Israel placed its forces on alert Saturday ahead of the anniversary of Hamas's October 7 attack, after a military official said the country was preparing its retaliation for Iran's missile attack.

The alert came with Israel engaged in an intensifying war with the Lebanese group Hezbollah, which military chief Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said would be hit "without concession or respite".

Archaeological treasures from the Gaza Strip are going on display in Geneva, with the Swiss city protecting the heritage of a territory devastated by a year of war.

Amphoras, statuettes, vases, oil lamps and figurines are among the 44 objects unearthed in Gaza going on show in the "Patrimony in Peril" exhibition at the Museum of Art and History (MAH).

"It's a part of Gaza's soul. Its identity, even," Beatrice Blandin, the exhibition's curator, told AFP. "Heritage is really the history of this strip of land, the history of the people who live there."

Farmer Chedliya Mzrighi, who is working her field along with other women in northwest Tunisia, has little hope that things will change after the country's election on Sunday.

"We have nothing here," said the 47-year-old in the impoverished Fernana area, her back curbed under the scorching sun as she shovelled herbs off the field. "We have no running water, no electricity."

Earning a mere 10 dinars (about $3) a day, she struggles to provide food and other necessities for her three children.

At a cafe in Tunis's bustling Bab Souika, a group of young men lean over sports betting slips. With presidential elections just days ahead, they are instead focused on Champions League scores -- a sign of common indifference in a country many wish to leave.

Mohamed, a 22-year-old who chose not to give his full name for fear of "imprisonment", told AFP that he and his friends were not going to vote because it was "useless".

"We have nothing to do with politics," he said. "We try to live our lives day by day. It doesn't concern us."

US President Joe Biden on Friday advised Israel against striking Iran's oil facilities, saying he was trying to rally the world to avoid the escalating prospect of all-out war in the Middle East.

But his predecessor Donald Trump, currently campaigning for another term in power, went so far as to suggest Israel should "hit" the Islamic republic's nuclear sites.

Making a surprise first appearance in the White House briefing room, Biden said that Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu "should remember" US support for Israel when deciding on next steps.

US forces on Friday hit 15 targets in Huthi-controlled areas of Yemen, the US military said.

Four provinces were struck, the Iran-backed rebels' Al Masirah television network reported.

The United States and Britain have repeatedly carried out strikes aimed at curbing the Huthis' ability to target shipping, but the rebels' attacks on merchant vessels transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden have persisted.

Israel's invasion of Lebanon this week and Iran's missile attack on its regional foe, all while war rages on in Gaza, have heightened the risk of a high-intensity conflict across the Middle East.

The spiralling violence now threatens to engulf more and more of the region despite diplomatic efforts to calm tensions, with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warning of a "sickening cycle of escalation after escalation".

AFP spoke to analysts to assess what could happen next:

- Will Israel retaliate? -

A delivery of medical supplies from the United Nations reached Lebanon on Friday, a first since last week's escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, said a UN agency and a Lebanese minister.

"An airlift... landed in Beirut earlier this morning with 30 metric tonnes of trauma and surgical supplies, enough to treat tens of thousands people," the World Health Organization's regional director Hanan Balkhy said on social media platform X.

"More flights are arriving later today and tomorrow, carrying trauma supplies, cholera supplies and mental health supplies," she added.

When an Israeli air strike killed her employer and destroyed nearly everything she owned in southern Lebanon, it also crushed Fatima Samuella Tholley's hopes of returning home to Sierra Leone to escape the spiralling violence.

With a change of clothes stuffed into a plastic bag, the 27-year-old housekeeper told AFP that she and her cousin made their way to the capital Beirut in an ambulance.

Bewildered and terrified, the pair were thrust into the chaos of the bombarded city -- unfamiliar to them apart from the airport where they had arrived months before.

Iran's supreme leader vowed in a rare address on Friday that his allies around the region would keep fighting Israel, as he defended his country's missile strike on its foe.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's address in Tehran followed Iran's second-ever direct attack on Israel. It was also the first since exchanges of fire between Tehran-backed Hezbollah fighters and Israeli troops escalated into full-blown war in Lebanon.