Tehran has condemned U.S. airstrikes on Iran-linked forces in Syria that reportedly killed 19 people, which Washington said it carried out following a deadly drone attack on U.S. forces.

The Iranian foreign ministry late Saturday condemned "the belligerent and terrorist attack of the American army on civilian targets" in the eastern Syrian region of Deir Ezzor.

The death toll from retaliatory U.S. strikes on Iran-linked groups in Syria following a deadly drone attack has risen to 19, a war monitor said Saturday, as Washington insisted it is not seeking conflict with Tehran.

Further rocket attacks by Iran-backed militias took place late Friday, prompting more strikes by coalition warplanes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

Israel's attorney general on Friday warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he has violated the Supreme Court's conflict of interest ruling, which barred him from direct involvement in his government's divisive plans for a judicial overhaul.

Netanyahu's far-right government has barreled ahead with plans to weaken the Supreme Court and grant politicians less judicial oversight in their policymaking despite massive protests from across Israeli society — including an uproar among business leaders, top legal officials and military reservists. On Thursday, just hours after his coalition passed a law that would protect the Israeli leader from being deemed unfit to rule because of his corruption trial and claims of a conflict of interest, Netanyahu defiantly pledged to proceed with the overhaul.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak held talks with Benjamin Netanyahu in London on Friday as protesters shouting "Shame!" In Hebrew demonstrated against the Israeli leader's right-wing policies and his plans to overhaul the country's judiciary.

Netanyahu had to pass by hundreds of protesters waving Israeli flags and waving signs calling for the defense of Israeli democracy as he arrived at 10 Downing St. for talks that focused on the war in Ukraine and concerns about Iran's nuclear program.

The Islamic State group killed 15 people foraging for desert truffles in conflict-ravaged central Syria by cutting their throats, while 40 others are missing, a war monitor said Friday.

Syria's desert truffles fetch high prices in a country battered by 12 years of war and a crushing economic crisis.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to "mend the rift" in a nation deeply divided over his proposed overhaul of the country's judiciary. But he offered no details on how he intends to do so and gave no indication that he would slow down the plan.

Netanyahu delivered his appeal in a nationally televised address after another day of mass protests across the country against the plan, and hours after his parliamentary coalition passed the first in a series of laws that make up the overhaul. His vague pledges were quickly rejected by the protest movement, which said it would continue to oppose "Netanyahu's attempt to become a dictator."

A strike Thursday by a suspected Iranian-made drone killed a U.S. contractor and wounded five American troops and another contractor in northeast Syria, the Pentagon said. American forces said they retaliated soon after with "precision airstrikes" in Syria targeting facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guard, with activist groups saying the U.S. bombing killed at least four people.

The attack and the U.S. response threaten to upend recent efforts to deescalate tensions across the wider Middle East, whose rival powers have made steps toward détente in recent days after years of turmoil.

Saudi Arabia is in talks with Syria to reopen its embassy in the war-torn nation for the first time in a decade, state television in the kingdom reported late Thursday, the latest diplomatic reshuffling in the region.

The announcement on state TV comes after Chinese-mediated talks in Beijing saw Saudi Arabia and Iran agree to reopen embassies in each others' nations after years of tensions. Syrian President Bashar Assad has maintained his grip on power in the Mediterranean nation rocked by the 2011 Arab Spring only with the help of Iran and Russia, which made a historic call earlier in the day to Oman.

Israeli security forces killed a Palestinian militant during a raid in the northern West Bank on Thursday, Palestinian health officials said, the latest escalation of violence in what has been the deadliest start of a year for Palestinians in the occupied territory in more than two decades.

Israeli forces stormed into the northern city of Tulkarem, home to an emerging militant group with ties to the armed offshoot of the nationalist Fatah party. The Palestinian Health Ministry said that 25-year-old Amir Abu Khadija was shot multiple times in the head and legs. The Tulkarem branch of Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claimed Abu Khadija as its leader.

A Brazilian government watchdog has voted to give former President Jair Bolsonaro five working days to return to authorities a set of jewels he received from Saudi Arabia in 2021.

All nine members of the government watchdog voted in favor of requiring Bolsonaro to turn the jewels over to the state-owned Caixa Economica Federal bank in the capital city of Brasilia.