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.

Senior US and Israeli officials will meet in early December to address American concerns over harm to civilians caused by military operations in Gaza, the State Department said Tuesday.

The United States has regularly voiced concerns to key ally Israel over American-supplied weapons being used in strikes that have killed civilians in the Gaza Strip.

However, it has only once exercised the ultimate US leverage -- holding some of the billions of dollars in military aid to Israel.

An Afghan teacher and a jailed lawyer from Tajikistan on Tuesday won the Martin Ennals Award, one of the world's most prestigious rights prizes, with the jury hailing their "exceptional courage".

Zholia Parsi, a teacher from Kabul who began protesting for women's rights after the Taliban returned to power three years ago, shared the prize with lawyer Manuchehr Kholiqnazarov, who is serving a 16-year prison sentence in connection with his human rights work.

Israeli organisation Amana, a movement that backs developing settlements in the occupied West Bank, on Tuesday denounced sanctions imposed on it by the United States the previous day.

A statement by the group said the sanctions "result from baseless slander directed at Amana by hostile and extremist elements".

"Had the US administration bothered to verify the claims... it would have found them to be factually unfounded and refrained from taking action against us," the statement said.

European powers and the United States are moving ahead with a plan to censure Iran for its poor cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog at this week's board meeting, despite an offer by Tehran to cap its highly enriched uranium stock, diplomats told AFP.

Tensions between Iran and Western powers have repeatedly flared since a 2015 deal curbing Tehran's nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief fell apart.

A US envoy said he was in Beirut Tuesday because he saw "a real opportunity" to end the Israel-Hezbollah war, with the Lebanese group announcing then postponing a speech by its leader shortly after.

On September 23, Israel began an intensified air campaign in Lebanon before sending in ground troops, nearly a year into exchanges of fire initiated by Hezbollah in support of Palestinian ally Hamas after its October 7, 2023 attack sparked the war in Gaza.

Three Palestinians were killed in an Israeli military operation near Jenin in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, Israeli security forces said.

In Jenin itself, another two people were killed in an Israeli operation, the Palestinian health ministry and Red Crescent said, with another nine wounded by bullets or fire from drones.

The Israeli military has not yet acknowledged carrying out an operation in Jenin.

US special envoy Amos Hochstein said Tuesday in Beirut that an end to the Israel-Hezbollah war was "now within our grasp" as he met officials to discuss a truce plan largely endorsed by Lebanon.

The United States and France have spearheaded efforts for a ceasefire, which escalated in late September after nearly a year of deadly exchanges between Hezbollah and Israeli troops.

Israel expanded the focus of its operations from Gaza to Lebanon, vowing to secure its northern border to allow tens of thousands of people displaced by the cross-border fire to return home.

G20 leaders met in Rio de Janeiro on Monday for talks on climate change, ongoing wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Lebanon, and more, at a forum that highlighted differences between world powers but also delivered some successes.

Here are five key takeaways from the summit:

- No climate breakthrough -

Hopes were high that G20 leaders would jumpstart stalled UN climate talks taking place in Azerbaijan.

In their final declaration, however, they merely recognized the need for "substantially scaling up climate finance from billions to trillions from all sources."