Award-winning director Mohammad Rasoulof, who made a dramatic clandestine escape from Iran this month, will attend the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of his new movie, organisers told AFP on Tuesday.

Rasoulof will be in Cannes on Friday when "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" competes for the Palme d'Or, the festival's top prize, its director Thierry Fremaux said.

An outspoken critic of the Iranian government, Rasoulof served two terms in Iranian jails over previous films and had his passport withdrawn in 2017.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that a Gaza ceasefire deal was still possible but he charged that an International Criminal Court arrest bid for Israeli leaders was setting back diplomatic efforts.

Testifying before Congress, Blinken was repeatedly disrupted by protesters critical of US support for Israel. Several were evicted after shouting that he was a "war criminal," but protesters -- many showing symbolically reddened hands --were later allowed to sit silently behind him.

When Karim Khan was sworn in as chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, he said the court should be judged by its acts -- "the proof of the pudding should be in the eating."

And by seeking arrest warrants for Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior Hamas figures, Khan has shown he is not afraid to take on the world's most controversial cases.

The application followed an arrest warrant issued last year for President Vladimir Putin of Russia, which promptly slapped arrest warrants on Khan himself.

The death in a helicopter crash of president Ebrahim Raisi, seen as a possible successor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has reshuffled the cards in the succession process and increased the spotlight on the Iranian number one's son Mojtaba as a contender.

While analysts emphasise it is impossible to know for sure the intentions of Iran's leadership, Raisi's record as a pillar of the Islamic republic over several decades made him an inevitable candidate to become its third supreme leader after Khamenei and revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Israel walked back its decision to shut down an Associated Press live video feed of war-torn Gaza on Tuesday, following a protest from the US news agency and concern from the White House.

Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said he had revoked an earlier order that accused the AP of breaching a new ban on providing rolling footage of Gaza to Qatar-based satellite channel Al Jazeera.

"I have now ordered to cancel the operation and return the equipment to the AP agency," Karhi said in a statement, after Washington called on Israel to reverse the move.

Four ships from the United States and France are transporting aid from Larnaca port in Cyprus to the Gaza Strip amid the spiralling humanitarian crisis there, the Cyprus presidency said on Tuesday.

However a US Defence Department spokesman said that none of the 569 tonnes of humanitarian assistance that has arrived at a US-built pier in the besieged territory had been distributed to those in need.

At least 10 female farm workers died in Egypt when a minibus plunged off a river ferry and into the Nile northwest of Cairo on Tuesday, the health ministry said.

"The toll is at 10 and could rise," ministry spokesman Hossam Abdelghaffar told AFP.

The state's flagship Al-Ahram newspaper reported the accident earlier and said the driver, who had released the handbrake, was arrested while trying to flee.

He had gotten into "a verbal argument" with one of the passengers before leaving the vehicle, it reported.

Israeli forces battled Hamas in Gaza on Tuesday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu angrily dismissed a bid for an international arrest warrant against him on charges of war crimes in the Palestinian territory.

US President Joe Biden backed Netanyahu in condemning as "outrageous" the bid by the International Criminal Court's prosecutor who also sought warrants against leaders of Palestinian militant group Hamas.

The first trial in France of officials from the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad opened on Tuesday, with three top security officers tried in absentia for complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The Paris Criminal Court is hearing cases against the officials for their role in the deaths of two French Syrian men, Mazzen Dabbagh and his son Patrick, arrested in Damascus in 2013.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's British-born wife Asma, who recovered from breast cancer in 2019, has been diagnosed with leukaemia, the president's office said on Tuesday.

"First Lady Asma al-Assad has been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia," an aggressive cancer of the white blood cells involved in battling infection, it said in a statement.

She will undergo a "specialised treatment protocol" that requires social distancing to avoid infection, the statement said, adding that she will "temporarily withdraw from all direct engagements as part of her treatment plan".