A bad bout of asthma nearly derailed the comeback of former world number two Ons Jabeur at the Australian Open on Thursday, with the Tunisian saying she found it hard to breathe and nearly gave up in her second-round victory.

Senior Hamas leader Sami Abu Zuhri said on Thursday there was "no basis" to Israeli allegations the Palestinian militant group was backtracking on elements of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal announced the day before.

"There is no basis to (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu's claims about the movement backtracking from terms in the ceasefire agreement," Abu Zuhri told AFP.

Air raid sirens and loud blasts rang out over Kyiv on Thursday during a visit to the Ukrainian capital by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, AFP journalists reported.

Officials in Kyiv said that air defense systems in the center of the city were engaging enemy targets, after the air force warned of an enemy drone attack. AFP reporters in central Kyiv saw a drone flying overhead.

Gaza's civil defense agency said Thursday that Israel has pounded several areas of the Palestinian territory since the announcement of a ceasefire deal, killing at least 73 people and wounding hundreds.

"Since the ceasefire agreement was announced, Israeli occupation forces have killed 73 people, including 20 children and 25 women," agency spokesman Mahmoud Bassal told AFP, adding that another 230 people were wounded in the "bombardments that are continuing", a day after the truce announcement.

The Israel-Hamas deal was made possible by 18-hour days and a "remarkable" partnership between Joe Biden and Donald Trump's Mideast envoys -- but even then it seemed it might come apart at the last minute.

In the final four days of talks, Biden's pointman Brett McGurk was joined in the region by Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, to get the deal over the line, U.S. officials said.

Spain's top diplomat has announced a €10 million aid package for Lebanon's army, in a boost for the armed forces who have a crucial role in implementing a fragile Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire.

"This announcement of 10 million euros for the United Nations Development Program" will contribute to "supplement the salaries of the Lebanese Armed Forces" as well as finance "solar panels and logistical aspects" of the army, Jose Manuel Albares said Wednesday during a visit to Beirut.

U.S. President Joe Biden urged Americans Wednesday to stand guard against a "dangerous" oligarchy forming under Donald Trump as he delivered a dark farewell address before stepping down next week.

In a primetime speech from the Oval Office at the end of his single term in office, he warned of an ultra-wealthy "tech industrial complex" that he said could gain unchecked power over the American people.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump hailed a hostage release and ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas on Wednesday, agreed just five days before he returns to power.

An Israeli air strike for the first time hit a military target belonging to Syria's new Islamist-led authorities on Wednesday, killing three people, a war monitor and a medical source said.

"An Israeli drone launched an attack targeting a military convoy... killing two members of the Military Operations Department, and injuring another person" in southern Syria's Quneitra region, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. A medical source told AFP a local official was among the three killed in the strike.

Hamas has approved a Gaza truce and hostage release deal, Palestinian sources close to negotiations said Wednesday, after mediator Qatar expressed hope an agreement to end the war could be reached very soon.

After months of failed bids to end the deadliest war in Gaza's history, negotiators were making a final push in Qatar to seal a ceasefire.