Israel bombarded Rafah on Wednesday as the military said ground troops conducted "targeted raids" in the southern Gaza city's east, with negotiations to halt the seven-month war underway in Cairo.
Israel has defied international objections and sent tanks into Rafah, which is crowded with Palestinian civilians sheltering near the Egyptian border, seizing early Tuesday a crossing that is the main conduit for aid into the besieged territory.
The reservoir behind the massive Darbandikhan dam, tucked between the rolling mountains of northeastern Iraq, is almost full again after four successive years of drought and severe water shortages.
Iraqi officials say recent rainfall has refilled some of the water-scarce country's main reservoirs, taking levels to a record since 2019.
The US military has completed construction of its Gaza aid pier, but weather conditions mean it is currently unsafe to move the two-part facility into place, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
The pier -- which the US military started building last month and which will cost at least $320 million -- is aimed at boosting deliveries of desperately needed humanitarian assistance to Gaza, which has been ravaged by seven months of Israeli operations against Hamas.
The United States announced Tuesday it had brought back two dozen Western citizens, half of them Americans, from Islamic State prison camps in northeastern Syria where tens of thousands have languished.
The repatriation is the largest ever of US citizens and comes as rights groups warn of dire conditions in the camps still in use some five years after the ultra-violent extremist movement lost its last territory in Syria.
The United States paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over fears it would invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah, an official said Tuesday, marking the first time in the conflict that President Joe Biden has squeezed military aid to the key US ally.
Washington halted the load of 1,800 2,000-lb (907 kg) bombs and 1,700 500-lb (226 kg) bombs after Israel had not "fully addressed" US concerns about a major ground operation, a senior administration official said.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited Libya on Tuesday to sign cooperation agreements with leaders from both administrations in the conflict-torn country.
Accompanied by a ministerial delegation on her second visit to Libya since taking office in October 2022, Meloni first met the head of the Tripoli-based government, Abdelhamid Dbeibah, Libyan officials said.
"Declarations of intent" were signed on cooperation in health, education and research as well as youth and sports, an Italian government statement said.
UN atomic watchdog chief Rafael Grossi on Tuesday decried "completely unsatisfactory" cooperation from Tehran after returning from Iran where he urged leaders to adopt "concrete" measures to address concerns over its nuclear programme.
Grossi's visit came at a time of heightened regional tensions and with his International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) criticising Iran for lack of cooperation on inspections and other outstanding issues.
France on Tuesday accused Iran of employing a policy of state hostage-taking and blackmail, as it called for the release of a French couple held in jail for the last two years.
Activists have long accused Iran of having a deliberate hostage-taking strategy aimed at extracting concessions from the West, but it is rare for a Western government to make such a strong statement.
Teacher Cecile Kohler and her partner Jacques Paris were detained in Iran in May 2022. They are accused of seeking to stir up labour protests, accusations their families vehemently deny.
Families of hostages held in Gaza have urged the United States and other governments with citizens among the captives to pressure Israel to strike a deal with Hamas for their return.
Following indications Monday of progress in talks towards a truce in the seven-month war, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said it had appealed to a number of countries to "exert your influence on the Israeli government" and push for an agreement.
As well as killing more than 34,000 people and causing catastrophic levels of hunger and injury, the seven-month war between Israel and Hamas has also caused massive material destruction in Gaza.
"The rate of damage being registered is unlike anything we have studied before. It is much faster and more extensive than anything we have mapped," said Corey Scher, a PhD candidate at the City University of New York, who has been researching satellite imagery of Gaza.
