The call came in the middle of the night, Mohammed Shula said. His daughter-in-law, eight months pregnant with her first child, was whispering. There was panic in her voice.

"Help, please," Shula recalled her saying. "You have to save us."

Hamas' threat to delay the next planned release of Israeli hostages from the Gaza Strip has jolted a fragile ceasefire that's seen as having the potential to wind down the war.

The next handover of three hostages had been scheduled for Saturday, and families say time is running out for those still alive. Israel now awaits what comes from a security Cabinet meeting Tuesday morning, moved up in response to Monday's Hamas announcement.

Salman Rushdie was so stunned when a masked man started to stab him on a stage in western New York that the author didn't even try to fight back, a prosecutor said Monday during opening statements in the suspect's attempted murder trial.

Prosecutors told jurors that the author came "dangerously close" to dying.

Lawyers are scheduled to deliver opening statements Monday at the trial of the Lebanese-American man charged with trying to fatally stab author Salman Rushdie in front of a lecture audience in western New York.

Rushdie, 77, is expected to testify during the trial of Hadi Matar, bringing the writer face-to-face with his knife-wielding attacker for the first time in more than two years.

Egypt announced that it will host an emergency Arab summit on Feb. 27 to discuss "new and dangerous developments" after U.S. President Donald Trump proposed to resettle Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

Trump's suggestion, made at a White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, infuriated the Arab world, including Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia — key allies of Washington.

New details and growing shock over emaciated hostages have renewed pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to extend a fragile Gaza ceasefire beyond the first phase, even as U.S. President Donald Trump repeated his pledge that the U.S. would take control of the Palestinian enclave.

Talks on the second phase, meant to see more hostages released and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, were due to start Feb. 3. But Israel and Hamas appear to have made little progress, even as Israeli forces withdrew Sunday from a Gaza corridor in the latest commitment to the truce.

Six people were killed and two injured in Lebanon on Saturday in an Israeli drone strike in the area of Janata near the eastern border with Syria, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported.

The Israeli military said in a statement that it struck “Hezbollah operatives” who “were operating in a strategic weapons manufacturing and storage site” belonging to the militant group.

Israeli forces began withdrawing from a key Gaza corridor on Sunday, Israeli officials said, part of Israel's commitments under a tenuous ceasefire deal with Hamas that is moving ahead but faces a major test over whether the sides can negotiate its planned extension.

Israel agreed as part of the truce to remove its forces from the 4-mile (6-kilometer) Netzarim corridor, a strip of land that bisects northern Gaza from the south that Israel used as a military zone during the war.

Lebanon's prime minister named a new government on Saturday, the presidency announced, after an agreement was reached to appoint Fadi Makki as the so-called "fifth Shiite minister." Makki will serve as State Minister for Administrative Development.

Premier Nawaf Salam vowed to "restore confidence between citizens and the state, between Lebanon and its Arab surroundings, and between Lebanon and the international community" and to implement reforms needed to bring the country out of an extended economic crisis.

President Joseph Aoun and Syria's interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa discussed fighting that has broken out on the border between the two countries “and agreed to coordinate to control the situation and prevent targeting civilians,” Aoun’s office said in a statement.

Clashes have been ongoing for three days between Syrian security forces and Lebanese clans in the border area.