In his fight to get his kidnapped soldier son back from Gaza, Yehuda Cohen has marched through the desert, addressed tens of thousands, been spat at and called a traitor. Now, he's going to Washington.

Cohen is determined to hound the man he blames for failing to get his son Nimrod out of Hamas detention: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As the Israeli leader visits the United States this week to bolster support for the Gaza war, a group of hostage families, including Cohen, plans to publicly challenge him at each step.

The stress shows on the face of Samiha Ismail who since October 7 has been stuck in her home in an occupied West Bank village that lives in constant fear of attack by Israeli settlers.

The day after the Hamas raid into southern Israel, settlers entered Susya, a hilltop village in the south of the West Bank, vowing retribution and "humiliation", the 53-year-old Palestinian recalled.

More than nine months on, Ismail is among 450 inhabitants who spend most of the day indoors. Even their sheep are not allowed out of their sheds.

Israel's Olympic delegation flew to Paris on Monday as the Palestinian contingent called for banning the Israeli athletes over the war in Gaza.

The Summer Games in the French capital open Friday against a backdrop of heightened security concerns and growing international outrage over the death toll and humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza.

The Palestine Olympic Committee said Monday it sent a letter to International Olympic Committee (IOC) chief Thomas Bach asking him to ban Israel, citing the bombings of the besieged strip as a breach of the Olympic truce.

To get his family the water they need for drinking, bathing and laundry, Ahmed al-Shanbari steels himself for a lengthy search through the north of the Gaza Strip.

Shanbari said most of the wells near his makeshift shelter in the Jabalia refugee camp have been destroyed.

And the water distribution network barely works after more than nine months of war that has devastated Gaza's infrastructure.

Israeli strikes on Saturday hit a power plant and fuel storage facilities in Hodeida, the main port under the control of Yemen's Iran-backed Huthi rebels.

Here is what we know about the damage caused by the attack, which set oil tanks ablaze for days and came a day after the first fatal strike by the Huthis in Israel.

- Storage tanks -

Saturday's long-distance strike, the first by Israel on the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country, hit the Hodeida harbour, a key gateway for fuel and international aid into Huthi-held parts of Yemen.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday that an Israeli operation in the main southern city of Khan Yunis killed 70 people and wounded more than 200, after Israel warned its forces would "forcefully operate" in the area.

Thousands of Palestinians fled southern areas of the territory following the Israeli army's temporary evacuation order for parts of Khan Yunis, including the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone.

Israel's military said it would act to curb rocket fire in the area, which saw heavy fighting earlier this year.

Around 300 pink flamingo chicks were rescued by volunteers in eastern Algeria after the salt lake where they hatched dried up following years of high temperatures and drought.

Thousands of flamingos migrate each year to nest in Lake Tinsilt, located around 450 kilometres (about 280 miles) southeast of the capital Algiers.

It is one of the largest wetlands in the country, with an area of more than 20 square kilometres.

Thousands of panicked Gazans fled after the Israeli military showered Khan Yunis with leaflets ordering evacuation on Monday, warning it was preparing to launch an operation in part of a former humanitarian area.

The military had declared Al-Mawasi, along the Gaza coast between the cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah, a safe zone in May, and told Palestinians to relocate there.

But it has now ordered people to leave part of the zone in eastern Khan Yunis city that it says militants have been using to launch attacks on Israeli targets.

Firefighting teams on Monday struggled to contain a massive blaze at Yemen's rebel-held Hodeida port, days after a deadly Israeli strike damaged oil storage facilities and endangered aid ships in the harbour.

Heavy flames and black smoke spiralled into the sky for a third consecutive day following the strike on Saturday, said an AFP correspondent in Hodeida.

Firefighters appeared to have made little progress, with the blaze seemingly expanding in some parts of the port, the correspondent said, amid fears it could reach food storage facilities.

Israeli settlers on Sunday attacked a group of foreign volunteers helping Palestinian farmers in the occupied West Bank, injuring some who needed hospital treatment, the activists and Israeli army said.

Eight mainly American volunteers were working with the farmers in an olive grove near the Palestinian village of Qusra when settlers came after them, said David Hummel, an American-German in the group.

"We were standing there peacefully, not a threat to anyone, when they started coming towards us and pushing us down the path," Hummel told AFP.