Israel launched artillery strikes on Syria Sunday morning, the Israeli army announced, after several rockets were fired from there and landed in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Israel's retaliatory strike to rocket attacks from Syria -- which no one has claimed -- is the latest episode in escalating violence in the region.

"In response to the rockets fired from Syria at Israel earlier today, IDF Artillery is currently striking in Syrian territory," the military tweeted.

Israeli demonstrators crowded Tel Aviv late Saturday for another protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plans to reform the judiciary, despite the process being put on hold.

Organisers said around 258,000 people attended, but police gave no figures of their own.

The demonstration came a day after a car-ramming attack on the city's seafront killed an Italian visitor and injured seven other tourists.

Violence has surged since Israeli police stormed Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem on Wednesday after they said Palestinians barricaded themselves inside.

A Saudi delegation arrived in Tehran Saturday to discuss reopening the kingdom's diplomatic missions in the Islamic republic, two days after a historic meeting in Beijing between their foreign ministers.

The visit follows the unprecedented meeting between their heads of diplomacy in China on Thursday after they agreed last month to restore diplomatic ties.

The Saudi diplomatic delegation arrived in Iran to discuss the reopening of its missions after a seven-year absence, Riyadh's foreign ministry said.

Rockets were fired from Syria late Saturday after Israel began calling up police and army reservists following attacks that killed three people, including an Italian tourist, and earlier rocket fire from Lebanon.

Despite appeals for restraint, violence has surged since Israeli police stormed the Al-Aqsa mosque on Wednesday after they said Palestinians barricaded themselves inside.

Israel bombarded both Gaza and Lebanon in response to rocket fire by Palestinian militants.

Late Saturday three rockets were fired from Syria, the Israeli army said.

Twenty years after the fall of his regime, the late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein remains admired and popular in Jordan where his image can still be seen across the country.

The instantly recognisable face peers out from everything from bumper stickers to mobile phone cases in neighbouring Jordan, despite symbols and images associated with his rule being outlawed in Iraq itself.

Surrounded by spring flowers and the ruins of their family homes near Israel's border with Lebanon, Christians gathered Friday to ensure their Easter traditions survive decades after the destruction of their village.

There had been doubts the pilgrimage would happen at all after militants in Lebanon and the Israeli military had traded fire across the nearby frontier hours earlier.

But as people burned incense beside their relatives' tombs, Father Souhail Khoury recounted the importance his community attached to returning to the Palestinian village of Iqrit.

France's foreign minister has held a rare face-to-face meeting with her Iranian counterpart in China, urging Tehran to release French nationals "arbitrarily detained" in Iran, the foreign ministry said Friday.

Catherine Colonna, travelling with President Emmanuel Macron on his state visit to China, met Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Beijing.

Amir-Abdollohian was leading the Iranian delegation in separate reconciliation talks in Beijing between Iran and its once arch regional foe Saudi Arabia.

South Africa said Friday it had learnt with "shock and dismay" that the United Arab Emirates had rejected a request to extradite two brothers accused of orchestrating industrial-scale corruption.

Justice Minister Ronald Lamola bluntly accused the UAE of "non-cooperation" after being informed late Thursday of a court ruling against extraditing tycoons Atul and Rajesh Gupta.

"We learnt with shock and dismay that the extradition hearing had been concluded in the Dubai Court on the 13 February 2023 and our extradition request was unsuccessful," Lamola said in a statement.

Two Israeli women were killed and another seriously wounded Friday in a shooting attack on a vehicle in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli army and medics said.

The army said the assailants struck at Hamra junction, in the northern part of the Jordan valley. It did not immediately give details on the identity of the dead women.

The Magen David Adom emergency service said it had confirmed the "death of two women in their 20s and provided medical treatment to a 40-year-old woman in a serious condition".

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday threatened to abandon a landmark grain deal with Ukraine if obstacles to Moscow's exports remained.

Negotiated in July by Turkey and the United Nations, the agreement allows Ukraine -- one of the world's top grain producers -- to export grain through a safe corridor in the Black Sea.