When Hamas militants stormed Omer Weiss' kibbutz in southern Israel on October 7, they killed his father and kidnapped his mother. On Thursday the Israeli military told him she had been found dead, and his world fell apart again.

Yehudit Weiss, 65, was one of some 240 hostages snatched by militants and taken to the Gaza Strip, according to Israeli authorities.

With their home in kibbutz Beeri devastated in the attack, Weiss and his wife and baby daughter have been staying with friends in the coastal city of Netanya.

Airstrikes, destroyed houses and loved ones annihilated by bombs: Palestinians who fled the north of the Gaza Strip on Israeli orders have found no trace of the safety promised to them.

Nada Abu Hiya is eight years old and suffered her third bombing of the war at the Nuseirat refugee camp on Friday.

"First they bombed my grandfather's house where we lived" in Gaza City, she told AFP. "Then we went to Deir el-Balah, where we were bombed again.

"So we came here and they bombed us again."

Sudan has informed the UN chief of the "immediate" end of the United Nations political mission in the war-torn country, according to a letter circulated in the Security Council.

In an official letter in Arabic dated Thursday, accompanied by an English version from the Sudanese ambassador to the UN, Foreign Minister Ali Elsadig Ali informed Antonio Guterres of "the decision of the government of Sudan to terminate the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS) with immediate effect."

"You have 15 seconds" to seek shelter when rocket alert sirens blare, an Israeli supervisor instructs wide-eyed students and housewives replacing dead Thai labourers at a dairy farm abutting the war-stricken Gaza Strip.

Israeli tanks and turret-mounted guns line the periphery of the Nir Oz Kibbutz, one of the communities hit the hardest by the Hamas attacks on October 7, which officials say killed about 1,200 people across southern Israel.

One of the last grain warehouses in the Gaza Strip has been damaged by Israeli strikes and a key flour mill in Khan Yunis -- where hundreds of thousands have fled -- has stopped working for lack of fuel.

The store, also in Khan Yunis in the south of the territory and with room for 3,000 tonnes of wheat, was hit by an air strike overnight Wednesday-Thursday. AFP was unable to ascertain what happened to its reserves.

When Khulud Jarboueh and her children fled their home in the northern Gaza Strip under Israeli bombardment in early October, the young ones were wearing just shorts and T-shirts.

The heat of late summer still lingered then. But now she rummages through piles of clothing looking for something to keep them warm in the rain and bitter cold.

"We left Gaza City with 20 members of the family more than a month ago," the 29-year-old told AFP at a second-hand clothes stall outside a school in Rafah run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

Israel's army said Friday it killed at least seven militants in two separate confrontations in the West Bank, as Hamas admitted a number of its fighters were slain amid growing violence wracking the occupied territory.

Since the October 7 Hamas attacks on southern Israel, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of clashes in the West Bank, where the Israeli army has stepped up incursions targeting militant groups.

Germany and Turkey's leaders traded barbs Friday over Israel's war on Hamas, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz stressing the country's right to self-defence while Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded an end to Israel's military operation.

Erdogan is on a highly controversial visit to staunch Israel defender Germany, made more tricky by his recent accusations directed at Israel.

The Turkish leader has branded Israel a "terror state" and repeatedly defended the Hamas militants who rule Gaza as "liberators" fighting for their land.

Raghad Qassem searched all over Iraq's capital Baghdad for a psychologist she could talk to about her problems, before finally settling for consultations online.

It was the best she could do in a state haunted by decades of conflict and trauma, where mental health is poorly treated and professionals are few and far between.

The World Health Organization estimates that in a country of 43 million, there are just two mental health workers for every 100,000 Iraqis.

A first consignment of fuel has entered Gaza after US pressure on Israel, allowing communications to resume in the territory, where a hospital director on Saturday said 26 people had been killed in a strike in Khan Yunis.

A two-day blackout caused by fuel shortages ended after a first delivery arrived from Egypt late Friday, but UN officials continued to plead for a ceasefire, warning no part of Gaza is safe.