiatu Koroma and her five-month-old daughter have taken refuge along with dozens of women from Sierra Leone in a dilapidated warehouse turned shelter.

After Israeli forces began heavily striking Lebanon around a month ago, Koroma, 21, from Freetown, said she strapped her young child to her back and fled her home in south Beirut, initially sleeping "in the streets".

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday sought to make headway with Saudi Arabia on normalisation with Israel, hoping a potentially historic deal will offer incentives to end the war in Gaza.

The top US diplomat flew directly from Tel Aviv in Israel to the Saudi capital Riyadh, a mere two-hour flight impossible on commercial airliners, on a tour of the Middle East days before the US election.

The World Health Organization said Wednesday that "intense bombardment" and "escalating violence" in northern Gaza had forced it to postpone the final phase of a child polio vaccination drive.

The necessary second round of vaccinations has been completed in central and southern Gaza, and was to begin on Wednesday in the north.

But the WHO said it had been "compelled to postpone" the bid to give 119,279 children in northern Gaza a second vaccine dose.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday "now is the time" to end the Gaza war, and urged Israel to avoid further escalation with Iran.

Israel is fighting Iran-backed Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon and has vowed to retaliate against Iran for an October 1 missile attack.

In southern Lebanon, Israeli strikes pounded Tyre, leaving swathes of its centre in ruins and sparking a new exodus from the once vibrant coastal city.

"The whole city shook," said resident Rana, who fled to the seafront after the Israeli military issued an evacuation warning.

AFP correspondents reported several strikes on Lebanon's Tyre on Wednesday after the Israeli army warned residents to evacuate swathes of the coastal city which boasts a UNESCO world heritage site.

AFPTV footage showed plumes of thick black smoke rising from several neighbourhoods, with parts of the evacuation area just 500 metres (yards) from the city's ancient ruins.

"Four strikes targeted the city of Tyre after the enemy threatened to bomb it," the National News Agency said, after earlier reporting that "an enemy drone targeted" a "street in Tyre".

A general in Iran's Revolutionary Guards has been charged in New York in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate a dissident Iranian-American journalist, US officials said Tuesday.

The target of the alleged assassination plot was not named in unsealed court documents, but she has been widely identified as Masih Alinejad, who lives in New York.