Stuck in no man's land on the war-hit Lebanon-Syria border, cab driver Fadi Slika now scrapes a living ferrying passengers between two deep craters left by Israeli air strikes.

The journey is just two kilometres (about 1.2 miles), but Slika has no other choice -- his taxi is his only source of income.

"My car is stuck between craters: I can't reach Lebanon and I can't go back to Syria. Meanwhile we're under threat of (Israeli) bombardment," said the 56-year-old.

"I work and sleep here between the two holes," he told AFP.

Lebanon said Israeli strikes Thursday on the country's east and south killed 52 people, as raids also hit south Beirut and Hezbollah claimed its deepest attack on Israel in over a year.

More than 11 months of cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the Gaza conflict escalated into all-out war in September, with Israel conducting an extensive bombing campaign, primarily targeting Hezbollah strongholds, and sending ground troops into southern Lebanon.

Dozens were killed or unaccounted for in Gaza on Thursday after Israeli strikes, on the day the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war.

With warrants also issued for Netanyahu's former defence minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas's military chief, all three men face accusations of crimes against humanity and war crimes in the conflict sparked by the October 7 attack.

The world approved a bitterly negotiated climate deal Sunday but poorer nations most at the mercy of worsening disasters dismissed a $300 billion a year pledge from wealthy historic polluters as insultingly low.

After two exhausting weeks of chaotic bargaining and sleepless nights, nearly 200 nations banged through the contentious finance pact in the early hours in a sports stadium in Azerbaijan.

But the applause had barely subsided in Baku when India delivered a full-throated rejection of the dollar-figure just agreed.

UN atomic watchdog chief Rafael Grossi on Wednesday welcomed Iran's "concrete step" on agreeing to cap its stockpile of highly enriched uranium after Tehran implemented preparatory steps to stop adding to its inventory.

"I think this is ... a concrete step in the right direction -- we have a fact which has been verified by us," Grossi told reporters in Vienna.

"I attach importance to the fact that for the first time... since the distancing of Iran from its past obligations, they are taking a different direction," he said.

Hezbollah's leader delivered a defiant speech on Wednesday, saying Israel cannot impose conditions for a truce in Lebanon, as visiting US envoy Amos Hochstein headed to Israel to try to negotiate an end to the war.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, in a near-simultaneous statement, said any ceasefire deal must ensure Israel still has the "freedom to act" against Hezbollah.

European powers and the United States have submitted a resolution censuring Iran for its lack of cooperation on its nuclear dossier, despite the head of the UN watchdog on Wednesday welcoming "a concrete step" by Iran to cap its uranium stockpile.

As a board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) started in Vienna, diplomats told AFP that Paris, Berlin, London and Washington formally tabled a censure motion critical of Iran.

The resolution is expected to come to a vote on Thursday, the diplomats said.

The United States on Wednesday vetoed a UN Security Council push to call for a ceasefire in Gaza that Washington said would have emboldened Hamas.

The resolution demanded "an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire" in the war between Israel and the Palestinian group, along with "the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages."

But Israel's UN ambassador Danny Danon said the resolution "was not a path to peace, it was a road map to more terror, more suffering and more bloodshed.

Lebanese footballer Celine Haidar was about to make her dream of playing for the national women's team come true, but debris from an Israeli strike left the 19-year-old in a medically induced coma.

After full-blown war erupted in September, Haidar's family were among more than a million people who fled south Beirut and other Hezbollah strongholds, as Israeli bombs rained down.

"But Celine had to come back to (south) Beirut for her studies and training," her father Abbas Haidar told AFP.

Iraq is holding its first nationwide census in nearly four decades this week, a long-awaited count in a nation that has been blighted by sectarian and ethnic divisions.

The census is scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, and will provide sorely needed up-to-date demographic data for the country which has an estimated population of around 44 million.

It will be the first census to cover all 18 governorates since 1987, when dictator Saddam Hussein was in power, following repeated delays caused by years of war and political tensions between factions.