(Reuters) -The Israeli military is attacking Houthi targets in Yemen's Hodeidah port, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a statement on Monday.

Katz said the army is "forcefully countering any attempt to restore the terror infrastructure previously attacked".

Since Israel's war in Gaza against the Palestinian militant group Hamas began in October 2023, the Iran-aligned Houthis have been attacking vessels in the Red Sea in what they say are acts of solidarity with the Palestinians.

Syrian authorities on Monday evacuated Bedouin families from the Druze-majority city of Sweida, after a ceasefire in the southern province halted bloody clashes between the communities, an AFP correspondent and official media said.

An AFP correspondent outside the devastated provincial capital saw a convoy including buses enter Sweida and then exit again carrying civilians.

The evacuees, including women and children, were headed for reception centres in neighbouring Daraa province and to the capital Damascus, in coordination with the Syrian Red Crescent.

At the main hospital in south Syria's Sweida city, dozens of bodies are still waiting to be identified as the death count of days of sectarian clashes continues to rise.

"We have handed 361 bodies over to family members, but we still have 97 unidentified corpses," a forensic medicine official at facility said on condition of anonymity.

Clashes erupted on July 13 in Syria's Druze-majority province of Sweida between local fighters and Sunni Bedouin, spiralling and drawing in government forces, tribal allies of the Bedouin and the military of neighbouring Israel.

DUBAI (Reuters) -Iran could withhold security commitments if European states invoke a U.N. mechanism to reimpose international sanctions on the Islamic Republic, a member of Iran's parliamentary national security commission said on Monday, according to Borna news.

"We have many tools in our disposition. We can withhold our commitment to security in the region, Persian Gulf and Hormuz Strait as well as other maritime areas," Abbas Moqtadaei said in reference to Tehran's potential counter-measures to the reimposition of international sanctions.

Libya's eastern authorities recently expelled a senior European delegation in a move analysts say was meant to send a message: the unrecognised administration backed by military leader Khalifa Haftar cannot be ignored.

On July 8, an EU commissioner and ministers from Greece, Italy and Malta were in Libya to discuss irregular migration from the North African country.

By Humeyra Pamuk

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Days before President Donald Trump said he would help Afghan evacuees who fled their country and were stuck in the United Arab Emirates, the Emirati government had already begun returning them to Afghanistan and informed Washington that it was doing so, according to an internal State Department cable seen by Reuters on Sunday.

(Corrects misspelled word in June 17 story to 'tallies' in third last paragraph)

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) -Israeli tanks fired into a crowd trying to get aid from trucks in Gaza on Tuesday, killing at least 59 people, according to medics, in one of the bloodiest incidents yet in mounting violence as desperate residents struggle for food.

DUBAI (Reuters) -Iran has replaced air defences damaged during last month's conflict with Israel, Iran's Defah Press news agency reported on Sunday quoting Mahmoud Mousavi, the regular army's deputy for operations.

During the conflict in June, Israel's air force dominated Iran's airspace and dealt a heavy blow to the country's air defences while Iranian armed forces launched successive barrages of missiles and drones on Israeli territory.

DUBAI (Reuters) -Iran, Britain, France and Germany could hold talks next week on Tehran's nuclear programme, Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Sunday, following warnings by the three European countries that failure to resume negotiations would lead to international sanctions being reimposed on Iran.

"The principle of talks has been agreed upon, but consultations are continuing on the time and place of the talks. The country in which the talks could be held next week has not been finalised," Tasnim reported, quoting a source informed on the matter.

As malnutrition surges in war-torn Gaza, tens of thousands of children and women require urgent treatment, according to the UN, while aid enters the blockaded Palestinian territory at a trickle.

Gaza's civil defence agency told AFP it has noted a rising number of infant deaths caused by "severe hunger and malnutrition", reporting at least three such deaths in the past week.

"These heartbreaking cases were not caused by direct bombing but by starvation, the lack of baby formula and the absence of basic healthcare," civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.