Israeli troops killed three Palestinian militants during an overnight raid in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, the military said on Wednesday.

The Palestinian health ministry confirmed at least one death in the Israeli operation, the latest in a months-long military crackdown across the occupied West Bank since Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel.

"In a joint counterterrorism activity in the city of Jenin, IDF soldiers apprehended 14 suspects, killed three terrorists and struck additional terrorists," the army said in a statement.

An Israeli strike on a residential area of Damascus killed at least two people Wednesday, Syrian state media reported, the latest deaths from an escalating Israeli air campaign since the Gaza war erupted.

Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes in Syria since civil conflict broke out in 2011, but has increased pressure on its Iran-backed neighbour since Hamas's unprecedented attack from the Gaza Strip on October 7.

Dancers and drummers swarmed the Saudi delegation from the moment they touched down in Somalia's capital to launch new aid projects, part of the kingdom's ramped-up outreach to the African nation.

Yet as they politely applauded agreements to provide stationery for schoolchildren and watering points for livestock, some Somali officials made clear they hoped Saudi engagement would go much further, including deeper into the security sphere.

Heavy fighting rocked besieged Gaza on Wednesday as aid agencies warned of looming famine and new talks were held in Cairo towards an Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage release deal.

The White House sent Middle East envoy Brett McGurk for renewed talks involving mediators and Hamas, a day after a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire was blocked by the US.

An Israeli minister said the talks had raised the "possibility of progress".

Stricken by drought and depleted by upstream dams, Iraq's once mighty rivers the Tigris and Euphrates are suffocating under pollutants from sewage to medical waste.

In a country where half the population lacks access to safe drinking water, according to UN figures, state institutions are to blame for a man-made disaster which is turning rivers into waste dumps.

"What is strange about water pollution in Iraq is that most government institutions are responsible for it," Khaled Shamal, the ministry of water resources spokesman, told AFP.

Rockets at dawn, gunfire outside, hours of anxiety: a survivor of the October 7 attack shared his account of the day Gaza militants stormed his southern Israeli community, speaking into a video camera.

Arnon Avni's story is one of several hundred witness accounts of the deadly Hamas attack being collected by Israel's national library in partnership with local and international initiatives.

G20 foreign ministers open a two-day meeting Wednesday in Brazil, with the outlook bleak for progress on a thorny agenda of conflicts and crises, from the Gaza and Ukraine wars to growing polarization.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are both expected in Rio de Janeiro for the first high-level G20 meeting of the year -- though not China's Wang Yi.

An Israeli ground offensive in Rafah would turn the southern Gaza city into a "graveyard" and heighten the looming risk of famine, leaders of global humanitarian groups warned on Tuesday.

"The consequences of a full scale assault on Rafah are truly unimaginable," Avril Benoit, executive director of Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres) in the United States, told reporters.

"Carrying out a military offensive there would turn it into a graveyard," Benoit said at a press briefing by MSF, Refugees International, Oxfam, Amnesty International and other groups.

UN aid agencies said Tuesday that food deliveries to war-torn northern Gaza had been suspended after looting attacks and that dozens of patients in a besieged hospital remain trapped in "indescribable" conditions.

The World Food Programme (WFP) and World Health Organisation (WHO) stepped up warnings as Israel prepares a major offensive in the southern city of Rafah.

The WFP said it resumed deliveries to northern Gaza on Sunday after a three-week halt but its first convoy "faced complete chaos and violence".

The French navy has shot down two drones over the Red Sea where Yemen's Huthi rebels have been attacking ships, the defence ministry in Paris said Tuesday.

The navy, which has two frigates deployed in the area, detected "multiple drone attacks originating in Yemen" overnight Monday to Tuesday, before destroying two of the unmanned aircrafts, the ministry said.

The attack came a day after the European Union formally launched a naval mission to protect Red Sea shipping from the Iran-backed Huthis who control much of war-torn Yemen.