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A Turkish drone killed five civilians in northeastern Syria on Saturday, a war monitor said.

"Two civilians, a woman and a political party member, succumbed to their wounds, bringing to five the number of people killed Saturday by Turkish drone strikes," the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Earlier Saturday, the Hawar Kurdish news agency in Syria reported: "The Turkish occupation targeted a car with a drone strike on a road between Al-Hawl and Tal Brak" in Hasakeh province, "killing three civilians".

Since the ouster of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad on 8 December, Turkey has emphasised its backing for armed groups fighting Kurdish forces that control part of the country's north.

The Israeli army is reportedly planting more explosive devices near Gaza's Kamal Adwan Hospital - Al Jazeera journalists on the ground report.

The army is also ordering civilians to leave the areas, threatening them and saying the area would be blown up.

Dozens of Gazans in Jenin are protesting against the military operations being carried out by the Palestinian Authority (PA) - Al Jazeera reports.

The publication verified a video of dozens of people gathering in the central square in the occupied West Bank.

The PA has been raiding the area for over two weeks, fighting with members of the Jenin Brigades and killing its commanders.

Gaza's Ministry of Health is appealing to the international community to bring aid, medicine and food to Kamal Adwan Hospital in the Gaza Strip.

This comes as Israel continues its relentless campaign of attacking the hospital and its staff, affecting critical medical infrastructure.

The ministry said the hospital needs the necessary maintenance supplies to maintain the continued provision of electricity, water and oxygen amid a severe shortage of medicines and painkillers.

"We urgently call on anyone who can provide these supplies to assist us," the Ministry said in a statement.

A drone attack on a car in northeastern Syria attributed to the Turkish military has killed three civilians, a media report and Kurdish security forces said on Saturday.

"The Turkish occupation targeted a car with a drone strike on a road between Al-Hawl and Tal Brak" in Hasakeh province, "killing three civilians", the Hawar Kurdish news agency in Syria reported.

In a statement, the Kurdish Internal Security Force said: "This crime is one of a series of flagrant violations of international law and human rights which forbid the targeting of civilians."

The strike came after two journalists from Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast were killed, reportedly by a Turkish drone, while covering clashes between an Ankara-backed militia and US-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria.

Hamas and two other Palestinian groups said on Saturday that a Gaza ceasefire deal with Israel is "closer than ever", provided Israel does not impose new conditions.

"The possibility of reaching an agreement (for a ceasefire and a prisoner exchange deal) is closer than ever, provided the enemy stops imposing new conditions," Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said in a rare joint statement issued after talks in Cairo on Friday.

Yemen's Houthis said on Saturday they had hit a "military target" in central Israel's Jaffa area with a ballistic missile.

The Israeli military said it had launched an "initial inquiry regarding the incident of a fallen missile fired from Yemen" and that the details were still under review.

(Reuters) 

The Israeli military said it intercepted a drone approaching from the east on Saturday, after a missile fired by Yemen's Houthi rebels struck the central city of Tel Aviv.

"Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in Gvulot, Talmei Eliyahu and Ein HaBesor regarding a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle - drone) infiltration, a UAV that crossed into Israeli territory from the east was intercepted by the IAF (Israeli Air Force)," the military said in a statement.

A Palestinian child was killed in an Israeli mine explosion on Saturday in the southern occupied West Bank.

The 7-year-old boy was killed after a mine left by the Israeli army exploded in the Rashayda area, southeast of Bethlehem, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said in a statement.

Unexploded ordnance left by Israeli forces in the West Bank have killed four Palestinians and injured about 86 others, most of them children, since the start of the Gaza war, deputy director of the Palestinian Mine Action Center, Issa Al-Ghnaymat, told Anadolu Agency.

He pointed out that "the [Israeli] occupation's remnants are concentrated in the areas of the southern West Bank and the northern Jordan Valley, where the army conducts its training."

He added that "these Israeli army remnants, which are a result of incursions into cities and villages, have doubled since the start of the war on Gaza, and now pose a danger to Palestinians in various places in the West Bank."

At least 25 Palestinians have been arrested in the occupied West Bank - according to The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society.

The detainees include two children and former prisoners. The arrests were made in the occupied governorates of Nablus, Jenin, Bethlehem, Tulkarem and East Jerusalem.

The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs says there are over 12,000 arrest cases in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Qatar reopened its embassy in Damascus on Saturday, 13 years after being shut early in Syria's civil conflict. Foreign governments are seeking to establish ties with the country's new rulers.

An AFP journalist saw Qatar's flag raised over the mission, making it the second country, after Turkey, to officially reopen its embassy since rebels drove President Bashar al-Assad from power earlier this month.

Syria's new rulers have appointed Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as the country's foreign minister, official Syrian news agency SANA said on Saturday. 

(Reuters)

At least 45,227 Palestinians have been killed and 107,573 others wounded since 7 October 2023, the  Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday.

The Israeli strike targeting Jabalia refugee camp has risen to 12, including seven children. 

The strike targeted a residential building in Jabalia town.

The Gaza Civil Defense Authority has revealed the Israeli army is killing civilians and leaving their bodies in the streets, preventing their evacuation - which they say is a "clear violation of international law.

"The Israeli occupation army continues to kill citizens in the Gaza Strip, leaving their bodies in the streets and roads, and preventing our teams and medical relief crews from reaching and evacuating them, refusing to bury them in order to preserve the dignity of the martyrs and the deceased," the Gaza Civil Defense Authority said in a statement.

The authority says the army prevents civil defence teams and medical crews from accessing the bodies as they are in dangerous combat zones, and the forces "directly open fire on the crews whenever they approach these areas".

"These actions taken by the Israeli occupation are inconsistent with both divine laws and international humanitarian laws. This unlawful policy has resulted in the exposure of the bodies of the martyrs to being devoured by hungry stray dogs, which found food in them, all under the watchful eyes of Israeli occupation soldiers."

They also reveal witness accounts of bodies being found to be nothing but "skeletons", and stray dogs were seen devouring bodies.

Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria's new leader, a senior U.S. diplomat said Friday, following "positive messages" from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism.

Barbara Leaf, Washington's top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus - the first formal mission to Syria's capital by United States diplomats since the early days of Syria's civil war.

Leaf's meeting with HTS chief Sharaa came despite Washington's six-year-old designation of his group as a terrorist organisation.

"Based on our discussion, I told him we would not be pursuing the Rewards for Justice reward offer," Leaf told reporters.

After their talks, "it's a little incoherent, then, to have a bounty on the guy's head," she said, welcoming the messages from him. "We will be looking for progress on these principles and actions, not just words," she added.

A senior US diplomat said Friday after talks with Syria's new ruler that she expected the country would completely end any role for Iran, the longtime ally of fallen president Bashar al-Assad.

"If I'm to judge by today, Iran will have no role whatsoever, and it shouldn't," Barbara Leaf, the top US diplomat for the Middle East, told reporters.

The United Nations Security Council on Friday extended a long-running peacekeeping mission between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights for six months and expressed concern that Israel's military activities in the area could escalate tensions.

In the resolution adopted on Friday, the Security Council stressed "that both parties must abide by the terms of the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Israel and the Syrian Arab Republic and scrupulously observe the ceasefire."

It expressed concern that "the ongoing military activities conducted by any actor in the area of separation continue to have the potential to escalate tensions between Israel and the Syrian Arab Republic, jeopardize the ceasefire between the two countries, and pose a risk to the local civilian population and United Nations personnel on the ground."

Lebanese rescuers recovered three bodies from the rubble of a building struck by Israel in a 27 September air raid that killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, state media reported on Friday.

The health ministry has not released a death toll for the strike, which flattened several buildings in Haret Hreik, a southern Beirut suburb and stronghold of Hezbollah.

Rescuers arrived at the site on Friday morning to search for seven missing people, the National News Agency said, adding they "retrieved the bodies of three martyrs".

The remains were taken to Rafik Hariri University Hospital in Beirut for DNA tests to confirm their identities, NNA reported.

Search efforts were ongoing for others it said were still missing.

Pope Francis on Saturday condemned the bombing of children in Gaza as "cruelty", a day after the territory's rescue agency said an Israeli air strike killed seven children from one family.

"Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war. I want to say it because it touches my heart," he told an audience of members of the government of the Holy See.