Ukraine's air force said Thursday it shot down 31 Russian missiles overnight, the largest attempted strike in weeks as Moscow vowed revenge for recent Ukrainian attacks on its border regions.

"The main direction of the attack was Kyiv," Ukraine's air force said in a statement on social media. Some 13 people were injured in the capital, the interior ministry said in a separate statement.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday to discuss efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and ramp up aid deliveries to the Palestinian territory.

The US top diplomat touched down in Jeddah where he was to meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, said an AFP journalist on board, the first stop on Blinken's sixth Middle East tour since the Israel-Hamas war started on October 7.

Ukraine on Wednesday said Russian shelling had killed three people and wounded five in the northeastern city of Kharkiv.

"Russians shelled Kharkiv," Sergiy Bolvinov, head of the investigative department of Kharkiv's police, said on social media. "Three people died, five were wounded, a large-scale fire broke out".

About 700 people were stranded in far northern Australia Tuesday after a tropical cyclone barrelled through their remote community, cutting off links with the rest of the country.

The Australian Defense Force tried to evacuate residents of the small Northern Territory community of Borroloola, but attempts to land aircraft Monday were hampered by wild weather.

The United States plans to refill its strategic oil reserve by the end of 2024 after the stockpiles reached historic lows last year, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, U.S. President Joe Biden announced an unprecedented tapping of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in a move criticized by Republicans.

The U.N. warned Tuesday that Israel's severe restrictions on aid into war-ravaged Gaza and its ongoing hostilities could mean it is using starvation as a "weapon of war".

"The extent of Israel's continued restrictions on entry of aid into Gaza, together with the manner in which he continues to conduct hostilities may amount to the use of starvation as a method of war, which is a war crime," U.N. rights office spokesman Jeremy Laurence told reporters in Geneva, adding that the final determination of whether "starvation is being used as a weapon of war" would be determined by a court of law.

Israeli raids hit warehouses storing weapons for the Lebanese Hezbollah group in Syria Tuesday, a war monitor said, as a Syrian military source said air defenses had intercepted several missiles.

Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes in Syria since civil war broke out in 2011, targeting Iran-backed forces including Hezbollah as well as Syrian army positions.

The entire population of Gaza is experiencing "severe levels of acute food insecurity", U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday, underscoring the urgency for increasing the delivery of humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory.

"According to the most respected measure of these things, 100 percent of the population in Gaza is at severe levels of acute food insecurity. That's the first time an entire population has been so classified," Blinken told a press conference in the Philippines where he is on an official visit.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Saudi Arabia and Egypt this week to discuss efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and increase humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory, a State Department spokesperson said Tuesday.

Blinken will hold talks with Saudi leaders in Jeddah on Wednesday before travelling to Cairo on Thursday for talks with Egyptian authorities, spokesman Matthew Miller said from the Philippines, where Blinken is touring.

Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera said Israeli forces had beaten and arrested its correspondent Ismail Alghoul during a raid on Monday on Gaza's largest hospital, urging his release.

The Israeli army said it was battling Hamas militants at the Al-Shifa hospital with witnesses reporting air strikes and tanks near the facility which was crowded with patients and displaced people.