Turkey on Tuesday holds pre-dawn vigils for the loss of more than 50,000 people -- and parts of entire cities -- in the earthquake-prone country's deadliest disaster of modern times.

Grieving Turks are still coming to terms with how a 7.8-magnitude tremor could upturn the lives of millions of people in a matter of seconds while they were still asleep.

An updated toll released Friday showed that 53,537 people had died across 11 southeaster provinces officially designated as the disaster zone.

Türkiye Salı günü, depreme eğilimli ülkenin modern zamanların en ölümcül felaketinde 50.000'den fazla insanın ve bazı şehirlerin kaybı nedeniyle şafak öncesi nöbet tutuyor.

Kederli Türkler, 7,8 büyüklüğündeki bir sarsıntının milyonlarca insanın hayatını henüz uykudayken nasıl birkaç saniye içinde alt üst edebileceğini hâlâ kabul etmeye çalışıyor.

Cuma günü açıklanan güncellenmiş ölü sayısı, resmi olarak afet bölgesi olarak belirlenen 11 güneydoğu ilinde 53.537 kişinin öldüğünü gösterdi.

Egypt's antiquities ministry said Saturday it was setting up a committee to review the restoration of Giza's Menkaure Pyramid after a public outcry over the project.

A week ago, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Mostafa Waziri, posted a Facebook video showing workers setting blocks of granite on the base of the shortest of the three Giza pyramids.

The footage sparked a storm of criticism from Egyptologists who voiced fears that a wholesale reconstruction of the famed monument was under way, to the detriment of the preservation of its historic fabric.

When Ines Tehini and her family fled their south Lebanon village after Hezbollah and Israel began exchanging fire in October, she thought they would be home in a matter of days.

But nearly four months later in a school turned shelter, her hopes for a swift return to normality have faded after Israeli strikes badly damaged the family home in Aita al-Shaab on the border, said the mother of three.

Israel pressed its blistering Gaza assault on Saturday as fears grew over a push into a southern area teeming with displaced Palestinians and Hamas said a truce deal was not yet within reach.

As fighting raged, mediation efforts to halt the nearly four-month war have gathered pace, though a Hamas official in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, said a proposed framework was missing some details.

Hamas needed more time to "announce our position", Hamdan said, "based on... our desire to put an end as quickly as possible to the aggression that our people suffer".

Deadly strikes were reported early Saturday in the overcrowded Gaza border town of Rafah -- dubbed a "pressure cooker of despair" by the UN -- as international mediators readied a new push to seal a tentative truce deal between Israel and Hamas.

Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have fled south to Rafah since the outbreak of the war, with the former city of 200,000 now housing more than half of Gaza's two million-plus population, a WHO representative said Friday.

The United States on Friday carried out strikes against Iranian forces in Iraq and Syria in retaliation over a drone attack that killed three US soldiers in Jordan.

Here is what we know so far:

- Hitting Iran unit, but not Iran -

The US military said the airstrikes hit more than 85 targets inside Iraq and Syria targeting both the elite Quds force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and affiliated militia groups.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said at least 18 pro-Iranian fighters were killed in the strikes in eastern Syria.

The United States launched overnight air strikes against Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Syria, drawing condemnation from both governments Saturday, and promised more to come in retaliation for a deadly attack on US troops.

The United States blamed Sunday's drone attack on a US base in Jordan on forces backed by Iran, but did not strike inside Iranian territory, with both Washington and Tehran seemingly keen to avoid all-out war.

Tens of thousands of people crammed into a street in Rafah, the southern Gaza city where vast numbers have sought refuge from advancing Israeli ground troops.

"These are the worst months of our lives," said Noha al-Madhun, who fled from the Beit Lahia area of northern Gaza and was taken in by relatives along with some of her children.

"My husband and eldest sons sleep in a tent. There's no space for everyone. We sleep on the floor and we feel the cold" without enough blankets to go round, she said.

Two decades after London began moves to clamp down on sports utility vehicles, Parisians on Sunday will vote on whether to squeeze the gas-guzzlers out of town by tripling their parking fees.

The proposal by Paris's Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo is the most radical by a big city in the fight against the big cars, blamed for driving up emissions, being a menace to pedestrians and generally taking up too much space.

The number of SUVs on the roads have shot up nearly sevenfold since 2010, to about 330 million worldwide.