The head of the U.N. health agency says he and his team were about to board a flight in Yemen’s rebel-held capital Sanaa when the airport came under aerial bombardment.

“The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge — just a few meters (yards) from where we were — and the runway were damaged,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X.

Syria's new security forces checked IDs and searched cars in the central city of Homs on Thursday, a day after protests by members of the Alawite minority erupted in gunfire and stirred fears that the country's fragile peace could break down.

A tense calm prevailed after checkpoints were set up throughout the country's third-largest city, which has a mixed population of Sunni and Shia Muslims, Alawites and Christians.

Israeli airstrikes on Thursday targeted Yemen's Sanaa airport, the Hodeida port and energy and oil facilities, in an apparent response to missile and drone strikes on Israel by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

A missile launched from Yemen had triggered air raid sirens across central Israel early Wednesday, sending millions of residents looking for cover for the second night in a row.

The chief pediatric doctor at a southern Gaza hospital told AFP that three babies had died of "severe temperature drop" this week, as the war-ravaged Palestinian territory grapples with winter cold.

About 18,000 Syrians have crossed into their country from Jordan since the government of Bashar al-Assad was toppled earlier this month, Jordanian authorities said on Thursday.

Syria's new authorities launched an operation in a stronghold of ousted president Bashar al-Assad on Thursday, with a war monitor saying three gunmen affiliated with the former government were killed.

Assad fled Syria after an Islamist-led offensive wrested from his control city after city until Damascus fell on December 8, ending his clan's five-decade rule.

A Syria war monitor said 17 people were killed Wednesday in clashes in Tartus province after security forces sought to arrest an officer under deposed leader Bashar al-Assad who was linked to a notorious prison.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "14 members of the General Security force" of Syria's new authorities were killed, along with "three armed men" in Khirbet al-Maaza, raising an earlier toll of nine dead.

An Israeli strike killed five Palestinian journalists outside a hospital in the Gaza Strip overnight, the Health Ministry said early Thursday. The Israeli military said it had targeted a group of militants.

The strike hit a car outside the Al-Awda Hospital in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp in the central part of the territory. The journalists were working for the local Quds News Network, which also reported the strike.

Angry protests broke out Wednesday in several areas of Syria after a video circulated showing an attack on an Alawite shrine in the country's north, a war monitor and witnesses said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said large demonstrations took place in the coastal cities of Tartus and Latakia, provinces that are the heartland of the Alawite minority which deposed ruler Bashar al-Assad hails from.

Israel and Hamas accused each other of complicating ceasefire efforts on Wednesday, as the two sides inch closer to a deal that could wind down the 14-month war in Gaza.