Yemen's Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia's state media reported Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their ongoing attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel's war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unnamed official but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine.

An Israeli general leading troops in Gaza has delivered rare public criticism of the country's political leadership, demanding it "be worthy" of the soldiers fighting against Hamas in the Palestinian territory.

Brigadier General Dan Goldfus, head of the 98th division deployed in Gaza's main southern city of Khan Younis, also appeared to enter into a row over exempting ultra-Orthodox Jews from military service.

A first boat loaded with 200 tonnes of food aid was making slow progress towards the Gaza Strip on Thursday as efforts grew to bring more humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian territory besieged by Israel.

The main U.N. aid agency in Gaza said an Israeli strike a day earlier hit one of its warehouses in the southern city of Rafah, killing an employee, although Israel later said a Hamas militant was killed in the rocket strike.

Israel plans to tell 1.4 million Palestinians displaced in the southern city of Rafah to seek shelter in central Gaza ahead of a planned military offensive into the south.

Civilians would be directed toward “humanitarian islands” that would provide temporary housing, food, water and other necessities, Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said Wednesday. He did not say when this would occur, nor when the Rafah offensive might begin.

Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinian men at a hospital in the West Bank on Wednesday, an official said, the latest in a spate of killings in the occupied territory since the war in Gaza began.

The killings before dawn took place on the compound of the government hospital in Jenin, in the north of the West Bank, the hospital's director, Wissam Bakr, told AFP.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said one of its aid warehouses in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip was "hit" on Wednesday, wounding scores of people.

"We can confirm that an UNRWA warehouse/distribution centre in Rafah (southern Gaza) has been hit," agency spokeswoman Juliette Touma told AFP, adding there were "scores injured".

A U.S. Congress-mandated group cut short a fact-finding mission to Saudi Arabia after officials in the kingdom ordered a Jewish rabbi to remove his kippah in public, highlighting the religious tensions still present in the wider Middle East.

Speaking to The Associated Press, Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom sought to distance the order over his skullcap from what he described as progress made in the kingdom under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on quietly allowing different faiths to worship privately.

Israeli police said a Palestinian stabbed and wounded two people at a checkpoint near Jerusalem before being shot Wednesday.

Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said the two people who were stabbed were in “mild to moderate condition.” Israeli police said the two people who were stabbed were members of the security forces, without elaborating. An Associated Press reporter saw the body of the attacker.

A Jordanian citizen has died after being shot by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian authorities said Tuesday, with the military accusing the man of aiding a militant.

Tawfiq Aed Fawaz Hussein, 25, was shot at Zeita junction north of the West Bank city of Tulkarm on Monday, the Palestinian foreign ministry said.

The Israeli military said Tuesday a soldier believed to be held captive in Gaza had been killed in the October 7 attack and his body taken to the Palestinian territory.

Sergeant Itay Hen, 19, "fell on October 7 and was then kidnapped" to the Gaza Strip by Palestinian militants, the military said in a statement.