At least seven people were killed Wednesday in a car bomb blast targeting the convoy of a security official in the southern Yemeni government-controlled city of Aden, security sources said.

The blast "targeted the convoy of the Lahij governorate security director, Saleh al-Sayed, in the Khor Maksar neighbourhood of central Aden", a source told AFP.

At least four soldiers and three civilians were killed in the blast, added the source, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A Yemeni journalist was killed earlier in June when a bomb detonated in his car in Aden.

Russia's second-richest man, hit by British sanctions on Wednesday, had his superyacht berthed in Dubai, one of three ultra-expensive, oligarch-owned boats moored in the Gulf financial hub.

Vladimir Potanin, whose fortune Forbes magazine estimated in 2021 at $27 billion, had his assets frozen and was handed a travel ban and other restrictions, the British foreign ministry said.

Unilever announced Wednesday it has sold its Ben & Jerry's interests in Israel to a locally based licensee, clearing the way for renewed ice cream sales in West Bank settlements.

In July last year, US-based Ben & Jerry's owned by Unilever announced it would no longer sell its ice cream in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, which the Jewish state seized in 1967.

It said selling ice cream in the Israel-occupied Palestinian territories was "inconsistent with our values", although it said it planned to keep selling its products in Israel.

A US citizen held for nearly seven years in Iran made an appeal from prison Wednesday to President Joe Biden, urging a deal to free Americans regardless of the outcome of nuclear diplomacy.

In an op-ed published in The New York Times, 50-year-old Iranian-American Siamak Namazi said he was concerned about repercussions he might suffer for speaking out while confined to Tehran's infamous Evin prison.

An Iranian border guard was killed in an "incident" in the country's southeast at a border crossing with Afghanistan, Iran's foreign ministry said Wednesday.

"The dimensions of this unfortunate incident in the Milak border area, which led to the martyrdom of the dear border guard of the Islamic Republic of Iran, are being investigated by the authorities and will be announced as soon as the issue is clarified," ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said.

He expressed condolences to the family of Mohammad Sayyad who was killed at Milak crossing in Sistan-Baluchestan province.

Syrian counter-narcotics units seized a record haul of 2.3 tonnes of the amphetamine-type stimulant known as captagon, the interior ministry announced Wednesday.

Law enforcement officers had earlier discovered 249 kilos of captagon hidden in steel machinery inside containers ready to leave the Mediterranean port of Latakia.

The ensuing investigation alerted the authorities "to the existence of a warehouse containing drugs on a farm" in the nearby province of Hama, a ministry statement said.

Turkey said Wednesday it would seek the extradition of 33 alleged Kurdish militants and coup plot suspects from Sweden and Finland under a deal to secure Ankara's support for the Nordic countries' NATO membership bids.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dropped weeks of resistance to Sweden and Finland joining NATO after crunch talks ahead of Wednesday's NATO summit in Madrid, focused on Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

A Palestinian gunman from the Islamic Jihad militant group was shot dead by Israeli troops during clashes Wednesday in Jenin, a flash point in the occupied West Bank hit by waves of recent violence.

Mohammad Marei, 25, died from a bullet wound to the chest, the Palestinian health ministry said.

Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian armed group present in the West Bank and the Israeli-blockaded Gaza strip, said in a statement that Marei was one of their fighters and a "martyr" who died while confronting a raid "by occupation forces... in Jenin at dawn on Wednesday".

Israel's Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Wednesday he would not stand in upcoming elections, as parliament postponed a vote to dissolve itself and force the country's fifth vote in less than four years.

The premier, who conceded last week that his eight-party alliance which took office a year ago was no longer tenable, is due to hand power to Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, who will lead a caretaker government into polls that could come as soon as October.

In one of Saudi artist Ahmed Mater's best-known works, a silhouette of a gas pump morphs into a man holding a gun to his head –- a clear critique of oil's damaging influence.

Yet for several years, most Saudis couldn't see the piece, titled "Evolution of Man", as local curators deemed it too sensitive to show in the oil-reliant kingdom.

Its inclusion in a recent exhibition in the capital Riyadh is just one sign of changing times.