Seventeen civilians were killed in an attack in a market in Yemen's northern Saada governorate, the United Nations said, the third deadly assault on the same location in just over a month.

The Turkish parliament will in January vote on a motion to send troops to Libya to support the UN-backed government in Tripoli, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday.

"We will present the motion to send troops (to Libya) as soon as parliament resumes" on January 7, Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara.

Israeli military aircraft carried out air strikes against the Gaza Strip Wednesday night, the army said, in what it called a response to a rocket fired from the Hamas-controlled Palestinian enclave.

Five pro-Iranian fighters were killed by unidentified missiles on Wednesday evening in Syria's eastern province of Deir Ezzor, a war monitor said.

Israel's embattled premier Benjamin Netanyahu faces off against longtime rival Gideon Saar in a Likud party leadership contest Thursday that could threaten his grip on power. 

Abu Walid emptied a container of pistachio shells into the top of a heater in his living room in violence-plagued northwest Syria, where millions are bracing for a harsh winter.

In a camp for the displaced in northern Syria, Nasrallah scatters mushroom spores into a bag of wet hay, hoping they will sprout and feed his family.

Layla Mohammed barely had time to gather her children's belongings before fleeing their southern Tripoli home when shelling targeted the Libyan capital's outskirts earlier this year.

Hundreds of anti-government protesters marched Wednesday in southern Iraq to mourn a dead activist after a night during which the headquarters of two pro-Iran militias were set on fire, an AFP correspondent reported.

Pope Francis on Wednesday urged the world community to strive for peace and security in war-ravaged Syria and the Middle East in his Christmas message.