Nine activists from Bahrain had their iPhones hacked by advanced spyware made by the Israeli company NSO Group, the world's most infamous hacker-for-hire firm, a cybersecurity watchdog reported on Tuesday.

Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto said NSO Group's Pegasus malware successfully hacked the phones between June 2020 and February 2021. Those reportedly hacked included members of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and two political dissidents living in exile. At least one of the activists lived in London when the hacking occurred, Citizen Lab said.

Hamas-backed Palestinian activists on Tuesday in the Gaza Strip launched a new wave of incendiary balloons into Israel, further raising tensions after a night of Israeli airstrikes on the seaside territory.

The enemy sides this week have engaged in their heaviest cross-border fighting since an 11-day war in May. In the occupied West Bank, meanwhile, officials said a Palestinian teen was killed in a clash with the Israeli military.

Algeria formally broke off diplomatic relations with neighboring Morocco on Tuesday, with the foreign minister citing a series of alleged hostile acts.

The move culminates a period of growing tension between the North African countries which are mired in a decades-long feud, with their borders closed to each other. There was no immediate reaction from Morocco.

Syrian rebels started leaving the southern province of Daraa Tuesday as part of a Russian-brokered truce aimed at ending the worst fighting in the region in years, a war monitor said.

Daraa was retaken by the government in 2018 but emerged as a new flashpoint as government forces tighten control over Daraa al-Balad, a southern district of the provincial capital considered a hub for former rebels.

An explosion shook the base of an al-Qaida-linked group in northern Syria on Tuesday, killing and wounding dozens of fighters, opposition activists said.

It wasn't immediately clear what caused the explosion at the base of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the northwestern province of Idlib, the last major rebel stronghold in the country. HTS is the most powerful group in Syria's northwest.

Fighting between government forces and former rebels in the Syrian province of Daraa has displaced more than 38,000 people over the past month, the United Nations said Tuesday, as truce talks falter.

Daraa, retaken by government forces in 2018, has emerged as a new flashpoint in recent weeks as government forces tightened control over Daraa al-Balad, a southern district of the provincial capital that is considered a hub for former rebel fighters.

The Moroccan navy has rescued more than 400 migrants since Thursday, after their makeshift boats ran into trouble on the dangerous sea crossing to Europe, state media reported.

The 438 migrants, most of them from sub-Saharan Africa, were given first aid before being taken to the nearest Moroccan port, an officer told the state-run MAP news agency late Monday.

Eighteen migrants have drowned after their boat sank off Libya, the coastguard said Tuesday, the latest tragedy on the dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing to Europe.

Rescue vessels picked up 51 survivors from Sunday night's shipwreck, a coastguard official in the port of Zuwara, 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of the capital Tripoli, told AFP.

Tunisian President Kais Saied has extended his suspension of parliament "until further notice", a month after sacking his prime minister and granting himself greater powers in a shock intervention that opponents decried as a coup.

In a statement issued by the presidency late on Monday, Saied also extended an order freezing immunity for lawmakers and said he would address the Tunisian people in the coming days, without providing further details.

Israel launched airstrikes against Gaza on Monday, the army and a source inside the enclave said, after incendiary balloons launched from the strip started fires in the country's south.

The latest escalation of tension follows weekend border clashes in which dozens were injured.