Washington's top diplomat Antony Blinken said Saturday that he wants to make sure the conflict in the Middle East "doesn't spread", as he held meetings in Turkey and Greece.

Blinken, on a new tour of the Middle East, met Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Crete on Saturday, a few hours after a long meeting in Istanbul with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"One of the real concerns is the border between Israel and Lebanon, and we want to do everything possible to make sure we see no escalation," he told journalists in Crete after the meeting.

UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths on Friday said Gaza had become "uninhabitable" after relentless bombing by Israeli forces in retaliation for the Hamas militant group's attack in October.

"Three months since the horrific 7 October attacks, Gaza has become a place of death and despair," Griffiths said in a statement.

"Gaza has simply become uninhabitable. Its people are witnessing daily threats to their very existence -- while the world watches on.

"The humanitarian community has been left with the impossible mission of supporting more than two million people."

Thousands rallied in support of Gaza in the rebel-controlled Yemeni capital Sanaa on Friday, chanting anti-US and anti-Israeli slogans.

The Huthis have launched more than 20 attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea in recent weeks, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in the face of Israel's war on Hamas.

Since the outbreak of the war on October 7, the Iran-backed rebels have organised weekly protests in Sanaa but Friday's demonstration was the "largest" so far, spokesman Mohammad Abdel Salam said.

Chen Amit refuses to return to his abandoned kibbutz near Israel's tense northern border with Lebanon, for fear that Hezbollah militants will breach the frontier and take hostages.

Violence has surged in the north nearly three months since war broke out between Israel and Hamas on October 7, with the Israeli army regularly exchanging cross-border fire with Hezbollah, an Iran-backed, Lebanese ally of the Palestinian militant group.

The head of Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah group warned Israel Friday that it will respond swiftly "on the battlefield" to the killing of Hamas's deputy leader in its south Beirut stronghold.

"The response is inevitably coming. We cannot remain silent on a violation of this magnitude because it means the whole of Lebanon would be exposed," Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech.

"The decision is now in the hands of the battlefield," he said in his second speech since the killing of Saleh al-Aruri on Tuesday.

Shipping giant Maersk said Friday that it would divert all vessels around Africa instead of using the Red Sea and Suez Canal for the "foreseeable future" after Yemeni rebels attacked its merchant ships.

The Danish company cited the highly volatile situation and noted that the security risk remains high.

"We have therefore decided that all Maersk vessels due to transit the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden will be diverted south around the Cape of Good Hope for the foreseeable future," it said in a statement.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi joined mourners in the southern city of Kerman on Friday for the funerals of 89 people killed in twin blasts claimed by the Islamic State group, state media reported.

Suicide bombers struck crowds gathered near the tomb of storied Revolutionary Guards general Qasem Soleimani to mark the fourth anniversary of his killing in Baghdad in a targeted US drone strike.

The attack killed 89 people, who included many women and children as well as at least a dozen Afghans, state television said.

India's navy said Friday it had rescued 21 crew members from a vessel in the Arabian Sea after a hijacking distress call, the latest attack on commercial shipping in the region.

Last month the force deployed several warships into the sea to "maintain a deterrent presence" after a string of recent shipping attacks, including a drone strike near India's coast which the United States has blamed on Iran.

Bombing continued across Gaza on Friday as the United Nations warned Israel's war with militant group Hamas, now approaching its fourth month, had made the territory "uninhabitable".

With much of the Gaza Strip already reduced to rubble, air strikes hit the southern cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah as well as parts of central Gaza, AFP correspondents reported.

The Israeli army said its forces had "struck over 100 targets" across Gaza over the previous 24 hours, including military positions, rocket launch sites and weapons depots.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Turkey on Friday to start his fourth Middle East crisis tour since the start of the Israel-Hamas war three months ago.

The top American diplomat will visit Israel, the Palestinian Authority base in the West Bank and five Arab countries -- Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the State Department said.