Syrian government troops battled insurgents inside the country's largest city Aleppo for the first time since 2016, while warplanes targeted rebel supply lines on the city's edge, state media reported Saturday.

Turkey Friday demanded an end to "attacks" on the rebel enclave of Idlib in Syria, where Syrian and Russian warplanes reportedly launched airstrikes.

"We have emphasized that these attacks must come to an end," the Turkish foreign ministry said in a message on X. "The recent clashes have resulted in an undesirable escalation of tensions in the region."

Two children and a 50-year-old woman were crushed to death Friday as a crowd of Palestinians pushed to get bread at a bakery in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah, medical officials said.

The flow of food allowed into Gaza by Israel has fallen to nearly its lowest level of the almost 14-month-old war for the past two months, according to Israeli official figures. U.N. and aid officials say hunger and desperation are growing among Gaza’s population, almost all of which relies on humanitarian aid to survive.

Hamas claimed responsibility for a shooting attack on an Israeli bus in the occupied West Bank on Friday that wounded eight people, including four soldiers.

It was the latest violence to scar the territory as tensions run high 14 months into the Israel-Hamas war.

Insurgents breached Syria's second-largest city Aleppo after blowing up two car bombs on Friday and were clashing with government forces on the city's western edge, according to a Syria war monitor and fighters.

It was the first time the city has been attacked by opposition forces since 2016, when they were ousted from Aleppo's eastern neighborhoods following a grueling military campaign in which Syrian government forces were backed by Russia, Iran and its allied groups.

Jihadists and their allies cut a major highway linking the main cities of Damascus and Aleppo on Thursday after launching an offensive against government forces in Syria's northwest, a war monitor said.

"Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and allied factions cut off the Damascus-Aleppo international M5 highway... in addition to controlling the junction between the M4 and M5 highways," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels will keep up their attacks on Israel, their leader said on Thursday, two days into a ceasefire in Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

"The operations from the Yemeni front to support the Palestinian people with missiles and drones towards the Israeli enemy are continuing," Abdulmalik Al-Huthi said on the rebels’ Al-Masirah TV station.

For many across the Middle East, the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire came as a relief: the first major sign of progress in the region since war began more than a year ago.

But for Palestinians in Gaza and families of hostages held in the territory, the news appeared only to inaugurate a newer, grimmer period of the conflict there. For them, it marked yet another missed opportunity to end fighting that has stretched on for nearly 14 months.

U.S. President Joe Biden will launch a renewed drive Wednesday for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, now that Israel and Hezbollah have agreed to a truce in Lebanon, his national security adviser said.

The truce that began before dawn Wednesday in the south Lebanon war means Iran-backed Hezbollah is no longer fighting in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. That will increase pressure on the militant Palestinian group to agree to a ceasefire and hostage deal, Jake Suillivan told MSNBC.

As a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah appears to hold in Lebanon, fighting raged on in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.

The Gaza Health Ministry said 33 bodies had been brought to hospitals over the past 24 hours, raising the death toll in the nearly 14-month-long war to 44,282.