The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog on Thursday said Iran is showing "willingness" to re-engage on the nuclear issue, but that Tehran will not reconsider its decision to deny access to top UN inspectors.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said Tehran was "showing signs of willingness to reengage, not only with the IAEA, but also... with our former partners in the nuclear agreement of 2015."

Lebanese man Hassan Slim had avoided Syria for years as war raged in the neighbouring country, but has now found himself fleeing there as Israeli strikes pounded Lebanon's south.

Slim, 24, was waiting on Wednesday with his elderly mother for their papers to be processed on the Syrian side of a border crossing, after a dramatic escalation this week of nearly 12 months of cross-border clashes between Lebanon's Hezbollah and Israeli forces.

The United States on Thursday announced $535 million in new aid for Syrians, pledging to keep up humanitarian assistance even after fighting in the brutal war has ended.

Uzra Zeya, the US under secretary in charge of civilian security, announced the new funding on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

The funding will go through humanitarian groups to assist Syrians including refugees by providing shelter, food, education and healthcare, the US Agency for International Development said.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas called Thursday on the international community to stop sending weapons to Israel in order to halt bloodshed in the West Bank and Gaza, singling out the United States.

Abbas said that Washington continued to provide diplomatic cover and weapons to Israel for its war in Gaza despite the mounting death toll there, now at 41,534 according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run strip.

The United States has accused Russia of discussing weapon transfers with Yemen's Iran-backed Huthi rebels whose attacks on Red Sea shipping are holding hostage a vital commercial waterway.

Speaking to AFP on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, US Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking said Moscow was "cutting its own deals" with the Huthis to allow their ships to sail through the Red Sea unharmed.

"We have confirmation that the Russians and the Huthis are in dialogue about ways to cooperate," including on weapon transfers, Lenderking said Wednesday.

The facade of Denmark's foreign ministry in Copenhagen was sprayed with anti-Israeli slogans Thursday, police said.

Police told AFP in a statement that they had been made aware early Thursday that a foreign ministry building had been "vandalized with political graffiti".

Messages such as "Boycott Israel" and "Israel kills children" was spray-painted on the wall in red.

Pictures from news agency Ritzau showed cleaners removing the paint and words. Police said they were securing video images and conducting technical investigations.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza on Thursday accused the Israeli army of treating exhumed bodies in an "inhumane" manner, saying it deposited a container containing scores of dead Palestinians without proper documentation.

The Israeli army rejected the accusation, saying its policy was to treat the bodies of the deceased "with dignity and respect".

Israel has regularly taken dead bodies out of Gaza to determine whether they are hostages seized during Hamas's October 7 attack which sparked the ongoing war in the Palestinian territory.

The family of jailed British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah urged the UK government on Thursday to act to ensure his release in three days' time, when he will have served a full five years in custody.

Abdel Fattah, 42, was arrested on September 29, 2019.

Just over two years later, he was handed a five-year sentence for "spreading false news" by sharing a Facebook post about police brutality.

But his family say the time he spent in pre-trial detention from 2019 means he should be freed on Saturday.

Lebanese businessman Anis Rubeiz has lived through conflict and crisis in his country but now sees no hope as all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah appears closer than ever.

"Everything is collapsing around us," said Rubeiz, 55, in Beirut's Christian-majority Ashrafieh district, criticising what he said were attempts to drag Lebanon into a war it could do without.

Lebanon is crushed by a five-year economic collapse and paralysed by a longstanding political deadlock.

An Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs on Thursday killed the head of Hezbollah's drone unit, the militant group and the Israeli military said.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah said in a statement that the strike killed Mohammed Srur, born in 1973.

The Israeli military earlier said in a statement that its fighter jets had "targeted and eliminated" Srur, identifying him as "the commander of Hezbollah's air unit".

It was the fourth attack in a week targeting Hezbollah commanders in the densely populated area, one of the group's strongholds.