Children have died of malnutrition in a Gaza hospital, the Hamas-ruled territory's health ministry said Wednesday as its overall toll for Palestinians killed in the almost five-month war neared 30,000.
As mediators insisted a truce deal between Israel and Hamas could be just days away, UN agencies sounded the alarm about the dire humanitarian conditions and warned of a looming famine in Gaza's north.
A coalition of civil society groups on Wednesday accused the Emirati hosts of a World Trade Organization meeting of "heavy-handed restrictions", saying some of its members have been detained at the talks.
Our World Is Not for Sale (OWINFS), representing more than a dozen civil society groups, said it has complained to the WTO following a series of incidents at the body's 13th ministerial conference in the United Arab Emirates capital Abu Dhabi.
Iran's supreme leader urged voters to come out in droves on Friday and show the foes of the Islamic republic a "strong and fervent" election process for parliament and the key Assembly of Experts.
"The enemies of Iran want to see if the people are present" on polling day for the 290-seat legislature and the 88-member Assembly, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday.
If citizens fail to cast their ballots in large numbers, the 84-year-old supreme leader warned in an address to first-time voters, Iran's enemies "will threaten your security in one way or another".
Operatives from Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah are working inside Yemen to support Huthi insurgents' attacks on international shipping, a US official said Tuesday.
Tim Lenderking, the US special envoy for Yemen, told a Senate subcommittee that Iran's clerical state was "equipping and facilitating" the Huthi attacks, which have triggered retaliatory US and British strikes on Yemen.
"Credible public reports suggest a significant number of Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah operatives are supporting Huthi attacks from inside Yemen," Lenderking said.
Famine is "imminent" in northern Gaza, where no humanitarian group has been able to provide aid since January 23, the World Food Programme warned Tuesday, as Israel wages war on Palestinian militant group Hamas.
With a dire humanitarian emergency unfolding in the Gaza Strip and the main UN aid agency there struggling to cope, other bodies have called for help in reaching the thousands of Palestinians in desperate need.
Attempts to organise an Israel-Hamas ceasefire to allow the release of hostages held in Gaza dominated the first day of a state visit to France by Qatar's emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.
Qatar has played a key mediation role since the Gaza war erupted in October and international diplomatic efforts have intensified in recent days to halt hostilities for the Ramadan Muslim holiday.
The emir and President Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed during their talks the need to "very quickly" achieve a ceasefire, the French presidential office said.
Fighting between Hezbollah and Israel took a dangerous turn this week with Israeli strikes deep into Lebanese territory, further stoking fears of all-out war between the arch-foes.
Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, has exchanged near-daily fire with the Israeli army since war erupted between Israel and the Gaza-based Palestinian militant group on October 7.
Despite the bellicose rhetoric on both sides, neither seems to want a war that could set the whole region ablaze. AFP looks at the situation on the ground, the risks and possible solutions.
- What's happening? -
Palestinian teacher Iman Mussallam says she is struggling to come to terms with the Gaza war's death toll nearing 30,000 after almost five months of conflict between Israel and Hamas.
But with many victims still trapped under the rubble of flattened buildings, the displaced Gaza woman says she is certain "the real number is greater than that".
"We don't know how many martyrs there will be when the war ends," added the 30-year-old, who has taken refuge at a crowded United Nations shelter in Gaza's far-southern city of Rafah.
As Iranians head to the polls for legislative and other elections on Friday, candidates have promised them on campaign posters to "fight corruption" and "fix the economy".
In the minds of many voters, economic hardship is indeed the most burning issue as the Islamic republic suffers under punishing international sanctions and rapid inflation.
At Tehran's storied Grand Bazaar, many shoppers are simply wandering the warren of aisles without buying anything, as prices have skyrocketed in recent years.
Israeli troops killed three Palestinians in an overnight raid in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said Tuesday.
The Israeli army confirmed the deaths, saying all three were Palestinian militants, including a senior commander from the Islamic Jihad group.
The raid was the latest in a surge of violence in the Palestinian territory since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip on October 7.
