Israeli air strikes hit rebel-held Sanaa's international airport and other targets in Yemen on Thursday as the head of the UN's World Health Organization said he and his team prepared to fly out.
Yemen's civil aviation authority said the airport planned to reopen on Friday after the strikes that it said occurred while the UN aircraft "was getting ready for its scheduled flight".
From tiny and impoverished Mayotte to oil-rich behemoth Saudi Arabia, prosperous European cities to overcrowded slums in Africa, nowhere was spared the devastating impact of supercharged climate disasters in 2024.
This year is the hottest in history, with record-breaking temperatures in the atmosphere and oceans acting like fuel for extreme weather around the world.
World Weather Attribution, experts on how global warming influences extreme events, said nearly every disaster they analysed over the past 12 months was intensified by climate change.
Israeli air strikes pummelled Sanaa's international airport and other targets in Yemen on Thursday, with Huthi rebel media reporting six deaths.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on social media he was at the airport during the strike, adding that "one of our plane's crew members was injured".
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether they were aware of his presence at the time.
Syria's new authorities have arrested a military justice official who under ousted president Bashar al-Assad issued death sentences for detainees in the notorious Saydnaya prison, a war monitor said Thursday.
The confirmation by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights of his detention came a day after deadly clashes erupted in the coastal province of Tartus, an Assad stronghold, when gunmen sought to protect him.
Mohammed Kanjo Hassan is the highest-ranking officer whose arrest has been announced since Assad's ousting on December 8.
Palestinian sources said that Israeli strikes in Gaza on Thursday killed at least 45 people including hospital workers and journalists for a militant-linked broadcaster.
Five staff at one of northern Gaza's last functioning hospitals were among those killed, the facility's director said, more than two months into an Israeli operation in the area.
The quiet resumption of operations at a desalination plant in the Gaza Strip last month marked a small but significant step toward restoring public services in the Palestinian territory ravaged by more than 14 months of war.
The process of restarting the plant in Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza, involved both Israeli and Palestinian stakeholders who could have a hand in the territory's future, especially amid renewed hopes for a ceasefire in recent days.
Hamas and Israel traded accusations on Wednesday over delays in finalising a ceasefire and hostage release deal, after both had reported progress in the latest round of Gaza truce talks.
Indirect negotiations mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States have taken place in Doha in recent days, rekindling hope for an agreement between the two warring parties that has so far proven elusive.
On Wednesday, both sides accused the other of throwing up roadblocks, while Israeli President Isaac Herzog urged the country's leadership to move towards a deal.
A key Syrian rescue group and an activist told AFP on Wednesday a burial site outside Damascus was likely a mass grave for detainees held under former president Bashar al-Assad and fighters killed in the civil war.
In a vast walled area located near the Baghdad Bridge, some 35 kilometres (22 miles) from the capital, AFP journalists visiting the site saw a long row of graves more than one metre deep, mostly covered with cement slabs.
Angry protests broke out Wednesday in Syria over a video showing an attack on an Alawite shrine, with a war monitor saying one demonstrator was killed in Homs city.
In an unrelated incident in Tartus province, a stronghold of deposed ruler Bashar al-Assad's Alawite minority, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor reported deadly clashes over the attempted arrest of a former official.
Hundreds of Christians in war-ravaged Gaza City gathered at a church on Tuesday, praying for an end to the war that has devastated much of the Palestinian territory.
Gone were the sparkling lights, the festive decorations, and the towering Christmas tree that had graced Gaza City for decades.
The Square of the Unknown Soldier, once alive with the spirit of the season, now lay in ruins, reduced to rubble by relentless Israeli air strikes.
Amid the rubble, the faithful sought solace even as fighting continued to rage across the coastal strip on Tuesday.
