Israel's defense minister said Monday the military would expand its operations in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, while the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced he's seeking arrest warrants for both Israeli and Hamas leaders in connection with their actions during the seven-month war.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with Gallant and the Israeli military leadership in Tel Aviv earlier Monday. Sullivan’s visit comes two weeks into the military’s foray into Rafah, where troops have been battling Hamas fighters and escalating bombardment.

Human rights experts working for the United Nations on Monday urged Yemen's Houthi rebels to release five people from the country's Baha'i religious minority who have been in detention for a year.

The five are among 17 Baha'i followers detained last May when the Houthis raided a Baha'i gathering in the capital of Sanaa. The experts said in a statement that 12 have since been released "under very strict conditions" but that five remain "detained in difficult circumstances."

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said Monday he is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in connection with their actions during the seven-month war between Israel and Hamas.

Karim Khan said that he believes Netanyahu, his defense minister Yoav Gallant and three Hamas leaders — Yehia Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh — are responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Israel.

A war monitor said at least six pro-Iran fighters were killed Monday in Israeli strikes in Syria near the Lebanese border, in an area where Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah group holds sway.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "Israeli strikes targeted two positions of pro-Iran groups in the Homs region", including "a Hezbollah site in the Qusayr area" near the border where "six Iran-backed fighters were killed".

The helicopter crash in which Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country's foreign minister and other officials were killed is likely to reverberate across the Middle East, where Iran's influence runs wide and deep.

That's because Iran has spent decades supporting armed groups and militants in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Palestinian territories, allowing it to project power and potentially deter attacks from the United States or Israel, the sworn enemies of its 1979 Islamic Revolution.

A Gaza hospital said Sunday that an Israeli air strike targeting a house at a refugee camp in the center of the Palestinian territory killed at least 20 people.

"We received 20 fatalities and several wounded after an Israeli air strike targeted a house belonging to the Hassan family in Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza," the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said in a statement.

President Joe Biden's national security adviser met early Sunday with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to discuss what the kingdom described as the "semi-final" version of a wide-ranging security agreement between the countries.

The announcement by the state-run Saudi Press Agency comes as the strategic deal had been upended after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel that Israeli authorities claim it killed 1,200 people and saw 250 others taken hostage back to the Gaza Strip.

Benny Gantz, a popular centrist member of Israel's three-member War Cabinet, has threatened to resign from the government if it doesn't adopt a new plan in three weeks' time for the war in Gaza, a decision that would leave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more reliant on far-right allies.

The announcement deepens a divide in Israel's leadership more than seven months into a war in which Israel has yet to accomplish its goals of dismantling Hamas and returning scores of hostages abducted in the militant group's Oct. 7 attack.

A crude oil tanker was hit by a missile off the coast of Yemen's southwestern city of Mokha overlooking the strategic Bab al-Mandeb strait, maritime security firm Ambrey said Saturday.

Heavy clashes and bombardment Saturday rocked Gaza's southern city of Rafah, witnesses said, as the Israeli military announced the first 310 pallets of humanitarian aid had entered the besieged territory via a US-built pier.