The Trump administration's cuts to USAID have frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in contractual payments to aid groups, leaving them paying out of pocket to preserve a fragile ceasefire, according to officials from the U.S. humanitarian agency.

The cutbacks threaten to halt the small gains aid workers have made combatting Gaza's humanitarian crisis during the Israel-Hamas ceasefire. They also could endanger the tenuous truce, which the Trump administration helped cement.

A Syrian war monitor said Friday that gunmen loyal to the government "executed" nearly 70 members of the Alawite minority in Latakia province, where clashes broke out with gunmen loyal to toppled president Bashar al-Assad.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the gunmen executed Alawite men in the towns of Al-Shir, Al-Mukhtariya and Haffah in the Latakia countryside, based on videos it verified, as well as testimonies it received from the victims' relatives.

More than 70 people were killed and dozens more wounded in Syria in fighting between government security forces and militants loyal to deposed ruler Bashar al-Assad, a war monitor said Friday.

"More than 70 killed and dozens wounded and captured in bloody clashes and ambushes on the Syrian coast between members of the Ministry of Defense and Interior and militants from the defunct regime's army," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a post on X.

A Syria war monitor said Wednesday that four civilians had been killed in a security operation in a former pro-government bastion this week, while clashes in the south had left at least seven security personnel and gunmen dead.

Landmines and unexploded ordnance in Syria have killed or injured at least 188 children since president Bashar al-Assad's overthrow in December, the Save the Children charity said Thursday.

The Hamas militant group on Thursday brushed off President Donald Trump's latest threat and reiterated that it will only free the remaining Israeli hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas accused Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of trying to back out of the ceasefire agreement they reached in January. The agreement calls for negotiations over a second phase in which the hostages would be released in exchange for more Palestinian prisoners, a permanent ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas officials said the group has held direct talks with a U.S. envoy on freeing hostages held in Gaza, after the White House said it was engaged in talks with the Palestinian militants.

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened further destruction of Gaza if all remaining hostages are not released, and issued an ultimatum to Hamas leaders to flee.

The United States meanwhile confirmed unprecedented indirect talks with Hamas, which it proscribes as a "terrorist" group, focused on American hostages in Gaza.

Qatar on Wednesday rebuffed what it said were "false accusations" by Israel's domestic security agency attributing funds from the Gulf state to an increase in Hamas's military strength before its unprecedented October 7 2023 attack.

"False accusations made by the Shin Bet security agency linking Qatari aid to the October 7 attack are yet another example of deflection driven by self-interest and self-preservation in Israeli politics," Qatar's International Media Office said in a statement.

The Israeli military said it demolished two homes on Wednesday in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron belonging to Palestinians accused of carrying out a deadly attack in Tel Aviv in October of 2024.

In a statement, the military said its forces "destroyed in Hebron the homes of the two terrorists who carried out the attack at the Jaffa light rail station in which seven Israelis and foreign residents were murdered and 15 additional civilians were injured".