More heavy rains in Afghanistan have triggered flash floods, raising the death toll to 84 in the country’s north following weeks of devastating torrents that had already left hundreds dead and missing, a Taliban spokesman said Sunday.

A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s foreign minister and other officials apparently crashed in the mountainous northwest reaches of Iran on Sunday, sparking a massive rescue operation in a fog-shrouded forest as the public was urged to pray.

An Israeli airstrike killed 27 people in central Gaza, mostly women and children, and fighting with Hamas raged across the north on Sunday as Israel’s leaders aired divisions over who should govern Gaza after the war, now in its eighth month.

President Joe Biden’s national security adviser met early Sunday with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to discuss what the kingdom described as the “semi-final” version of a wide-ranging security agreement between the countries.

“As a doctor, I cannot abandon the remaining members of my team, and as a former soldier, I cannot abandon my fellow Americans.”

Benny Gantz, a popular centrist member of Israel’s three-member War Cabinet, threatened Saturday to resign from the government if it doesn’t adopt a new plan in three weeks’ time for the war in Gaza, a decision that would leave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more reliant on far-right allies.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels hit an oil tanker in the Red Sea with a ballistic missile early Saturday, damaging the Panama-flagged, Greek-owned vessel in their latest assault over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, officials said.

Key Arab leaders’ desire for what one senior White House official describes as a new “political horizon” for Gaza is only complicating President Joe Biden’s fraught efforts in the region — and his bid for a second term.

The Israel Defense Forces has recovered the bodies of three Israelis who were held in Gaza, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said Friday. The bodies were found in tunnels in Gaza during a military operation Thursday night, he said.

The Navy is on track to homeport four Independence-class littoral combat ships in Bahrain next year as part of a new mine countermeasures force in the Middle East, service officials said.