The World Health Organization said Monday its facilities in Gaza had come under Israeli attack, echoing calls from Western countries for an immediate ceasefire as Israel expanded military operations to the central city of Deir el-Balah.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the Israeli military had entered the UN agency's staff residence, forced women and children to evacuate on foot, and handcuffed, stripped and interrogated male staff at gunpoint.

LONDON (Reuters) -Britain and more than 20 other countries called on Monday for an immediate end to the war in Gaza and criticised the Israeli government's aid delivery model after hundreds of Palestinians were killed near sites distributing food.

France, Italy, Japan, Australia, Canada, Denmark and other countries said more than 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid and condemned what it called the "drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians".

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Belgium's King Philippe described abuses in Gaza as a "disgrace to humanity" in a speech on the eve of Monday's national day, unusually direct remarks on international affairs from a monarch who traditionally avoids public politics.

"I add my voice to all those who denounce the serious humanitarian abuses in Gaza, where innocent people are dying of hunger and being killed by bombs while trapped in their enclaves," he said speaking at his palace in Brussels.

Israel pounded Yemen's Huthi-held port of Hodeida with air strikes on Monday for the second time in a month, stoking fears of escalation as it warned Yemen could face the same fate as Iran.

Huthi-controlled areas of Yemen have come under repeated Israeli strikes since the Iran-backed rebels began launching missile and drone attacks on Israel, declaring they act in solidarity with Palestinians over the Gaza war.

CAIRO (Reuters) -An Israeli undercover force detained Marwan Al-Hams, a senior Gaza Health Ministry official, outside the field hospital of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday, the health ministry said.

Hams, in charge of field hospitals in the enclave, was on his way to visit the ICRC field hospital in northern Rafah when an Israeli force "abducted" him after opening fire, killing one person and wounding another civilian nearby, according to the ministry.

ATHENS (Reuters) -Greece revealed on Monday the boundaries of two planned marine parks in the Ionian and Aegean Seas, which Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said will be the largest in the Mediterranean region.

Athens wants to establish the parks, for the protection of sea mammals and turtles in the Ionian Sea and for seabirds and seals in the Aegean, this year. Mitsotakis said they will help the country meet its global commitment to expand its marine protected areas to 30% of its waters by 2030.

LONDON (Reuters) -The co-founder of a pro-Palestinian campaign group sought on Monday to challenge the British government's decision to ban the group under anti-terrorism laws, a move her lawyers said had "the hallmarks of an authoritarian and blatant abuse of power".

Huda Ammori, who helped found Palestine Action in 2020, is asking London's High Court to give the go-ahead for a full challenge to the group's proscription, which was made on the grounds it committed or participated in acts of terrorism.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -Pope Leo warned against the "indiscriminate use of force" and the "forced mass displacement" of people in the Gaza strip in a phone conversation with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday, the Vatican said in a statement.

(Reporting by Giulia Segreti and Alvise Armellini, editing by Gianluca Semeraro)

By Asif Shahzad

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) -Islamist militants in Pakistan have started using commercially acquired quadcopter drones to drop bombs on security forces in the country's northwest, police said, a potentially dangerous development in the volatile region.

The use of such drones, which are powered by four rotors allowing for vertical take-off and landing, is worrying the overstretched and under-equipped police force, the frontline against militant attacks, officials said.

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia-Azerbaijan relations are currently going through a challenging phase, but Moscow remains hopeful for improvement as the two countries share common interests, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

Tensions between Moscow and Baku have escalated in recent months following the detention of several ethnic Azerbaijanis in Russia and the death of two of them in police custody.