The Saudi-led military coalition fighting Yemen's Huthi insurgents said Friday it had freed a batch of rebel prisoners, part of what it describes as efforts to end the seven-year war.

Last week, the coalition said it would release 163 prisoners it accused of participating in "hostilities" against Saudi Arabia.

The official Saudi Press Agency said on Twitter early Friday evening that all 163 had been flown to Yemen.

Lebanese expatriates on Friday voted in parliamentary polls, kickstarting a critical election that comes amid an unprecedented financial crisis that has spurred a mass population exodus.

While opposition figures have pinned their hopes on the diaspora, experts said the elections were expected to uphold the status quo, despite years of economic meltdown.

Expatriates in nine Arab countries and in Iran cast their votes on Friday, with Syria and Tehran seeing the highest turnout rates, according to Foreign Affairs Minister Abdallah Bou Habib.

Overloaded trucks and cars packed with families ply narrow, bumpy mountain roads surrounding this Yemeni city long-besieged by Huthi rebels -- evidence that the terms of a truce have yet to be met.

Announced just over a month ago, the truce called for warring parties to reopen the main roads into Taez, a city of roughly 600,000 people in Yemen's southwest that has been largely cut off from the world since 2015.

Israel conducted a large-scale manhunt on Friday for a pair of Palestinians suspected of killing three Israelis in an axe attack as the Jewish state marked its founding.

The deadly attack on Thursday night in Elad, a central city mainly populated by ultra-Orthodox Jews, was the sixth in which Israelis have been targeted since March 22.

Witnesses said two assailants leapt from a car swinging axes at passers-by, leaving three dead and four wounded, before fleeing in the same vehicle.

Three people were killed in an attack in the central Israeli city of Elad, as the Jewish state marked the anniversary of its founding on Thursday, and follows a brief lull in deadly unrest.

Police said that a manhunt using helicopters and roadblocks had been launched, with a larger number of officers and army units pursuing "one or two terrorists."

Russian President Vladimir Putin has apologised for remarks made by his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who claimed Adolf Hitler may have had "Jewish blood", Israel said on Thursday.

Lavrov's comments sparked outrage in Israel, which has sought to maintain ties with Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.

"The Prime Minister accepted President Putin's apology for Lavrov's remarks and thanked him for clarifying his attitude towards the Jewish people and the memory of the Holocaust," Bennett's office said in a statement.

Israeli civil rights groups on Thursday denounced a High Court decision that approved the eviction of roughly 1,000 Palestinian villagers to make way for a military training zone.

Residents of eight villages had been in court for around 20 years fighting Israeli government efforts to evict them.

The case of Masafer Yatta -- or Firing Zone 918 -- an agriculture area near Hebron in the occupied West Bank, has been one of Israel's longest running legal battles.

One person died in Iraq and more than 5,000 were treated in hospitals Thursday for respiratory ailments due to a sandstorm, the seventh in a month, the health ministry said.

Duststorms have increased dramatically in frequency in Iraq in recent years, driven by soil degradation and intense droughts made worse by climate change, with rising average temperatures and sharply lower rainfall.

Residents of six of Iraq's 18 provinces, including Baghdad and the vast western region of Al-Anbar, awoke once again to a thick cloud of dust blanketing the sky.

Calm returned to Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound on Thursday afternoon following early-morning clashes between Israelis and Palestinians that shattered a pause over the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday.

Israeli police said they had repelled "dozens of rioters" who had been "throwing stones and other objects" at the security forces. Yet, by afternoon prayers, Palestinian mingled in the mosque's courtyard under the mid-day sun, while large numbers of police stood by.

More than 1,000 Iraqis were rushed to hospital with respiratory ailments on Thursday due to a sandstorm, the seventh to hit the country in the past month, state media said.

Residents of six of Iraq's 18 provinces, including Baghdad and the vast western region of Al-Anbar, awoke once again to a thick cloud of dust blanketing the sky.

Authorities in Al-Anbar and Kirkuk provinces, north of the capital, urged people to stay indoors, said the official INA news agency.