Pep Guardiola admitted Manchester City cannot think about catching Arsenal in the Premier League title race after their winless run extended to three matches.

Guardiola's side wasted a chance to put pressure on Arsenal as they were held to a 1-1 draw by Brighton at the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday.

Israel on Thursday condemned the Syrian government over what it described as attacks against the Kurdish community in Aleppo, just days after the two sides agreed to establish a joint mechanism aimed at lowering bilateral tensions.

"Attacks by the Syrian regime's forces against the Kurdish minority in the city of Aleppo -- are grave and dangerous... Systematic and murderous repression of Syria's various minorities contradicts the promises of a 'new Syria'," Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on X.

Turkey's military was ready to "support" Syria in its battle with Kurdish fighters in the northwestern city of Aleppo if Damascus asks for help, a defense ministry official said Thursday.

Deadly clashes erupted this week between Syrian government forces and the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) after the two sides failed to reach a year-end deadline to merge the Kurdish fighters into the main Damascus military.

Israel said Thursday that Lebanon's efforts to disarm Hezbollah were encouraging but "far from sufficient", after the Lebanese army announced it had completed the first phase of the process.

"The ceasefire agreement brokered by the United States between Israel and Lebanon states clearly, Hezbollah must be fully disarmed," the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.

The army announced Thursday that it had completed the first phase of its plan to disarm Hezbollah, covering the area between the Israeli border and the Litani River.

In a statement, the army said it had "achieved the objectives of the first phase" of its plan, with an intention to extend it to the rest of Lebanon.

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".