A senior Red Cross official in Gaza on Saturday told reporters of the horrific scenes after an Israeli strike in the Gaza Strip.

It was around 3:30 pm when three explosions rocked the walls of the Red Cross compound in Gaza on Friday, William Schomburg, the local chief for the ICRC told reporters in Geneva via video link.

Then came the "flood of wounded people" seeking help, said the international charity's chief in Rafah.

"There were piles of dead bodies, blood everywhere," he added.

Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly ordered 16 tourism companies stripped of their licences and referred their managers to the public prosecutor Saturday over illegal pilgrimages to Mecca, the cabinet said.

The order came after countries whose citizens performed this year's hajj reported more than 1,100 deaths, many attributed to the oven-like summer heat in Saudi Arabia.

An AFP tally on Friday, compiling official statements and reports from diplomats involved in the response, put the toll at 1,126, more than half of them from Egypt.

A security source said a leader of the Lebanese Islamist group Jamaa Islamiya, an ally of Hamas, was killed Saturday in an Israeli strike on a vehicle in eastern Lebanon.

Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7, Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah movement and other groups allied with the Palestinian militants have traded near-daily fire with Israel across the southern border.

Days after Israel announced a daily pause in fighting on a key route to allow more aid into Gaza, chaos in the besieged Palestinian territory has left vital supplies piled up and undistributed in the searing summer heat.

More than eight months of war, sparked by Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, have led to dire humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip and repeated UN warnings of famine.

Desperation among Gaza's 2.4 million population has increased as fighting rages, sparking warnings from agencies that they are unable to deliver aid.

A war monitor on Saturday said three pro-Iran fighters, including at least two Iraqis, were killed in an overnight air strike in eastern Syria near the Iraq border.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the strike occurred in Deir Ezzor province. Iran wields significant influence in the area, which is regularly targeted by Israel and sometimes by the United States.

"Two of the dead were Iraqi nationals with the Islamic Resistance in Iraq and the third was not identified," the Observatory said, referring to a loose alliance of Iran-backed groups.

With many Israelis gripped by a sense of insecurity following Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack, the number of women applying for gun permits has soared, while feminist groups have criticised the rush to arms.

According to security ministry data, there have been 42,000 applications by women for gun permits since the attack, with 18,000 approved, more than tripling the number of pre-war licenses held by women.

The surge has been enabled by the loosening of gun laws under Israel's right-wing government and its far-right security minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

Health officials in Gaza said Israeli air strikes on Saturday killed at least 24 people in the territory's north, a day after the International Committee of the Red Cross said 22 people were killed in shelling that damaged its office.

The Gaza City strikes added to at least 120 deaths over the previous 48 hours which the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza reported earlier Saturday.

Dr Mahmud Aliwa of Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City said his facility received 24 bodies after the strikes, which left smoke rising over the city.

Abdullah Hammoud's election as the first Muslim mayor of Dearborn was a watershed moment for this city, an automaking hub home to the highest concentration of Arab-Americans in the United States.

But while his early focus was on upgrading sewer infrastructure and investing in parks, he has now been thrust into the national spotlight for his outspoken criticism of fellow Democrat Joe Biden, over the president's support for Israel's military offensive in Gaza.

A senior Saudi official defended the Gulf kingdom's management of the hajj pilgrimage on Friday after various countries reported more than 1,100 deaths, many attributed to high heat.

"The state did not fail, but there was a misjudgement on the part of people who did not appreciate the risks," the official told AFP in the government's first comments on the deaths.

An AFP tally on Friday, compiling official statements and reports from diplomats involved in the response, put the toll at 1,126, more than half of them from Egypt.

Restrictions on women's rights continue to prevent Afghanistan's "reintegration" into the international community, a senior UN official said Friday, noting the Taliban's participation in upcoming talks in Doha is not legitimization of the isolated government.

Since their 2021 return to power, Taliban authorities have not been formally recognized by any nation and apply a rigorous interpretation of Islam, leading to a suppression of women's freedoms that the United Nations has described as "gender apartheid."