Only a dozen pilgrims turned up Friday at this year's Jewish pilgrimage on Tunisia's island of Djerba amid heightened security concerns after a deadly attack last year and as the Israel-Hamas war rages in Gaza.

The pilgrimage to the Ghriba synagogue, Africa's oldest, usually draws thousands of pilgrims from Europe, Israel and beyond, attracting international and local tourists as well.

But on the first day of the pilgrimage event this year, only about a dozen worshippers were present -- almost none of them foreigners -- with a heavy police and National Guard presence.

The shouts ringing out from the makeshift baseball court on the ship's deck are a far cry from the desperation of a few days ago, when the players were plucked from the often fatal waters of the Mediterranean.

As the young Bangladeshi men scampered and leapt for the ball, some watched while others aboard the Ocean Viking migrant rescue ship drew with crayons or pushed pawns across wooden game boards.

In a cowshed in Gaza's Khan Yunis, zookeeper Fathi Ahmed Gomaa has created a temporary home for dozens of animals including lions and baboons, having fled with them from Israel's offensive in Rafah.

"We've moved all the animals we had, except for three big lions that remain (in Rafah)", he said.

"I ran out of time and couldn't move them."

Ahmed abandoned his zoo in Rafah when Israel ordered the evacuation of parts of the southern Gazan city.

A momentary shriek presages a bone-juddering blast, followed by a plume of thick black smoke. Refrigerator-sized holes mark where Hezbollah anti-tank missiles like this one have hit along Israel's northern border.

Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has been exchanging near-daily cross-border fire with the Israeli army since Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack triggered war in Gaza.

The Iran-backed militants have launched thousands of rockets, mortar rounds, anti-tank missiles and attack drones at northern Israel.

Switzerland's foreign minister on Friday returned to her Iraqi counterpart three important Mesopotamian objects seized during a criminal procedure, the Swiss government said.

During a ceremony at the culture ministry in Bern, Elisabeth Baume-Schneider handed over a partial statue and two Mesopotamian reliefs to Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein.

The three works, which are 1,700 to 2,800 years old, are "of great significance" to Iraq, the ministry said in a statement.

They were confiscated during a criminal procedure in the Geneva canton last year, it said.

Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria said Friday that they had handed over a woman and three children to British representatives for repatriation, with a source saying they had been held in a camp for jihadists' relatives.

Five years after the Islamic State group was driven out of its last bastion in Syria, tens of thousands of the jihadists' family members, including from Western countries, remain in detention camps in the Kurdish-controlled northeast.

The annual Jewish pilgrimage on Tunisia's island of Djerba began Friday with low turnout amid heightened security concerns after a deadly attack last year and as the Israel-Hamas war rages in Gaza.

The three-day pilgrimage to the Ghriba synagogue, Africa's oldest, usually draws thousands of pilgrims from Europe, Israel and beyond. It also attracts a significant number of international and local tourists and non-observant visitors.

Saudi Arabia is moving aggressively with its investments in more gaming companies, the Canadian industry veteran steering the kingdom's push to become a global hub for the sector told AFP Friday.

The kingdom has already been spending heavily with a $38-billion push into gaming under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 programme, part of a plan to diversify the economy away from oil.

Campaigners say the gaming push -- accompanied by similar drives in football and other areas -- belies a dire rights record where dissidents are imprisoned and executions are common.

For weeks, refugee Maryam Janhat has been living in fear of deportation as Lebanon cracks down on Syrians, with politicians ramping up calls for them to be forced home.

Refugees from Lebanon's war-torn neighbour face a dilemma: should they stay and contend with stricter measures and growing anti-Syrian sentiment, or should they return home and risk poverty and repression?

Standing at her husband's vegetable stall by the side of the road outside the village of Minyara in Lebanon's impoverished north, Janhat, 38, said she lives in a state of constant worry.

The top UN court ordered Israel Friday to halt military operations in Rafah, a landmark ruling likely to increase international pressure for a ceasefire more than seven months into the war sparked by Hamas's October 7 attack.

The International Court of Justice also demanded the immediate release of all hostages still held by Palestinian militants, hours after the Israeli military announced troops had recovered the bodies of three more of the captives from northern Gaza.