Hamas officials told AFP that search operations for the remains of the last Israeli hostage held in Gaza resumed on Wednesday after a two-week pause due to bad weather.

Israel has previously said it is awaiting the return of Ran Gvili's body before beginning talks on the second phase of the fragile ceasefire agreement with Hamas which came into effect in October.

Washington and Kyiv teams in Paris were on Wednesday expected to tackle Ukraine talks' "most difficult issues" including territory following a breakthrough in European-led negotiations, Ukraine's leader said.

On Tuesday, European leaders and US envoys announced they had agreed key security guarantees for Kyiv as they sought to present a united front for Ukraine despite raging tensions over Venezuela and President Donald Trump's designs on Greenland.

Germany's blue-chip DAX stock index jumped above 25,000 points for the first time Wednesday, following strong gains on Wall Street as hopes for the artificial intelligence boom bolster investor sentiment.

The index, which groups the 40 largest publicly traded companies on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, hit the milestone shortly after opening, and was trading at 25,010 points at 9:15 am (0815 GMT).

The United Nations said on Wednesday that decades of discrimination and segregation of Palestinians in the West Bank by Israel were intensifying and creating a kind of "apartheid system".

Rights chief Volker Turk said there was "a systematic asphyxiation of the rights of Palestinians in the West Bank", creating a "particularly severe form of racial discrimination and segregation, that resembles the kind of apartheid system we have seen before".

Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday ordered security forces not to crack down on economic protests, drawing a distinction between peaceful demonstrators and armed "rioters".

In a video released by the news agency Mehr after a cabinet meeting, Vice President Mohammad Jafar Ghaempanah said Pezeshkian had "ordered that no security measures be taken against the demonstrators".

Clashes broke out Wednesday in Syria's northern city of Aleppo after hundreds of people left two predominantly ethnic Kurdish neighborhoods when the military opened two corridors for civilians to leave the area that witnessed deadly violence a day earlier.

Syria's military gave people until 3 p.m. (1200 GMT) to leave the neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud and Achrafieh, after which they would be considered a "closed military area." Once the deadline ended, sounds of explosions were heard in the two neighborhoods.

The ceasefire monitoring committee, which includes representatives from the United States, France, Lebanon, Israel and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), met Wednesday in Naqoura in south Lebanon.

The meeting was only military and was not attended by civilian representatives. Last month, Lebanon and Israel appointed the first civilians to lead their delegations to the ceasefire monitoring committee, after a request from the United States.

Israeli strikes on south Lebanon killed two people on Tuesday as Israel said it targeted Hezbollah operatives, a day before a new meeting of the committee monitoring a year-long ceasefire.

Israel has intensified its strikes on southern and eastern Lebanon in recent days, saying it has struck targets from both the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group and its Palestinian ally Hamas.

President Joseph Aoun on Tuesday condemned Israel's latest strikes on Lebanon, saying they undermine efforts to prevent escalation.

Aoun's criticism came after Israel launched a series of strikes in southern and eastern Lebanon on Monday, saying it hit Hezbollah and Hamas targets.

An emboldened U.S. President Donald Trump has hinted that he has other countries in his sights after toppling Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, leaving the world asking: where's next?