By Ece Toksabay

BELEK, Turkey, March 27 (Reuters) - Iran’s men's national soccer team wore black armbands and held schoolbags as their anthem played ahead of a match in Turkey on Friday in what a team official said was a protest over the killing of schoolgirls on the first day of the Iran war.

Iran were playing a friendly against Nigeria in the resort town of Belek ahead of the World Cup in the U.S., Mexico and Canada where their participation is in doubt over the conflict.

By Jonathan Saul

LONDON, March 27 (Reuters) - Two Chinese container ships turned backed after trying to exit the Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz on Friday, ship-tracking data showed, despite assurances from Iran that Chinese vessels could pass.

The operator, China's COSCO, had said in a March 25 client advisory that it had resumed bookings for general cargo containers for shipments from Asia to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Iraq.

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By Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali, Jonathan Landay and Erin Banco

WASHINGTON, March 27 (Reuters) - The United States can only determine with certainty that it has destroyed about a third of Iran's vast missile arsenal as the U.S. and Israeli war on the country nears its one-month mark, according to five people familiar with the U.S. intelligence.

Iran has warned the United States about attempting to seize any of its strategic islands in the Gulf -- a move that President Donald Trump is reported to be mulling. AFP looks at potential targets.

- Kharg -

A strip of scrubland located in the northern Gulf, about 30 kilometres from the coast, Kharg is home to Iran’s largest oil terminal, which accounts for around 90 percent of its crude exports, according to a recent note from the American bank JP Morgan.

In mid-March it was targeted by US airstrikes.

By Pesha Magid

JERUSALEM, March 27 (Reuters) - Some are the size of small trucks, and they've come crashing to the ground almost daily for a month -- littering school yards, roadsides and hilltops with visceral remnants of a Middle East at war.

Across Israel and the occupied West Bank, massive chunks of Iranian ballistic missiles have slammed to the earth after being shot out of the sky by Israeli air defence systems.

GENEVA, March 27 (Reuters) - The U.N. rights chief urged Washington to conclude its investigation into a fatal strike on a primary school in Iran at a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting on Friday, with some states voicing outrage over the incident.

The emergency debate at the Geneva council was called by Iran to discuss the attack on the Shajareh ​Tayyebeh School which Tehran says killed more than 175 children and teachers on the first day of the nearly month-long regional war which began with joint U.S.-Israeli strikes.

By John Irish

VAUX-DE-CERNAY, France, March 27 (Reuters) - Ukraine is close to clinching several security agreements — including with the UAE and Qatar — to counter Iranian attacks, its foreign minister said on Friday, adding that he saw scope to draw China into peace efforts to end the war with Russia.

"We have the situation in the Middle East so it is important not to lose the global attention on the Ukrainian case, because everything is interlinked," Andrii Sybiha told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the G7 foreign ministers meeting in France.

Nearly a month into the Middle East war, Lebanon is facing a deepening humanitarian crisis that now risks teetering over into a catastrophe, the United Nations refugee agency warned Friday.

Since March 2, more than a million people -- one in five residents -- have been forced to flee their homes, said the UNHCR.

With the numbers continuing to rise, "it is really a deepening humanitarian crisis that we here on the ground are seeing in Lebanon", said Karolina Lindholm Billing, the agency's representative in the country.

By Olivia Le Poidevin

GENEVA, March 27 (Reuters) - Large differences remain between most countries and the U.S. and India as trade ministers meet to discuss reforms at the World Trade Organization, two diplomats told Reuters on Friday.

The ministers are meeting for four days in Yaounde, Cameroon, as the organisation faces a critical test to its future amid a year of tariff-fuelled trade turmoil and large-scale disruption to shipping, energy prices and supply chains due to the Middle East conflict.

By Emma Farge

GENEVA, March 27 (Reuters) - Emergency cholera medical supplies for several African countries have become stuck in a logistical quagmire caused by the Iran war, aid officials told Reuters, raising concerns about preparations ahead of the high-risk rainy season.

The stocks stranded in Dubai warehouses are contingency supplies placed in cholera-prone countries including Chad and Sudan ahead of the rainy months starting from May to curb any future outbreak of the fast-spreading, potentially fatal diarrhoeal disease.