Israel's defense minister said it will take months to destroy Hamas, predicting a drawn-out war even as his country and its top ally, the United States, face increasing international isolation and alarm over the devastation from the campaign in Gaza.

Yoav Gallant's comments came as U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with Israeli leaders to discuss a timetable for winding down major combat in Gaza. Israeli leaders repeated their determination to pursue the military assault until they crush the militant group for its Oct. 7 attack.

Israel's president has joined the ranks of high-ranking Israeli officials to speak out against a two-state solution after the war in Gaza.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, Isaac Herzog said it is not the time to be talking about establishing an independent Palestinian state when the country's pain from Hamas' Oct. 7 attack is still fresh.

Denmark and Germany have announced arrests of several terror suspects, including alleged Hamas members suspected of plotting attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions in Europe over the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

The announcements were issued separately and it was unclear how the arrests were connected and if they were the result of coordinated actions, or even possibly one operation spanning the continent.

The European Union failed to agree on a 50 billion-euro ($54 billion) package in financial aid that Ukraine desperately needs to stay afloat, even as the bloc decided Thursday to open accession negotiations with the war-torn country.

The aid was vetoed by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, delivering another tough blow to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after he failed this week to persuade U.S. lawmakers to approve an additional $61 billion for Ukraine, mainly to buy weapons from the U.S.

A boy, his face coated in fresh blood, screams as rescuers try to pull him out of the rubble of a destroyed building following an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. A bruised, elderly Israeli hostage is taken away by Hamas in a golf cart as a man clutching a machine gun sits behind her, smiling. A 10-year-old girl cries next to the body of her brother as he is buried near Kyiv, Ukraine.

This year as in years past, The Associated Press was there up close to document the world's conflicts and their toll on civilians.

A ballistic missile fired from rebel-held territory in Yemen slammed into a cargo ship Friday in the Red Sea near the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait, following another attack only hours earlier that struck a separate vessel, authorities said.

The missile attack on the MSC Palatium III and the earlier assault on the Al Jasrah escalate a maritime campaign attributed to the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. The attacks also endanger ships traveling through a vital corridor for cargo and energy shipments for both Europe and Asia from the Suez Canal out to the Indian Ocean.

The United States national security adviser and the Palestinian president were set Friday to discuss postwar arrangements for Gaza — which, according to a senior U.S. official, could include reactivating Palestinian security forces driven out by Hamas in its 2007 takeover of the territory.

The proposal, floated as one of several, was the first specific indicator of Washington's vision for security arrangements in Gaza if Israel achieves its U.S.-backed objective to end Hamas control of the besieged enclave.

Suspected members of a separatist group killed 11 people and injured several others in a nighttime attack on a police station in southeastern Iran, state TV said Friday.

The deputy governor of Sistan and Baluchistan province, Ali Reza Marhemati, said senior police officers and soldiers were killed and injured in the 2 a.m. attack in Rask town, about 1,400 kilometers (875 miles) southwest of Tehran.

Throngs of people in down parkas and boots climbed a hill that overlooks the Forbidden City this week to jostle with others trying to get a shot of the snow-covered roofs of the former imperial palace.

For many people in Beijing, a snowfall means it's time to bundle up and head out to take photos of a city dotted with traditional architecture from the Ming and Qing dynasties that ruled the country for more than five centuries.

The first tropical cyclone to hit Australia in the current season weakened to a low pressure system but continued to lash the northeast coast Thursday with flooding rain and left almost 40,000 homes and businesses without power.

Cyclone Jasper crossed the Queensland state coast late Wednesday as a category 2 storm on a five-tier scale that whipped the sparsely populated region with winds of up to 140 kph (87 mph).