Iranian commentators warned Tuesday of a US military retaliation after Washington pledged a "very consequential" response to troop deaths, but largely agreed full-blown war was not in the offing.
US President Joe Biden blamed "radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq" for Sunday's drone strike on a remote Jordan desert base near Syria and Iraq that killed three US forces.
Businesses and shops in several cities in Kurdish-populated western Iran shut down Tuesday in a general strike protesting the hanging a day earlier of four Kurds convicted of collaborating with Israel, activists said.
The four, who had been arrested in July 2022, were hanged at a prison in the city of Karaj outside Tehran in defiance of a campaign by rights groups who said their trial had been grossly unfair.
Their hanging added to concerns over a surge in executions in Iran, which has seen on average two people executed every day so far this month, according to campaigners.
Dozens demonstrated Tuesday outside the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in Beirut against several countries' decision to suspend funding for the body after Israel charged some staff participated in Hamas's October 7 attack.
At least 12 key donor countries have said they will halt funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency following the accusations, while UNRWA has fired several employees and promised a thorough investigation into the claims.
Palestinians buried dozens of bodies in a mass grave in southern Gaza on Tuesday, after officials said Israel returned remains it had exhumed from the territory.
An AFP photographer saw Gazans moving the bodies in blue plastic shrouds from a truck towards the newly dug mass grave east of Rafah.
Health ministry employees wearing white protective clothing lowered them into the ground, near the tents of people displaced by the Israel-Hamas war.
Israeli undercover agents, some disguised as medical staff, raided a West Bank hospital Tuesday and shot dead three Palestinian militants, in the first such operation in eight years.
An AFP photographer saw a bullet hole on a pillow covered in blood following the raid at Ibn Sina Hospital in the northern city of Jenin, where Palestinians gathered around the bodies of those killed.
The Israeli military said forces entered the hospital -- a major health facility serving Jenin city and its adjacent refugee camp -- to target a "Hamas terrorist cell".
Saudi Arabia has ordered energy giant Aramco to maintain its oil production capacity at 12 million barrels per day, abandoning a planned increase, the firm said on Tuesday.
"Aramco announces that it has received a directive from the ministry of energy to maintain its maximum sustainable capacity (MSC) at 12 million barrels per day" instead of ramping it up to 13 million bpd, the firm said in a statement.
"The company will update its capital spending guidance when its full-year 2023 results are announced in March."
Israel's army said Tuesday it was flooding Hamas's attack tunnels amid intense fighting in Gaza, even as international mediators pushed for a new halt in the nearly four-month war.
The epicentre of the fighting has been Khan Yunis, southern Gaza's main city where vast areas have been reduced to a muddy wasteland of bombed-out buildings.
The Israeli military said it had adopted the tactic of channelling water into Hamas's vast underground network of tunnels that it has dubbed "the Gaza metro".
Saudi Arabia has ordered energy giant Aramco to maintain its oil production capacity at 12 million barrels per day, abandoning a planned increase, the firm said on Tuesday.
"Aramco announces that it has received a directive from the ministry of energy to maintain its maximum sustainable capacity (MSC) at 12 million barrels per day" instead of ramping it up to 13 million bpd, the firm said in a statement.
"The company will update its capital spending guidance when its full-year 2023 results are announced in March."
The killing of three US troops is dragging the United States further into a proxy war with Iran that President Joe Biden had hoped to avoid and that he still hopes can be contained.
After years of trying to ease tensions with Iran through dialogue, and then months seeking to keep the Israel-Hamas war from escalating, the drone strike by Iranian-backed militants on US forces in Jordan crossed an unstated red line for the Biden administration.
Despite the war and whatever the result, the only thing that mattered in Al-Dhahiriyah in the occupied West Bank on Monday was the number 7 jersey worn by Palestine's Musab al-Battat.
For those in the team captain's native village, and despite the team's last 16 loss to Qatar in Doha, the game was 90 minutes of pure pride.
Hours before Monday's kick-off, the plastic chairs had already been drawn up in a semicircle.
There were sweets, and black, green and red wigs in the national colours for the kids. For the men there were endless cigarettes.
