Sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its accompanying warships have spent four months straight at sea defending against ballistic missiles and flying attack drones fired by Iranian-backed Houthis, and are now more regularly also defending against a new threat — fast unmanned vessels that are fired at them through the water.

While the Houthis have launched unmanned surface vessels, or USVs, in the past against Saudi coalition forces that have intervened in Yemen's civil war, they were used for the first time against U.S. military and commercial in the Red Sea on Jan. 4. In the weeks since, the Navy has had to intercept and destroy multiple USVs.

Israeli forces stormed the main hospital in southern Gaza on Thursday, hours after Israeli fire killed a patient and wounded six others inside the complex, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

The raid came a day after the army sought to evacuate thousands of displaced people who had taken shelter at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. The southern city has been the main target of Israel's offensive against Hamas in recent weeks.

Israel's vow to push ahead with a "powerful" operation in Gaza's Rafah was met with a growing chorus of international condemnation Thursday, with leaders warning against catastrophic consequences for the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped there.

Australia, Canada and New Zealand warned Israel "not to go down this path", issuing a rare joint statement in the latest urgent appeal seeking to avert further mass civilian casualties.

Israel's army Tuesday released a video it said was of Hamas's chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, filmed on October 10 with his family members in a tunnel in the Palestinian territory.

Negotiations to pause the Israel-Hamas war and free the remaining hostages headed into a second day in Cairo on Wednesday, as displaced Gazans braced for an expected Israeli assault on their last refuge of Rafah.

A Hamas source told AFP that a delegation was headed to the Egyptian capital to meet Egyptian and Qatari mediators, after Israeli negotiators held talks with the mediators on Tuesday.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived Tuesday in the United Arab Emirates on his seventh trip to the nation, preparing to be feted by tens of thousands of his countrymen ahead of elections back home in the coming months.

Modi was met on landing in Abu Dhabi by Emirati President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a man he has called his brother while working to bolster ties between the Arabian Peninsula nation that is home to millions of Indians. The two leaders walked past an honor guard before sitting down for their meeting, which saw bilateral agreements signed between the nations.

China called Tuesday on Israel to halt military operations in Gaza as soon as possible following a raid that rescued two hostages and killed at least 74 Palestinians.

The Foreign Ministry in Beijing added in a brief statement that Israel should “do everything possible to avoid casualties among innocent civilians and prevent a more devastating humanitarian disaster in Rafah.”

CIA director William Burns, Mossad chief David Barnea and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani met Egyptian officials in Cairo Tuesday "to discuss a truce in Gaza", Egyptian media reported.

Al-Qahera News, which has links to Egyptian intelligence, reported the "quartet meeting" as international pressure grows for a truce between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas.

President Joe Biden is hosting Jordan's King Abdullah II in Washington Monday and the two leaders are expected to discuss the ongoing effort to free hostages held in Gaza, and growing concern over a possible Israeli military operation in the port city of Rafah.

It is the first meeting between the allies since three American troops were killed last month in a drone strike against a U.S. base in Jordan. Biden blamed Iran-backed militias for the fatalities, the first for the U.S. after months of strikes by such groups against American forces across the Middle East since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

U.S. President Joe Biden has been venting his “frustration” in recent private conversations, some of them with campaign donors, over his “inability to persuade Israel to change its military tactics in the Gaza Strip,” and he has named Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the “primary obstacle,” five people directly familiar with his comments told NBC News.

Biden has said he is trying to get Israel to agree to a cease-fire, but Netanyahu is “giving him hell” and is impossible to deal with, said the people familiar with Biden’s comments, who all asked not to be named.