The leader of the United Arab Emirates made a surprise visit on Monday to Qatar as it is hosting the World Cup — his first since leading a yearslong four-nation boycott of Doha over a political dispute that poisoned regional relations.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who also serves as the ruler of Abu Dhabi, made the trip at the invitation of Qatar's ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the state-run WAM news agency reported.

A protester and a policeman were killed Sunday in Syria's southern city of Sweida as security forces cracked down on a rare demonstration by hundreds against deteriorating living conditions.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog arrived Sunday in Bahrain, the first visit by an Israeli head of state to the small Gulf kingdom since the two countries normalized relations in 2020.

Iran on Sunday put to death four people accused of working with Israel's intelligence service, the judiciary said.

The Israeli air force said it had carried out overnight air strikes against sites of the Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip after a rocket was fired from the Palestinian enclave towards Israeli territory.

A civilian was killed and another one wounded Friday in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region in an attack likely carried out by Turkey, a local official said.

The pair were working on their land near the village of Mawat when they were killed in a bombardment "likely carried out by Turkey", the town's mayor Kamaran Hassan told AFP.

Dozens of Israeli peace activists toured the occupied West Bank's largest city Friday in a show of solidarity with Palestinians, amid chants of "shame, shame" from ultra-nationalist hecklers.

The encounter in the center of Hebron signaled the widening rift among Israelis over the nature of their society and Israel's open-ended military rule over the Palestinians, now in its 56th year.

Evidence collected in Iraq strengthens preliminary findings that Islamic State extremists committed crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Christian community after it seized about a third of the country in 2014, a U.N. investigative team said in a report circulated Thursday.

The report to the U.N. Security Council said crimes included forcibly transferring and persecuting Christians, seizing their property, engaging in sexual violence, enslavement and other "inhumane acts," such as forced conversions and destruction of cultural and religious sites.

First Qatar was out, exiting the World Cup with the worst record of a host country. Then the Saudi national team's run ended, despite a historic upset against Argentina last week. Finally Tunisia was eliminated, after a dramatic victory against already-qualified France.

Now, at the first World Cup ever to be held in the Middle East, Morocco is the Arab world's last hope. The fractured region is rallying around the North African nation after its 2-1 win Thursday against Canada that advanced Morocco to the knockout stage of the tournament for the first time since 1986.

When Syrian rebels attacked a hideout in mid-October in the southern Syrian village of Jassem, they had no idea that a militant commander who was killed in the operation was the leader of the Islamic State group.

Syrian opposition activists and state media apparently did not know that the man killed was IS leader Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi and identified him as Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Iraqi.