Gaza's civil defence agency said on Sunday that Israeli strikes killed at least 35 Palestinians across the territory, more than 14 months into the Israel-Hamas war.

The violence came even as Palestinian groups involved in the fighting said a ceasefire deal was "closer than ever".

Israel has faced growing criticism of its actions during the war, triggered by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack, including from rights groups accusing it of "acts of genocide" which the Israeli government strongly denies.

Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli strikes overnight and early Sunday killed at least 28 Palestinians, including at one family's home and at a school building the military said was used by Hamas.

There was no let-up in the violence in the Gaza Strip more than 14 months into the Israel-Hamas war, even as Palestinian groups involved in the fighting said a ceasefire deal was "closer than ever".

Two US Navy pilots were shot down over the Red Sea early Sunday in "an apparent case of friendly fire," the US military said.

Yemen's Iran-backed Huthi rebels said later on Sunday they had "targeted" the aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman a day earlier in an operation that led to "shooting down an F-18 aircraft" and thwarting "American-British aggression" against Yemen.

United States Central Command said late on Saturday that both US pilots were recovered alive but "initial assessments indicate that one of the crew members sustained minor injuries".

The smell of dampness rises through the dust at a private club in central Baghdad, one of many shut in a crackdown on alcohol sales in Iraq.

"We appealed to all authorities in the country, but no one listened to us," said the owner, a Christian who asked not to be named.

Although a law banning the sale and import of alcohol was passed in 2016 and came into force at the start of last year, its enforcement had been patchy.

But conservative lawmakers have a majority in parliament, and have pushed for stronger action.

On a hillside in Tunisia's northwestern highlands, women scour a sun-scorched field for the wild herbs they rely on for their livelihoods, but droughts and rising temperatures are making it ever harder to find the precious plants.

Yet the harvesters say they have little choice but to struggle on, as there are few opportunities in a country hit hard by unemployment, inflation and high living costs.

School lessons ended in Syria's biggest Palestinian refugee camp on October 18, 2012, judging by the date still chalked up on the board more than a decade later.

"I am playing football"; "She is eating an apple"; "The boys are flying a kite" are written in English.

Outside, the remaining children in the Damascus suburb of Yarmuk now play among the shattered ruins left by Syria's years of civil war.

Pope Francis on Saturday condemned the bombing of children in Gaza as "cruelty", sparking a sharp response from Israel which accused him of double standards.

The pontiff made his remarks a day after the rescue agency in Gaza said an Israeli air strike had killed seven children from one family.

"Yesterday they did not allow the Patriarch (of Jerusalem) into Gaza as promised," the pope told members of the government of the Holy See.

"Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war.

"I want to say it because it touches my heart."

At a Damascus intersection, young volunteers act as unofficial traffic cops after police assigned to the duty deserted their posts when president Bashar al-Assad fell to a rapid rebel advance.

Some traffic officers abandoned their uniforms and motorbikes in the street on December 8, the day the rebels took Damascus.

Traffic jams resulted, especially where signals weren't working or crowds gathered to mark the end to more than half a century of paranoid and brutal rule by the Assad clan.

In the towns and villages of southern Syria that Israel has occupied since the overthrow of longtime strongman Bashar al-Assad, soldiers and residents size each other up from a distance.

The main street of the village of Jabata al-Khashab is largely deserted as a foot patrol of Israeli troops passes through it.

Most villagers have cloistered themselves inside their homes since the troops arrived. A few look on through windows and from rooftops.

The suspected perpetrator of a deadly ramming at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg on Friday is a 50-year-old Saudi refugee from a Shiite family who declared himself an atheist and "anti-Islam".

Taleb Jawad al-Abdulmohsen had been living in Germany since 2006 and practised as a psychiatrist in the town of Bernburg, near Magdeburg. He had no known links to jihadists.