Turkey's top diplomat stressed Monday the regional defense pact with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia was not aimed at any particular country and open to others, including Egypt.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that the United States will hit back against Iranian attacks on U.S. targets in the Middle East, as the war flared after a prolonged pause, according to Fox News.

"We're going to hit them hard," Trump said, according to a Fox News reporter who said he talked to Trump briefly.

The U.S. attack on an Iranian island in the Strait of Hormuz killed two people and wounded several others, Iranian state media reported on Monday.

"During the attack on Larak Island late Sunday, two people were martyred and several others were injured. The injured in the incident are receiving medical services and their treatment is ongoing," said the official IRNA news agency, quoting Hossein Amir Teymouri, governor of nearby Qeshm Island, without specifying whether the victims were soldiers or civilians.

The United Arab Emirates on Monday condemned an Iranian drone attack intercepted over its territorial waters, calling it a "dangerous escalation".

The foreign ministry said in a statement on X that it "strongly condemned the hostile Iranian attack on the country involving a drone that was intercepted by air defense systems over UAE territorial waters", adding that the UAE reserved the "full and legitimate right to respond".

From a Roman temple to ancient olive presses, Lebanon keeps turning up archaeological treasures even as the latest Israel-Hezbollah war has caused excavations to grind to a halt at precious heritage sites in the country's south.

Dozens of Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Qusra in the northern occupied West Bank after nearly three weeks of tension in the area, drawing rare condemnation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Earlier in August a group of settlers began blocking supplies from entering Palestinian houses on the outskirts of the village near Nablus, trapping residents inside and drawing unusually strong criticism from the US ambassador.

Iran's supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei on Sunday called on Muslim countries in the region to unite against the United States and Israel, in a written message issued six months on from the start of the Middle East war.

Khamenei, in power since shortly after his father Ali Khamenei was killed at the start of the war on February 28, has yet to be seen in public since his appointment, and authorities have not released any video or audio of him.

The death toll from a Russian strike on an arms depot near Kyiv has risen to 38, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday.

The strike on the Ukrainian military depot storing ammunition, drones and explosives triggered a huge explosion and fire, and secondary detonations that sent flames shooting into the surrounding area.

Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem has again rejected a deal struck between Israel and Lebanon and said his Iran-backed group refused to "surrender" nearly six months after war erupted with Israel.

The U.S. Treasury Department is due to cut off a major Egyptian bank's operations in the United Arab Emirates from the U.S. financial system, an official said Friday, as Washington pushes to choke Iran off economically.

The move impacts UAE branches of Egypt's second-largest bank, Banque Misr, blocking their banking access to U.S. financial institutions.