Carlos Queiroz said he feels "at home" after he returned to Tehran on Wednesday to take charge of Iran for a third successive World Cup finals campaign.

The 69-year-old Portuguese coach was appointed to the post last Wednesday having previously been in charge of Iran for eight years, the longest stint in the national team's history.

That included appearances at the 2014 and 2018 World Cup finals where Iran exited in the group stage, although in the latter they beat Morocco for only their second win in football's global showpiece.

An Israeli soldier and two Palestinians were killed in clashes Wednesday near Jenin in the occupied West Bank, an area hit by waves of recent deadly unrest.

Israel's army said a major "was killed overnight during operational activity adjacent to the Gilboa Crossing during an exchange of fire with Palestinian terrorists".

The Palestinian health ministry confirmed "the martyrdom of the two young men" in clashes near the checkpoint, which is known to Palestinians as Jalameh, north of the militant stronghold of Jenin.

A bomb killed the former head of a pro-government militia and seven others in northwestern Pakistan, officials said Wednesday, in an attack claimed by the local Taliban.

The blast happened Tuesday night in Kabal town in the Swat valley, which was largely ruled by the Pakistan Taliban during a 2007-2009 insurgency.

For years Islamabad encouraged tribal vigilante forces known as peace committees to defend their villages against militants.

Most have been disbanded since the insurgency was largely crushed and security improved across the country.

Syria's first major cholera outbreak in over a decade has killed seven people and infected more than 50, the health ministry said, amid widespread damage to water treatment infrastructure.

In a statement late Tuesday, the ministry confirmed 53 cholera cases spread across five of the country's 14 provinces, with the highest number recorded in the northern province of Aleppo.

It said seven people had died of the illness.

The updated toll comes after the ministry reported two confirmed cholera deaths on Monday.

Forty years after Christian militiamen massacred Palestinian refugees and Lebanese nationals in the country's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, the horrors of the tragedy remain seared into survivors' memories.

Najib al-Khatib, whose father and 10 other family members were killed in the massacre, still remembers the stench of corpses.

It "lingered for more than five or six months. A horrible smell," the 52-year-old Lebanese survivor said.

A French court on Wednesday will issue its verdict on involuntary homicide charges against Yemenia Airways over a 2009 crash that killed 152 people -- but miraculously left a 12-year-old girl alive.

The Yemeni national airline faces a maximum fine of 225,000 euros ($225,000) if found guilty of insufficient pilot training that led to fatal mistakes by the crew onboard, as prosecutors have alleged.

The bodies of five people were recovered after a four-storey residential building collapsed in Jordan's capital Tuesday, authorities said, adding that 14 more were injured and others remained trapped.

The toll from the collapse in the city's Jabal al-Weibdeh district "has risen to five dead and 14 injured", security spokesman Amer al-Sartawy said in a statement.

He had earlier told state television that civil defence forces were being supported by teams from the regional security command and the gendarmerie, and that rescue efforts were ongoing.

The World Health Organization warned Tuesday of a "very high" risk of cholera spreading across Syria after the country recorded its first cases since 2009.

"The risk of cholera spreading to other governorates is very high," the WHO said, after cases were recorded in at least five of the country's 14 provinces.

"The source of infection could be linked to people drinking water from untreated sources," or "food contamination due to irrigating plants with contaminated water," the WHO said in a statement.

Saudi authorities have arrested a man who claimed to have travelled to the Muslim holy city of Mecca to perform an umrah pilgrimage on behalf of the late Queen Elizabeth II.

The man, a Yemeni national, on Monday published a video clip of himself on social media at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam's holiest site, where non-Muslims are forbidden.

In the clip, he held up a banner saying: "Umrah for the soul of Queen Elizabeth II, we ask God to accept her in heaven and among the righteous."

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz Monday ruled out the revival of a nuclear deal with Iran "in the near future", as Israel pushed for a "credible military threat" to pressure Tehran.

Scholz's sombre assessment came during Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid's visit -- his latest diplomatic effort to persuade Western powers to ditch the agreement with the Jewish state's arch nemesis.

Israel has long opposed a revival of the 2015 accord that seeks to tame Tehran's nuclear ambitions.