When Andrey Kozlov saw his mother after being rescued from eight months of captivity in Gaza, the Russian-Israeli fell to his knees while she hugged him.

"It was so emotional that we just could not talk", Kozlov's mother, Evguenia, told AFP of the day she was reunited with her son last week, in images broadcast over Israeli TV and social media.

She feared "that Andrey would not be the same again", she said, adding that the meeting "was a storm of energy, an emotional shock wave coming from him".

Israeli strikes hit Gaza on Friday as truce talks with Hamas militants failed to progress and tensions surged on Israel's northern border with Lebanon.

Witnesses reported the strikes in various parts of the Gaza Strip in the morning, particularly the centre.

At Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah, men gathered over the body of an 11-year-old boy who died during bombardment of nearby Bureij refugee camp.

In a black singlet, the child lay on a floor smeared with fresh blood, a white bandage covering the top half of his face, AFP images showed.

Grieving families kept a solemn vigil in the terminal of an Indian airport on Friday as the bodies of dozens of migrant workers killed in a Kuwait building fire returned home.

Wednesday's dawn blaze quickly engulfed a housing block home to foreign labourers servicing the oil-rich gulf state's economy.

Fifty people died in the resulting inferno, 45 of them Indians, with dozens more hospitalised and anguished relatives back home frantically chasing news of whether their loved ones had perished.

When Iranians worry about life's big questions, many seek answers in the works and wisdoms of Persia's most revered poet, Hafez -- sometimes with the help of a parakeet.

Retired housewife Mitra, 61, had questions about whether her son married the right woman, so she went to the tomb of Iran's beloved 14th-century bard in the southern city of Shiraz.

Seeking guidance, she visited a fortune-teller there, one of many who offer advice with the help of Hafez's collected works, a book of odes known as the Divan.

More than one million Muslim pilgrims packed a giant tented city near Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on Friday for a hajj pilgrimage held in sweltering heat and against the grim backdrop of the Gaza war.

Robed worshippers arrived on buses or on foot, many shaded by umbrellas, at the vast encampment in Mina after performing the "tawaf" -- walking seven times around the Kaaba, the giant black cube at Mecca's Grand Mosque.

At weddings, football matches and other special events, some Iraqi men like to fire salvos of celebratory gunfire into the sky, worrying little about where the bullets might fall.

For some Iraqis, the tradition has been devastating, as have random bullets from sporadic gun battles in a society still awash with weapons after decades of war and turmoil.

Baghdad mother Randa Ahmad was busy with chores when a loud bang startled her. Alarmed, she hurried to the living room to find her four-year-old son Mohamed bleeding on the floor.

Palestinian officials said Israeli troops killed three Palestinians in a raid in a town in the occupied West Bank Thursday, as Israel's military reported it had "eliminated two wanted suspects".

The raid took place in the town of Qabatiyah near the city of Jenin, said Jenin governor Kamal Abu al-Rub who confirmed the "deaths of two martyrs".

The Palestinian Red Crescent said a third Palestinian was also killed in the raid. The Ramallah-based health ministry identified him as 21-year-old Qais Muhammad Zakarneh.

Kuwaiti authorities said Thursday three people had been detained for suspected manslaughter over a building fire that killed 50 foreign workers, mostly Indians, and plunged relatives and friends into mourning.

Three Filipinos were also among the dead, officials in Manila said, after the fire sent black smoke billowing through the six-storey structure south of Kuwait City and injured dozens more.

Most of oil-rich Kuwait's population of more than four million is made up of foreigners, many of them from South and Southeast Asia working in construction and service industries.

Two cruise missiles launched by Yemen's Huthi rebels struck a bulk cargo carrier in the Gulf of Aden on Thursday, severely injuring a sailor who was evacuated by American forces, the US military said.

The Huthis have been targeting vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since November 2023 in attacks they say are in solidarity with Palestinians during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

Although this has caused major disruption to international shipping, casualties have been rare.

Some Gazans have criticised the Islamist group Hamas, which rules the besieged and conflict-ravaged Palestinian territory, for failing to end the war with Israel that has devastated their lives.

Hamas has "led the Palestinian people into a war of annihilation", said Umm Ala, 67, who has been displaced twice during more than eight months of war between Hamas-led Palestinian militants and Israel.