Syrian government forces have lost control of Daraa city, a war monitor said, in another stunning blow for President Bashar al-Assad's rule after rebels wrested other key cities from his grip.

Daraa was dubbed "the cradle of the revolution" early in Syria's civil war, after activists accused the government of detaining and torturing a group of boys for scribbling anti-Assad graffiti on their school walls in 2011.

University professor Ahmed Abu Shaban often gets up at 3:00 am in Toronto to remotely teach his students in Gaza -- motivated by loyalty to his trapped pupils, and a deep sense of guilt.

Shaban, an academic who fled Gaza days after October 7, 2023, said he has an obligation to students in the Palestinian Territory desperate to study in defiance of unimaginable challenges.

He also said he has a responsibility to help preserve higher education in Gaza, while the world is focused on the humanitarian emergency.

But the 50-year-old conceded that guilt also weighs on him.

Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip worked Thursday to clear bent metal sheets and charred personal belongings from tents incinerated by an Israeli air strike on a displacement camp.

Gaza's Civil Defence agency said that the strike on the tents in the in Al-Mawasi area -- designated a humanitarian zone by the Israeli army -- killed 21 and injured 40, "most of them children, women and the elderly".

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that at least five children were among the dead, most of whose bodies were left completely burnt by fires caused by the bombing.

Air strikes targeted a bridge on the highway linking the Syrian cities of Homs and Hama, a war monitor said Friday, as government forces scramble to secure Homs after Islamist-led rebels captured Hama and commercial hub Aleppo.

"Fighter jets executed several airstrikes, targeting Al-Rastan bridge on (the) Homs-Hama highway... as well as attacking positions around the bridge, attempting to cut off the road between Hama and Homs and secure Homs," the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The fall of Syria's second city, Aleppo, to Islamist-led rebels has brought flight and displacement for some, but for others like Bahria Bakkur, it has led to long-awaited reunions.

After almost a decade apart, 43-year-old Bakkur was finally able to embrace her son, separated when government forces reclaimed control of their city.

The Islamist-led rebels' lightning assault on Aleppo has revived a war that had been mostly dormant for years.

Several OPEC+ countries, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, agreed Thursday to extend oil supply cuts for three months through March to avoid a sharp drop in prices in a global market awash in crude.

The decision had been widely expected, though dissension that caused the meeting to be delayed by a few days had created some doubts that the oil cartel would maintain the cuts.

Eight OPEC+ countries will extend their "voluntary adjustments" of 2.2 million barrels per day until the end of March, the Vienna-based group said in a statement following a virtual meeting.

Amnesty International accused Israel Thursday of "committing genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza since the start of the war last year, saying its new report was a "wake-up call" for the world.

The London-based human rights group said its findings were based on satellite images documenting devastation, fieldwork and ground reports from Gazans as well as "dehumanising and genocidal statements by Israeli government and military officials".

Israel angrily dismissed the findings as "entirely false", denouncing the report as "fabricated" and "based on lies".

Nearly 14 years after the start of Syria's civil war, White Helmets rescue group chief Raed Saleh sees no way out of a conflict that has reignited.

This week, he traveled to New York to plead the case of the Syrian people before the United Nations Security Council -- just as he did a decade ago.

Islamist rebels have captured swathes of territory and the second city of Aleppo in Syria's northwest in recent days, challenging President Bashar al-Assad's grip over the country. The fighting has claimed hundreds of lives.

Gaza's civil defence agency said Wednesday that 20 people, including five children, were killed in an Israeli strike on a displacement camp near Khan Yunis in the territory's south.

The agency's spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP there were "20 martyrs, including five children, and dozens were injured after the occupation (Israel) bombed the tents of the displaced in the Al-Mawasi area" near Khan Yunis.

Asked about the strike, the Israeli military said it targeted "senior Hamas terrorists... in the humanitarian area in Khan Yunis".

Syria's fourth-largest city, Hama, which the army on Thursday admitted it lost control of after an Islamist-led rebel advance, was the scene in the 1980s of a massacre that remains among the darkest chapters in the country's history.

Around 210 kilometres (130 miles) north of the capital Damascus, Hama is strategic because of its location between Syria's second city Aleppo -- which rebels took on December 1 -- and Damascus, President Bashar al-Assad's power base.