U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff said Friday that his visit to U.S.-backed aid stations in Gaza would help Washington draw up a plan to deliver more aid to the Palestinian territory.

"Today, we spent over five hours inside Gaza," Witkoff said in a post on X, accompanied by a photo of himself wearing a protective vest and meeting staff at a distribution center.

The U.N. human rights office said Friday that 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while waiting for aid in the shortage-stricken Gaza Strip since late May, most of them by the Israeli military.

"In total, since 27 May, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food; 859 in the vicinity of (U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation) sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys," the U.N. agency's office for the Palestinian territories said in a statement.

A series of Israeli air strikes killed four people in south and east Lebanon, the health ministry said Friday, offering a toll for attacks that took place the day before.

The Israeli military said on Thursday that it had targeted Hezbollah "infrastructure that was used for producing and storing strategic weapons", including what the country's defense minister described as the group's "biggest precision missile manufacturing site".

Sweden on Thursday called on the EU to suspend the trade section of its association agreement with Israel over its conduct of the war in Gaza.

"The situation in Gaza is absolutely appalling, and Israel is failing to fulfil its most basic obligations and agreements on emergency aid. Sweden therefore demands that the EU freeze the trade section of the association agreement as soon as possible," Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said in a post to X, calling on the Israeli government to allow "unhindered humanitarian aid into Gaza."

Canada's support for Palestinian statehood makes a trade deal with Ottawa "very hard", U.S. President Donald Trump said early Thursday.

"Wow! Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine. That will make it very hard for us to make a Trade Deal with them. Oh' Canada!!!" Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Japan's weather office on Thursday lifted a tsunami advisory imposed a day earlier after one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded, off Russia's Far East.

"There is currently no coastal area for which tsunami warnings or advisories are in force," the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said on its website.

President Joseph Aoun said Thursday that Lebanon is determined to disarm Hezbollah, a step it has come under heavy U.S. pressure to take, with the Iran-backed group insisting that doing so would serve Israeli goals.

Hezbollah and Israel recently fought an all-out war that left the militant group badly weakened, though it retains part of its arsenal.

Gaza is slipping into famine, U.N. agencies warned on Tuesday, as the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said the Palestinian death toll in the nearly 22-month war had topped 60,000.

The World Food Program, UNICEF and the Food and Agriculture Organization warned that time was running out and that Gaza was "on the brink of a full-scale famine."

Turkey will start exporting natural gas from Azerbaijan to Syria from Saturday, the energy minister said on Wednesday.

One of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded struck Russia's sparsely populated Far East on Wednesday, causing tsunamis up to four meters (12 feet) high across the Pacific and sparking evacuations from Hawaii to Japan.