Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the militant group Israel says is the target of its latest Gaza bombardment, is an Iran-backed group founded in 1981 and committed to armed resistance against the Jewish state.

The group initially set up by students at the Islamic University of Gaza is seen as a sister organisation to Hamas, the Islamists who have controlled the Palestinian enclave since 2007.

Both were born out of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that was established in Egypt last century.

The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards said Saturday that the Palestinians are "not alone" in their fight against Israel as they faced a second day of air strikes in Gaza.

"Today, all the anti-Zionist jihadi capabilities are on the scene in a united formation working to liberate Jerusalem and uphold the rights of the Palestinian people," Major General Hossein Salami said in a statement on the Guards' Sepah News website.

With empty streets and drawn curtains, Gaza feels like a ghost town. Its residents -- tested by repeated wars -- feel like they are living the same scenes again and again.

Before Israel launched its "pre-emptive" strikes on militants in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian territory was enjoying a summer unlike any other in recent years.

Gaza's beaches, long deemed too polluted with waste water for swimmers, had been declared mostly usable again, allowing Palestinians swimmers and surfers to rediscover the joys of the sea.

The leader of Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad vowed Friday to target Tel Aviv after an Israeli strike killed one of the group's senior commanders in the Gaza Strip.

"The Zionist enemy started this aggression and it must expect us to fight non-stop... There will be no truce after this bombing," Ziad al-Nakhala told Lebanon's Al-Mayadeen television channel from Tehran, where he has been visiting in recent days.

"There are no red lines in this battle... Tel Aviv will also be one of the targets of the resistance's missiles... as will all Zionist cities," he said.

Britain, France and Germany urged Iran on Friday "not to make unrealistic demands" in the talks to salvage a 2015 deal aimed at reining in Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Officials from world powers and Iran were meeting in the Austrian capital for the first time since March, when negotiations -- which began in 2021 to reintegrate the United States into the agreement -- stalled.

"Today's talks in Vienna do not mark a new round of negotiations. These are technical discussions," the three countries -- known as the E3 group -- said in a statement.

Shell-shocked Gazans on Monday sifted through the rubble of three days of deadly fighting between Israel and Islamic Jihad militants as a truce held and life slowly returned to normal.

An Egypt-brokered ceasefire reached late Sunday ended the intense fighting that killed 46 people including 16 children and wounded 360 in the enclave, according to Gaza's health ministry, updating an earlier toll of 44.

The first shipment of Ukrainian grain since Russia's invasion is expected to dock in the northern Lebanese port city of Tripoli on Sunday, state media and Ukraine's embassy said.

The Sierra Leone-flagged vessel Razoni set sail from the Ukrainian port of Odessa last Monday carrying 26,000 tonnes of corn and stopped in Turkey the next day.

The delivery is the first under a UN-backed deal, brokered with the help of Turkey last month, which aims to ease a global food crisis.

Tens of thousands attended mass prayers Friday in Baghdad's Green Zone in a new power play by Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr after his adversaries conditionally backed his call for early elections.

Sadr, a longtime political and religious force in the oil-rich but war-scarred country, has for months been in a political standoff with a rival Shiite alliance backed by Iran.

Worshippers converged on a vast square inside the normally secure Green Zone, home to government and diplomatic buildings, including the parliament which his followers began occupying on July 30.

Every morning, his skin bronzed by the sun, pensioner Metin Cakmakci rushes to grab a deckchair under a parasol on his local beach on the Asian side of Istanbul.

"A sea like this for a gigantic city such as Istanbul -- it's not bad," the 74-year-old smiles, pointing to the crystal-clear water facing the Princes' Islands on the Sea of Marmara.

Istanbul, a bustling megalopolis of 16 million people between two continents and two seas, does not immediately bring to mind images of a beach resort.

Ways to halt the war in Ukraine and the possible launch of a new conflict in Syria are expected to dominate talks on Friday between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Turkish leader was riding high from the diplomatic success of helping orchestrate the resumption of Ukrainian grain shipments across the Black Sea when he took most of his top ministers to Sochi for his second talks with Putin in 17 days.