Palestinians from the occupied West Bank will soon be allowed to travel on flights to Turkey out of an Israeli airport, the Israel Airports Authority said.

The move is part of a series of gestures Israel says it is making to improve the living conditions of Palestinians in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Critics say the measures do not address the daily humiliations of the decades-long occupation or pave the road for Palestinian statehood.

A Palestinian hunger striker who his family says has refused food for the past 160 days and is wasting away in an Israeli jailhouse infirmary has suddenly been thrust into the center of efforts to firm up a Gaza cease-fire.

Khalil Awawdeh is in the spotlight because the Islamic Jihad group sought his release as part of Egyptian-brokered talks that ended three days of fighting between the Gaza-based militants and Israel over the weekend.

A Turkish drone strike Tuesday killed at least four people in a northeast Syrian city held by Kurdish forces, the latest in a flurry of attacks, a war monitor said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack struck near a hospital in Qamishli, the de facto capital of a semi-autonomous Kurdish administration that runs large parts of the country's northeast.

Kurdish Iraqi farmer Azad Muhamad has become a social media star by sharing tips on growing fresh fruit and vegetables in the sun-parched country that is highly vulnerable to climate change.  

Hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims on Tuesday marked the festival of Ashura in Iraq's holy city of Karbala, the burial place of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed.

The top U.N. Mideast envoy warned Monday that the ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants is "fragile" and the "cycles of violence" will only stop when an independent Palestinian state lives side-by-side with Israel.

Tor Wennesland called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders and the international community at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the latest violence "to strengthen diplomatic efforts to return to meaningful negotiations towards a viable two-state solution."

A Palestinian official has been shot dead Monday in Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp of Ain Al-Helweh, near the coastal southern city of Sidon, a Fatah official said.

Saeed Alaeddine was an officer in Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement, in charge of liaising between the group and Lebanese security.

Israeli troops killed three Palestinians and wounded dozens in a shootout Tuesday during an arrest raid in the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

The shootout came a day after a cease-fire ended three days of fighting between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group in the Gaza Strip.

Millions of Shiite Muslims — from Iran to Afghanistan and Pakistan — were marking the festival of Ashoura on Monday, one of the most emotional occasions in their religious calendar, commemorating the 7th century martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson Hussein.

Security forces, particularly in Taliban-run Afghanistan, were on high alert for any violence. In the past, bloody attacks have marred the festival across in the Middle East, as Sunni extremists who view the Shiites as heretics seize on the holy day to target large gatherings of mourners.

Demonstrators blocked roads as protests broke out in southern Iraq on Monday after power outages left many without electricity during scorching peak summer heat.

Temperatures reached 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit), nearly matching last year's record high. Southern provinces, where the heat wave is most intense in Iraq, suspended working hours.