Iraqi farmer Umm Ali has watched her poultry die as salinity levels in the country's south hit record highs, rendering already scarce water unfit for human consumption and killing livestock.

"We used to drink, wash and cook with water from the river, but now it's hurting us," said Umm Ali, 40, who lives in the once watery Al-Mashab marshes of southern Iraq's Basra province.

This season alone, she said brackish water has killed dozens of her ducks and 15 chickens.

"I cried and grieved, I felt as if all my hard work had been wasted," said the widowed mother of three.

Swedish prosecutors on Thursday sought the arrest a young Syrian man for killing Salwan Momika, who repeatedly burned copies of the Koran in 2023 and sparked outrage in the Muslim world.

Momika, an Iraqi Christian, was shot on January 29 in an apartment in Sodertalje, south of Stockholm. He died soon after in hospital.

"We have a clear picture of the sequence of events, and following extensive technical investigations and a review of the collected surveillance footage, we have requested that a person be remanded in custody," senior prosecutor Rasmus Oman said in a statement.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -A suspect has been identified in the murder of an anti-Islam campaigner in Sweden in January, the public prosecutor said on Monday, a case that the Swedish prime minister has said might have links to foreign powers.

"We have a good picture of the sequence of events and after extensive technical investigations and review of obtained surveillance footage," the prosecutor said in a statement. "At present, the suspect's whereabouts are unknown."

The statement did not name the suspect.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel’s military aid agency COGAT said on Thursday preparations are ongoing with Egypt to open the major Rafah border crossing with Gaza for the movement of people, with the date to be announced at a later stage.

Israel had earlier warned it could keep Rafah shut and reduce aid into the Palestinian enclave as Hamas, it said, was returning the bodies of dead hostages too slowly, underlining the risks to a ceasefire that halted two years of devastating war and saw all living hostages held by Hamas released.

By Steve Holland and Costas Pitas

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States is looking to establish a basic stabilization of Gaza and planning is underway for an international force to go into the Palestinian enclave, said a senior U.S. adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity, on Wednesday.

"Right now what we're looking to accomplish is just a basic stabilization of the situation. The international stabilization force is starting to be constructed," said the senior U.S. adviser.

Syria is in a hurry to rebuild its war-torn economy and will not wait for the international community to begin making those changes, the country's finance minister said Wednesday.

Mohammed Yisr Barnieh, who spoke at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, was part of Syria's first delegation to the Fund and the World Bank's semi-annual gathering of central bank governors and finance ministers since the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011.

By Pesha Magid

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (Reuters) -Shadi Abu Sido’s world shattered in Israeli detention when guards told him his wife and two children had been killed.

“I got hysterical,” the Gaza Palestinian photographer said.

It wasn’t until his release on Monday, part of the U.S.-mediated ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel that halted two years of war, that he discovered his loved ones were alive.

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

CAIRO (Reuters) -The United Nations is seeking a dramatic boost in humanitarian aid for Gaza, saying the hundreds of relief trucks cleared to enter the devastated enclave under a ceasefire were nowhere near the thousands needed to ease a humanitarian disaster.

Tom Fletcher, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and its top emergency relief coordinator, told Reuters in an interview that thousands of humanitarian vehicles must enter weekly to avert further catastrophe.

By Bhargav Acharya

(Reuters) -The U.S. military's Middle East command on Wednesday called on Hamas to stop its violence against civilians in Gaza and disarm "without delay" as the militant group reasserts itself by deploying security forces and executing those it deems collaborators with Israel.

Hamas, which has not publicly committed to disarming and cedingpower, has gradually sent its men back into the streets of Gaza since the ceasefire began on Friday.

Pope Leo XIV will carry a message of peace to Lebanon and the Christians of the Middle East when he visits next month, Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai told AFP on Wednesday.

The Vatican said last week that Pope Leo will travel to Turkey and Lebanon in a six-day trip beginning late November, his first since becoming head of the Catholic Church.

Rai, who heads the Maronite Church, religiously diverse Lebanon's most influential Christian sect, hailed the pontiff's visit at a time of truce in the conflict between Israel and Lebanon, as well as the war in Gaza.