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Geneva (AFP) – The United Nations on Tuesday condemned what it said was Israel's "weaponisation of food" in Gaza and called it a war crime, urging its military to "stop shooting at people trying to get food".

The head of the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees also called a new US- and Israel-backed food-distribution system in the Gaza Strip an "abomination".

"Israel's militarised humanitarian assistance mechanism is in contradiction with international standards on aid distribution," said UN human rights office spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan.

"The weaponisation of food for civilians, in addition to restricting or preventing their access to life-sustaining services, constitutes a war crime."

He stressed that only a court could make a legal determination on whether war crimes have been committed.

Kheetan noted "scenes of chaos around the food distribution points" of the GHF.

"Desperate, hungry people in Gaza continue to face the inhumane choice of either starving to death or risk being killed while trying to get food," he told reporters in Geneva.

Since the GHF began operating, "the Israeli military has shelled and shot Palestinians trying to reach the distribution points, leading to many fatalities", he said.

Kheetan pointed to reports that "over 410 Palestinians have been killed as a result, (while) at least 93 others have also been reportedly killed by the Israeli army while attempting to approach the very few aid convoys of the UN and other humanitarian organisations".

He said those figures came from the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip and from other sources, including NGOs.

Kheetan said the UN human rights office was in the process of verifying the figures -- and in both cases, further people may have been killed from other sources of fire -- something his office cannot confirm.

"At least 3,000 Palestinians have been injured in these incidents," he added.

"Each of these killings must be promptly and impartially investigated, and those responsible must be held to account."

Kheetan cautioned that the system "endangers civilians and contributes to the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza".

The UN said in May that "100 percent of the population" of the besieged territory were "at risk of famine".

"Humanitarian assistance must never be used as a bargaining chip in any conflict," he said.

The UN rights office demanded immediate action to rectify the situation.

"The Israeli military must stop shooting at people trying to get food," said Kheetan.

Meanwhile Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, slammed GHF as "an abomination that humiliates and degrades desperate people".

"It is a death trap costing more lives than it saves," he told a press conference in Berlin.

Lazzarini called for UNRWA to regain access to the Palestinian territory and restart its aid efforts.

"The humanitarian community, including UNRWA, has the expertise and must be allowed to do their job and provide assistance with respect and dignity," he said.

"There is no other alternative to address the challenges of spreading hunger in the Gaza Strip."

GHF said Monday it had distributed roughly 680,000 food boxes so far.

"GHF workers continue to provide meals safely and securely," said the foundation's interim chief John Acree, adding: "Our system is working, and we will press on."

Dhaka (AFP) – Mosquito-borne dengue fever was rarely a major problem in Bangladesh's coastal districts, but some hospitals are so full of those with the potentially deadly virus that patients are treated on the floor.

As climate change drives erratic weather patterns, experts point to a dire lack of clean drinking water in the wider delta -- where the snaking Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers reach the sea -- as a likely driving force for the surge.

Rakibul Islam Rajan said his two-year-old daughter keeps searching for her mother, Azmeri Mona Lisa Zareen, who died of dengue in early June in the southern region of Barisal.

"Zareen developed high fever... her blood pressure collapsed -- and then she couldn't breathe," said 31-year-old Rajan.

"Our daughter keeps searching for her from one room to another".

In the worst cases, intense viral fevers trigger bleeding, internally or from the mouth and nose.

Barisal has recorded nearly half of the 7,500 dengue cases across Bangladesh this year, according to the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR).

Five people have died there this year with dengue fever, out of 31 deaths recorded across the entire country of some 170 million people.

Numbers are still far below the deadly outbreak of 2023, when more than 1,700 people died across the South Asian nation, and more than 200,000 were infected.

In the Barisal district of Barguna, the hospital is packed full.

Barisal health chief Shyamol Krishna Mondal said it was the "worst we've seen".

Barguna's 250-bed public hospital was coping with more than 200 dengue patients.

"We couldn't even offer beds," Mondal said. "They are getting treatment while lying on the floor."

Kabirul Bashar, an expert on disease at Jahangirnagar University, said a lack of clean water was "one of the major reasons".

People store rainwater in containers, exactly the conditions mosquitoes love.

"The water distribution system is almost absent," Bashar said.

While a lack of clean water is a long-running problem, climate change is making it worse.

Rising seas driven by climate change threaten swathes of low-lying Bangladesh, with increasing numbers of powerful storms bringing seawater further inland, turning wells and lakes salty, according to government scientists.

Changing weather patterns, making once predictable rains uncertain, adds to the challenge -- with people storing rainwater when they can.

But Mushtuq Husain, a public health expert and adviser at IEDCR, said that the plentiful water storage pots also provided perfect mosquito breeding sites.

"We can't allow water stagnation anywhere -- that should be the rule of thumb, but it's not happening," he said.

"The vulnerability is soaring because of the high temperatures and erratic rainfall, which are conducive to mosquito breeding."

Bangladesh has recorded cases of dengue since the 1960s but documented its first outbreak of dengue haemorrhagic fever, a severe and sometimes fatal form of the disease, in 2000.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that dengue and other mosquito-borne viruses are spreading faster and further due to climate change.

About half of the world's population is now at risk of dengue, with an estimated 100 to 400 million infections occurring each year, and many of those causing only mild illness, according to the WHO.

Rajan, mourning his wife, worries that there will be more deaths to come, accusing local authorities of failing to stem mosquitoes.

"Dengue has taken her," he said of his late wife. "I don't know how many more are in the queue... but I don't see enough cleanup activities."

Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) (AFP) – Historic forest fires in Brazil last year scorched through an area larger than the size of Italy, recording a burned area some 60 percent higher than average of the last four decades, said a report released Tuesday.

Brazil experienced historic fires last year, particularly in the Amazon, the largest tropical rainforest on the planet that is key to absorbing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

According to the monitoring platform MapBiomas, the fires razed 30 million hectares (115,830 square miles) last year, a 62 percent jump compared to the 18.5 million hectares burned annually on average.

MapBiomas, which began satellite recording in 1985, said that the Amazon accounted for more than half of the fires suffered in Brazil, with 15.6 million hectares affected -- more than double its historical average.

The record is discouraging for the government of leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who will host the UN's COP30 climate conference in November in the Amazonian city of Belem.

The unprecedented drought that hit Brazil in 2024, aggravated by climate change, contributed to the record number of fires.

Authorities and experts attribute the fires to human activity and link them to the often illegal clearing of land for grazing and agriculture.

"The combination of highly flammable vegetation, low humidity, and the use of fire has created the perfect conditions for it (fires) to spread on a large scale," said Felipe Martenexen, MapBiomas's Amazon coordinator.

"Once the forest burns, it ends up losing moisture and forest cover," he said.

"It ends up altering that entire microclimate, making it more vulnerable next time to new fires," he warned at a press conference.

The Pantanal, a natural region encompassing the world's largest wetland which is mostly in Brazil, also suffered devastating fires last year. Sixty-two percent of this area has been affected by fire at least once in the last 40 years.

Also setting a new record in 2024 was the Atlantic Forest, one of the most threatened biomes on the planet which stretches along Brazil's ocean coast and extends into neighbouring Paraguay and Argentina.

The 1.2 million hectares burned was the largest area affected by fire since 1985 and represented a 261 percent increase compared to the historical average in this region.

MapBiomas's report also revealed that 2024 was Brazil's second-worst year for fires since 2007, with nearly a third of the area burned last year suffering from mega-fires of more than 100,000 hectares.

These large fires represent a worrying change in the country's historical fire patterns, noted MapBiomas experts.

Aranyaprathet (Thailand) (AFP) – Dozens of tourists and workers, some carrying children, were left stranded on Tuesday at Thailand's main land crossing with Cambodia, after the army stopped almost all border traffic in an escalating territorial dispute.

Thailand has closed crossing points in in all seven border provinces to everyone except students and those seeking medical treatment, after a long-running row erupted into military clashes last month in which a Cambodian soldier was killed.

There was confusion at the Ban Khlong Luek checkpoint in Sa Kaeo province -- the main crossing for people travelling overland to Cambodia's Siem Reap, where the Angkor Wat complex is located.

Around 50 Cambodian workers, mostly vendors who regularly cross into Thailand for trade, found themselves stuck at the checkpoint, unable to return home.

"I wanted to go back last night but had to sleep at my shop instead because police didn't allow me to cross," said Malin Po, 38, a clothing seller.

"I usually cross every day because I come to work in Thailand and go back home to Cambodia."

She said no one had explained why the checkpoint was closed, leaving many frustrated.

Riot police were stationed near the crossing point -- a grand archway sealed shut with yellow railings -- as people trudged back towards the Thai side after being turned away.

Chanta Wo, 32, a Cambodian carpenter based in Sa Kaeo, said he was trying to cross the border after learning that his 73 year old mother-in-law had just died.

Travelling with his wife, brother, two-year-old daughter and a one-month-old baby, he was seen changing his infant son's nappy on a bench near the checkpoint.

"I was warned away by the police... I'm very concerned," he told AFP.

As well as Cambodian workers, a handful of tourists hoping to cross the border also found themselves stuck.

Matteo Toso, 34, from Turin, Italy, said he was backpacking across Asia and had spent two months starting from Nepal before attempting to cross into Cambodia.

"I might have to go back to Bangkok and take a plane to Cambodia but of course that's more expensive," he told AFP.

Thailand and Cambodia are at odds over several small sections of their border in a row that dates back to the drawing of the 800-kilometre (500-mile) frontier in the early 20th century during the French occupation of Indochina.

Violence sparked by the dispute has led to at least 28 deaths in the region since 2008, but the issue had died down in recent years until last month's flare-up.

Peace-seeking talks stalled, and Cambodia has banned imports of fuel and oil from Thailand, as well as Thai fruit and vegetables.

The row has also gravely wounded Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who is facing calls to quit over a leaked phone call with former Cambodian leader Hun Sen which saw her accused of appeasing Phnom Penh and undermining her own military.

Thai border police said it was unclear when the crossing would reopen, adding that officers on the ground were following military orders with limited information.

Hanoi (AFP) – A $45 million corruption trial against 41 people including state officials began in Vietnam on Tuesday, part of the communist state's wide-ranging anti-graft drive.

The so-called "burning furnace" campaign against corruption has swept up dozens of senior government figures, including two presidents and three deputy prime ministers, as well as top business leaders.

In the latest case, a court in Hanoi began proceedings against 30 former officials of northern Vinh Phuc, Phu Tho and central Quang Ngai provinces.

Eleven others -- businesspeople and company employees -- are also accused of involvement in corruption that prosecutors say caused damage to the state worth more than 1.16 trillion dong ($44.6 million).

They are accused of offences including bribery, abuse of power, and violating laws on bidding and accounting.

Prosecutors say that between 2010 and 2024, chairman of the Phuc Son Group, Nguyen Van Hau, spent over $5 million bribing officials to win contracts in 14 multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects in the three provinces.

Hau brought suitcases of cash to the offices or private residences of the officials for the bribes, prosecutors say.

Former party chief of Vinh Phuc province Hoang Thi Thuy Lan received the biggest bribes from Hau, totalling almost $2 million dollars -- in suitcases weighing up to 60 kilograms.

In April, Vietnam jailed a former deputy minister of industry and trade for six years after finding him guilty of "power abuse" in a solar energy development plan.

Hoang Quoc Vuong, 62, had admitted to taking a $57,600 bribe to favour solar power plants in southern Ninh Thuan province, but his family had paid the amount back before the sentencing.

Panama City (AFP) – Panama's government has regained "control" of the western Bocas del Toro province, officials said, after months of violent anti-government protests.

Anti-government protests began almost two months ago in the major banana-producing region of Bocas del Toro over pension reforms that critics say will force them to work longer.

The unrest has left one dead, more than 300 arrested, and dozens injured, including 14 police officers, according to authorities.

National Police Director General Jaime Fernandez told a press conference Monday that "there is already a consolidation of police and public forces in general in Bocas del Toro."

"We somehow managed to take control of the situation" and the protests and looting "have ceased," though "the threat remains," he added.

President Jose Raul Mulino last week declared a state of emergency for the province, suspending freedom of assembly and movement where protesters set up roadblocks and damaged the airport, businesses and offices.

Violence peaked in the city of Changuinola, where groups looted businesses and partially set fire to a baseball stadium with police officers inside, authorities said.

Local media reported clashes were winding down, and the Panamanian Security Ministry published photos and video Monday showing police clearing roads in Changuinola.

"There is still significant damage," Fernandez said.

Over 2,500 police officers were deployed to restore order to the province.

Workers with US banana giant Chiquita in Bocas del Toro went on strike in late April over pension reforms adopted by the Panamanian Congress.

Chiquita sacked thousands of workers over the strike.

The banana growers' unions called off their protest earlier this month in a bid to reverse the layoffs, but other groups have remained at the barricades.

"A major part of the arrests are due to vandalism and looting," Deputy Security Minister Luis Felipe Icaza said.

Kyiv (Ukraine) (AFP) – Russian drone attacks killed three people in Ukraine's northeastern region of Sumy, including a child, local authorities said on Tuesday.

It came a day after Ukraine said Russia carried out dozens of drone and missile strikes on its territory, killing 10 people in the capital Kyiv.

Diplomatic efforts to end the three-year war have stalled, with the last direct meeting between Kyiv and Moscow almost three weeks ago and no follow-up talks scheduled.

"We have information about three dead. Among them is an eight-year-old boy," said Oleg Grygorov, head of the Sumy region's military administration.

The boy's body was pulled from the rubble of a destroyed house, he added.

"The strike took the lives of people from different families. They all lived on the same street. They went to sleep in their homes but the Russian drones interrupted their sleep -- forever."

Three people were wounded in the attack and have been hospitalised, with one in "serious condition", Grygorov added.

Russian drone strikes were also reported in Kharkiv, where three people were wounded, the city's mayor said on Telegram.

Russia said a drone had targeted a residential building in Moscow overnight Monday, wounding two people, including a pregnant woman.

"About 100 people were evacuated from the building, including 30 children," according to the region's governor, Andrei Vorobyov, who added that two more drones were shot down.

Russia had fired dozens of drones and missiles at Ukraine a day earlier, ripping open a housing block in Kyiv, killing 10 civilians and burying others beneath the rubble.

Separate Russian attacks on Monday in the southern Odesa region left two people dead and another dozen wounded, local authorities said.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said a school was hit.

"Sadly, some people may still be trapped under the rubble," he added.

Zelensky met British Prime Minister Keir Starmer during a surprise visit to London on Monday.

Zelensky is due to attend a two-day NATO summit in The Hague starting on Tuesday.

New York (AFP) – Mahmoud Khalil, one of the most prominent leaders of pro-Palestinian protests on US campuses, recounted his experience surviving 104 days in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention after being targeted for deportation by the Trump administration.

"I shared a dorm with over 70 men, absolutely no privacy, lights on all the time," the 30-year-old said Sunday on the steps of Columbia University, where he was a graduate student.

Khalil, a legal permanent resident in the United States who is married to an American citizen and has a US-born son, had been in custody since March facing potential removal proceedings.

He was freed from a federal immigration detention center in Jena, Louisiana on Friday, hours after a judge ordered his release on bail.

The activist was a figurehead of student protests at Columbia University against US ally Israel's war in Gaza, and the administration of Donald Trump labeled him a national security threat.

"It's so normal in detention to see men cry," Khalil recalled, deeming the situation "horrendous" and "a stain on the US Constitution."

"I spent my days listening to one tragic story after another: listening to a father of four whose wife is battling cancer, and he's in detention," Khalil detailed in his first protest appearance since regaining his freedom.

"I listened to a story of an individual who has been in the United States for over 20 years, all his children are American, yet he's deported."

The circumstances of the detention were tough, Khalil described, and he took solace where he could find it to gain the strength to carry on.

"It is often hard to find patience in ICE detention," Khalil said.

"The center is crowded with hundreds of people who are told that their existence is illegal, and not one of us knows when we can go free.

"At those moments, it was remembering a specific chant that gave me strength : 'I believe that we will win,'" he continued, to cheers from the audience.

Khalil said he even scratched the phrase into his detention center bunk bed as a reminder, being the last thing he saw when he went to sleep and the first thing he read waking up in the morning.

He repeats it even now, "knowing that I have won in a small way by being free today."

Khalil took specific aim at the site of his speech, Columbia University, chastising the institution for saying "that they want to protect their international students, while over 100 (days) later, I haven't received a single call from this university."

Khalil's wife Noor Abdalla, who gave birth to their son while her husband was held by ICE, said his "voice is stronger now than it has ever been."

"One day our son will know that his father did not bow to fear. He will know that his father stood up when it was hardest, and that the world stood with him," Abdalla said.

Paris (AFP) – Killer whales have been caught on video breaking off pieces of seaweed to rub and groom each other, scientists announced Monday, in what they said is the first evidence of marine mammals making their own tools.

Humans are far from being the only member of the animal kingdom that has mastered using tools. Chimpanzees fashion sticks to fish for termites, crows create hooked twigs to catch grubs and elephants swat flies with branches.

Tool-use in the world's difficult-to-study oceans is rarer, however sea otters are known to smash open shellfish with rocks, while octopuses can make mobile homes out of coconut shells.

A study published in the journal Current Biology describes a new example of tool use by a critically endangered population of orcas.

Scientists have been monitoring the southern resident killer whales in the Salish Sea, between Canada's British Columbia and the US state of Washington, for more than 50 years.

Rachel John, a Masters student at Exeter University in the UK, told a press conference that she first noticed "something kind of weird" going on while watching drone camera footage last year.

The researchers went back over old footage and were surprised to find this behaviour is quite common, documenting 30 examples over eight days.

One whale would use its teeth to break off a piece of bull kelp, which is strong but flexible like a garden hose.

It would then put the kelp between its body and the body of another whale, and they would rub it between them for several minutes.

The pair forms an "S" shape to keep the seaweed positioned between their bodies as they roll around.

Whales are already known to frolic through seaweed in a practice called "kelping".

They are thought to do this partly for fun, partly to use the seaweed to scrub their bodies to remove dead skin.

The international team of researchers called the new behaviour "allokelping," which means kelping with another whale.

They found that killer whales with more dead skin were more likely to engage in the activity, cautioning that it was a small sample size.

Whales also tended to pair up with family members or others of a similar age, suggesting the activity has a social element.

The scientists said it was the first known example of a marine mammal manufacturing a tool.

Janet Mann, a biologist at Georgetown University not involved in the study, praised the research but said it "went a bit too far" in some of its claims.

Bottlenose dolphins that use marine sponges to trawl for prey could also be considered to be manufacturing tools, she told AFP.

And it could be argued that other whales known to use nets of bubbles or plumes of mud to hunt represent tool-use benefitting multiple individuals, another first claimed in the paper, Mann said.

Michael Weiss, research director at the Center for Whale Research and the study's lead author, said it appeared to be just the latest example of socially learned behaviour among animals that could be considered "culture".

But the number of southern resident killer whales has dwindled to just 73, meaning we could soon lose this unique cultural tradition, he warned.

"If they disappear, we're never getting any of that back," he said.

The whales mainly eat Chinook salmon, whose numbers have plummeted due to overfishing, climate change, habitat destruction and other forms of human interference.

The orcas and salmon are not alone -- undersea kelp forests have also been devastated as ocean temperatures rise.

Unless something changes, the outlook for southern resident killer whales is "very bleak," Weiss warned.

Toronto (Canada) (AFP) – She was one of ancient Egypt's most successful rulers, a rare female pharaoh who preceded Cleopatra by 1,500 years, but Queen Hatshepsut's legacy was systematically erased by her stepson successor after her death.

The question of why her impressive reign was so methodically scrubbed has attracted significant debate, but in new research published Monday, University of Toronto scholar Jun Wong argues far too much emphasis has been placed on her gender.

"It's quite a romantic question: why was this pharaoh attacked after her death?" Wong told AFP, explaining his interest in a monarch who steered ancient Egypt through a period of extraordinary prosperity.

Earlier scholars believed Queen Hatshepsut's stepson Thutmose III unleashed a posthumous campaign of defilement against her out of revenge and hatred, including because he wanted to purge any notion that a woman could successfully rule.

"The way in which (Hatshepsut's) reign has been understood has always been colored by her gender," Wong said, referencing beliefs that Thutmose III may have viewed her as "a kind of an evil stepmother."

His research, which builds on other recent scholarship and is being published in the journal Antiquity, argues Thutmose III's motivations were far more nuanced, casting further doubt on the theory of backlash against a woman in charge.

Hatshepsut ruled Egypt roughly 3,500 years ago, taking over following the death of her husband Thutmose II.

She first served as regent to her stepson, the king-in-waiting, but successfully consolidated power in her own right, establishing herself as a female pharaoh.

Experts say she expanded trade routes and commissioned extraordinary structures, including an unparallelled mortuary in the Valley of the Kings on the Nile's west bank.

Wong reassessed a range of material from damaged statues uncovered during excavations from 1922 to 1928.

He said there is no doubt Thutmose III worked to eliminate evidence of Hatshepsut's achievements, but his efforts were "perhaps driven by ritual necessity rather than outright antipathy," Wong said.

Thutmose III may have been trying to neutralize the power of his predecessor in a practical and common way, not out of malice.

He also found that some of the statues depicting Hatshepsut were likely damaged because later generations wanted to reuse them as building materials.

"For a long time, it has been assumed that Hatshepsut's statuary sustained a vindictive attack," Wong said, arguing that a fresh look at the archives suggests "this is not the case."

Tehran (AFP) – Iran's foreign minister said Tuesday Tehran did not intend to continue its strikes if Israel stopped its attacks, hours after US President Donald Trump announced a staggered ceasefire to bring about an "official end" to their conflict.

Abbas Araghchi suggested that Iran had already halted its operation at 4am Tehran time (0030 GMT) -- and wanted a simultaneous end in attacks from Israel as well.

Trump had said the ceasefire would be a phased 24-hour process beginning at around 0400 GMT Tuesday, with Iran unilaterally halting all operations. Israel would follow suit 12 hours later.

"It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

"Upon the 24th hour, an official end to the 12-day war will be saluted by the world," he said, adding that both sides had agreed to remain "peaceful and respectful" during each phase of the process.

Any cessation in hostilities would come as a huge relief to world leaders frantic about an escalation in violence igniting a wider conflagration.

There was no immediate confirmation from Israel on ending the conflict that has killed hundreds in Iran and two dozen in Israel.

Explosions continued to rock Tehran overnight, with blasts in the north and centre of the Iranian capital described by AFP journalists as some of the strongest since the conflict broke out.

Writing on social media, Araghchi said: "The military operations of our powerful Armed Forces to punish Israel for its aggression continued until the very last minute, at 4am."

"As of now, there is NO 'agreement' on ceasefire or cessation of military operations. However, provided that the Israeli regime stops its illegal aggression against the Iranian people no later than 4 am Tehran time, we have no intention to continue our response afterwards," he added.

The adversaries had been swapping missile fire since Israel carried out surprise "preemptive" strikes against Iran on June 13, targeting nuclear and military sites, and prompting Trump to warn of a possible "massive" regional conflict.

The US leader's truce announcement came hours after Iran launched missiles at the largest US military facility in the Middle East -- Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar -- in a move Trump shrugged off as "very weak."

Calling for a de-escalation, Trump said Tehran had given advance notice of the barrage.

Iran's National Security Council confirmed having targeted the base "in response to the US aggressive and insolent action against Iran's nuclear sites and facilities".

But it added that the number of missiles launched "was the same as the number of bombs that the US had used" -- a signal that it had calibrated its response to be directly proportional rather than escalatory.

"This was calibrated and telegraphed in a way that would not result in any American casualties, so that there is an off ramp for both sides," Ali Vaez, a senior advisor at the International Crisis Group, told AFP.

The offensive came after the United States joined its ally Israel's military campaign against Iran, attacking an underground uranium enrichment centre with massive bunker-busting bombs and hitting two other nuclear facilities overnight Saturday into Sunday.

Iran said its assault in Qatar wasn't targeting the Middle Eastern neighbour, but the government in Doha accused Tehran of "blatant aggression" and claimed its right to a "proportional" response.

Iran's state media quoted the Revolutionary Guard Corps announcing that six missiles had hit Al Udeid, which had been evacuated beforehand, according to the Qataris.

The broadside was made up of "short-range and medium-range ballistic missiles," a US defence official said.

AFP reporters heard blasts in central Doha and in Lusail, north of the capital, on Monday evening, and saw projectiles moving across the night sky.

Iranians gathered in central Tehran to celebrate, images on state TV showed, with some waving the flag of the Islamic republic and chanting "Death to America".

Qatar earlier announced the temporary closure of its airspace in light of "developments in the region", while the US embassy and other foreign missions warned their citizens to shelter in place.

Israeli strikes on Iran have killed more than 400 people, Iran's health ministry has said. Twenty-four people have died in Iran's attacks on Israel, according to official figures.

Washington (AFP) – A divided US Supreme Court paved the way on Monday for the Trump administration to resume deportations of undocumented migrants to countries that are not their own.

The unsigned order from the conservative-dominated top court came in response to an emergency appeal by the Justice Department to lift a stay imposed by a lower court on so-called third country deportations.

The Supreme Court did not provide an explanation for the decision and the three liberal justices dissented.

The original case challenging the third country deportations will now be heard by an appeals court but the top court's move allows the removals to proceed for now.

District Judge Brian Murphy had ordered a halt to third country deportations in April, saying migrants were not being given a "meaningful opportunity" to contest their expulsions.

Murphy said they should get at least 15 days to challenge their deportation and provide evidence of whether they may be at risk of torture or death if expelled.

The original case involves the deportation of eight men -- two from Myanmar, two from Cuba, a Vietnamese man, a Laotian, a Mexican and one from South Sudan -- who the US authorities said were convicted violent criminals.

They were being flown to impoverished war-torn South Sudan when Murphy's order came down and have been held since at a US military base in Djibouti.

The Trump administration has defended the third country deportations as necessary since the home nations of some of those being targeted for removal often refuse to accept them.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, author of the dissent, accused the administration of "flagrantly unlawful conduct" that is "exposing thousands to the risk of torture or death."

"The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard," Sotomayor said.

Donald Trump campaigned for president promising to expel millions of undocumented migrants, and he has taken a number of actions aimed at speeding up deportations since returning to the White House in January.

But his mass deportation efforts have been thwarted or stalled by numerous courts, including the Supreme Court, over concerns that migrant rights to due process are being ignored.

Murphy, an appointee of Trump's Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, also temporarily blocked the government from expelling Asian migrants to Libya.