President Joe Biden said Friday that the United States would start to deliver relief supplies from the air into Gaza, a day after the deaths of more than 100 Palestinians at an aid convoy.

"We need to do more, and the United States will do more," Biden told reporters at the White House at the start of a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

"In the coming days we're going to join with our friends in Jordan and others in providing air drops of additional food and supplies," the 81-year-old Biden said in the Oval Office.

With the humanitarian situation in Gaza increasingly desperate, the United States said Friday that it would join some of its Arab and European allies in delivering emergency relief from the sky.

The amount of aid brought into the territory by truck has plummeted during nearly five months of war, and Gazans are facing dire shortages of food, water and medicines.

Four more children have died of "malnutrition and dehydration" in war-torn Gaza, the Hamas-ruled territory's health ministry said on Friday, the latest such reported deaths as famine warnings mount.

The deaths occurred at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said in a statement, noting that the number of child "malnutrition and dehydration" deaths now totalled 10.

Earlier Friday, a spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA told reporters that "if something doesn't change, a famine is almost inevitable" in Gaza.

Max Verstappen's quest for a fourth consecutive Formula One world championship began in style on Friday with the Red Bull ace claiming pole for the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.

Charles Leclerc's Ferrari will start alongside Verstappen on the front row for Saturday's first of a record 24 races this year.

Verstappen's 33rd career pole and third in Bahrain was a welcome boost to Red Bull after a day of continued speculation surrounding team boss Christian Horner.

The Israeli military has said AI helps it more accurately target militants in its five-month war against Hamas, but as Gaza deaths rise, experts are questioning how effective algorithms can really be.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip says the war has killed upwards of 30,000 people, the majority of them civilians.

"Either the AI is as good as claimed and the IDF (Israeli military) doesn't care about collateral damage, or the AI is not as good as claimed," Toby Walsh, chief scientist at the University of New South Wales AI Institute in Australia, told AFP.

Hundreds took to the streets across Syria's rebel-held northwest on Friday in rare protests against its jihadist rulers, as anger simmered a week after a man died in their custody.

About half of Idlib province and parts of Hama, Aleppo and Latakia are controlled by former Al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

The rebel-controlled region hosts about three million people, many of whom fled other parts of the country held or recaptured by the Russian and Iranian-backed government of President Bashar al-Assad.

As Iranians cast ballots on Friday, many are preoccupied with a pivotal question, not about which candidate to pick, but whether to vote at all.

"It is a religious duty, it is a national duty, and it is the order of the supreme leader," said Afrasiabi, 43, while proudly displaying his ink-stained finger at a polling station south of Tehran.

Afrasiabi was among those who turned out on Friday to pick members of a new parliament and the Assembly of Experts, a body in charge of electing Iran's supreme leader.

Ireland finally won their first Test match on Friday when they defeated Afghanistan by six wickets in Abu Dhabi, ending a streak of seven successive losses.

Captain Andy Balbirnie led from the front with an undefeated 58 as Ireland reached their modest target of 111 in the final session of the third day.

Ireland had played their first Test back in 2018 when they were defeated by Pakistan.

"We're absolutely excited. We've created history. The monkey is off the back and it's very special to do that," said Balbirnie whose team were wobbling at 13-3 at one stage.

Famine in the Gaza Strip is almost inevitable unless the Israel-Hamas war changes, the United Nations said Friday.

The UN and other humanitarian actors have not yet declared a state of famine in Gaza, despite worsening conditions in the Palestinian territory since the war started with the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7.

However, "once a famine is declared, it is too late for too many people", said Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA.

Left-wing firebrand George Galloway was elected to the UK parliament on Friday after tapping into anger over the Israel-Hamas war in a chaotic by-election marred by allegations of anti-Semitism.

Galloway, 69, first became an MP in 1987 and will return to the House of Commons for the first time since 2015 after winning the seat of Rochdale, in northwest England, by nearly 6,000 votes.