The Israeli military said it had "eliminated over 15 terrorists" and arrested 40 wanted people during a major raid that began last week in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.

The raid began two days after a truce took hold in the Gaza Strip, seeking to put an end to more than 15 months of the Israel-Hamas war that ravaged the Palestinian coastal territory.

Egypt said Tuesday that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi did not speak by phone with Donald Trump at the weekend, after the U.S. leader called for relocating Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt and Jordan.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Tuesday that Gaza had brought Israel "to its knees", in a reference to the recent ceasefire in the Palestinian territory.

The ceasefire and hostage-release deal between Iran's arch-enemy Israel and the Tehran-backed militant group Hamas went into effect just over a week ago, aiming to put an end to more than 15 months of war.

An explosion struck a Hong Kong-flagged container ship Tuesday traveling north through the Red Sea, sparking a major fire that forced its crew to abandon the vessel, shipping industry officials said.

The ship was drifting and ablaze some 225 kilometers (140 miles) off the coast of Hodeida, a port city in Yemen held by the country's Houthi rebels, said the Diaplous Group, a maritime firm.

BY Kelsey Norman, Rice University and Ana Martín Gil, Rice University

(THE CONVERSATION) For more than a decade, Syrians have been the world's largest refugee population.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is hoping to meet with President Donald Trump in Washington as early as next week, according to two U.S. officials familiar with preliminary planning for the trip.

Should the trip come together in that timeframe, Netanyahu could be the first foreign leader to meet with Trump at the White House since his inauguration last week. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the planning remains tentative, said details could be arranged when Trump's special Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, travels to Israel this week for talks with Netanyahu and other Israeli officials.

A delegation of Russian officials arrived in Damascus on Tuesday for the first such visit to Syria since the fall of former President Bashar Assad.

Assad, an ally of Moscow, took refuge in Russia after his ouster in December in a lightning rebel offensive.

They walked for hours loaded with whatever clothes, food and blankets they could carry. Many smiled, some hugged loved ones they hadn't seen for months. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians filled Gaza's main coastal road as they streamed back to homes in the north.

The mood was joyous, even though many knew their homes had been destroyed in Israeli offensives against Hamas that leveled large parts of Gaza City and the surrounding north.

Israeli authorities say they have arrested two Israeli citizens for allegedly conducting missions on behalf of Iran, the latest in a string of similar cases announced in recent months.

A statement from the Israeli police and the Shin Ben internal security agency on Monday said that Yuri Eliasfov and Georgi Andreev, residents of northern Israel, were in contact with an Iranian agent and carried out various missions under his instruction.

U.S. President Donald Trump's suggestion that Egypt and Jordan take in Palestinians from the war-ravaged Gaza Strip was met with a hard "no" Sunday from the two U.S. allies along with the Palestinians themselves, who fear Israel would never allow them to return.

Trump floated the idea on Saturday, saying he would urge the leaders of the two Arab countries to take in Gaza's now largely homeless population, so that "we just clean out that whole thing." He added that resettling most of Gaza's population of 2.3 million could be temporary or long term.