Thousands in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip staged one of the biggest celebrations in years for the rival Fatah movement of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Saturday.
The demonstrators turned Gaza City's Al-Katiba square into a sea of yellow as they waved Fatah flags to mark the 58th anniversary of the party's foundation.
Fatah rallies on this scale have been a rarity in Gaza for the past decade and a half.
Two migrants died and another 200 were rescued Saturday when their boat sank off Lebanon's northern coast, from where increasing numbers make the risky journey to flee a collapsed economy.
An AFP correspondent in the impoverished port city of Tripoli said men, women and children -- mostly refugees from Syria but also about 50 Lebanese -- were on board the vessel when it got into difficulty.
"Three naval ships, accompanied by another from UNIFIL (the UN mission in Lebanon), arrived at the site... off Selaata and personnel saved some 200 people," the army said on Twitter.
Only hours after Cristiano Ronaldo penned a two-year contract with Saudi Arabia's Al Nassr, crowds flocked to a football kit store in Riyadh to buy the five-time Ballon d'Or winner's new club jersey.
Abdulmohsen al-Ayyban, 41, and his nine-year old son, Nayef, were among those queueing at Al Nassr club's official kit store on Saturday where clerks where busy pressing Ronaldo's name onto t-shirts.
"We are witnessing a historic moment," al-Ayyban told AFP of the deal which he believes "will elevate the Saudi football league".
Iran's security forces fired on a crowd in the Kurdish-populated west on Saturday, killing a 22-year-old, a rights group said, more than 100 days after the death of Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini sparked nationwide protests.
The Islamic republic has been rocked by demonstrations since Amini died in custody on September 16 following her arrest for an alleged breach of the country's strict dress code for women.
The UN General Assembly on Friday asked the International Court of Justice to consider consequences for Israel over its occupation of Palestinian territories, a day after the Jewish state's most right-wing government ever took over.
The General Assembly voted 87-26 with 53 abstentions on the resolution, with Western nations split but virtually unanimous support in the Islamic world -- including Arab states that have normalized relations with Israel -- and backing from Russia and China.
Cristiano Ronaldo on Friday signed for Al Nassr of Saudi Arabia, the club announced, in a deal believed to be worth more than 200 million euros.
The 37-year-old penned a contract which will take him to June 2025.
"I can't wait to discover a new football league in a different country," said the former Manchester United, Real Madrid and Juventus player.
The Portuguese star was pictured on the Al Nassr Twitter feed holding a blue and yellow shirt with his favoured number seven printed on the back.
Three Egyptian policemen were killed and four others, including a police officer, wounded Friday in an attack in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia, security and medical sources said.
Two cars approached a checkpoint in a residential neighbourhood of the city and two armed assailants opened fire at the policemen, the security source said.
The policemen responded, killing one of the assailants while the other fled.
The Al-Aqsa mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, is a site sacred to both Islam and Judaism in the Old City of Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem that has long been a lightning rod in Israeli-Palestinian relations.
On Wednesday, Israeli riot police stormed the mosque to dislodge what it called Palestinian "agitators" who barricaded themselves inside after the last prayers of the day with fireworks, sticks and stones.
The Israeli press gave a tentative, if not cold, reception to Benjamin Netanyahu's new government on Friday, fearing changes to judicial powers as the prime minister's ongoing corruption trial proceeds.
After winning the November 1 election, and following weeks of negotiations with ultra-Orthodox and far-right parties, Netanyahu was sworn in as prime minister on Thursday, heading the most right-wing government in Israel's history.
Hundreds of Syrians in the rebel-held north protested Friday against signs of a thaw between Ankara and Damascus after their defence ministers met in Moscow for the first time since 2011.
Several hundred demonstrators gathered in Al-Bab, a town controlled by rebel factions long backed by Ankara, brandishing banners reading: "The revolution is an idea, you can't kill an idea," an AFP photographer reported.
"We will not reconcile, we cannot reconcile, we don't want to reconcile," said Sohbi Khabiyeh, one of the demonstrators who had been displaced from the suburbs of Damascus.
