A coalition of activists said on Tuesday they would send a flotilla of ships to break Israel's siege of Gaza by the end of 2014, fours years after a similar campaign ended in a deadly raid by Israeli commandos.

"We plan to send the flotilla during 2014," the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, which includes activists from at least 10 countries, said in Istanbul.

Israel expressed concern recently that Hizbullah might be using smuggling tunnels in the Jewish state's north similar to those build by Hamas in the south, media reports said on Tuesday.

However, the head of the Israeli Northern Command, Major General Yair Golan, assured that these tunnels, if they exist, don't pose a threat along the frontier with Lebanon as reports remain baseless.

Hollywood star George Clooney's fiancee Amal Alamuddin is to join fellow human rights experts probing Israel's Gaza offensive, the United Nations said Monday.

The Lebanese-born British lawyer was one of three top experts appointed to a commission of inquiry by the U.N. Human Rights Council, which ordered the investigation last month.

The Foreign Press Association on Monday lodged a strong protest accusing the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas of harassment and of threatening foreign reporters working in Gaza.

The association for journalists working in Israel and the Palestinian territories said Hamas authorities and their representatives employed "blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods" against visiting international journalists covering the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza.

A Turkish aid group said on Monday it would send a new flotilla of ships to break Israel's siege of Gaza, four years after the deadly storming of its vessel by Israeli commandos.

The May 2010 Israeli assault on the Turkish ship the Mavi Marmara in international waters en route to Gaza sparked widespread condemnation and provoked a major diplomatic crisis between Turkey and Israel.

An Israeli delegation arrived in Cairo on Monday for indirect negotiations with Palestinians on a durable truce in Gaza, Egypt and Israeli officials said.

The Palestinian delegation meanwhile was already locked in talks with Egyptian intelligence mediators, who will relay their demands to the Israeli negotiators, a Palestinian official said.

After two hours waist-deep in the sea, Sameer al-Hissi says his paltry haul of tiny fish is not the only consequence he and Gaza's fishermen are suffering from Israel's offensive.

Ashore, he lifts up his t-shirt to show red-brown blotches across his chest and stomach, the result, he says, of spending his mornings in a sea heavily tainted with smelly sewage since Israeli strikes knocked out the power station supplying electricity to treatment plants.

Pope Francis expressed "dismay and disbelief" on Sunday over the violence in Iraq, calling for an "effective political solution" to a crisis which has forced thousands to flee their homes.

Giving the traditional Angelus prayer in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, the head of the Roman Catholic Church renewed his call for prayer and assistance for those hit by the conflict.

Former Cuban president Fidel Castro has signed an international manifesto "supporting Palestine," demanding that Israel respect U.N. resolutions and withdraw from Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Castro, who will be 88 next week, added his signature to those of intellectuals and politicians to the document "In Defense of Palestine," the official Granma newspaper said Saturday.

Israeli bombardment has left parts of Gaza in ruins, and the enclave's already shattered economy is also feeling the pinch as prices for staple foods have started to climb.

The market in Gaza City's Shati refugee camp was bustling Saturday, but many of the camp's hard-up residents are buying less.