Tyson Fury declared himself ready to face Oleksandr Usyk and said he'd pray for his Ukrainian rival before Saturday's undisputed heavyweight clash.

The sometimes madcap Mancunian kept his comments brief in a subdued press appearance on Thursday, two days before what is being billed as the biggest fight this century.

Lennox Lewis, who became the last undisputed heavyweight champion in 1999, sat with Evander Holyfield, the man he beat to unify the belts, in the front row as Fury spoke.

At a field hospital that has become one of Gaza's main trauma centres, a doctor who has worked in a dozen war zones described the situation as the most "catastrophic" he had ever seen.

"It is devastating," said Javed Ali, International Medical Corps's head of emergency response in Gaza.

Speaking to AFP this week from a field hospital northwest of the areas of Rafah ordered evacuated by Israel, he said the situation around the far-southern city was "dire".

Hundreds of lawyers, activists and others demonstrated on Thursday in the Tunisian capital over the arrest of two lawyers in police raids on the national bar association, AFP journalists said.

Protesters gathered near the main courthouse in Tunis as police barred journalists from entering the building at the behest of the prosecutor, reporters were told.

Inside, black-robed lawyers chanted "Freedom!" and "The police state belongs in the past!", according to videos streamed live on social media.

US troops on Thursday anchored a long-awaited temporary pier aimed at ramping up emergency aid to a beach in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, the US military and Israel said.

The US Central Command said the pier was "successfully affixed to the beach in Gaza" with around 500 tonnes of aid expected to enter the Palestinian territory in the coming days.

"It's a pretty substantial amount, and it's spread out over multiple ships right now," Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, deputy CENTCOM commander, told reporters in Washington.

Egypt, after months of measured condemnation of Israel over the Gaza war, has hardened its tone and formally supported an international case accusing its neighbour of genocide.

Cairo and its state-aligned media have stepped up scathing criticism of Israel over the conflict raging next door, reflecting public anger in the world's most populous Arab nation.

The two countries have also traded blame over the closure of Gaza's Rafah border crossing with Egypt, a crucial lifeline for aid trucks, since Israeli forces and tanks captured the Gaza side last week.

Israel vowed Thursday to "intensify" its ground offensive in Rafah, in defiance of global warnings over the fate of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians sheltering in Gaza's far-southern city.

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said "additional forces will enter" the Rafah area and "this activity will intensify".

"Hundreds of targets have already been struck and our forces are manoeuvring in the area," Gallant said following a troop visit on Wednesday.

US troops early Thursday anchored a long-awaited temporary pier, meant to boost aid deliveries into war-ravaged Gaza, to a beach in the besieged Palestinian territory, the US military said.

"Today at approximately 7:40 am (0440 GMT) United States Central Command personnel supporting the humanitarian mission to deliver additional humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in need anchored a temporary pier to the beach in Gaza," CENTCOM said in a post on social media platform X.

Lebanese state-run media said an Israeli strike on a car in the country's south on Thursday killed two people, with Hezbollah-affiliated rescuers saying at least one of them was a group member.

Israel and Hamas ally Hezbollah have exchanged near-daily fire since the Palestinian group's October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza, now in its eighth month.

"Two people were martyred in the raid that targeted a car on the Ramadiya-Qana road," the official National News agency (NNA) said, after earlier reporting a drone strike.

Like hundreds of other pro-Turkish fighters, Omar left northern Syria for mineral-rich Niger last year, joining Syrian mercenaries sent to the West African nation by a private Turkish military company.

"The main reason I left is because life is hard in Syria," fighter Omar, 24, told AFP on message app WhatsApp from Niger.

In northern Syria "there are no job opportunities besides joining an armed faction and earning no more than 1,500 Turkish lira ($46) a month," Omar said, requesting like others AFP interviewed to be identified by a pseudonym for security reasons.

The Arab League on Thursday called for a UN peacekeeping force in the Palestinian territories and an international peace conference at a summit dominated by the war between Israel and Hamas.

In a concluding statement following a meeting in Manama, the 22-member grouping called for "international protection and peacekeeping forces of the United Nations in the occupied Palestinian territories" until a two-state solution is implemented.