Israel's top diplomat landed in Morocco on Wednesday for the first visit by a senior official from the Jewish state since the two sides agreed to normalize ties last year.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad issued a decree on Tuesday approving a new cabinet headed by Hussein Arnous, following a May election that secured Assad's grip on power in the war-torn country.

The new 29-minister government, announced less than two weeks since Assad tasked Arnous with forming it, is little changed from its predecessor.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein met his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif in Tehran Tuesday, Iranian media reported, as Baghdad prepares to host a regional summit later this month.

The two men discussed "bilateral ties and latest regional and international developments," the ISNA news agency said.

The Israeli military said soldiers shot and wounded a Palestinian woman after she attacked them with a knife in the occupied West Bank late on Monday.

The woman was hospitalized after being shot in her "lower body" near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, the military said in a statement early Tuesday. A military spokesman said he was not aware of her current condition. No Israeli soldiers were wounded in the incident.

Just three months after the latest war between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, the border town of Sderot appears to be on the road to recovery.

The streets are bustling, and the town is filled with well-kept parks and playgrounds. The local real-estate market is booming.

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency chief William Burns was due in Israel Tuesday for talks on common foe Iran, as rising tensions overshadow talks on restoring a landmark nuclear deal.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Naftali Bennett gave no details of the agenda for the CIA chief's talks in Israel.

Kitted out and nowhere to go: many young Iraqis in Baghdad make an effort to be hip, even as they admit their country may have no future.

Regime shelling has killed four children in Syria's last major rebel bastion in the northwest of the country, a Britain-based war monitor said Sunday.

Israel conducted overnight air strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza in retaliation for the launching of incendiary balloons from the Palestinian enclave that caused fires in southern Israel, the country's military said early Saturday.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid is to visit Morocco next week, the two countries said Friday, in the first trip to the kingdom by Israel's top diplomat since they normalized ties.

A source at Morocco's foreign ministry told AFP that Lapid would visit on August 11-12 and meet with his counterpart, without providing further details.