Heavy clashes between Houthi rebel troops and Yemen's pro-government forces have killed at least 8 people, a security official confirmed. The fresh round of violence comes amid heightened tensions following last week's failure to extend a cease-fire between the warring sides.

The official said exchanges of fire broke out late Thursday night in the contested western area of Yafa, killing four troops from either side and injuring five others. Local witnesses said both Houthi troops and forces under the Southern Transitional Council, which is backed by the United Arab Emirates and is a major pillar of the Saudi coalition fighting in Yemen, deployed machine guns and mortars during the clashes.

The severed head and decapitated torso of a 25-year-old Palestinian were discovered on the side of a road in the occupied West Bank, police said Friday, confirming gruesome details of a killing that shocked Palestinian society.

But accounts that the victim, Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh, was a gay man who feared persecution for his sexuality and had sought asylum in Israel two years ago turned the terrible crime into a socially and politically explosive case.

U.S. forces killed three senior Islamic State leaders in two separate military operations in Syria Thursday, including a rare ground raid in a portion of the northeast that is controlled by the Syrian regime, U.S. officials said.

According to officials, U.S. special operations forces conducted a raid near the village of Qamishli, killing IS insurgent Rakkan Wahid al Shamman, wounding another and capturing two others.

U.S. President Joe Biden has effectively acknowledged the failure of one of his biggest and most humiliating foreign policy gambles: a fist-bump with the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, the crown prince associated with human rights abuses.

Biden's awkward encounter with Mohammed bin Salman in July was a humbling attempt to mend relations with the world's most influential oil power at a time when the US. was seeking its help in opposing Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the resulting surge in oil prices.

A U.S. airborne operation involving multiple helicopters left one person dead in a government-controlled area of Syria's northeast, Syrian state TV reported Thursday.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was released from a Jerusalem hospital on Thursday, his party said, a day after he was admitted complaining of chest pains.

Netanyahu, 72, was taken to the city's Shaarei Tzedek hospital a day earlier after feeling unwell at synagogue services for the Jewish fasting day of Yom Kippur.

Yemen's government wants to renew a ceasefire with Huthi rebels and will not escalate the conflict, its foreign minister said Wednesday, three days after a six-month truce expired.

A Palestinian man was killed by Israeli army fire Wednesday, as troops raided a village in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

The ministry said Alaa Zaghal, 21, died from a gunshot wound to the head in Deir al-Hatab, east of Nablus.

Turkey's parliament on Wednesday approved deploying Turkish soldiers to Qatar to help maintain security during next month's World Cup.

With a show of hands, lawmakers approved a motion to send an unspecified number of troops to the Gulf country for six months. Fikri Isik, a ruling party legislator and former Turkish defense minister, said the deployment would involve 250 troops and a corvette-class naval vessel.

Syria's health ministry has recorded 39 deaths from cholera and nearly 600 cases in an outbreak spreading in the war-ravaged country that the United Nations warned is "evolving alarmingly."