Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblat has urged members of the minority community in Syria to reject "Israeli interference" following Israeli threats against Damascus authorities if they harm the Druze.

"Preserving the (Druze) brothers (in Syria) involves rejecting Israeli interference," Jumblat said following a meeting with Druze figures in Beirut to discuss sectarian violence that erupted in Syria this week.

Syria said Israel launched new strikes near Damascus on Wednesday, after sectarian clashes left nearly 40 dead in two days and Israel warned against attacks targeting the Druze minority.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel carried out a strike in Syria on Wednesday on an "extremist group" preparing to attack members of the Druze community in the Damascus region.

The United Arab Emirates said on Wednesday that it had foiled a weapons shipment intended for the Sudanese army, which has accused the Gulf state of backing rival paramilitaries in the country's two-year war.

"The security services succeeded in preventing the transfer of a quantity of military equipment to the Sudanese Armed Forces following the arrest of members of a cell involved in unauthorized mediation, brokering and illicit trafficking of military equipment," UAE Attorney General Hamad Saif Al Shamsi said according to official news agency WAM.

The Palestinian Red Crescent aid group said one of its medics, Asaad al-Nsasrah, was released by Israel on Tuesday alongside nine other detainees from Gaza.

Prisoners released by Israel have said they were ordered by Israel not to speak to the media and fear for their safety.

Israel's military said it arrested Ali Samoudi, a well-known journalist, in an overnight raid in Jenin, a Palestinian city in the north of the territory.

Samoudi previously worked for international outlets including CNN and Al Jazeera. In 2022, he was injured in the same spray of gunfire that killed prominent Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. U.S. officials say Akleh was shot dead by an Israeli sniper.

At least 12 people including children were killed overnight in Gaza by Israeli strikes, hospital workers said Wednesday.

The pre-dawn strikes hit three houses in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp, according to staff at the Al-Aqsa hospital, which received the bodies. Among the dead were three children, including two brothers whose bodies arrived in pieces, according to the hospital's morgue.

Britain said Wednesday it had carried out air strikes on buildings in Yemen used by Houthi rebels to produce drones in a joint military operation with the United States.

"UK forces participated in a joint operation with US forces against a Houthi military target in Yemen," the Ministry of Defense said in a statement, adding that the strike took place at night about 25 kilometers (15 miles) south of the capital Sanaa.

Syria state media said Wednesday that 13 people had been killed in clashes that erupted overnight between security forces and "outlaw groups" near Damascus, as sectarian violence a day earlier spread.

"The number of dead after outlaw groups targeted civilians and security forces" in the Sahnaya area "has risen to 13 dead and a number of wounded", state news agency SANA said, citing a health ministry statement, without elaborating on the identity of those killed.

Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a "live-streamed genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe.

"Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages, the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide," Amnesty's secretary general Agnes Callamard said in its annual report.