Israel carried out fresh strikes in southern Gaza on Tuesday, forcing hundreds of Palestinians to flee after the army once again ordered the evacuation of certain densely populated areas.

Witnesses reported multiple strikes in and around the city of Khan Yunis, where eight people were killed and more than 30 were wounded, according to a medical source and the Palestinian Red Crescent.

The bombardment came after a rare rocket barrage claimed by the militant group Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas.

Israel on Monday freed the head of Gaza's biggest hospital who said he was tortured during seven months in detention, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu soon after criticised the release as a "serious mistake".

Tensions over the freeing of Al-Shifa hospital director Mohammed Abu Salmiya became public almost as soon as he was sent back to Gaza with dozens of other Palestinians held since the October 7 attacks that sparked the Israel-Hamas war.

The World Health Organisation expressed concern after Abu Salmiya was detained on November 23 with other hospital staff.

Passengers and crew of a British Airways flight who were taken hostage in Kuwait in 1990 have launched legal action against the UK government and the airline, a law firm said Monday.

People on BA flight 149 were taken off the Kuala Lumpur-bound plane when it landed in the Gulf state on August 2 that year, hours after Iraq's then leader Saddam Hussein invaded the country.

Some of the 367 passengers and crew spent more than four months in captivity, including as human shields against Western attacks on the Iraqi dictator's troops during the first Gulf war.

Representatives of Afghanistan's Taliban government began meetings on Sunday with UN officials as they attended talks in Doha with special envoys to the Central Asian country for the first time, a UN spokesperson said.

The two-day, UN-hosted meeting in Qatar is the third of its kind in the gas-rich emirate in just over a year but the first to include Taliban authorities who seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.

Palestinian officials said an Israeli strike on Sunday in the occupied West Bank killed a man identified by a militant group as one of its commanders, with the Israeli military confirming it had targeted a "wanted terrorist".

Palestinian official news agency Wafa said the strike was carried out with a drone that hit a house in Nur Shams refugee camp, near the town of Tulkarm in northern West Bank.

The Ramallah-based health ministry said a Palestinian man was killed and five other people were wounded "following a strike by the (Israeli) occupation".

The first round of Iran's presidential election revealed shrinking support for both reformists and conservatives even though some voters are pushing for change by backing the sole reformist candidate, analysts say.

Masoud Pezeshkian, the reformist contender, and ultraconservative Saeed Jalili led the polls held on Friday to replace the late ultraconservative president Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash last month.

Heavy battles and bombardment hit Gaza City's Shujaiya district for a fourth day on Sunday, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged his forces were engaged in a "difficult fight".

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled the devastated neighbourhood, where the Israeli army said it has carried out raids and fought Palestinian militants both "above and below ground" in tunnels.

Two men were remanded in custody Sunday in connection with an attack outside the Israeli embassy in Belgrade that Serbian authorities called a "targeted terrorist act", a minister said.

The assailant, whom the police said was a "convert" to Islam, shot a Serbian police officer in the neck with a crossbow while he was on duty in front of the embassy early Saturday.

The officer then shot and killed the attacker.

The assailant, from Mladenovac, near Belgrade, lived in Novi Pazar, a historical and political centre of Serbia's Bosniak Muslim minority, police said.

At least once a day, the hum of every fan, air conditioner and fridge across Egypt goes quiet. The lights go out and an expletive is muttered or hurled into the quickly-heating air.

Lifts stop, errands are cancelled and meetings delayed for as long as the power stays out -- hopefully an hour or two, but recently even longer.

It is now a year since energy and foreign currency crises led Egypt's government to institute planned blackouts known as "load shedding".

But the measures have not been felt equally across the country.

A Serbian police officer on Saturday killed a man who shot him in the neck with a crossbow in front of the Israeli embassy in Belgrade, in what the prime minister called a "terrorist act".

Police identified the assailant as being a "convert" to Islam, who was born in 1999 in the town of Mladenovac, some 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Belgrade.

The attack happened around 11:00 am (0900 GMT) on Saturday in the Serbian capital, when the attacker shot the officer who was on duty outside the Israeli embassy.