Israeli authorities destroyed around 50 homes belonging to Bedouins in the Negev desert on Wednesday, an AFP journalist reported, with Israel's far-right national security minister saying they were "illegal constructions".

Bulldozers flattened the houses in the Wadi al-Khalil village, sparking anger among members of its 500-strong community.

"There are more than 500 people here. (Now) the children and the women have nowhere else to go," said resident Sleiman Abu Asa.

Displaced Gazan Marwan al-Masri, sheltering in Rafah, said on Wednesday "life has completely ceased" since Israeli tanks and troops entered the city's east, sending desperate Palestinians fleeing north in the besieged territory.

More than 1.4 million people had crammed into Rafah, a city on the Gaza Strip's southern border with Egypt, as Israeli forces pushed their way southward from the coastal territory's north during months of war against Hamas militants.

President Joe Biden said Wednesday he would stop US weapons supplies to Israel if it attacks Rafah in southern Gaza, his most direct warning to date over the prosecution of the war against Hamas.

In an interview with CNN Biden also deplored the fact that civilians had been killed by the dropping of US bombs on the Palestinian territory.

His fresh warning came after the US last week halted a shipment of huge American bombs to Israel as it appeared ready to proceed with a major attack on Rafah -- a city packed with Palestinian civilians sheltering near the Egyptian border.

An Iranian court has sentenced prominent filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof to jail time for "collusion against national security", his lawyer Babak Paknia said Wednesday.

Rasoulof's film "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" is due to be shown at the main competition at Cannes Film Festival this month.

The director, who is in his early 50s, has been sentenced to eight years in prison but will only serve five, Paknia said in a post on social media platform X.

Under Iranian law, jail sentences run concurrently.

The United States said Wednesday it was considering potential further holds on weapons to Israel after it halted shipments of powerful bombs out of concern about plans for a Rafah invasion.

Speaking to a congressional committee, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed the freeze last week on 1,800 2,000-lb (907 kg) bombs and 1,700 500-lb (226 kg) bombs.

"We paused one shipment of high-payload munitions" for Israel but have not "made a final determination on how to proceed with that shipment," Austin said.

A Lebanese security source said five people including two Hezbollah fighters were killed Wednesday in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon, with a Palestinian armed group reporting three fatalities among its ranks.

Israel and Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, have stepped up cross-border exchanges that have been ongoing following the Palestinian group's October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.

According to the Lebanese security source, "two Hezbollah fighters" were killed in an Israeli air strike on the border town of Adaisseh.

Israeli bombardment of south Lebanon in seven months of cross-border hostilities with Hezbollah has caused more than $1.5 billion in damage, a Lebanese official said on Wednesday.

Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah movement began attacking Israel in support of ally Hamas a day after the Palestinian militant group's unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that sparked war in the Gaza Strip.

Police forcibly cleared an encampment of pro-Palestinian protesters at George Washington University in the US capital on Wednesday, arresting dozens in the latest clash with students demonstrating over the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

Republicans in Congress had pressured local authorities to act on the encampment, summoning Washington's mayor and police chief to testify in the House of Representatives later Wednesday.

But just after 4:00 am (0800 GMT), hundreds of officers moved in on a university quad, making arrests and using pepper spray.

Hospitals in the southern Gaza Strip have only three days of fuel left due to closed border crossings, the head of the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

Despite international objections, Israel sent tanks into the overcrowded southern city of Rafah on Tuesday and seized the nearby crossing into Egypt that is the main conduit for aid into the besieged Palestinian territory.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said fuel that the UN health agency had expected to be allowed in on Wednesday had been blocked.

When Ammar Alhaqbani first picked up a racket two decades ago while living in the United States, he knew very little about the tennis scene in his native Saudi Arabia.

Keenly aware that "football has been king" in the Gulf petro-state, he was surprised to discover a budding community of tennis enthusiasts when he flew to Saudi soil in 2011 to compete as a junior.