Israeli airstrikes have struck militant sites in Gaza on Sunday for the third straight day, the Israeli military said, after Palestinian militants near the border fence launched incendiary balloons into Israel and threw an explosive at soldiers. The strike came on the heels of an Israeli military raid in the northern West Bank that Palestinian health officials said killed two Palestinians.

It was the latest bloodshed in a surge of violence during a sensitive Jewish holiday period. A series of violent escalations on the border between Israel and Gaza over the past week has raised the specter of an escalation for the first time since a brief round of conflict last May between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group.

The Biden administration is poised to admit Israel this week into an exclusive club that will allow its citizens to travel to the United States without a U.S. visa despite Washington's ongoing concerns about the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinian Americans.

U.S. officials say an announcement of Israel's entry into the Visa Waiver Program is planned for late in the week, just before the end of the federal budget year on Saturday, which is the deadline for Israel's admission without having to requalify for eligibility next year.

Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians in a pre-dawn raid Sunday in the West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said, as the army confirmed "counter-terrorism" activity in the occupied territory.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the U.N. General Assembly on that Israel is "at the cusp" of a historic breakthrough leading to a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia, without outlining a clear path over the significant obstacles facing such an accord.

He struck an optimistic tone throughout his roughly 25-minute address — and, once again, used a visual aid. He displayed contrasting maps showing Israel's isolation at the time of its creation in 1948 and the six countries that have normalized relations with it, including four that did so in 2020 in the so-called Abraham Accords.

A day-long communication outage in a flood-stricken city in eastern Libya further complicated the work of teams searching for bodies under the rubble and at sea Wednesday.

The country's chief prosecutor, meanwhile, vowed to take "serious measures" to deliver justice for the victims of the floods, which killed thousands of people and devastated the coastal city of Derna more than a week ago.

Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a "strategic partnership" with Syria on Friday during talks with President Bashar al-Assad, who is seeking financial support to help rebuild his devastated country.

The leaders met on the eve of the Asian Games opening ceremony, which Assad will attend as part of his first visit to China since 2004.

The head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, has visited Syria to oversee a joint military drill, media outlets in the Islamic republic said.

Qaani, appointed Quds Force commander after a U.S. drone strike on Baghdad killed its revered leader Qasem Soleimani in 2020, met senior Syrian officials in Damascus, Tasnim news agency reported late Thursday.

The Israeli military said tanks struck two structures inside a demilitarized zone in Syria, claiming the buildings violated a half-century-old cease-fire agreement between the two countries.

The structures, it said, were being used by the Syrian military, amounting to what the army called a "clear violation" of the 1974 cease-fire. The Israeli army did not provide any information on what the structures were used for or when they were built.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has said there could be no peace in the Middle East without a two-state solution, sending a warning as Saudi Arabia considers recognizing Israel.

"Those who think that peace can prevail in the Middle East without the Palestinian people enjoying their full, legitimate national rights would be mistaken," Abbas told the U.N. General Assembly.

Israeli authorities are trying to figure out how a heavily armored, but unarmed, tank was stolen from a military training zone after finding it discarded in a junkyard.

The Israeli Merkava 2 tank disappeared from a training zone in northern Israel near the coastal city of Haifa, the Israeli army said Wednesday. The training zone is closed to the public when in use, but is otherwise accessible to passersby.