Three Republican members of the U.S. Congress have made a quick trip into opposition-held northwest Syria in the first known visit to the war-torn country by American lawmakers in six years. They urged the Biden administration and regional partners to keep up the pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The roughly one-hour stop was a signal of the significant support on Capitol Hill for the opposition in Syria's long civil war.

The Israeli and Libyan foreign ministers met secretly in Italy last week, Israel's Foreign Ministry said, in what it said was the first-ever meeting between the country's top diplomats.

The meeting between Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen and Najla Mangoush, foreign minister of the Tripoli-based government, marked a small breakthrough for Israel's government, whose hard-line policies toward the Palestinians have led to a cooling of its burgeoning ties with the Arab world.

Israeli air strikes on Aleppo airport in northern Syria caused the grounding of flights on Monday, Syrian state news agency SANA reported, citing a military source.

During more than 12 years of civil war in Syria, Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its territory, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters as well as Syrian army positions.

Jihadists killed at least 11 soldiers in northwestern Syria Saturday when they detonated explosives placed in tunnels dug underneath army positions before attacking them, a monitor said.

Rare protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government show no sign of abating with demonstrations reported in a string of towns in Daraa and Sweida provinces.

Israel's far-right national security minister lashed out at supermodel Bella Hadid on Friday for criticizing his recent fiery televised remarks about Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

In an interview earlier this week with Israel's Channel 12 following two deadly Palestinian attacks against Israelis in the occupied territory, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir argued that his right to freedom of movement as a Jewish settler outweighs the same right for Palestinians.

French investigative magistrates on Friday ordered former president Nicolas Sarkozy and 12 others to go on trial on charges that his 2007 presidential campaign received millions in illegal financing from the government of late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

The national financial prosecutor, Jean-François Bohnert, announced that the decade-long investigation has been formally closed. The trial will run from January to April 2025, the statement said.

The Danish government on Friday said it will propose a law that would make it illegal to desecrate any holy book in Denmark, where a recent string of public desecrations of the Quran by a handful of anti-Islam activists has sparked angry demonstrations in Muslim countries.

Denmark has been viewed as a country that facilitates insult and denigration of the cultures, religions, and traditions of other countries, the government said.

The Dutch Supreme Court on Friday upheld a ruling that a Palestinian man cannot sue Israel's former defense minister and another former senior military officer over their roles in a deadly 2014 Gaza airstrike.

The Highest Dutch court confirmed findings by judges in two lower courts that Benny Gantz and former Air Force Commander Amir Eshel are protected from civil proceedings in the Netherlands because they have "functional immunity."

An explosion ripped through a Hamas militant site in the central Gaza Strip on Thursday, Palestinian authorities said, killing one militant and seriously wounding another.

The Gaza-based interior ministry did not reveal the cause of the blast but said it killed Ashraf Hussein, a member of Hamas' military wing, the Qassam Brigades. The Qassam Brigades acknowledged that Hussein was killed in what the group described as an accidental explosion.