Agence France-Presse renewed its call on Thursday on Israel to conduct a full investigation into an attack in 2023 that killed a Reuters journalist in Lebanon and wounded several others, two of them from AFP.

On October 13, 2023, an attack killed Reuters video journalist Issam Abdallah and wounded six other journalists, including AFP reporters Dylan Collins and Christina Assi, who had to have her right leg amputated.

Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Thursday that Saudi Arabia should "keep riding camels" if it asks for a Palestinian state in exchange for normalizing ties with Israel.

"If Saudi Arabia tells us normalization in exchange for a Palestinian state, friends, no thank you", Smotrich said at a conference in Israel.

Syrian authorities have agreed a ceasefire with a group of jihadists led by Frenchman Oumar Diaby in northwest Syria, sources from both sides told AFP on Thursday.

Government forces surrounded the camp of Firqatul Ghuraba ("the Foreigners' Brigade") on Wednesday, leading to the first clashes with jihadists under Syria's new leadership since the ousting in December of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad.

The European Parliament on Thursday definitively adopted rules clamping down on pollution from the tiny pellets that constitute the building blocks of most plastic products.

The text introduces new rules to hold handling and transport firms accountable for spills of the lentil-sized pellets, called nurdles, which are used in everything from from car bumpers to salad bowls.

Oil prices jumped close to three percent in Asian trade on Thursday after U.S. President Donald Trump slapped sanctions on Russia's two largest oil companies.

West Texas Intermediate was up 2.89 percent at $60.19 while Brent crude jumped 2.86 percent to $64.38.

China said Thursday it "opposes" recent sanctions slapped by the United States on Russia's two largest oil companies over Moscow's war in Ukraine, saying they had "no basis in international law".

At the same press conference, foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun criticized sanctions on Russia agreed Wednesday by the European Union -- whose targets included Chinese companies -- insisting that "China is neither the creator of the Ukraine crisis nor a party to it".

U.S. Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that the Gaza ceasefire brokered by Washington could pave the way for broader alliances for Israel in the Middle East.

Syria government forces launched an operation Wednesday against jihadists holed up in a camp in the northwest of the country, in a push to capture French fighters wanted by their government, a monitor and a French jihadist told AFP.

Security forces "launched a vast operation against the camp... to arrest French fighters wanted by their government," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that allied nations in the Middle East were prepared to send troops into Gaza to confront Hamas if the group did not cease its alleged violations of his peace plan.

"Numerous of our NOW GREAT ALLIES in the Middle East, and areas surrounding the Middle East, have explicitly and strongly, with great enthusiasm, informed me that they would welcome the opportunity, at my request, to go into GAZA with a heavy force and 'straighten our (sic) Hamas' if Hamas continues to act badly, in violation of their agreement with us," Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was due in Doha late Tuesday as Ankara seeks to acquire some of Qatar's used Eurofighter Typhoon jets, a Turkish security source told AFP.