The top diplomats of China and Iran agreed Saturday that the Middle East is "not a battleground for the big powers" and should not be an arena of geopolitical competition between countries outside the region.

Israeli troops stormed and set fire to one of the last hospitals operating in the northernmost part of Gaza on Friday, forcing many of the staff and patients out of the facility, the territory’s health ministry said.

Iran's top diplomat warned Friday against "destructive interference" in Syria's future and said decisions should lie solely with the country's people, writing in Chinese state media as he visited Beijing.

The Arab League regional bloc has called on Iran not to fuel "strife" in Syria, after the ouster of Tehran ally president Bashar al-Assad ended decades of rule by his clan.

Assad's government crumbled on December 8 and he fled for Russia, another key backer of his rule, after an Islamist-led coalition of fighters wrested control of city after city until they reached Damascus.

The Israeli military said it conducted air strikes on Friday targeting "infrastructure" on the Syrian-Lebanese border near the village of Janta, which it said was used to smuggle weapons to the armed group Hezbollah.

"Earlier today, the IAF (Israeli air force) struck infrastructure that was used to smuggle weapons via Syria to the Hezbollah terrorist organization in Lebanon at the Janta crossing on the Syrian-Lebanese border," the military said in a statement.

A Syria war monitor has said the country’s new authorities have arrested a military justice official under the ousted government of president Bashar al-Assad who issued death sentences in the notorious Saydnaya prison.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Mohammed Kanjo Hassan was arrested in the coastal Tartus province, a stronghold of Assad’s clan, along with 20 members of his entourage.

Yemeni rebels claimed a strike against the airport in Israel's commercial hub of Tel Aviv on Friday, after Israeli air strikes hit rebel-held Sanaa's international airport and other targets in Yemen.

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.