Syria's minister of information in the country's transitional government told AFP he is working towards a free press and committed to "freedom of expression", after decades of tight control under the country's former rulers.

"We are working to consolidate freedoms of the press and expression that were severely restricted" in areas controlled by the former government of Bashar al-Assad, said the minister, Mohamed al-Omar, after Islamist-led rebels on December 8 ended more than five decades of rule by the Assad clan.

Umayyad Square in Damascus hummed to the throngs of people brandishing "revolution" flags as Syria saw in the new year with hope following 13 years of civil war.

Gunshots rang out from Mount Qasioun overlooking the capital where hundreds of people gazed up at fireworks, an AFP reporter at the square saw.

It was the first new year's celebration without an Assad in power for more than 50 years after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December.

"Long live Syria, Assad has fallen," shouted some children.

Syria's de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa met with senior Christian clerics on Tuesday, amid calls on the Islamist chief to guarantee minority rights after seizing power earlier this month.

"The leader of the new Syrian administration, Ahmed al-Sharaa, meets a delegation from the Christian community in Damascus," Syria's General Command said in a statement on Telegram.

The statement included pictures of the meeting with Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican clerics.

Israel's raid on a major Gaza hospital and the arrest of its director over alleged links to Hamas have drawn global attention to the war-ravaged territory's crumbling healthcare system.

For weeks, as fighting escalated around the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza's Beit Lahia area, its head Hossam Abu Safiyeh made desperate appeals to the international community to intervene and stop the violence "before it is too late".

US president Jimmy Carter, who died on Monday, left an enduring legacy when he brokered historic peace between Egypt and Israel -- tepid and shaky, but unbroken even by the nearly 15-month long Gaza war.

"For 45 years we've had no war" with Egypt, said Ruth Wasserman Lande, a former Israeli diplomat in Cairo.

But, she told AFP, "I would not go as far as to say it's a peace."

Israel's devastating campaigns against Iran's regional allies have severely weakened its arch-enemy's ability to project its power, but Yemen's Tehran-backed Huthi rebels remain a stubborn thorn in its side, analysts say.

With the ranks of Palestinian group Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah decimated after more than a year of war, and with the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria removing a key link in Iran's anti-Israel "axis of resistance", the Huthis have emerged as Israel's most immediate security concern.

Syrian authorities have appointed Maysa Sabreen as interim central bank governor, a bank official told AFP on Tuesday, the first time a woman heads the financial establishment.

Sabreen, until recently the bank's first deputy governor, took her new position on Tuesday, said a department manager at the Central Bank of Syria who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

"We received an internal circular yesterday assigning Dr Maysa Sabreen to run the Central Bank of Syria in a caretaker capacity," he said.

He did not say when her interim mandate was due to end.

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.