Two ultraconservative candidates have pulled out of Iran's Friday presidential vote, leaving four contenders including one reformist still in the race.

Tehran's ultraconservative mayor, Alireza Zakani, announced his withdrawal in a post on social media platform X on Thursday, after earlier denying he was ending his campaign.

Zakani's withdrawal came hours after a statement by the Ministry of Interior confirming the exit of Amirhossein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi, another ultraconservative.

In his post, Zakani urged two other candidates to unite.

Israel's military on Friday said it was conducting raids backed by air strikes in northern Gaza, killing "dozens" of militants in an area where it had declared the command structure of Hamas dismantled months ago.

The operation in Shujaiya, on the edge of Gaza City, caused numerous casualties, witnesses and medics said on Thursday when it began.

Renewed fighting in Gaza's north followed comments on Sunday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he said the "intense phase" of the war was winding down after almost nine months.

In a sun-baked cemetery in northern Iraq, silence lingers over a forsaken corner devoid of mourners, where women killed in gender-based violence rest in unmarked graves.

Domestic violence and femicide have long plagued Iraq's conservative society, including through so-called "honour killings" -- the murders of women deemed to have breached patriarchal social norms, often at the hands of close relatives.

In the unmarked section of the Siwan cemetery in Sulaimaniyah, the second city of the autonomous Kurdistan region, many of the headstones are blank.

Patients in Gaza's few standing hospitals are dying in droves from infections resulting from a lack of protective gear and soap, even when they survive their horrific blast injuries.

And health workers are facing agonizing decisions, like giving up on a seven-year-old boy with extensive burns because bandages are in short supply and he'd have probably died anyway.

Israel and the United States said Wednesday they had made progress toward resolving a rift over US weapons shipments after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly accused President Joe Biden's administration of slowing down deliveries.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant met top officials over three days in Washington as he voiced hope for quietly working through disagreements with Israel's vital ally, drawing an implicit contrast to Netanyahu's more confrontational approach.

Paris judges on Wednesday confirmed a French arrest warrant for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad over alleged complicity in crimes against humanity for 2013 chemical attacks, the plaintiffs' lawyers said.

The Paris appeals court found Assad could be sought over deadly August 2013 attacks on Syrian soil with chemical weapons.

"This is a historic decision. It's the first time a national court has recognised that a sitting head of state does not have total personal immunity" for their actions, said the plaintiffs' lawyers Clemence Bectarte, Jeanne Sulzer and Clemence Witt.

Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin on Wednesday urged warring parties in the Middle East to accept "peace proposals", saying the region including Lebanon "doesn't need war".

"The Middle East is going through a critical moment," Parolin told a press conference in Beirut during a days-long visit to Lebanon.

The Holy See "asks for peace proposals to be welcomed, so that fighting stops on each side, so hostages in Gaza are released, so that the necessary aid arrives unhindered to the Palestinian population", he said.

The outgoing United Nations humanitarian chief warned Wednesday that a spread of the Israel-Hamas war to Lebanon would be "potentially apocalyptic", as fighting raged in the southern Gaza Strip.

Martin Griffiths described Lebanon as "the flashpoint beyond all flashpoints", especially its southern border with Israel which has seen daily cross-border violence since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

"It's beyond planning. It's potentially apocalyptic," warned Griffiths whose term as UN humanitarian coordinator ends this week.

Iranians vote on Friday to elect a new president from six candidates, including a lone reformist who hopes he can challenge the dominance of conservatives in the Islamic republic.

A presidential election had not been due until 2025, but was brought forward after ultraconservative Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash last month.

The snap poll comes at a challenging time as Iran grapples with the economic impact of international sanctions amid heightened regional tensions over the Gaza war between Israel and Tehran's ally Hamas.

The United States is pressing Israel to avoid a major war against Lebanon's Hezbollah, with top American officials urging a diplomatic solution in order to prevent another Middle East crisis.

Israeli forces and Iran-backed Hezbollah are exchanging fire on a near-daily basis, and the Israeli army said last week that plans for an offensive in Lebanon were "approved and validated."