BEIRUT (Reuters) -Lebanon's Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said on Friday the group has the right to respond to Israel's killing of senior commander Haytham Ali Tabtabai and will "set the timing" for any retaliation.

In a televised speech, Qassem described the Israeli strike that killed Tabtabai and several others as "a blatant aggression."

(Reporting by Maya and Gebeily and Enas Alashray; Editing by William Maclean)

Palestinian student Razan Shawar has travelled for 24 hours to showcase her team's AI-powered invention at World Robot Olympiad in Singapore, telling AFP innovation -- not war -- should be why people hear about her country.

The 15-year-old high school student from Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank said she dreams of making "something big, so the world can know that the one who did this is Palestinian".

BERLIN (Reuters) -German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will travel to Israel on December 6 and 7 for his first official visit since taking office, a German government spokesperson said on Friday.

Merz is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on December 7 to discuss bilateral relations, the ceasefire in Gaza and other international issues, and will also visit the Yad Vashem memorial and hold talks with local representatives from society, the spokesperson added during a regular government press conference.

GENEVA (Reuters) -The U.N. human rights rights office said on Friday it was appalled by the killing of two Palestinian men by Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank, saying the incident appeared to amount to summary executions.

"We're appalled by the brazen killing by Israeli border police yesterday of two Palestinian men in Jenin in the occupied West Bank in yet another apparent summary execution," Jeremy Laurence told a U.N. briefing in Geneva.

Elfyn Evans' hopes of claiming his first World Rally Championship title suffered a major blow on Friday when the Welshman lost valuable time with a puncture in Saudi Arabia.

He had to change a rear-left tyre which cost him around two minutes, giving the title advantage to his Toyota teammate Sebastien Ogier.

"We had a puncture alarm right at the beginning," said Evans.

"It was going down quite slow but it was so far to go that we had to make a decision to change it where we could. Not ideal."

JERUSALEM/DAMASCUS (Reuters) -Ten people were killed by Israeli fire in a village in southern Syria on Friday, Syrian state media reported, while the Israeli military said five soldiers were wounded in a clash during an operation to apprehend members of a militant group there.

Israeli forces killed 13 people on Friday in an operation in southern Syria, saying they targeted an Islamist group, in Israel's deadliest attack on the country since Bashar al-Assad's overthrow last year.

Since an Islamist coalition overthrew longtime ruler Assad in December of last year, Israel has conducted hundreds of strikes on Syria's military arsenal as well as incursions into the country.

By Joshua McElwee

ISTANBUL (Reuters) -Pope Leo will meet in Turkey on Friday with Christian leaders from across the Middle East, and is expected to urge unity among denominations divided for centuries during his first overseas trip as leader of the global Catholic Church.

The first U.S. pope will attend a celebration for the 1,700th anniversary of a landmark early Church council, held in modern Turkey. It produced the Nicene Creed, still used by most of the world's 2.6 billion Christians today.

Muslim-majority Turkey, which is hosting Pope Leo XIV on his first overseas trip as pontiff, is not "a hostile environment" for Christians, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople told AFP in an interview.

"It is simplistic to see adversaries everywhere and to imagine the pope's visit as taking sides in a hostile environment," said Patriarch Bartholomew I, leader of the world's 260 million Orthodox Christians.

By Jeff Mason and Jasper Ward

PALM BEACH, Florida/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A National Guard member died on Thursday after being shot near the White House in an ambush that investigators say was carried out by an Afghan national, an attack President Donald Trump blamed on Biden-era immigration vetting failures as he ordered a sweeping review of asylum cases.