Visiting U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared prepared to negotiate a deal for the release of hostages held in Gaza.

President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview published Thursday that he disagrees "very vehemently" with Ukraine firing U.S.-supplied missiles deep into Russia.

NATO chief Mark Rutte on Thursday issued a stark warning to "turbo-charge" defense spending, saying European nations need to do more to "prevent the next big war" as the threat from Russia grows.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor reported Israeli strikes near Damascus, where AFP correspondents said they heard loud explosions.

"Israeli air strikes targeted the outskirts of the capital Damascus," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Jordan on Thursday at the start of a crisis tour following the overthrow of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Blinken is to meet in Aqaba with Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi on Thursday before traveling to Turkey for talks with Turkish officials on Friday. The meetings will focus largely on Syria but also touch on long-elusive hopes for a deal to end the fighting in Gaza that has devastated the Palestinian territory since October 2023.

A monitor of Syria’s war on Wednesday said that Israeli air strikes targeted sites belonging to ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s military in the coastal Latakia and Tartus provinces.

"Israeli warplanes launched air strikes" targeting "military sites" including "the Latakia port" as well as warehouses in neighboring Tartus province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that "Israeli warplanes continue to destroy what remains of Syria’s military arsenal for the fourth consecutive day since the fall of the former regime".

Israeli forces withdrew from a strategic town in southern Lebanon and handed it back to the Lebanese army in coordination with U.N. peacekeepers, the two militaries said Wednesday, marking an important test of the recent ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah militants.

It appeared to be Israel's first pullout from a Lebanese border town captured during this fall’s ground invasion, and comes as part of the initial phase of the ceasefire.

Ukraine attacked an airfield in southern Russia with US-supplied long-range missiles early Wednesday, the Russian military said, vowing it would respond with "appropriate measures".

Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz rebuffed on Wednesday Iranian accusation of a U.S.-Israeli "plot" to oust Syria's Bashar al-Assad, saying Tehran has itself to blame for the fall of its ally.

Katz, on a tour of the Jordanian border with military commanders, accused arch rival Iran of trying to establish an "eastern front" against Israel in the neighboring kingdom, and vowed to prevent it.

Israel must withdraw forces from the buffer zone separating the annexed Golan Heights from Syrian territory, France's foreign ministry said Wednesday.

"Any military deployment in the separation zone between Israel and Syria is a violation of the disengagement agreement of 1974... France calls on Israel to withdraw from the zone and to respect Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," a foreign ministry spokesman said.