Israel’s military said Wednesday it had returned the bodies of two militants who crossed into Israel from Jordan in October and shot two soldiers.

The militants entered Israeli territory south of the Dead Sea on Oct. 18, shooting and wounding two soldiers before being shot dead by Israeli troops. Hamas praised the incursion but not claim responsibility for it.

Israel's military confirmed it killed a senior member of Hezbollah responsible for coordinating with Syria's army on rearming and resupplying the Lebanese militant group.

Syrian state media said a drone strike on Tuesday hit a car in a suburb of the capital Damascus, killing one person, without saying who was killed.

In destroyed areas of southern Lebanon, residents clearing away rubble on Tuesday said they didn’t trust Israel to abide by the week-old ceasefire with Hezbollah.

“The Israelis are breaching the ceasefire whenever they can because they are not committed,” said Hussein Badreddin, a vegetable seller in the southern city of Nabatiyeh, which was pummeled by Israeli airstrikes over several weeks. “This means that they (can) breach any resolution at any time.”

U.S. forces conducted a self-defense strike Tuesday in the vicinity of Mission Support Site Euphrates, a U.S. base in eastern Syria, against three truck-mounted multiple rocket launchers, a T-64 tank and mortars that Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said presented “a clear and imminent threat” to U.S. troops.

The self-defense strike occurred after rockets and mortars were fired that landed in the vicinity of the base, Ryder said. The Pentagon is still assessing who was responsible for the attacks — that there are both Iranian-backed militias and Syrian military forces that operate in the area.

An Israeli court on Tuesday ordered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take the stand next week in his long-running corruption trial, ending a series of delays.

Netanyahu's lawyers had filed multiple requests to put off the testimony, arguing first that the war in Gaza prevented him from properly preparing for his testimony, and later that his security could not be guaranteed in the court chamber.

Syria said Wednesday its counteroffensive has pushed back insurgents attempting to advance to the strategic central city of Hama, while the insurgency says it captured more Syrian troops and Iran-backed militants in fierce battles.

The latest flareup in Syria's long civil war comes after forces opposed to Syrian President Bashar Assad over the past days captured large parts of the northern city of Aleppo, the country's largest, as well as towns and villages in southern parts of the northwestern Idlib province.

German authorities have arrested a Lebanese man accused of being a member of Hezbollah and working for groups allegedly controlled by the Lebanese organization in Germany.

Federal prosecutors said the suspect, identified only as Fadel R. in line with German privacy rules, was arrested in the Hannover region on Tuesday. The man is suspected of membership in a "foreign terrorist organization" and is not accused of direct involvement in any violence.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Tuesday sidestepped questions about Ukraine's possible membership of the military alliance, saying that the priority now must be to strengthen the country's hand in any future peace talks with Russia by sending it more weapons.

Rutte's remarks, ahead of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, came days after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that extending alliance membership to territory now under Kyiv's control could end "the hot stage" of the almost 3-year war in Ukraine, where Russian forces are pressing deeper into their western neighbor.

Georgia is convulsed by political upheaval again after its pro-Moscow government, fresh off parliamentary elections denounced as rigged by its critics, decided to suspend negotiations for the small former Soviet republic to join the European Union.

The small but ancient Caucasus country, which inhabits a crossroads between Slavic, Turkish and Persian cultures, has recently found itself navigating the geopolitical standoff between Russia under strongman President Vladimir Putin and the democratic, wealthy West.

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon made his first public appearance in Beirut since he was wounded in an attack involving exploding pagers in mid-September.

Mojtaba Amani, who returned to Lebanon over the weekend after undergoing treatment in Iran, visited on Tuesday the scene south of Beirut where Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Sept. 27.