The new head of Yemen's internationally recognized government has said that the council he was chosen to lead will work to end the country's grinding, eight-year civil war.

In his first televised address, Rashad al-Alimi thanked his government's backers —Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — which have been helping Yemeni government forces fight the Iran-backed Houthi rebels for years.

The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq said it shot down Friday an armed drone that targeted an air base, reporting no casualties or damage.

"U.S. air defense systems shot down an armed unmanned aerial system entering Al Asad Air Base" early Friday morning, the coalition said in a statement.

At least three people including two Polish tourists were killed when a bus crashed on a highway near the Red Sea, Egypt's state-owned MENA news agency reported.

The bus was carrying 21 people, including 19 Polish tourists when it rolled over on the highway linking the two ports of Safaga and al-Qoseir on Thursday, MENA said. The Egyptian driver was also killed in the crash.

Israel's premier on Friday gave security agencies "full freedom" of operation to curb surging violence, after the latest deadly attack saw a Palestinian gunman kill two men in a popular nightlife area.

"There are not and will not be limits for this war," Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said, speaking hours after the attack in Tel Aviv.

A knife-wielding man has mortally wounded a Coptic priest during an attack at the popular seaside promenade in Alexandria evening, Egypt's interior ministry said.

The ministry said the priest died while being treated for his wounds. It said the suspected attacker had been arrested.

Israeli security forces early Friday hunted down and killed a Palestinian man who had opened fire into a crowded bar in central Tel Aviv, killing two and wounding over 10 in an attack that caused scenes of mass panic in the heart of the bustling city.

It was the fourth deadly attack in Israel by Palestinians in three weeks, and came at a time of heightened tensions around the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Later in the day, thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank were set to enter Jerusalem for the first Friday prayers of Ramadan at the Al Aqsa Mosque.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is set to meet with Moroccan King Mohammed VI on Thursday during a two-day visit to Rabat that seeks to mark an easing of diplomatic tensions centered on Morocco's disputed region of Western Sahara.

The King will invite Sánchez and his family to share in the Iftar meal to break the day's fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, according to a Spanish government official not authorized to be named in media reports.

Yemen's exiled president stepped aside and transferred his powers to a presidential council on Thursday, as international and regional efforts to end the country's long-running civil war gained momentum with a two-month truce.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, major players in the conflict appear to have played a role in President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi's decision, quickly welcoming it with a pledge of $3 billion in aid. The head of the new council has close ties to Riyadh.

A Turkish court ruled Thursday to suspend the trial in absentia of 26 Saudis accused in the gruesome killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and for the case to be transferred to Saudi Arabia.

Kaghoggi, a United States resident who wrote for the Washington Post, was killed on Oct. 2, 2018, at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, where he had gone for an appointment to collect documents required for him to marry his Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz. He never emerged from the building.

Tunisia has summoned Turkey's ambassador in protest against "interference", the foreign ministry said Wednesday, after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized his counterpart in Tunis for dissolving the country's parliament.

President Kais Saied sacked the assembly last week, eight months after suspending it and seizing wide-ranging powers in a decisive blow against the democratic system born out of the country's 2011 uprising, which sparked the Arab Spring.