Iran has reduced its military footprint in Syria after a succession of strikes blamed on Israel, a source close to Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah and a war monitor said Wednesday.

Iran has provided military support to Syrian government forces through more than a decade of civil war but a series of strikes targeting its commanders in recent months has prompted a reshaping of its presence, the sources said.

Israel said Wednesday its forces were carrying out "offensive action" in Lebanon after launching cross-border strikes targeting Hamas ally Hezbollah as Israeli aircraft and tanks pounded the Gaza Strip.

Since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on October 7, Lebanon's powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah group and Israeli forces have traded near-daily fire, heightening fears of a wider conflict breaking out.

Argentina has asked Interpol to arrest Iran's interior minister over the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people, the foreign ministry said Tuesday.

The foreign ministry said the Iranian minister, Ahmad Vahidi, was part of a delegation from Tehran visiting Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and Interpol has issued a red notice seeking his arrest at the request of Argentina.

Argentina has also asked those two governments to arrest Vahidi, it added in a statement.

Emergency doctor Amjad Alewah once saved lives at Al-Shifa hospital, the largest medical facility in the Gaza Strip.

But after 200 days of war between Israel and Hamas militants, he now stands in its ruins.

"We are now in the middle of the rubble of this great hospital," Alewah, who returned to inspect the now charred emergency reception room, told AFP.

Following the outbreak of war, Al-Shifa became a safe haven for the thousands injured or fleeing the Israeli onslaught on the Palestinian territory.

The director of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees hit back at Israel Tuesday, calling for a Security Council probe into the "blatant disregard" for UN operations in Gaza after some 180 staffers were killed.

Philippe Lazzarini also revealed that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) had been able to partly offset a funding shortfall by raising $100 million from online donations since the Israel-Hamas conflict broke out in October.

Humanitarian workers have no knowledge of plans to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza's southernmost city ahead of an expected Israeli assault, but such a transfer would not be "possible" under current conditions, a Red Cross official told AFP on Tuesday.

"The rumour is that the probability of a major operation in Rafah is increasing," Fabrizio Carboni, Middle East regional director for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said on the sidelines of an aid conference in the United Arab Emirates.

Under a ceaseless storm of strikes in Gaza, a baby girl has survived insurmountable odds as the only member of her family left alive after she was delivered by Caesarian section as her mother lay dying.

At just seven months pregnant, her mother, Sabreen al-Sakani, reached the emergency unit in critical condition after she was fatally wounded in the head and abdomen at the weekend.

An Israeli air strike hit her family's house in the east of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, witnesses told AFP.

Palestinian director Rashid Masharawi wants to "export a different cinematic image of Gaza", now ravaged by war, as he presides over the jury at the eighth Aswan International Women Film Festival themed on "resistance cinema".

Against the backdrop of the war in the Gaza Strip, the festival in southern Egypt decided to screen six Palestinian short films in the competition, which brings together filmmakers from across the region.

This was despite many voices in the Arab world calling for the suspension of all artistic and cultural activities in solidarity with Palestinians.

The Israel-Hamas war entered its 200th day on Tuesday as aid groups warned that Israeli plans to invade the southern city of Rafah where most Gazans have taken refuge would create an "apocalyptic situation".

Fears have been rising that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will soon follow through on repeated threats to send troops into Rafah, where 1.5 million people have sought shelter, many in makeshift encampments.

Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah group on Tuesday said it launched dozens of rockets at northern Israel in response to the killing of two civilians in a strike blamed on Israel in Lebanon's south.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah group and Israel have exchanged regular fire in the south of Lebanon since October.

Hezbollah fighters fired "dozens of Katyusha rockets" at northern Israel "as part of the response to the Israeli enemy's attacks on... civilian homes, specifically the horrific massacre in Hanin and the killing and injuring of civilians," the group said in a statement.