Syria's tiny Jewish community and Syrian Jews abroad are trying to build bridges after Bashar al-Assad's ouster in the hope of reviving their ancient heritage before the community dies out.

This week, a small number of Jews living in Damascus, along with others from abroad, held a group prayer for the first time in more than three decades, in the Faranj synagogue in Damascus's Old City.

"There were nine of us Jews (in Syria). Two died recently," community leader Bakhour Chamntoub told AFP in his home in the Old City's Jewish quarter.

Arab leaders met in Riyadh on Friday to craft a plan for Gaza's post-war reconstruction to counter Donald Trump's proposal for the United States to take over the territory without its Palestinian residents.

Trump's plan has united Arab states in opposition to it, but disagreements remain over who should govern Gaza and how its reconstruction can be funded.

A photo from the meeting showed the kingdom's de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with the leaders of other Gulf Arab states, as well as Egypt and Jordan.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the army to step up its operations in the occupied West Bank on Friday as he paid a rare visit to troops in the territory that drew Palestinian condemnation.

Netanyahu's visit to Tulkarem refugee camp in the north of the territory came after bombs that Israeli officials said resembled those used by militants in the West Bank exploded on multiple buses in central Israel on Thursday.

The prime minister's office said he ordered more "operational activity" in the northern West Bank in response to the bomb blasts.

The daughter of murdered British aid worker this week at the Paris trial of two of his presumed Islamic State group jailers recounted her anguish after her father went missing in war-torn Syria in 2013.

In a Paris court on Thursday, Bethany Haines, 27, read out the last text message she would ever receive from her father, David Haines, before he was abducted by IS in north Syria aged 42.

Sitting in the dock as she read were Frenchmen Mehdi Nemmouche, 39, and Abdelmalek Tanem, 35, on trial for holding four French journalists hostage for IS in Syria between 2013 and 2014.

Argentina announced two days of national mourning on Thursday after the bodies of two Israeli Argentine children who had been taken hostage by Hamas were handed over by the group.

Hamas delivered the bodies of four hostages on Thursday, three of which it said were members of the Bibas family — Shiri Bibas and her two young sons.

While the identities of the Bibas boys, Kfir and Ariel were confirmed by Israeli forensics, they said Shiri was not among them, as the militants had claimed.

Israel's prime minister accused Hamas on Friday of killing two Israeli children in Gaza and said the militants would pay for failing to return their mother, Shiri Bibas, which Hamas blamed on a possible "mix-up" of bodies.

Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said after an analysis of the remains that Palestinian militants had killed the Bibas boys "with their bare hands", while Hamas has long maintained an Israeli air strike killed them and their mother early in the war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday ordered an "intensive operation against centers of terrorism" in the occupied West Bank, his office said, after three buses exploded in central Israel without causing any reported injuries.

Three devices detonated on buses in the city of Bat Yam on Thursday evening and two others were being defused, according to police, with Israel's defence minister accusing "Palestinian terrorist" groups of being behind the blasts.

Thousands of grieving Israelis gathered in the Tel Aviv plaza dubbed Hostages Square on Thursday, standing or sitting in silent mourning, after Hamas handed over the bodies of four hostages.

The Palestinian militants had delivered the black coffins they said contained the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two young boys, Kfir and Ariel -- who became symbols of the ordeal that has gripped Israel since the Gaza war began with the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023.

Eight civilians including three children were killed on Thursday when unexploded munitions ignited at a house in northwestern Syria, a war monitor and the civil defence said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported the deadly blast a day after another organisation said two-thirds of Syrians were at risk of being killed or wounded by unexploded ordnance.

Hundreds watched on Thursday as four black coffins, which Hamas said held the remains of Israel's Bibas family and an elderly hostage, were carried off stage by Palestinian militants in southern Gaza.

The ceremony, held on a sandy area that was once a cemetery before its destruction by Israeli forces, marked the first handover of deceased captives under a fragile Israel-Hamas truce.