An Israeli missile strike on an airbase in central Syria has killed two Damascus-allied foreign fighters and wounded several Syrian service personnel, a Britain-based war monitor said on Saturday.

The uncle of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has returned home from 36 years of exile to dodge arrest in France, the pro-government al-Watan newspaper reported.

Fighting over the key Yemeni city of Marib has displaced around 10,000 people in the past month, the U.N. migration agency said Thursday. The clashes escalated as Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels intensified their push to take the provincial capital from government forces.

Yemen has been convulsed by civil war since 2014, when the Houthis captured the capital, Sanaa, and forced the country's president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and the internationally recognized government to flee to the south, and then later to Saudi Arabia.

Iraqi security personnel across the country cast their ballots Friday, two days before the rest of the nation votes in parliamentary elections.

The vote is being held six months before schedule, in line with a promise made by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi when he assumed office in 2020. He is seeking to appease anti-government protesters who rose up in October 2019 in Baghdad and Iraq's south.

A ruling by a local Israeli court in favor of a Jewish man who prayed quietly at a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site has angered Muslim authorities, who denounced it on Thursday as a violation of the fragile status quo governing the compound.

The Al-Aqsa mosque compound is the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest site for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount because it was the location of the ancient Jewish Temples. It is the emotional epicenter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and tensions there helped ignite the 11-day Gaza war in May. Under informal understandings, Jews are not allowed to pray there.

Morocco's King Mohammed VI appointed a new government Thursday made up of a coalition of liberal and conservative parties and led by a billionaire businessman.

The cabinet of Prime Minister Aziz Akhanouch of the Rally of National Independents party is made up of 24 ministers, including seven women.

More than a year after his son was killed by Israeli forces under disputed circumstances in the occupied West Bank, Mustafa Erekat is still seeking his remains.

It is one of dozens of cases in which Israel is holding the remains of Palestinians killed in conflict, citing the need to deter attacks and potentially exchange them for the remains of two Israeli soldiers held by the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

A court in Saudi Arabia upheld a 20-year prison term imposed on a Saudi aid worker who had criticized the government on Twitter, drawing a rare public rebuke from the U.S. in another sign of tension between the Biden administration and the kingdom.

The ruling, confirmed late Wednesday, also upheld a 20-year travel ban on Abdulrahman al-Sadhan after his release.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians lined up outside chambers of commerce across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, hoping to get permits to work inside Israel after rumors circulated that more would be issued to residents of the Hamas-ruled territory.

Gaza's more than 2 million Palestinian residents have lived under a crippling Israeli and Egyptian blockade since the Islamic militant Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007, and jobs are scarce. Israel says the closures are needed to contain the militant group, while critics view it as a form of collective punishment.

Qatar's foreign minister arrived in Abu Dhabi and met Wednesday with its crown prince, the clearest sign so far that relations between the two Gulf Arab states are easing following a lengthy embargo that strained ties and echoed across the region.

The United Arab Emirates' state-run WAM news agency reported that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan received Qatar's Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani at al-Bahr Palace in Abu Dhabi. The brief report said only that the two "discussed the strong ties between their countries and ways to enhance them to serve the interests of their nations."