In a battered village in Syria's last main opposition bastion, one resident has hewn a bomb shelter out of rock to stay on his land and protect his family from attacks.

Kansafra, in the south of Idlib province, often comes under Syrian army fire targeting jihadists who control the area, while Russian warplanes circle above and carry out air strikes in support of ally Damascus.

Many families have fled the village, located less than two kilometres (1.2 miles) from the front lines.

Now, just a few shops remain open, while heavily damaged buildings line the streets.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday began his first official trip to China in almost two decades, with Beijing saying the visit will take ties to a "new level" as the Arab leader seeks financial support to help rebuild his devastated country.

China is one of only a handful of countries outside the Middle East that Assad has visited since the 2011 start of a civil war that has killed more than half a million people, displaced millions more, and battered Syria's infrastructure and industry.

Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu met Wednesday to smooth over months of tension, eyeing a deal to normalize Israel's ties with Saudi Arabia despite US concerns over the state of Israeli democracy.

Biden said the pair had a "candid, constructive conversation" in New York, their first talks since the Israeli prime minister was reelected in December at the head of a hard-right government.

The fence-mending meeting comes as the US president pushes Netanyahu to agree on a potentially historic deal to end decades of enmity with Riyadh, one of Washington's main regional allies.

Saudi Arabia and Israel voiced optimism Wednesday that they were moving closer to a historic normalization of ties as Iran -- their common foe -- accused the kingdom of betraying the Palestinians through the US-led effort.

US President Joe Biden is hoping to transform the Middle East -- and score an election-year diplomatic victory -- by securing recognition of the Jewish state by Saudi Arabia, the guardian of Islam's two holiest sites.

In Libya's flood-hit city of Derna, the Mediterranean Sea breeze mixes with the nauseating stench of human remains buried under the mud-caked rubble.

Ten days after a tsunami-scale flash flood ripped through the coastal city, razing entire neighbourhoods, many of the traumatised survivors are still waiting to learn the fate of missing relatives.

Few of them have any hope of seeing their loved ones alive.

Floods that killed thousands in the Libyan city of Derna also inundated one of the country's premier ancient sites, threatening its UNESCO-listed monuments with collapse, a recent visitor and a leading archaeologist said.

The immediate damage to the monuments of Cyrene, which include the second century AD Temple of Zeus, bigger than the Parthenon in Athens, is relatively minor but the water circulating around their foundations threatens future collapses, the head of the French archaeological mission in Libya, Vincent Michel, told AFP.

Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Huthi rebels put a positive spin on historic but inconclusive talks in Riyadh on Wednesday as diplomatic efforts increased to end Yemen's bitter war.

The five days of talks were "positive", Saudi officials and a senior Huthi said, after the rebel delegation ended the first public visit to the Saudi capital since hostilities broke out between the two sides.

Israeli forces killed a 19-year-old Palestinian in a pre-dawn raid in the West Bank on Wednesday, the Palestinian health ministry said, as violence in the occupied territory showed no sign of any letup.

Durgham al-Akhras was killed in a clash with Israeli soldiers raiding Aqabat Jaber refugee camp near the city of Jericho to carry out arrests, the ministry said.

The Israeli army said "explosive devices" were hurled at troops, who "responded with live fire toward one of the suspects and neutralised him," a statement said.

US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to smooth over tensions at talks Wednesday, hailing "unbreakable" ties despite Biden's concerns over the state of Israeli democracy.

The veteran leaders shook hands against a backdrop of flags in New York, as they met for the first time since Netanyahu was re-elected in December at the head of a hard-right government pushing controversial judicial reforms.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Tuesday announced it had transferred ownership of two antiquities to Yemen, but that the war-torn country had agreed to leave them in New York for safe-keeping.

Both pieces are stone sculptures -- a sandstone female figure and a marble mortar -- and date to the third millennium BCE from areas in modern-day Yemen, the Met said in a statement.

The museum said it had acquired the statue in 1998 from collector Jean-Luc Chalmin, who also donated the mortar in 1999.