Berlin police said Friday they have launched an investigation into Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas over his comments on the Holocaust during a recent visit to the German capital.

Police have received a complaint accusing Abbas of "relativizing the Holocaust" and are investigating "on suspicion of inciting hatred", a police spokeswoman told AFP.

Only ever found in incomplete, clandestine translations in Arabic, "The Satanic Verses" could have gone largely unnoticed in the Arab world, were it not for the Iranian religious edict against its author Salman Rushdie.

Then supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's fatwa calling for Rushdie's death, issued on February 14, 1989, struck a nerve with Arab authors, themselves often in danger of ruffling authoritarian feathers and "offending moral values".

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Israel's prime minister Thursday that he condemns any attempts to deny or downplay the Holocaust, offering reassurance after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sparked outrage with remarks to that effect earlier this week.

Speaking at a joint news conference with Scholz in Berlin, Abbas on Tuesday accused Israel of committing "50 Holocausts" against Palestinians over the years. Scholz, who was standing next to Abbas, didn't immediately react to the comments but later strongly criticized them.

A Palestinian shot by Israeli troops during clashes near a flashpoint holy site in the occupied West Bank died of his wounds on Thursday, Palestinian officials said.

A hospital official in Nablus in the northern West Bank said the 20-year-old was shot overnight.

Israel raided the offices of several Palestinian advocacy groups it had previously designated as terrorist organizations, sealing entrance doors and leaving notices declaring them closed, the groups said Thursday.

Israel has claimed some of these groups had ties to the militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular, left-wing movement with a political party as well as an armed wing that has carried out deadly attacks against Israelis. The groups deny Israel's claim.

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said Wednesday his government will restore full diplomatic ties with Turkey, following years of strained relations between the Mediterranean nations.

Egypt's central bank governor resigned Wednesday as the country struggles to address its economic woes.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi accepted the resignation of Tarek Amer and named him a presidential adviser, the Egyptian leader' office said in a statement.

Syria denied on Wednesday it is holding U.S. journalist Austin Tice or other Americans after President Joe Biden accused the Syrian government of detaining him.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Damascus "denies it had kidnapped or is holding any American citizen on its territories."

A Palestinian human rights group and an Israeli newspaper have reported that an explosion in a cemetery that killed five Palestinian children during the latest flare-up in Gaza was caused by an Israeli airstrike and not an errant Palestinian rocket.

It was one of a number of blasts during the fighting that did not bear the tell-tale signs of an Israeli F-16 or drone strike, and which the Israeli military said might have been caused by rockets misfired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has expressed no regret for the deadly attack by Palestinian militants on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics a half century ago, countering that Israel had committed "50 Holocausts" against Palestinians over the years.

Eleven Israeli athletes and a German police officer died after members of the Palestinian militant group Black September took hostages at the Olympic Village on Sept. 5, 1972. At the time of the attack, the group was linked to Abbas' Fatah party.