WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. has issued a fresh round Iran-related sanctions targeting individuals and entities that Washington says finance Tehran's military, including some in Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates, the U.S. Treasury Department said on Tuesday.

Those targeted have helped coordinate funds transfers, including from the sale of Iranian oil, that benefit Iran's military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC)- Quds Force and its Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL), Treasury said.

United Nations investigators on Tuesday accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza in a bid to "destroy the Palestinians", accusing Israel's prime minister and other top officials of incitement.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI), which does not speak on behalf of the world body, found that "genocide is occurring in Gaza", commission chief Navi Pillay told AFP.

"The responsibility lies with the State of Israel."

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

DAMASCUS (Reuters) -Under U.S. pressure, Syria is accelerating talks with Israel for a security pact that Damascus hopes will reverse Israel's recent seizures of its land but that would fall far short of a full peace treaty, sources briefed on the talks said.

Washington is pushing for enough progress to be made by the time world leaders gather in New York for the U.N. General Assembly at the end of this month to allow President Donald Trump to announce a breakthrough, four of the sources told Reuters.

France on Tuesday repatriated three women and 10 children from Syrian camps housing alleged jihadists, anti-terror prosecutors said, in the first such operation in two years.

Repatriation is a deeply sensitive issue in France, which has been a target of Islamists over the past decade, notably in 2015, when jihadist gunmen and suicide bombers staged the worst attack on Paris since World War II, killing 130 people.

As drones buzzed overhead in the morning sun, Palestinians gently lifted from the rubble a blanket holding a body, the latest casualty of Israel's relentless bombardment of Gaza City.

The devastating scene is a familiar one in the Gaza Strip's main urban hub, where Israel has carried out intensifying strikes in the runup to the ground assault it launched on Tuesday.

Overnight bombing reduced a residential block in the north of the city to mounds of rubble. One man squeezed his head and hand beneath a concrete slab in a desperate search for survivors.

GENEVA (Reuters) -The U.N. Human Rights Chief called on Israel to immediately stop its ground assault on Gaza City that got underway on Tuesday, saying that evidence was mounting of war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly more.

"I can only think of what it means for women, for malnourished children, for people with disabilities, if they are again attacked in this way. And I have to say the only response to this is: stop the carnage," High Commissioner Volker Turk told reporters in Geneva.

GENEVA (Reuters) -An official of the United Nations' children's agency said on Tuesday it was "inhumane" to expect hundreds of thousands of children to leave Gaza City as camps further south were unsafe, overcrowded and ill-equipped to receive them.

Israel announced on Tuesday the start of its long-awaited ground operation into Gaza City, the main urban centre in the enclave where Israel has ordered residents to flee. So far, more than 140,000 have already fled south from Gaza City since August 14, U.N. data shows, of a population of around 1 million people.

By Olivia Le Poidevin

GENEVA (Reuters) -Israel undermined regional peace and stability in its attack last week on Hamas leaders who had been in Qatar to negotiate a ceasefire, the United Nations rights chief said during an urgent debate at the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday.

SOFIA (Reuters) -Police in Bulgaria have arrested the Russian owner of a ship that brought the explosive material that detonated at Beirut port in August 2020, killing more than 200 people, Bulgarian media reported on Tuesday.

Igor Grechushkin, a Russian businessman based in Cyprus, was detained for possible extradition to Lebanon, where he is wanted for his role in the blast, Bulgarian National Radio and other outlets reported.

A shipowner wanted over a 2020 blast at Beirut port that killed more than 220 people has been arrested in Bulgaria, officials said Tuesday.

The August 4, 2020 disaster was one of the world's largest non-nuclear explosions, ravaging swathes of the Lebanese capital and injuring more than 6,500 people.

Authorities have said the blast was triggered by a fire in a warehouse where tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertiliser had been stored haphazardly for years after arriving by ship, despite repeated warnings to senior officials.