The Palestinian health ministry said on Wednesday that Israeli forces killed two people in separate overnight raids in the occupied West Bank, including one in Jenin, where the Israeli military is conducting a major offensive.

The Ramallah-based ministry said in a statement that a 25-year-old man it identified as Osama Abu al-Hija was killed late on Tuesday in Jenin "as a result of an Israeli air strike".

The military told AFP that an Israeli aircraft conducted a strike in Jenin on Tuesday night "after a terrorist threw an explosive device" towards troops.

Syria's new authorities announced Wednesday that Ahmed al-Sharaa, who took the helm after Bashar al-Assad's ouster last month, has been appointed interim president and tasked with forming a transitional legislature, state media reported.

Sharaa was appointed "as the country's president in the transitional phase", state news agency SANA reported, quoting military official Hassan Abdel Ghani, without specifying a timeframe.

An abandoned lifeguard cabin, a rusty pier and mangled umbrellas are all that is left of Ein Gedi, once Israel's flagship beach drawing international tourists to float in the world-famous waters of the Dead Sea.

Now, this lush desert oasis at the lowest point on Earth sits in ruins beside the shrinking sea, whose highly salty waters are rapidly retreating due to industrial use and climate change, which is accelerating their natural evaporation.

It has been 10 years since a teenage Shamima Begum and two friends secretly left Britain to marry Islamic State group fighters in Syria.

Over the past decade Nadia Fall, a British theater director of Muslim heritage, has watched the polarizing and vitriolic debate about Begum's infamous case, online radicalization, and who is to blame.

"We kept thinking 'well these are girls, these are children really, legally,'" said Fall, who began work on a film project with writer Suhayla El-Bushra.

"The stories never really were (told) from their point of view."

Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said Tuesday that Israel had freed nine Lebanese prisoners under the terms of a more than six-week-old ceasefire and urged the release of another nine.

Israeli forces had been due to withdraw from southern Lebanon by Sunday under the terms of the ceasefire agreement with Lebanese militant group Hezbollah but that deadline was extended until February 18.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Mikati thanked the International Committee of the Red Cross for its role in the release of the nine prisoners of war freed by Israel so far.

Columns of Palestinians carrying what belongings they could headed to north Gaza on Tuesday for a second straight day, after Israel permitted their passage in accordance with an ongoing ceasefire.

"I'm happy to be back at my home," said Saif Al-Din Qazaat, who returned to northern Gaza but had to sleep in a tent next to the ruins of his house.

"I kept a fire burning all night near the kids to keep them warm... (They) slept peacefully despite the cold but we don’t have enough blankets," the 41-year-old told AFP.

An idea floated by US President Donald Trump to move Gazans to Egypt or Jordan faced a renewed backlash Tuesday as hundreds of thousands of Gazans displaced by the Israel-Hamas war returned to their devastated neighbourhoods.

A fragile ceasefire and hostage release deal took effect earlier this month, intended to end more than 15 months of war that began with Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Israel, backed by Washington, will cease contact with the UN's Palestinian humanitarian relief agency UNRWA and any body acting on its behalf, its UN envoy said Tuesday, drawing condemnation from aid groups.

Signaling a shift in the US position on the agency by the administration of President Donald Trump, a US envoy voiced support for the decision and called for a probe into Israeli claims UNRWA sites were used by Palestinian militant group Hamas.

They have lived for years in Zaatari, the world's biggest refugee camp for Syrians, but many are unsure they want to return home from Jordan even after the ouster of former president Bashar al-Assad.

They fear the security situation might once again deteriorate after 13 years of civil war, and some say their homes have been destroyed while others lost their jobs and feel they have nothing to go back to.

In 2012, a year into the war in Syria, neighbouring Jordan opened Zaatari camp to host people fleeing the conflict.

Books recounting torture in Syrian prisons or texts on radical Islamic theology now sit openly in Damascus bookstores, no longer traded in secret after iron-fisted ruler Bashar al-Assad's ouster.

"If I had asked about a (certain) book just two months ago, I could have disappeared or ended up in prison," said student Amr al-Laham, 25, who was perusing stores near Damascus University.