The United States is drawing down the presence of staffers who are not deemed essential to operations in the Middle East and their loved ones due to the potential for regional unrest, the State Department and military said Wednesday.

The State Department said it has ordered the departure of all nonessential personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad based on its latest review and a commitment "to keeping Americans safe, both at home and abroad." The embassy already had been on limited staffing, and the order will not affect a large number of personnel.

Medical charity Medecins du Monde Wednesday accused Israel of violating international law with drone strikes on a building housing one of its offices in war-torn Gaza that killed eight people, none of them staff.

The France-based aid group said in a statement the attack on Tuesday "constitutes a serious violation of international humanitarian law, which protects both civilian populations and humanitarian organizations operating in conflict zones".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government faces a major test on Wednesday after the opposition submitted a bill to dissolve the government, with his ultra-Orthodox coalition partners threatening to support the measure and force early elections.

The ultra-Orthodox parties are furious that the government has failed to pass a law exempting their community from mandatory military service, an issue that has bitterly divided the Israeli public during the war in the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian death toll from the 20-month Israel-Hamas war has climbed past 55,000, the Gaza Health Ministry said Wednesday.

The ministry doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants, but has said that women and children make up more than half the dead.

Three Alawite civilians were killed in western Syria overnight, hours after an attack on government forces killed at least one officer, a war monitor said on Wednesday.

The Gaza civil defense agency said 31 people were killed and "about 200" wounded Wednesday when Israeli troops fired on people waiting to enter a food distribution center.

Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway said Tuesday they have imposed sanctions on two far-right Israeli government ministers for allegedly "inciting extremist violence" against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The decision by Western governments friendly to Israel was a sharp rebuke of Israel's settlement policies in the West Bank and of settler violence, which has spiked since Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack ignited the war in the Gaza Strip.

The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on a major Palestinian legal group for prisoners and detainees along with 4 other charitable entities across the Middle East, Africa and Europe, accusing them of supporting Hamas' military wing under the pretense of humanitarian aid in Gaza.

Those sanctioned include Addameer, a nongovernmental organization that was founded in 1991 and is based in the city of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a vote to dissolve parliament Wednesday and key coalition partners have threatened to bring down his government.

Still, few think it's the end of the road for Israel's longest-serving prime minister, who has been battling corruption charges for years, or his far-right government, still in power after presiding over the security failures surrounding the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

Air raid sirens sounded across central Israel and Jerusalem on Tuesday as the military said it had detected a projectile launched from Yemen.

"The IDF (military) has identified the launch of a missile from Yemen toward Israeli territory," the military said in a statement, adding that sirens were sounded in several areas. AFP reporters heard loud booms over Jerusalem, similar to past interceptions.