Nagorno-Karabakh has laid down its arms but Armenian Sergei Davidyan is having none of it.

The enclave taken over by Azerbaijan is the homeland of his ancestors, the place where he grew up and the land he was wounded fighting to defend during the 2020 war that Armenia lost.

In a small flat which he shares with his mother in the suburbs of Yerevan, the 39-year-old veteran struggled to find the right words to express his indignation.

"The loss of Karabakh... I can't accept it," he said, wearing a black polo shirt emblazoned with the self-proclaimed republic's flag.

An Israeli physicist who has become the face of a wave of anti-government protests warns that her country risks falling under "tyranny" as the hardline government pushes through its contentious judicial overhaul.

Shikma Bressler, 43, has led passionate weekly street rallies that have become Israel's biggest protest movement in years, ever since the divisive legal reform agenda was unveiled in January.

Iraqi gamers celebrated the release Thursday of the latest instalment of the "Assassin's Creed" action-adventure saga, set in ninth century Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate.

In the game, the hooded and stealthy hero fights his way through an ancient maze of alleyways, souks and rooftops, rendered in loving detail with what its creators say is the help of historical sources.

A drone strike Thursday on a Syrian military academy killed more than 60 people, a war monitor said, with state media blaming "terrorist organisations" for the attack in government-held Homs.

Separately, in the war-torn country's Kurdish-held northeast, Turkish strikes on military and infrastructure targets killed at least nine people, according to Kurdish forces, after Ankara had threatened raids in retaliation for a bomb attack.

Israeli forces killed three Palestinian militants in two separate firefights in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The Israeli army confirmed its soldiers had been engaged in a shootout that killed two gunmen near Tulkarem in the northern West Bank.

The Palestinian health ministry named the two men killed as Abdul Rahman Atta, 23, and Huthaifa Faris, 27, saying they died as a result of "occupation (Israeli) bullets". Hamas identified them as members of its armed wing.

The United States offered no additional funds to the world's largest climate fund on Thursday, overshadowing fresh support for nations most vulnerable to global warming and infuriating campaigners.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF), seen as a key element of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, funnels grants and loans for adaptation and mitigation projects, mostly in Africa, the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America and the Caribbean.

As Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar pack Saudi stadiums, a quieter but equally dramatic transformation is unfolding for women's professional football, which didn't even exist in the kingdom five years ago.

On a recent evening in the mountain city of Taif, the Saudi women's national team ran through a one-touch passing drill ahead of a game against Pakistan, the latest in a series of friendlies intended to give the players some much-needed match experience.

The squad only formed two years ago and entered the FIFA rankings in March, at 171st place.

Lebanon's LGBTQ community has been reeling from months of snowballing hostility, as activists in one of the Middle East's more liberal countries worry about deteriorating personal and political freedoms.

Rights advocates and LGBTQ community members told AFP they have been harassed and even received death threats in recent months as controversy has raged over everything from rainbow imagery to family values and the "Barbie" movie.

Palestinian militants marched Wednesday through Gaza City, brandishing weapons and carrying rockets and drones, in a parade marking the 36th anniversary of the establishment of the Islamic Jihad movement.

Islamic Jihad forces in the blockaded Gaza Strip have been involved in recent years in several bloody confrontations with Israel, most recently in May when five days of cross-border fighting killed 34 Palestinians -- including six commanders of the militant group -- and one Israeli.

Turkey on Wednesday launched fresh strikes against Kurdish targets in Iraq and warned of more intense cross-border air raids after concluding that militants who staged a weekend attack in Ankara came from Syria.

Turkey convened a national security meeting involving top defence and intelligence chiefs to prepare its response to Sunday's attack on the capital's government district.

Police shot dead one of the assailants while the other died in an apparent suicide blast outside Turkey's interior ministry that injured two security officers.