Battles between Turkish-backed groups, supported by air strikes, and Kurdish-led forces killed 37 people on Thursday in Syria's northern Manbij region, a war monitor said.
The latest reported fighting comes despite the United States saying Wednesday that it was working to address Turkey's concerns in Syria to dissuade the NATO ally from escalating an offensive against Kurdish fighters.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken agreed Thursday in talks in Rome with European counterparts on the need to encourage stability in Syria, officials said, as Turkey threatens Kurdish forces in the war-torn country.
Blinken was on the last leg of what likely is his final trip as the top US diplomat before President Joe Biden makes way for President-elect Donald Trump later this month.
On a trip that already took him to South Korea, Japan and France, Blinken headed to a Renaissance-era villa in Rome for a working dinner on Syria.
A French city on Thursday removed posters depicting Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after Tehran called the images "insulting", in the latest incident in a period of strained relations between the two countries.
The southern city of Beziers ran a campaign on buses calling for selective sorting of waste using portraits of Iran's Khamenei, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Lebanese lawmakers elected army chief Joseph Aoun as president on Thursday, ending a more than two-year vacancy and marking a step towards lifting the war-battered country out of financial meltdown.
Aoun, who turns 61 on Friday, arrived in parliament to take the oath of office to general applause, wearing a dark suit and blue tie instead of his usual military uniform.
"Today, a new phase in Lebanon's history begins," he told the chamber.
The Israeli military said Wednesday that its troops recovered the body of a hostage in Gaza and brought it back to Israel following a "complex and difficult operation".
The body of Bedouin Arab hostage Youssef al-Zayadna was found as international mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States kept up a push for a ceasefire and hostage release deal.
"The troops located and recovered the body of hostage Youssef al-Zayadna from an underground tunnel in the Rafah area of the Gaza Strip and returned his body to Israel," the Israeli military said in a statement.
UN peacekeepers in Lebanon patrol through rocky hills and olive groves near the border with Israel, ahead of a deadline for a truce in the war with Hezbollah that some residents fear will not hold.
The situation is "still very fragile", said Indian peacekeeper Gurpyar Sharma from the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) amid the wreckage of several destroyed buildings near the town of Marjayoun.
"We are carrying out these kind of patrols" to help prevent any "further escalation of the violence", he said as AFP accompanied peacekeepers on a tour of the area.
Syrians returned on Wednesday to the national museum in Damascus, reopened for the first time since Islamist-led forces seized the capital and ousted president Bashar al-Assad.
The antiquities museum closed its doors on December 7, a day before Damascus was taken by rebel forces, over fears of looting.
"We firmly shut the museum's iron doors after we saw the situation was unstable," said Mohamed Nair Awad, head of the national antiquities authority.
Gaza's civil defence agency said a series of Israeli air strikes killed at least 14 people on Wednesday, in the latest violence to ravage the already devastated Palestinian territory.
Five people were killed and several wounded in an air strike on the house of the Barghout family in the Zeitun neighbourhood of Gaza City, the agency said.
Three people were killed in another strike targeting the house of the Al-Banna family in the central city of Deir el-Balah.
Saudi Arabian Yazeed al-Rajhi won Wednesday's fourth stage of the Dakar Rally, in which five-time winner Nasser al-Attiyah dropped to seventh overall.
The special stages between Al Henakiyah and Al Ula in Saudi Arabia included 415km of racing.
It ended at a makeshift overnight bivouac where competitors won't be able to call on their support team before hitting the road again on Thursday.
Worries about protecting his bike and tyres led Spaniard Tosha Schareina to deliberately surrender the lead near the finish in the motorcycle category.
Lebanese political heavyweights held talks Wednesday as parliament prepares to elect a president, with foreign powers pressuring for consensus a day ahead of the vote.
The tiny Mediterranean country, already deep in economic and political crisis, has been without a president for more than two years amid bitter divisions between Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah and its opponents.
With Hezbollah weakened by war with Israel, Lebanon's politicians have come under renewed external pressure to pick a head of state.
