Iran began counting ballots on Saturday after a vote for parliament and a key clerical body, with local media estimating a low turnout and conservatives expected to dominate.

Friday's elections were the first since widespread protests triggered by the September 2022 death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, an Iranian Kurd. She had been arrested for allegedly violating the Islamic republic's strict dress code for women.

Iran has also been badly affected by international sanctions that have led to an economic crisis since the last elections in 2020.

As Israelis are called up to join the war effort in Gaza, anger is mounting at the ultra-Orthodox community which has long been spared the compulsory military service required of most citizens.

Since the October 7 attack by Palestinian militants, the question surrounding whether the insular community, whose members see army service as conflicting with their religious duties, should be obligated to serve has sparked debate and led to protests against their decades-long exemptions.

US President Joe Biden said Friday he was "hoping" for a ceasefire deal in the Israel-Hamas conflict by the Muslim holy month of Ramadan but agreement was still not sealed.

"I'm hoping so, we're still working real hard on it. We're not there yet," he told reporters at the White House when asked if he expected a deal by Ramadan, which will start on March 10 or 11, depending on the lunar calendar.

President Joe Biden said Friday that the United States would start to deliver relief supplies from the air into Gaza, a day after the deaths of more than 100 Palestinians at an aid convoy.

"We need to do more, and the United States will do more," Biden told reporters at the White House at the start of a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

"In the coming days we're going to join with our friends in Jordan and others in providing air drops of additional food and supplies," the 81-year-old Biden said in the Oval Office.

With the humanitarian situation in Gaza increasingly desperate, the United States said Friday that it would join some of its Arab and European allies in delivering emergency relief from the sky.

The amount of aid brought into the territory by truck has plummeted during nearly five months of war, and Gazans are facing dire shortages of food, water and medicines.

Four more children have died of "malnutrition and dehydration" in war-torn Gaza, the Hamas-ruled territory's health ministry said on Friday, the latest such reported deaths as famine warnings mount.

The deaths occurred at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said in a statement, noting that the number of child "malnutrition and dehydration" deaths now totalled 10.

Earlier Friday, a spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA told reporters that "if something doesn't change, a famine is almost inevitable" in Gaza.

Max Verstappen's quest for a fourth consecutive Formula One world championship began in style on Friday with the Red Bull ace claiming pole for the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.

Charles Leclerc's Ferrari will start alongside Verstappen on the front row for Saturday's first of a record 24 races this year.

Verstappen's 33rd career pole and third in Bahrain was a welcome boost to Red Bull after a day of continued speculation surrounding team boss Christian Horner.

The Israeli military has said AI helps it more accurately target militants in its five-month war against Hamas, but as Gaza deaths rise, experts are questioning how effective algorithms can really be.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip says the war has killed upwards of 30,000 people, the majority of them civilians.

"Either the AI is as good as claimed and the IDF (Israeli military) doesn't care about collateral damage, or the AI is not as good as claimed," Toby Walsh, chief scientist at the University of New South Wales AI Institute in Australia, told AFP.

Hundreds took to the streets across Syria's rebel-held northwest on Friday in rare protests against its jihadist rulers, as anger simmered a week after a man died in their custody.

About half of Idlib province and parts of Hama, Aleppo and Latakia are controlled by former Al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

The rebel-controlled region hosts about three million people, many of whom fled other parts of the country held or recaptured by the Russian and Iranian-backed government of President Bashar al-Assad.

As Iranians cast ballots on Friday, many are preoccupied with a pivotal question, not about which candidate to pick, but whether to vote at all.

"It is a religious duty, it is a national duty, and it is the order of the supreme leader," said Afrasiabi, 43, while proudly displaying his ink-stained finger at a polling station south of Tehran.

Afrasiabi was among those who turned out on Friday to pick members of a new parliament and the Assembly of Experts, a body in charge of electing Iran's supreme leader.