The Gulf states will restore travel, trade and transport links with Qatar within a week, the UAE said Thursday, after a landmark deal to normalize ties ended a damaging rift.

Strikes conducted overnight by Israel in Syria left three fighters from Iran-backed groups dead, a war monitor reported Thursday.

Syrian air defense forces responded late Wednesday to "Israeli aggression" in the south of the country, state news agency SANA said.

The agency reported Sana reported heavy blasts in southern Syria, indicating that "our air defenses have responded to Israeli aggression," without providing further details. 

The United States and Sudan on Wednesday signed the "Abraham Accords" under which the mainly Arab Muslim country agreed to normalize ties with Israel, the U.S. embassy in Khartoum said.

Amnesty International on Wednesday called on Israel to provide coronavirus vaccine doses to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, saying the Jewish state was obligated to do so under international law.

Tunisia, the current president of the U.N. Security Council, called Monday for a resolution sending international monitors to support Libya's brittle ceasefire to be adopted as soon as possible.

"We hope that it will be adopted as soon as possible" because "there is a momentum, yet it's a little bit fragile," said Tunisian ambassador to the U.N. Tarek Ladeb, referring to the negotiations between Libyan parties and the U.N. mission there.

The densely populated Gaza Strip has long lacked sufficient drinking water, but a new project helps ease the shortage with a solar-powered process to extract potable water straight from the air.

Israeli soldiers on Tuesday shot dead a man as he attempted to carry out a stabbing attack southwest of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, the army said.

Saudi Arabia and its allies have restored full relations with Qatar, Riyadh said Tuesday after a landmark summit, ending a damaging rift that erupted in 2017.

Gulf leaders flew to Saudi Arabia Tuesday for a summit that could yield more breakthroughs in a regional crisis, after Riyadh re-opened its borders to Doha despite lingering enmity between the neighbours.