Spain's Carlos Sainz has been ruled out of the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix this weekend with appendicitis with 18-year-old British reserve driver Oliver Bearman taking his place, the Ferrari team announced Friday.

"Carlos Sainz has been diagnosed with appendicitis and will require surgery," the Italian team said in a statement.

"Oliver will therefore take no further part in this round of the F2 Championship. The Ferrari family wishes Carlos a speedy recovery."

European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen expressed hope Friday that a humanitarian aid corridor from Cyprus to Gaza will open this weekend, amid fears of famine in the war-torn Palestinian territory.

"We are very close to opening this corridor, hopefully this Sunday," von der Leyen said following a visit to the Cypriot port of Larnaca with Cyprus's President Nikos Christodoulides.

Her announcement came after US President Joe Biden, in his State of the Union address on Thursday, said the US military would establish a "temporary pier" off Gaza's coast to bring in aid.

A group of South African Jewish women held an International Women's Day march on Friday to denounce their government's silence regarding abuse by Hamas fighters against Israeli hostages.

Organised by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), the women marched in the scorching Johannesburg sun under the banner "Me Too unless you are a Jew".

"Jewish women are put to an extra burden of proof all over the world," one of the organisers, Gabriella Farber Cohen, said.

"I don't sleep anymore," Latifa Abu Hamid said while looking at pictures of her children hanging on the walls of her living room, two women and 10 men. All have passed through Israeli prisons.

Four are still languishing in jail while a fifth died in custody 14 months ago. His body remains in the hands of the Israelis, she said.

Another died in 1994, in an operation triggered by the death of an Israeli.

Hamid, 74, said she wanted to pave "another path" for her children, one of "education and knowledge".

An international effort gathered pace on Friday to get desperately needed humanitarian relief into Gaza by sea, in the latest bid to counter overland access restrictions blamed on Israel as it battles Hamas militants.

The dire conditions more than five months into the war have led some countries to airdrop food and other assistance over the besieged Gaza Strip, but a parachute malfunction turned the latest operation lethal.

For Muslims worldwide, Ramadan is a time of prayer, reflection and joyful evening meals, but all Gazans wish for this year is an end to five months of war and suffering.

It is a hope shared widely across the Islamic world, where the thoughts of many are with Gaza ahead of the fasting month which starts with the sighting of the crescent moon on Sunday or Monday.

The war sparked by Hamas's October 7 attack against Israel has devastated Gaza, killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and triggered violence elsewhere in the Middle East, from Lebanon to the seas off Yemen.

The number of female genital mutilation survivors tops 230 million worldwide, UNICEF said in a new report Thursday, an increase of 15 percent since 2016 despite progress against the practice in some countries.

"It is indeed bad news. This is a huge number, a number that is bigger than ever before," said Claudia Coppa, lead author of the report released to coincide with International Women's Day.

Female genital mutilation, known as FGM, can include partial or total removal of the clitoris as well as the labia minora, and suturing of the vaginal opening to narrow it.

Bearing food aid and wearing "Don't Starve Gaza!" t-shirts, dozens of Israeli activists drove towards the border of the besieged territory on Thursday in a show of support for Palestinians.

The 30-vehicle convoy got within three kilometres of the Kerem Shalom border crossing before police turned it back.

Organisers had expected that outcome, and they acknowledged the convoy was a symbolic act in a society in which their focus on the plight of Palestinians places them in the minority.

Shell-shocked Palestinians who returned Thursday to part of Khan Yunis where Israeli soldiers have carried out extensive military operations took stock of the outcome: dead bodies, toppled buildings and destroyed landmarks.

Across the grey ruins of central Khan Yunis, southern Gaza's largest city, the streets were filled with thousands of residents who piled whatever they could salvage onto cars, donkey-carts and even their own heads.

The authorities stressed that much had been lost for ever.

The Al-Otaibi sisters have paid a steep price for defending women's rights in Saudi Arabia, with one detained, another exiled, and the third trapped in the kingdom under a travel ban.

Initially, the Saudi sisters were emboldened by a social reform agenda which has led to dramatic changes in the deeply conservative Gulf country in the past seven years, including granting women the right to drive and the promotion of female sports.

But soon enough they came up against unspoken limits.