Jailed Iranian Nobel Peace laureate Narges Mohammadi this week faces a new trial and risks being transferred out of Tehran to a new prison to serve an eventual sentence, her family said on Monday.
The trial, which gets underway on Tuesday at a Tehran revolutionary court, is the first against Mohammadi since her family accepted the 2023 prize on her behalf in Oslo on December 10.
France's Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna on Monday urged restraint in meetings with senior officials in Beirut, seeking to de-escalate tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border amid near-daily exchanges of fire.
Since October 8, the day after the Israel-Hamas conflict started, the frontier between Lebanon and Israel has seen escalating cross-border fire, mainly between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, which says it is acting in support of Palestinian armed group Hamas.
Yemen's Iran-backed Huthi rebels said Monday they had attacked two "Israeli-linked" vessels in the Red Sea, including a Norwegian-owned ship that denied any link to Israel.
In a statement, the rebels said they had carried out a "military operation against two ships linked to the Zionist entity".
They identified them as the Swan Atlantic and the MSC Clara, saying they were targeted after refusing to respond to calls.
Hamas has been the focus of a relentless Israeli onslaught in Gaza but with resilient and diverse finances, it is expected to have a significant war chest at its disposal as the conflict drags on.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to annihilate the Palestinian Islamist movement behind the October 7 attack -- the deadliest in the country's history.
The gunmen killed 1,139 people -- most of them civilians -- according to Israel, and took an estimated 250 hostages back to Gaza, where 129 are still believed to be held.
Israel faced mounting international pressure Monday over the rising civilian death toll and destruction of hospitals in Gaza, as it pressed on with its war against Hamas militants in the besieged Palestinian territory.
The United Nations Security Council was set to vote Monday on a new resolution calling for an "urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities" in Gaza.
The deadliest ever Gaza war began with unprecedented attacks by Hamas on October 7, when the group killed 1,139 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250, according to updated Israeli figures.
Iraqis voted Monday in the first provincial council elections held in a decade, which were expected to strengthen the dominance of pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim groups.
The vote comes at a time of widespread political apathy and disillusionment in the oil-rich country of 43 million that is still recovering from years of war and plagued by corruption.
Polls closed as planned at 6:00 pm (1500 GMT), state media reported, with the election commission saying preliminary results were expected 24 hours later.
Prolonged negotiations have led the UN Security Council to postpone to Tuesday a vote on a resolution that had sought a new ceasefire in Gaza, diplomatic sources said, as Washington exhibits growing impatience with key ally Israel.
The United Arab Emirates, which had introduced the latest text, requested that the vote set for 5:00 pm (2200 GMT) Monday be postponed to allow for complex negotiations to continue, and is now expected to be rescheduled for Tuesday, the sources told AFP.
In what was once the courtyard of the Kamal Adwan hospital in the northern Gaza city of Beit Lahiya, Palestinians wade through the rubble, searching for corpses.
The sound of one of them sobbing breaks out while he wraps a body to prepare for burial.
Mahmud Assaf, 50, came to the hospital from Jabalia with a cart to recover two of his relatives' children who had been patients at the facility for 10 days.
An Israeli hostage mistakenly killed by soldiers in the Gaza Strip was buried on Sunday, with his brother accusing the army of having "abandoned" and "murdered" him.
Alon Shamriz, 26, was one of the three Israeli hostages shot dead Friday by soldiers during combat in the Gaza City district of Shejaiya, even as they carried a white flag and cried for help in Hebrew.
Shamriz, Yotam Haim and Samer El-Talalqa were killed when troops mistook them for a threat and opened fire, the army said.
The Israeli army said on Sunday it had uncovered the biggest Hamas tunnel in the Gaza Strip so far, just a few hundred metres from a key border crossing.
Such was its size that small vehicles would be able to travel within the tunnel, an AFP photographer granted access to it reported.
The underground passage formed part of a wider branching network that stretched for over four kilometres (2.5 miles) and came within 400 metres (1,300 feet) of the Erez border crossing, the army said in a statement.
