Iran's president on Thursday hailed his visit to Damascus as a "turning point", after Tehran's support helped Syria retake most of the territory it lost in 12 years of war.
Ebrahim Raisi's two-day trip is the first such visit to Tehran's close ally since 2010, and gives Iran a leading role as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad seeks to focus on reconstruction, despite Western sanctions on both countries.
Thousands of people demonstrated Thursday in Tel Aviv and across Israel against the government's planned judicial overhaul, despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu putting the controversial reforms on ice a month ago.
Opponents of the ambitious legislation, which seeks to give elected officials greater power over the judiciary, have kept up demonstrations in the commercial hub and across the country since the plan was presented in January.
Sudanese exiled rebel leader Abdel Wahid Nur -- a veteran of decades of fighting in the troubled Darfur region -- says there can be "no winner" in the war now raging between two rival generals.
"The Sudanese people want neither of them," Nur, now based in neighbouring South Sudan, told AFP. "They want a civilian government."
Battles have flared for weeks between Sudan's army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
US President Joe Biden on Thursday threatened to impose new sanctions over Sudan's conflict, saying the fighting "must end", as gunfire and explosions rocked Khartoum for a 20th straight day.
Hundreds of people have been killed in Sudan since battles began on April 15 between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan's forces and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo's Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
As the latest ceasefire expired at midnight (2200 GMT), the army said it was ready to abide by a new seven-day truce, but there was no word from its foes in the paramilitary RSF.
Israel said its security forces shot dead three Palestinians blamed for killing a British-Israeli woman and two of her daughters last month, in a raid in the occupied West Bank on Thursday.
Two suspects in the killings and a third man accused of helping them were killed in a joint operation in Nablus by the army, police and Shin Bet security service, a statement said.
Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, said all three men killed in what it termed an "assassination" were from its ranks, hailing them as "heroes of resistance".
Under an almond tree in his garden, Moustafa Ahmed shows a handful of bullet casings he collected near his home in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.
Residents of his village in Iraq's mountainous far north often find themselves caught in the crossfire between the Turkish army and fighters from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
"Most of the inhabitants have left," said Ahmed, from the Kurdish village of Hiror in a green valley near the Turkish border, an area that for decades has seen fighting between the two forces.
Israeli troops carried out demolitions Wednesday of the homes of two Palestinians accused of carrying out deadly attacks on Israelis in the occupied West Bank last year.
The army said the demolitions targeted the homes of Mohammed Souf, 18, accused of a "car-ramming and stabbing attack" which killed three Israelis last November, and Younis Hilan, accused of fatally stabbing an Israeli the previous month.
Souf's uncle, Mostafa, denounced the demolitions as "collective punishment".
Sanctions-hit Iran seized on Wednesday a second oil tanker in less than a week as tensions rise in the commercially vital Gulf waters.
A fleet of high-speed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) craft surrounded the Greek-owned Niovi as it travelled empty from Dubai to Fujairah, another port in the United Arab Emirates, the US military said.
The Panama-flagged vessel's seizure in the Strait of Hormuz comes six days after a similar incident also in the Gulf, which lies between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula and carries at least a third of the world's seaborne oil.
The UN chief on Wednesday said "we failed" to stop war from erupting in Sudan, where persistent fighting between rival generals undermined efforts to firm up a truce.
"The UN was taken by surprise" by the conflict, because the world body and others were hopeful that negotiations towards a civilian transition would be successful, Antonio Guterres told reporters in Nairobi.
"To the extent that we and many others were not expecting this to happen, we can say we failed to avoid it to happen," the secretary general said.
An uneasy truce between Israel and Gaza militants was holding Wednesday following a major exchange of cross-border fire sparked by the death in custody of a Palestinian prisoner on hunger strike.
Violence flared from Tuesday after the inmate, Khader Adnan, 45, from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, died following an 87-day hunger strike after his arrest by Israel over ties to the armed group Islamic Jihad.
