An emotional Palestinian team will play Australia on Tuesday at the neutral venue of Kuwait after its World Cup qualifier was moved from the West Bank due to continuing conflict in the region.

Authorities in Kuwait are expecting a big crowd at the Jaber Al-Ahmad International Stadium with passionate support for the Palestinians, a team that has never appeared at the World Cup.

Federal government workers from the State Department to NASA are circulating open letters demanding that President Joe Biden pursue a cease-fire in Israel's war against Hamas. Congressional staffers are picking up microphones in front of the Capitol, speaking out to condemn what they say is the silence of lawmakers about the toll on Palestinian civilians.

As the deaths soar in Gaza, Biden and Congress are facing unusually public challenges from the inside over their support for Israel's offensive. Hundreds of staffers in the administration and on Capitol Hill are signing on to open letters, speaking to reporters and holding vigils, all in an effort to shift U.S. policy toward more urgent action to stem Palestinian casualties.

Heavy fighting in a disputed region claimed by both Sudan and South Sudan killed has at least 32 people, including a U.N. peacekeeper, authorities said.

The civilians and a Ghanaian soldier serving with a peacekeeping force died when unknown gunmen attacked two villages in the southern part of the Abyei administrative region, local media reported.

When Israeli warplanes swooped over the Gaza Strip following Hamas militants' deadly attack on southern Israel, Palestinians say a different kind of war took hold in the occupied West Bank.

Overnight, the territory was closed off. Towns were raided, curfews imposed, teenagers arrested, detainees beaten, and villages stormed by Jewish vigilantes.

Heavy fighting erupted Monday around a hospital in northern Gaza where thousands of patients and displaced people have been sheltering for weeks, as Israeli forces focus on clearing out medical facilities that they say Hamas militants use for cover.

The advance on the Indonesian Hospital came a day after the World Health Organization evacuated 31 premature babies from Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the territory's largest, where they were among more than 250 critically ill or wounded patients stranded there days after Israeli forces entered the compound.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made an unannounced visit to Kyiv on Monday in a high-profile push to keep money and weapons flowing to Ukraine even as U.S. and international resources are stretched by the new global risks raised by the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Austin, who traveled to Kyiv by train from Poland, is scheduled to meet with senior Ukrainian officials and publicly press Ukraine's urgent military needs as it enters another tough winter of fighting.

Yemen's Houthi rebels seized an Israeli-linked cargo ship in a crucial Red Sea shipping route Sunday and took its 25 crew members hostage, officials said, raising fears that regional tensions heightened over the Israel-Hamas war were playing out on a new maritime front.

The Iran-backed Houthi rebels said they hijacked the ship over its connection to Israel and would continue to target ships in international waters that were linked to or owned by Israelis until the end of Israel's campaign against Gaza's Hamas rulers.

A United Nations team said Sunday that 291 patients were left at Gaza's largest hospital after Israeli troops had others evacuate. Those left included 32 babies in extremely critical condition, trauma patients with severely infected wounds, and others with spinal injuries who are unable to move.

The team was able to tour Shifa Hospital for an hour after about 2,500 displaced people, mobile patients and medical staff left the sprawling compound Saturday morning, said the World Health Organization, which led the mission. It said 25 medical staff remained, along with the patients.

Thousands of family members and supporters of some 240 hostages held in Gaza streamed into Jerusalem on Saturday, castigating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government over his management of the war with Hamas and pleading with the government to do whatever it takes to bring their loved ones home.

As public pressure mounted, Netanyahu said Saturday that Israel's War Cabinet would meet with representatives of the families this week. "I am marching with you. The Israeli people are marching with you," he said. "I promise, when we have something to say, we will inform you."

U.S. President Joe Biden says that achieving a cease-fire amid Israel's war with Hamas "is not peace" and that an important key to lasting stability is a reunited Gaza Strip and West Bank that can be governed under "a revitalized Palestinian Authority."