Argentina's President Javier Milei on Thursday likened Hamas's attacks on southern Israel to the Holocaust, after touring a kibbutz targeted in the deadly October 7 raids.

Milei joined Israel's President Isaac Herzog on a visit to Nir Oz near the border with Gaza, where residents were killed or taken hostage by the Palestinian militant group.

They were accompanied by former hostage Ofelia Roitman, an elderly Argentine who moved to Israel in 1985, making her first visit back to the farming community since she was released.

About 30 rockets were fired into northern Israel from Lebanon late Thursday into early Friday, following an Israeli drone strike that seriously wounded a commander of Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the Israeli army said.

"We can confirm that around 30 rockets were fired from Lebanon toward the areas of Ein Zeitim and Dalton in the north of Israel," an army spokesperson told AFP, adding that initial reports suggested "no one was wounded" by the strikes.

Hundreds of thousands of people's lives are at risk in north and central Gaza because of a lack of food, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees warned on Thursday.

UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini said the last time the agency was allowed to deliver supplies to the area was more than two weeks ago on January 23.

Other agencies providing humanitarian aid also reported blocks on getting relief into the Palestinian territory, which has been bombarded by Israel since Hamas's deadly attack on October 7.

US President Joe Biden will host Jordan's King Abdullah II in Washington on Monday for talks on resolving the Israel-Hamas conflict, the White House said.

The meeting comes as the United States and regional powers try to broker a ceasefire in exchange for the release of hostages from Gaza, amid hopes of a longer-term solution.

The two leaders will "discuss the ongoing situation in Gaza and efforts to produce an enduring end to the crisis," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday in a statement.

Argentina's President Javier Milei on Thursday likened Hamas's attacks on southern Israel to the Holocaust, after touring a kibbutz targeted in the October 7 raids.

Milei joined Israel's President Isaac Herzog on a visit to Nir Oz near the border with Gaza, where residents were killed or taken hostage by the Palestinian militant group.

They were accompanied by former hostage Ofelia Roitman, an elderly Argentinian national who moved to Israel in 1985, making her first visit back to the farming community since she was released.

Fakhria al-Ali depends on the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees for her breast cancer treatment in Lebanon, but after key countries suspended their financing, she fears she has been handed a death sentence.

"My life is a nightmare," said the unemployed 50-year-old, who lives in the impoverished Beddawi Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon.

"Without UNRWA I would die," she added, referring to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

Aid groups working in Yemen are warning of rising shipping costs and delivery delays due to the Red Sea attacks by Huthi rebels which threaten to aggravate one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

After nine years of conflict, more than half of Yemen's population requires humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations, with severe funding shortages hampering the response.

In Israel's biblical city of Nazareth, the basilica is empty, restaurants and shops that usually thrive on Christian pilgrims are closed, and many hotels have been shut for months.

The Gaza war that began after the Hamas attack of October 7 has plunged the country's tourism industry into a fresh crisis, just as it had started to recover from the Covid pandemic.

"We felt that the influx of tourists was starting to be good at the end of September, the beginning of October," said Marwa Taha Abu Rani, manager of the Fauzi Azar hostel in the Old City.

A German navy frigate set sail for the Red Sea on Thursday with the aim of protecting commercial ships from attacks by Yemeni rebels, as part of a planned European Union mission.

The deployment marked "the most serious engagement of a unit of the German navy in many decades," navy chief Jan Christian Kaack told reporters in Berlin.

Yemen's Iran-backed Huthi rebels have launched a series of attacks on ships crossing the Red Sea since November, saying their campaign was in solidarity with Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday sought to advance a deal to free Gaza hostages in talks with Israeli moderates as he closed a Middle East tour without securing a pause in fighting.

US officials had tempered expectations that Blinken would achieve a breakthrough during his latest visit to the region since the October 7 attack on Israel, and few expected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree immediately to a Qatari-mediated offer.