Nearly half a million Palestinians have been displaced in recent days by escalating Israeli military operations in southern and northern Gaza, the United Nations says.

Palestinian officials say Israeli strikes in central Gaza killed at least 12 people overnight and into Tuesday.

The United States called on Iran on Monday to halt its transfer of an "unprecedented" amount of weaponry to Yemen's Houthi rebels, enabling their fighters to carry out "reckless attacks" on ships in the Red Sea and elsewhere.

U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the U.N. Security Council that if it wants to make progress toward ending the civil war in Yemen, it should collectively "call Iran out for its destabilizing role and insist that it cannot hide behind the Houthis."

Palestinians on Wednesday will mark the 76th year of their mass expulsion from what is now Israel, an event that is at the core of their national struggle. But in many ways, that experience pales in comparison to the calamity now unfolding in Gaza.

Palestinians refer to it as the "Nakba," Arabic for "catastrophe." Some 700,000 Palestinians — a majority of the prewar population — fled or were driven from their homes before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel's establishment.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that "more than 1,000 members" of the Palestinian militant group Hamas were being treated in Turkish hospitals amid the ongoing war in Gaza.

Erdogan, a vocal critic of Israel's war in the Palestinian territory since Hamas' attacks on October 7, made the announcement to reporters, adding that he considered Hamas "a resistance organisation".

Aid workers are struggling to distribute dwindling food and other supplies to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by what Israel says is a limited operation in Rafah, as the two main crossings near the southern Gaza city remain closed.

The United Nations' agency for Palestinian refugees said 360,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah over the past week, out of 1.3 million who were sheltering there before the operation began, most of whom had already fled fighting elsewhere over the course of the 7-month war between Israel and Hamas.

Halting arms exports to Israel is "not a wise path" and would only strengthen Hamas, Britain's foreign secretary said.

Asked whether the U.K. would follow the U.S. in threatening to cut the supply of offensive weapons to Israel if it carried out an attack on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, Foreign Secretary David Cameron said the two countries cannot be compared because unlike the U.S., Britain supplies a very small amount of Israel's weapons.

Protests over the Israel-Hamas war have spread across U.S. university and college campuses in recent weeks, leading to disruptions and arrests. Some demonstrations extended into weekend graduation celebrations, although they were muted in comparison to the encampments and rallies that have roiled campuses and resulted in nearly 2,900 arrests of students and other protesters.

Most of the commencement exercises took place as scheduled and remained largely peaceful. Here is a look at some of the ceremonies that included protests:

Israel’s leaders commemorated Memorial Day on Monday, honoring Israel’s fallen soldiers and those killed in attacks on a holiday that was almost entirely absorbed by the ongoing war in Gaza.

The usually somber calendar event has been compounded by simmering public anger over the failures of Oct. 7, when Hamas fighters from Gaza broke into southern Israel and allegedly killed 1,200 people, the act that sparked the war. The holiday began Sunday evening and continues until nightfall on Monday.

Israel’s leaders commemorated Memorial Day on Monday, a usually somber holiday that this year was almost entirely absorbed by the ongoing war in Gaza.

At 11:00 A.M., sirens announced two minutes of silence, and a formation of four fighter planes then flew over Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. At a ceremony, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed once again to defeat Hamas, a promise he has made repeatedly during Israel’s brutal seven month war with the militant group.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday that the besieged Palestinian territory's health system is "hours away" from collapse, after fighting has blocked fuel shipments through key crossings.

"We are just hours away from the collapse of the health system in the Gaza Strip due to the lack of the necessary fuel to operate generators in hospitals, ambulances, and (for vehicles to) transport staff," the ministry said in a statement.