Iran's supreme leader said Tuesday that Israel and the United States were "completely wrong" to imagine the Tehran-backed axis of resistance had collapsed with the ouster of Syria's longtime strongman.

"With the developments in Syria and the crimes the Zionist regime is committing and the crimes that America is committing, and the help that some others are giving to them, they thought that the resistance was over," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a televised speech.

"They are completely wrong."

The United Nations said Tuesday it expects around one million people to return to Syria in the first half of 2025, following the collapse of president Bashar al-Assad's rule.

Assad fled Syria just over a week ago, as his forces abandoned tanks and other equipment in the face of a lightning offensive spearheaded by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), ending five decades of repressive rule by Assad's family.

A UN envoy has warned that Syria's protracted conflict "has not ended yet", even as victorious Islamist-led rebels stepped up contacts with governments that deemed ousted president Bashar al-Assad a pariah.

Assad fled Syria just over a week ago following a lightning offensive spearheaded by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), more than 13 years after his crackdown on democracy protests precipitated one of the deadliest wars of the century.

In a war-ravaged Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, Radwan Adwan was stacking stones to rebuild his father's grave, finally able to return to Yarmuk cemetery after Bashar al-Assad's fall.

"Without the fall of the regime, it would have been impossible to see my father's grave again," said 45-year-old Adwan.

"When we arrived, there was no trace of the grave."

It was his first visit there since 2018, when access to the cemetery south of Damascus was officially banned.

After backing the rebels who overthrew Bashar al-Assad and brokering a key Horn of Africa peace deal, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan has boosted his international standing, leaving him well-placed to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, analysts say.

Although Turkey was not directly involved in the Syrian strongman's overthrow, it has long maintained a working relationship with the Islamist-led HTS rebels behind the push, leaving it with a direct line to Damascus as other governments fret over the group's Al-Qaeda roots.

Vegetation grows between crumbled walls and torn asphalt, and not a single street remains intact in Syria's Maaret al-Numan, a key war battleground town being brought back to life by returnees.

Bilal al-Rihani reopened his pastry shop in the western town this week with his wife and 14-year-old son.

The 45-year-old baker couldn't stay away after years of exile, even amid the devastation surrounding him.

Working without water or electricity, the shop bustles with customers as they prepare cinnamon pastries -– a family speciality for 150 years.

Malls and shopping centres in Iran's capital will limit opening hours starting Tuesday, closing two hours earlier to tackle severe energy shortages, local media said.

The fuel crisis has already led to frequent power cuts in Tehran in recent weeks and nationwide closures of schools and businesses.

The Tehran Chamber of Trade Unions and Guilds has decided that malls and shopping centres would close at 8:00 pm (1630 GMT), instead of their usual time of 10:00 pm, according to a statement carried by news agency ISNA.

The war in the Palestinian territories is having a catastrophic impact on the local economy, the World Bank said Monday, noting that all sectors have been badly affected by Israel's attacks.

Economic output in the Gaza Strip plummeted by 86 percent in the first half of this year, and by 23 percent in the West Bank, according to recent Bank data, leaving the Palestinian economy on track to contract by 26 percent in inflation-adjusted terms this year.

President-elect Donald Trump characterized the rebel ouster of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad as an "unfriendly takeover" by US ally Turkey as he addressed the conflict at a news conference on Monday.

"I think Turkey is very smart... Turkey did an unfriendly takeover, without a lot of lives being lost. I can say that Assad was a butcher, what he did to children," Trump told reporters at his residence in Florida.

Western powers are looking to establish contact with Syria's new rulers, aiming to avoid Iraq- or Libya-style chaos after the fall of the Assad regime to Islamist-led rebels.

Europe's top diplomat Kaja Kallas was heading to Damascus on Monday, after a number of countries, including the United States, announced they had made initial approaches.

The situation in Syria, long allied with Iran and Russia, remains volatile and Western nations are wary of the Al-Qaeda roots of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) that seized power in a lightning offensive.