The United Nations on Monday condemned the "unacceptable" level of violence becoming commonplace against humanitarian workers, a record 280 of whom were killed worldwide in 2023.
And it warned that the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza is potentially fueling even higher numbers of such deaths this year.
Top US diplomat Antony Blinken on Monday said Israel has accepted a US "bridging proposal" for a Gaza truce deal, and pressed Hamas to do the same, having earlier said the talks may be the "last opportunity" for a ceasefire.
Blinken, on his ninth visit to the Middle East since Hamas's October 7 attack triggered the war with Israel, said he had "a very constructive meeting" with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who "confirmed to me that Israel accepts the bridging proposal."
For months, Safaa Yassin has dressed her child in the same white bodysuit, an all-too-familiar tale in the Gaza Strip, which has been devastated by 10 months of war.
"When I was pregnant, I dreamed of dressing my daughter in beautiful clothes. Today, I have nothing to put on her," says Yassin, one of thousands of Palestinians displaced from Gaza City.
"I never thought that one day I wouldn't be able to dress my children," says the 38-year-old, now living in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area designated as a humanitarian zone by Israeli forces.
Israel's under-pressure prime minister traded blame with Hamas militants on Sunday for delays in reaching a Gaza truce accord as top US diplomat Antony Blinken landed in Tel Aviv to push for a deal.
Making his ninth trip to the Middle East since the Gaza war began when Hamas attacked Israel in October, the US secretary of state is to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders.
Diplomats say a Gaza deal could help avert a wider conflagration, and a US official speaking on customary condition of anonymity said this is "a particularly critical time".
Palestinian officials said two people were killed in an Israeli air strike in the occupied West Bank on Saturday that the Israeli military said targeted a "terrorist cell" in the Jenin area.
"Two bodies were transferred to Jenin public hospital after the occupiers (Israeli forces) bombed a car in the centre of the city," the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that the strike was carried out by an "Israeli drone".
Sobbing relatives thronged Sheikh Ragheb Hospital Saturday after an Israeli air strike killed 10 Syrians, including two children, who had escaped war at home only to die in south Lebanon.
The early morning strike hit a building in the Wadi al-Kafur area of Nabatieh, killing the 10 including a mother and her two children, Lebanon's health ministry said.
Israel's military said aircraft had struck a Hezbollah weapons storage facility.
A senior Hamas official on Saturday dismissed optimistic talk by US President Joe Biden that a Gaza truce is nearer after negotiations in the Gulf emirate of Qatar.
"To say that we are getting close to a deal is an illusion," Hamas political bureau member Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP. "We are not facing a deal or real negotiations, but rather the imposing of American diktats."
He was responding to Biden's comment Friday that "We are closer than we have ever been."
The Lebanese health ministry said an Israeli air strike on the south on Saturday killed 10 Syrians, as the Israeli military reported hitting weapons stores of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement.
The death toll from the strike in the Wadi al-Kafur area of Nabatieh is one of the heaviest since Hezbollah began exchanging near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces after the Gaza war erupted last October.
Hezbollah has gradually revealed its military capabilities in 10 months of cross-border clashes with Israel, analysts say, including footage of purported underground missile facilities released Friday amid fears of all-out war.
The Lebanese Shiite Muslim movement, armed and financed by Iran, has traded near-daily fire with Israeli forces in support of its ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war.
The Israeli settlers who attacked Hassan Arman's village of Jit in the occupied West Bank had a simple aim, he says: "To burn, kill, or destroy" -- all of which took place that night.
Residents hid in fear while dozens of settlers ransacked their northern village late on Thursday, burning homes and cars, until eventually a young Palestinian man was shot dead.
Arman, whose car was destroyed by fire during the attack, said he had "never seen anything like it" in Jit as he opened the charred door of his vehicle.
