Tunisian authorities on Thursday set fire to tents housing sub-Saharan African migrants, an AFP correspondent said, in a new drive to clear their informal camps.

Many migrants arrived in Tunisia after crossing the deserts of Algeria and Mali, hoping to reach Italy. But tighter controls on the sea route have left them stranded.

For nearly two years, olive groves around El Amra, a town near the city of Sfax, served as informal camps for thousands of the migrants but on April 4 authorities began dismantling the camps.

The world's only research centre on mycetoma, a neglected tropical disease common among farmers, has been destroyed in Sudan's two-year war, its director and another expert say.

Mycetoma is caused by bacteria or fungus and usually enters the body through cuts. It is a progressively destructive infectious disease of the body tissue, affecting skin, muscle and even bone.

It is often characterised by swollen feet, but can also cause barnacle-like growths and club-like hands.

President Donald Trump announced Thursday he will sit for an interview with the reporter who uncovered a major security lapse after being inadvertently added to a group chat in which top US officials shared secret military strike plans.

The Atlantic magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg was propelled to global fame -- and roundly attacked by Trump and other cabinet officials -- after publishing details of the sensitive exchanges on the Signal app in the run up to US strikes on rebel Huthis in Yemen.

Gaza rescue teams and medics said Israeli air strikes killed at least 55 people on Thursday, as the military threatened an even larger offensive if hostages were not freed soon.

Israel resumed its military assault in the Gaza Strip on March 18, after the collapse of a two-month ceasefire that had brought a temporary halt to fighting in the blockaded Palestinian territory.

Israel's army chief, visiting troops in Gaza on Thursday, threatened to expand the offensive in Gaza if hostages seized during Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel were not released.

Spain on Thursday cancelled a contract to buy bullets from an Israeli company following pressure from the Socialist-led government's far-left coalition partner -- a move swiftly condemned by Israel.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, one of the most outspoken critics of Israel's military operations in Gaza, halted weapons transactions with Israel after the outbreak of the war following Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Israel's president said at a Holocaust remembrance ceremony on Thursday that the return of hostages held by Palestinian militants in Gaza was a "universal moral imperative" and called on the international community to help end "this horrific humanitarian crime".

Isaac Herzog spoke from the southern Polish city of Oswiecim, the site of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, on the occasion of the annual March of the Living to commemorate its victims.

Israel's president said in Poland on Thursday the return of hostages held by Palestinian militants in Gaza was a "universal moral imperative" and called on the international community to help end "this horrific humanitarian crime".

Isaac Herzog spoke from the southern city of Oswiecim, the site of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, on the occasion of the annual March of the Living to commemorate its victims.

In Gaza, where hunger gnaws and hope runs thin, flour and bread are so scarce that they are carefully divided by families clinging to survival.

"Because the crossing points are closed, there's no more gas and no flour, and no firewood coming in," said Umm Mohammed Issa, a volunteer helping to make bread with the few resources still available.

Israel resumed military operations in the Palestinian territory in mid-March, shattering weeks of relative calm brought by a fragile ceasefire.

As America's escalated bombing campaign and economic sanctions hit Yemen hard, the Iran-backed Huthi rebels in Washington's crosshairs are trying to mine the situation for propaganda and recruitment, analysts said.

On Monday, four days after 80 people were killed in US strikes on a fuel port, the Huthis released a slick promotional video showing special forces marching over the Israeli flag and somersaulting through flaming hoops.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking Wednesday at an annual Holocaust commemoration, said Iran was an existential threat and warned that "the fate of all humanity" was at stake if it acquires nuclear arms.

Netanyahu was speaking at the start of Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorates the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis during World War II, and is observed every year in April or May according to the Jewish calendar. The International Holocaust Remembrance Day is marked on January 27.