Syria's new authorities announced on Tuesday that the military chief of the Islamist group that spearheaded the offensive that toppled longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad had been appointed defence minister in the transitional government.

"The General Command announces the nomination of General Murhaf Abu Qasra as defence minister in the new government of the Syrian Arab Republic," said a statement carried by the official news agency SANA.

Abu Qasra, 41, a former agronomist, led the armed wing of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) for five years.

A United Nations report published on Tuesday found that Israeli strikes on and near hospitals in the Gaza Strip had left healthcare in the Palestinian territory nearing total collapse.

The report by the UN human rights office said such strikes raised grave concerns about Israel's compliance with international law, citing potential war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Revellers across the world ushered in 2025 on Wednesday, with huge crowds waving goodbye to the old year that brought Olympic glory, a dramatic Donald Trump return, and turmoil in the Middle East and Ukraine.

It is all but certain that 2024 will go down as the hottest year on record, with climate-fuelled disasters wreaking havoc from the plains of Europe to the Kathmandu Valley.

United Nations rights experts on Monday said Israel must face the consequences of "inflicting maximum suffering" on Palestinian civilians in Gaza, alleging Israel was defying international law and being sheltered by its allies.

"International humanitarian law comprises a set of universal and binding rules to protect civilian objects and persons who are not, or are no longer, directly participating in hostilities and limits permissible means and methods of warfare," the 11 experts said in a joint statement.

About half of school-age children in Syria are missing out on education after nearly 14 years of civil war, Save the Children told AFP on Monday, calling for "immediate action".

The overwhelming majority of Syrian children are also in need of immediate humanitarian assistance including food, the charity said, with at least half of them requiring psychological help to overcome war trauma.

Syria's de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has tapped dozens of former rebels for high-ranking army positions, several of whom are foreign fighters, a war monitor and experts said on Monday.

The new authorities in Damascus, from the ranks of Islamist-led rebels who until several weeks ago had fought to overthrow longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad, now face the daunting task of rebuilding state institutions.

The Syrian army has effectively collapsed, much like other institutions set up by the Assad clan and their notorious security apparatuses.

For decades, any Syrian daring to broach political topics got used to speaking in hushed tones and with a watchful eye trained for a listener among the crowd.

"There were spies everywhere," Mohannad al-Katee said in Al-Rawda cafe in Damascus, adding almost in disbelief: "It's the first time that I sit in a cafe and I can talk about politics.

"It was a dream for Syrians," said Katee, 42, a researcher in political and social history.

Until now, he like thousands of others had grown accustomed to watching for the proverbial flies on the walls of Damascus's renowned cafes.

Iran played a central role in Jimmy Carter's presidency, but in Tehran, where state television branded him the "architect of economic sanctions", many have far from fond memories of the late US president.

The former US president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who passed away on Monday at the age of 100, left behind a legacy of punitive measures whose impact on Iran has endured since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

"Carter had a bad character," said Hassan Taherifar who works at a Tehran bazaar outside the former US embassy in Tehran, known locally as the "Den of Spies".

Wearing a safety belt, helmet and work boots, Raju Nishad navigates the scaffolding, hammering blocks that will form part of a building in a new neighbourhood in central Israel's town of Beer Yaakov.

While he and other Indians working alongside him do not look out of place on the expansive construction site, they are relative newcomers to Israel's building industry.

They are part of an Israeli government effort to fill a void left by tens of thousands of Palestinian construction workers barred from entering Israel since Hamas's unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack.

Jimmy Carter's critics turned his name into a synonym for weakness over the Iranian hostage crisis. But by any measure, he also scored major achievements on the world stage through his mix of moralism and painstaking personal diplomacy.

The 39th president of the United States, who died at age 100 on Sunday, transformed the Middle East by brokering the Camp David Accords, which established an enduring and once inconceivable peace between Israel and its most serious adversary at the time, Egypt.