President Donald Trump proclaimed a decisive break with decades of US interventionism during his Middle East tour, promising a new American foreign policy based instead on his beloved art of the deal.
Trump vowed during his swing through Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates that there would be no more "lectures on how to live", saying the region had achieved a "modern miracle the Arabian way."
Israel threatened to target the leadership of Yemen's Iran-backed Huthi rebels after the air force struck two rebel-held ports on Friday, following repeated Huthi missile attacks in recent days.
The Huthis agreed earlier this month to stop firing on international shipping in the Red Sea after the United States stepped up air strikes on rebel-held areas with British support.
But the rebels vowed to keep up their strikes on Israel despite the deal and fired three missiles in as many days this week that triggered air raid warnings in major cities.
The UN's rights chief on Friday denounced Israel's sharp escalation of attacks in Gaza -- and an apparent push to permanently displace the population -- as amounting to "ethnic cleansing".
"This latest barrage of bombs... and the denial of humanitarian assistance underline that there appears to be a push for a permanent demographic shift in Gaza that is in defiance of international law and is tantamount to ethnic cleansing," Volker Turk said in a statement.
Gulf Arab leaders were "starving for love" -- so US President Donald Trump showered them with near endless praise during a tour filled with bromance and billion-dollar deals this week.
Wary of raising contentious topics such as human rights, Trump rained down compliments on the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as he shuttled between palaces, business forums and lavish state dinners.
Speaking at an investment conference in Riyadh, he told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman: "I like you too much!".
The Council of Europe on Friday said Gaza was suffering from a "deliberate starvation", and warned that Israel was sowing "the seeds for the next Hamas" in the territory.
"The time for a moral reckoning over the treatment of Palestinians has come -- and it is long overdue," said Dora Bakoyannis, rapporteur for the Middle East at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
The 46-member Council of Europe works to safeguard human rights and democracy.
"No cause, no matter how just or pure, can ever justify every means," Bakoyannis said in a statement.
Flights resumed on Friday at Tripoli airport as businesses and markets reopened after days of deadly fighting between armed groups in the Libyan capital.
"Last night, for the first time since Monday, residents of the capital were able to sleep without hearing explosions or gunfire," an interior ministry official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
After the bout of violence that pitted armed groups aligned with the Tripoli government and rival factions it seeks to dismantle, the official said: "We believe the situation is moving toward a ceasefire."
More than 295 million people faced acute hunger last year, a new high driven by conflict along with other crises -- and the outlook is "bleak" for 2025 as humanitarian aid falters, a UN-backed report said Friday.
It was the sixth consecutive annual increase in the number of people hit with "high levels" of acute food insecurity, according to the Global Report on Food Crises.
A total of 295.3 million people endured acute hunger last year -- almost a quarter of the population in 53 of the 65 countries analysed for the report.
Rescuers said Israeli strikes on Gaza killed 100 people on Friday, as Hamas demanded the United States press Israel to lift a sweeping aid blockade in return for a US-Israeli hostage released by the group.
In early March, shortly before the collapse of a two-month ceasefire in its war against Hamas, Israel reimposed a total blockade on the Gaza Strip, where aid agencies have warned of critical shortages of everything from food and clean water to fuel and medicines.
Paris has filed a case against Tehran at the top UN court over two French citizens who have been held in Iran for three years, the French foreign minister said on Friday.
The announcement comes as Iranian negotiators are set to meet with their counterparts from the United Kingdom, France, and Germany in Turkey on Friday for talks on Iran's nuclear programme.
Cecile Kohler, a 40-year-old literature teacher from eastern France and her partner Jacques Paris, in his 70s, were arrested on May 7, 2022, on the last day of a tourist trip to Iran.
US President Donald Trump on Friday concluded his Gulf tour in Abu Dhabi after overseeing the signing of another raft of multi-billion-dollar deals, while also securing a $1.4 trillion investment pledge from the UAE.
The eye-watering amounts of money in investments were accompanied also by the lifting of decades-long sanctions on Syria and renewed optimism over an Iran nuclear deal during the multi-day trip across the Gulf.
