Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement on Wednesday announced the deaths of eight of its members after a day of cross-border fire with Israel that left at least 16 people dead.
Hezbollah said it had fired a barrage of rockets into northern Israel after its neighbour carried out a deadly strike on southern Lebanon.
One Israeli civilian was killed by the rocket fire.
Erdal Besikcioglu, adored in Turkey for his TV role as troubled Ankara police detective Behzat C, will be playing a different role this Sunday when he seeks to win over a conservative suburb of the capital in local elections.
In the long-running TV series, Besikioglu plays a complex but ultimately decent man, who, despite being discredited by his superiors, continues to take on a rotten system stuffed with venal officials.
Gazans waited again Tuesday in their hundreds for food to fall from the sky at beaches in the famine-stalked north, a day after nearly 20 died trying to get to parachutes carrying aid.
Twelve of them drowned trying to wade into the sea to get aid packages that went astray, according to the Hamas government and the Swiss-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.
They were "young men and children", witnesses told AFP. "They didn't know how to swim. They went and did not return."
The UN expert who concluded Israel was committing acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip received broad support at the United Nations on Tuesday, with countries speaking up to back her and her report.
Francesca Albanese, the special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, told the UN Human Rights Council that countries should impose an arms embargo and sanctions on Israel.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant Tuesday that civilian casualties in Gaza are "too high" and suggested alternatives to a major Israeli operation in the territory's south.
A separate Israeli delegation was supposed to visit Washington to discuss US concerns over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plans to launch an assault on the southern city of Rafah, where much of Gaza's population has sought refuge.
Spain's government has acquired a three-percent stake in telecoms giant Telefonica following concerns over a Saudi firm taking a piece of a company that Madrid considers strategically important.
Spanish state-owned holding company SEPI said in a filing with the stock market regulator late Monday that the move was "in line with a cabinet decision in December" to acquire 10 percent of Telefonica's share capital.
At the time, the government of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said it was to safeguard the firm's "strategic capacities and essential importance" to Spain.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, on a visit to Iran on Tuesday, said Israel is experiencing "unprecedented political isolation", a day after the UN Security Council called for a ceasefire in the Gaza war.
"Although this resolution came late and there may be some gaps that need to be filled, the resolution itself indicates that the Israeli occupation is experiencing unprecedented political isolation," Haniyeh told a news conference in Tehran after a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
Ahmed al-Hakim's 27-year-old brother was tortured to death in prison in Syria's jihadist-run northwest, sparking rare protests amid accusations from residents and activists of rights violations in the opposition bastion.
"We protested and rose up against the Assad regime in order to be rid of injustice," said Hakim, 30, referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Now "we find ourselves ruled with the same methods," he told AFP, crouched near his brother Abdel-Kader's grave, flowers and plants placed in the freshly turned soil.
The United States said Tuesday it would continue airdrops of aid to besieged Gaza, despite pleas from Hamas to stop the practice after it said 18 people had died trying to reach food packages.
Hamas demanded that its enemy Israel instead allow more aid trucks to enter the war-torn territory, which the United Nations has warned is on the brink of a "man-made famine" after nearly six months of war.
A military plane banked over the war-ravaged ruins of Gaza City dropping dozens of black parachutes carrying food aid.
On the ground, where almost no building within sight was still standing, hungry men and boys raced towards the beach where most of the aid seemed to have landed.
Dozens of them jostled intensely to get to the food, with scrums forming up and down the rubble-strewn dunes.
"People are dying just to get a can of tuna," said Mohamad al-Sabaawi, carrying an almost empty bag on his shoulder, a young boy beside him.
