Israel said its security forces shot dead three Palestinians blamed for killing a British-Israeli woman and two of her daughters last month, in a raid in the occupied West Bank on Thursday.

Two suspects in the killings and a third man accused of helping them were killed in a joint operation in Nablus by the army, police and Shin Bet security service, a statement said.

Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, said all three men killed in what it termed an "assassination" were from its ranks, hailing them as "heroes of resistance".

Under an almond tree in his garden, Moustafa Ahmed shows a handful of bullet casings he collected near his home in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.

Residents of his village in Iraq's mountainous far north often find themselves caught in the crossfire between the Turkish army and fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

"Most of the inhabitants have left," said Ahmed, from the Kurdish village of Hiror in a green valley near the Turkish border, an area that for decades has seen fighting between the two forces.

Israeli troops carried out demolitions Wednesday of the homes of two Palestinians accused of carrying out deadly attacks on Israelis in the occupied West Bank last year.

The army said the demolitions targeted the homes of Mohammed Souf, 18, accused of a "car-ramming and stabbing attack" which killed three Israelis last November, and Younis Hilan, accused of fatally stabbing an Israeli the previous month.

Souf's uncle, Mostafa, denounced the demolitions as "collective punishment".

Sanctions-hit Iran seized on Wednesday a second oil tanker in less than a week as tensions rise in the commercially vital Gulf waters.

A fleet of high-speed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) craft surrounded the Greek-owned Niovi as it travelled empty from Dubai to Fujairah, another port in the United Arab Emirates, the US military said.

The Panama-flagged vessel's seizure in the Strait of Hormuz comes six days after a similar incident also in the Gulf, which lies between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula and carries at least a third of the world's seaborne oil.

The UN chief on Wednesday said "we failed" to stop war from erupting in Sudan, where persistent fighting between rival generals undermined efforts to firm up a truce.

"The UN was taken by surprise" by the conflict, because the world body and others were hopeful that negotiations towards a civilian transition would be successful, Antonio Guterres told reporters in Nairobi.

"To the extent that we and many others were not expecting this to happen, we can say we failed to avoid it to happen," the secretary general said.

An uneasy truce between Israel and Gaza militants was holding Wednesday following a major exchange of cross-border fire sparked by the death in custody of a Palestinian prisoner on hunger strike.

Violence flared from Tuesday after the inmate, Khader Adnan, 45, from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, died following an 87-day hunger strike after his arrest by Israel over ties to the armed group Islamic Jihad.

Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad announced a truce around Gaza Wednesday, after militants traded fire with Israel following the death in Israeli custody of a hunger striker from its ranks.

Mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the United Nations intervened to broker a return to calm from 4 am (0100 GMT), sources in Islamic Jihad and fellow militant group Hamas told AFP.

Israel did not immediately confirm the agreement.

The Israeli army said the last warning sirens sounded near the Gaza border at around 5:30 am (0230 GMT).

In Lebanon's impoverished Palestinian refugee camps, young people say they dream of leaving a struggling country where their families took refuge generations ago and where their futures remain bleak.

Nirmeen Hazineh is a descendant of survivors of what Palestinians call the Nakba -- the "catastrophe" -- when more than 760,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes by the 1948 war over Israel's creation.

Now 75 years old, Israel models itself as an economic success story, a leader in business, agriculture and advanced technologies -- despite glaring inequalities that have left many Israelis behind.

The country readily describes itself as a "start-up nation", and its per capita GDP is higher than that of Germany, France or Britain.

But "there is the start-up nation and the soup kitchen nation," says Gilles Darmon, the head of Latet, an Israeli non-profit group working to fight poverty and deliver food aid.

Visiting Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Wednesday hailed Syria's Bashar al-Assad for overcoming sanctions and achieving "victory" in the country's 12-year-long civil war, in which Tehran has been a major ally.

The Syria conflict has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and battered the country's infrastructure and industry. While the front lines have mostly quietened in recent years, large parts of the country's north remain outside government control.