(Reuters) -Syria has carried out nationwide pre-emptive operations targeting Islamic State cells, a spokesperson for the Interior Ministry said on Saturday.

Syrian security forces carried out 61 raids, with 71 people arrested and explosives and weapons seized, the spokesperson told state-run Al Ekhbariya TV.

The raids come ahead of a trip by Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa to Washington to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump and join an anti Islamic State U.S.-led coalition.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israeli settlers attacked a group of Palestinian villagers, activists and journalists on Saturday who had gathered during an attempt to harvest olives near a settler outpost in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, witnesses said.

Two Reuters employees - a journalist and a security adviser accompanying her - were among those injured in the attack by the men who wielded sticks and clubs and hurled large rocks, in an area close to the Palestinian village of Beita.

Israel identified on Saturday the latest hostage remains sent back from Gaza by Palestinian militants, leaving only five more bodies to be returned under the US-brokered truce that halted the two-year war.

The Israeli military identified the body handed over on Friday as that of volunteer ambulance driver Lior Rudaeff, who was killed in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that triggered the Gaza war.

By Emily Rose

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -U.S. forces are taking part in overseeing and coordinating aid transfer into the Gaza Strip together with Israel as part of U.S. President Donald Trump's ceasefire plan, an Israeli security official said on Saturday.

The Washington Post on Friday reported that the U.S.-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) will replace Israel in overseeing aid into Gaza. It cited a U.S. official and people familiar with the matter as saying Israel was part of the process but that CMCC would decide what aid enters Gaza and how.

By Laila Bassam and Tom Perry

NAWA, Syria (Reuters) -As sectarian violence swept through Syria's southern Sweida province in July, the Sbeih family say they were taken by Druze gunmen and held in a school with other Bedouin tribe members. When their guards disappeared after three nights, they tried to escape.

Shots were fired, and the Bedouins scattered. Faisal Sbeih and his wife, Fasl, were separated. Three family members were killed, they said, including their 20-year-old daughter, Malak.

She had been due to marry the next day.

(Reuters) -Peace negotiations between Afghanistan and Pakistan broke down, although a ceasefire continues between the South Asian neighbours, a Taliban spokesperson said on Saturday.

Zabihullah Mujahid said negotiations had failed due to Islamabad insisting that Afghanistan assume responsibility for Pakistan's internal security, a demand he described as beyond Afghanistan's "capacity".

But, he said, "The ceasefire that has been established has not been violated by us so far, and it will continue to be observed."

By Tarek Amara

TUNIS (Reuters) -Jailed Tunisian opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi, 84, began a hunger strike, joining two prominent politicians who are protesting what they call “unjust imprisonment,” lawyers said on Saturday, marking the latest escalation in a standoff with President Kais Saied.

Most of the country's opposition leaders are in jail and some parties have accused Saied of turning Tunisia into an “open-air prison” while using the judiciary to cement his authoritarian rule.

Prominent Tunisian opposition figures including Rached Ghannouchi said Friday they would go on hunger strike in solidarity with a jailed politician whose health they say has severely deteriorated after nine days without food.

Jawhar Ben Mbarek, co-founder of the National Salvation Front, Tunisia's main opposition alliance, launched a hunger strike last week to protest his detention since February 2023.

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -Israeli settlers carried out at least 264 attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank during October, marking the biggest monthly total since United Nations officials began tracking such incidents in 2006, the U.N. said on Friday.

In a statement warning against the sharp rise in violence, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the attacks, which resulted in casualties and property damage, amounted to an average of eight incidents per day.

Crowds packed central Tehran on Friday for the unveiling of a statue celebrating an ancient Persian victory over foreign enemies -- a show of defiance toward Iran's modern-day foes in the wake of its recent 12-day war with Israel.

Thousands filled Enghelab Square to see the monument depicting the triumphant Sasanian king Shapur I looming on horseback over the kneeling Roman emperor Valerian, whom the Persian ruler captured in the third century AD.