The Al-Hol camp for displaced people in Syria is a jihadist threat and should be dismantled, a senior Iraqi security official said on Saturday.
Al-Hol, in the Kurdish-controlled northeast, is Syria's largest camp for displaced people. It houses about 56,000 including displaced Syrians and Iraqi refugees, some of whom maintain links with the Islamic State group (IS).
About 10,000 are foreigners, including relatives of jihadists.
Tehran on Saturday said it sanctioned a retired US general and 23 other American nationals involved in what the Islamic republic described as terrorism and human rights violations.
The announcement came days after Washington imposed new sanctions on Iran, and amid crucial talks in Vienna to salvage the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
Retired US General Joseph Votel, who headed US Central Command which covers the Middle East, is among the 24 sanctioned Americans. Other US former treasury and military officials, ambassadors and company managers are also on the list.
Israeli security forces raided the flashpoint West Bank district of Jenin on Saturday killing a Palestinian and wounding 12 others, after vowing there will "not be limits" to curb surging violence.
The operation, which lasted several hours, came after a gunman from Jenin went on a shooting rampage in a popular Tel Aviv nightlife area on Thursday evening, killing three Israelis and wounding more than a dozen others.
Israeli security forces shot dead a Palestinian on Saturday in the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin, home of the gunman behind a recent deadly Tel Aviv attack, the Palestinian health ministry said.
The Israeli army told AFP a military operation was ongoing in the Jenin camp, a stronghold of Palestinian armed factions in the north of the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian health ministry said five others were wounded in Jenin by Israeli gunfire.
Saudi Arabia said Saturday it would permit one million Muslims from inside and outside the country to participate in this year's hajj, a sharp increase after pandemic restrictions forced two years of drastically pared-down pilgrimages.
The move, while falling short of reinstating normal hajj conditions, offered hopeful news for many Muslims outside the kingdom who have been barred from making the trip since 2019.
Saudi Arabia said Saturday it will permit one million Muslims from inside and outside the country to participate in this year's hajj, a sharp uptick after pandemic restrictions forced two years of drastically pared-down pilgrimages.
The hajj ministry "has authorised one million pilgrims, both foreign and domestic, to perform the hajj this year," it said in a statement.
The United States insisted Friday on keeping the elite Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps on its designated list of terror groups, as Washington pushes on with negotiations to restore the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, had told a congressional hearing on Thursday that in his "personal opinion" the Quds Force should not be dropped from the terror list, which has been one of Tehran's conditions to renew the deal.
The United Nations said Friday it is seeking nearly $80 million for an emergency operation to prevent a catastrophic oil spill in the Red Sea off war-ravaged Yemen.
The 45-year-old tanker FSO Safer, long used as a floating oil storage platform with 1.1 million barrels of crude on board, has been moored off the rebel-held Yemeni port of Hodeida since 2015, without being serviced.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett gave security agencies "full freedom" Friday to curb a surge in violence, after a Palestinian gunman killed three men in a popular nightlife district.
"There are not and will not be limits for this war," Bennett said, speaking hours after Thursday night's attack in the coastal city of Tel Aviv.
"We are granting full freedom of action to the army, the Shin Bet (the domestic security agency) and all security forces in order to defeat the terror," he said.
Saudi Arabia announced Thursday it was sending an ambassador to Lebanon for the first time since a row broke out last year over the Riyadh-led military intervention in Yemen.
The foreign ministry "announces the return of the ambassador... to the sisterly Republic of Lebanon", read a statement carried by state media.
A diplomatic crisis erupted last October after the then-information minister was quoted criticising the Saudi role in Yemen, where a grinding war has produced what the UN describes as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
