Last month, after the biggest Israeli military raid on a Palestinian refugee camp in the occupied West Bank in years, Palestinians turned their wrath on their own security forces.

They unleashed gunfire, firebombs and pipe bombs at Palestinian security buildings in an outpouring of rage against the Palestinian Authority's failure to protect them from the devastating July 3 raid and a long-running, deeply unpopular security alliance with Israel.

Sweden's Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has said that Hezbollah and other "terrorist groups" have urged their sympathizers to take revenge for the Quran burnings that have taken place in Sweden.

He said that Swedish interests abroad had already been targeted, including an attempted attack on the diplomatic mission in Beirut last week and the storming of Sweden's Embassy in Baghdad last month.

Iran's foreign minister traveled to Saudi Arabia on Thursday, marking the first trip to the kingdom by Tehran's top diplomat in years after the two nations reached a détente with Chinese mediation.

The visit by Hossein Amirabdollahian comes as both Saudi Arabia and Iran try to ease tensions between their nations, which long have viewed each other as archrivals for influence across the wider Middle East. Challenges remain, however, particularly over Iran's advancing nuclear program, the Saudi-led war in Yemen and security across region's waterways.

A Libyan militia leader whose detention sparked clashes that killed 55 people in the capital Tripoli this week has been released, a military official said Thursday.

Gun battles had raged on the streets of Tripoli from Monday night through Tuesday after 444 Brigade leader Mahmoud Hamza was apprehended by the rival Al-Radaa Force.

Jordan's army said it shot down a drone Wednesday loaded with TNT explosives trying to enter its airspace from Syria, in the latest incident of trafficking of arms or drugs.

"Border guards... detected a drone trying to cross the border illegally" from Syria, it said in a statement, adding that the aircraft was "shot down over Jordanian territory".

Threats to return to war in Yemen are hindering efforts to start peace talks as the Arab world's poorest country faces an increasingly dire economic situation, a senior U.N. official said.

Hans Grundberg, the U.N. special representative for Yemen, told the Security Council that hostilities between Houthi rebels and government forces haven't returned to levels before a six-month truce that ended in October, but he said intermittent fighting and exchanges of fire have continued.

Across the dusty villages of the occupied West Bank, where Israeli water pipes don't reach, date palms have been left to die. Greenhouses are empty and deserted. Palestinians say they can barely get enough water to bathe their children and wash their clothes — let alone sustain livestock and grow fruit trees.

In sharp contrast, neighboring Jewish settlements look like an oasis. Wildflowers burst through the soil. Farmed fish swim in neat rows of ponds. Children splash in community pools.

Israeli forces raided a home above a bakery in a militant stronghold in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, killing a Palestinian militant in a gunbattle in Jenin, a city that has seen some of the worst bloodshed in the current round of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.

Violence has gripped the region since last spring when Israel launched near-nightly raids in response to a spate of deadly Palestinian attacks. It's become the fiercest fighting in the West Bank in some two decades, and along with increased violence by radical Jewish settlers and settlement expansion by Israel's far-right government, has fueled tensions in the region.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has decreed a 100-percent pay rise for civil servants and pensioners while fuel subsidies were lifted in a country ravaged by 12 years of war.

The Syrian economy has been battered by the conflict that has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions since it began in 2011.

For desperate Syrians, a WhatsApp message saying "I want to go to Europe" can be all they need to start a treacherous journey to Libya and then across the Mediterranean.

Twelve years after conflict broke out when President Bashar al-Assad repressed peaceful pro-democracy protests, Syrians are still trying to escape a war that has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and pulled in foreign powers and global jihadists.