US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he had spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that they were united on issues including trade and Iran.

"The call went very well -- We are on the same side of every issue," Trump said on his social media platform.

The United States and Iran launched talks this month on Tehran's nuclear program, first in Oman and then in Rome, and these discussions are due to resume this week.

Trump told reporters Monday his administration had had good meetings with the Iranians.

The Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, on Tuesday hailed Pope Francis's support for Gazans and engagement with the small Catholic community in the war-battered Palestinian territory.

The Catholic church's highest authority in the region, who is considered a potential successor to the late pontiff, Pizzaballa told journalists in Jerusalem that "Gaza represents, a little bit, all what was the heart of his pontificate".

A leader from Hamas-aligned Lebanese Islamist group Jamaa Islamiya was among two people killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon on Tuesday, the group and Israel's military said.

Israel has continued to carry out regular strikes on Lebanon despite a November truce with militant group Hezbollah that sought to halt more than a year of hostilities between the foes including two months of all-out war.

Lebanon's civil defence said "an Israeli drone targeted a car" near the coastal town of Damour, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Beirut, and rescuers recovered a man's body.

A Hamas delegation left for Cairo to discuss "new ideas" aimed at securing a ceasefire in Gaza, an official from the group said, as rescuers reported 26 dead in Israeli air strikes on Tuesday.

The renewed diplomatic effort follows Hamas's rejection last week of Israel's latest proposal to secure the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip.

Talks have so far failed to produce any breakthrough since Israel resumed its air and ground assault from March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire.

Israeli police have been searching for a man reported missing following a suspected shark attack off the country's Mediterranean coast, the force said on Tuesday.

Shark attacks have not been reported in Israel for decades.

Police spokesman Aryeh Doron said that "several findings have been sent for examination", without specifying the nature of the recovered evidence.

Search operations continued Tuesday in the southeastern Mediterranean, near the area of the central city of Hadera where the swimmer had disappeared.

Church bells tolled in Mosul and nearby towns Monday to mark the death of Pope Francis, the first pope to visit Iraq which suffered greatly at the hands of jihadists.

In the historic Al-Tahera church in the nearby town of Qaraqosh, where the Pope prayed in 2021, dozens of worshippers gathered for an Easter mass which also became an occasion to pay tribute to their beloved Francis.

Near the altar stood an empty wooden chair on which the pope had sat when he declared in a mass that he had entrusted the town's "rebirth" to the Virgin Mary.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Shiite Islam's highest authority in Iraq, offered his condolences on Monday for the death of Pope Francis, praising his work promoting "peace and tolerance".

Sistani, 94, who met the late pontiff in 2021 in the first-ever papal visit to Iraq, said in a statement issued by his office that it was an "important milestone" in supporting interfaith dialogue and "rejecting violence and hatred".

Francis had a "special role in serving the causes of peace and tolerance, and solidarity with the oppressed and persecuted around the world", Sistani said.

Lawyers and relatives on Monday denounced the hefty sentences handed down to Tunisian opposition figures in last week's mass trial as "fabricated" and "unfounded", and said they will appeal.

A court in Tunis in the early hours of Saturday handed down jail terms of up to 66 years to around 40 defendants, including vocal critics of President Kais Saied.

They were accused of "conspiracy against state security" and "belonging to a terrorist group" among other charges, according to their lawyers.

Pope Francis died on Monday aged 88, prompting mourning across the Christian world for the energetic reformer who inspired devotion from Catholics but riled traditionalists during a 12-year papacy.

Mourners gathered, many in tears, in St Peter's Square, where just a day earlier the the frail-looking pontiff had greeted worshippers on Easter Sunday, having recently left hospital following a 38-day battle with double pneumonia.

Gaza's civil defence agency on Monday accused the Israeli military of carrying out "summary executions" in the killing of 15 rescue workers last month, rejecting the findings of an internal probe by the army.

The medics and other rescue workers were killed when responding to distress calls near Gaza's southern city of Rafah early on March 23, days into Israel's renewed offensive in the Hamas-run territory.