The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said Monday that a Gaza food convoy was struck by the Israeli navy, which controls the waters off the territory.

"This morning a food convoy waiting to move into northern Gaza was hit by Israeli naval gunfire," UNRWA's Gaza chief Thomas White wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed to the Middle East for another crisis tour on Monday in a bid to secure a new truce in the Israel-Hamas war, as southern Gaza saw no let-up in fighting.

On his fifth trip to the region since Hamas's October 7 attack that triggered the war, Blinken is expected to visit Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt and Qatar.

Aya al-Sudani, a bubbly toddler with a toothy smile, will mark her first birthday on Tuesday, but there will be no celebration with cake and presents. The day also marks a dark memory.

On Feb. 6, 2023, a massive earthquake hit Syria and Turkey and the baby girl was pulled alive from the rubble of her family's house in the town of Jinderis in northern Syria. She was still attached by an umbilical cord to her dead mother.

A drone attack on a base housing U.S. troops in eastern Syria killed six allied Kurdish fighters late Sunday, in the first significant attack in Syria or Iraq since the U.S. launched retaliatory strikes over the weekend against Iran-backed militias that have been targeting its forces in the region.

The U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said Monday the attack hit a training ground at al-Omar base in Syria's eastern province of Deir el-Zour, where the forces' commando units are trained. No casualties were reported among U.S. troops.

After a weekend of retaliatory strikes, the United States warned Iran and the militias it arms and funds that it will conduct more attacks if American forces in the Mideast continue to be targeted, but that it does not want an "open-ended military campaign" across the region.

"We are prepared to deal with anything that any group or any country tries to come at us with," said Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden's national security adviser. Sullivan said Iran should expect "a swift and forceful response" if it — and not one of its proxies — "chose to respond directly" against the U.S.

The United States and Britain have struck Iran-backed armed groups in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, while Israel presses ahead with its offensive against Hamas in Gaza. Here is what to know about what is happening in the region now, and why:

US ATTACKS ON GROUPS BACKED BY IRAN

Yemen's Houthis said Sunday U.S. and British air strikes "will not deter us" and vowed a response after dozens of targets were hit in retaliation for the Iran-backed rebels' repeated Red Sea attacks.

Israeli strikes across Gaza killed scores overnight as battles raged Sunday in the besieged territory's south and Hamas was reviewing a proposal for a halt in the nearly four-month-long war.

The head of Iraq's pro-Iran Hashed al-Shaabi alliance on Sunday demanded the withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition forces from the country following deadly strikes.

The U.S. military overnight launched an air assault on dozens of sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iranian-backed militias and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, in the opening salvo of retaliation for the drone strike that killed three U.S. troops in Jordan last weekend.

The massive barrage of strikes hit more than 85 targets at seven locations, including command and control headquarters, intelligence centers, rockets and missiles, drone and ammunition storage sites and other facilities that were connected to the militias or the IRGC's Quds Force, the Guard's expeditionary unit that handles Tehran's relationship with and arming of regional militias. And President Joe Biden made it clear in a statement that there will be more to come.