Syrian state television said a bombed-out town in the one-time rebel stronghold of Eastern Ghouta outside Damascus had been "emptied" of opposition fighters on Friday.

Moscow denied Friday it was bombing Syria's Eastern Ghouta with incendiary weapons after war monitors said Russian air strikes killed 37 civilians in the Arbin area of the rebel enclave.

The British government said Friday that the sentencing of a Palestinian teenager for slapping an Israeli soldier was "emblematic" of the impact of the region's conflict on its youth.

Syrian state media announced Friday that an agreement has been reached for the evacuation of a second rebel-held pocket in Eastern Ghouta after a month than month-long regime offensive.

The deal provides for "the transfer of nearly 7,000 people, fighters and their families" from an area in the south of the enclave near Damascus held by the Islamist group Faylaq al-Rahman, state television said.

Nearly 170,000 people have fled after a Turkish-led assault on the Kurdish-majority Syrian city of Afrin, the U.N. said Friday, pointing to the harrowing conditions faced by those displaced.

Egypt opened its largely sealed border with the Gaza Strip on Friday for two days, Palestinian authorities said.

Israeli ministers on Friday hailed US President Donald Trump's choice of hardliner John Bolton as his new national security adviser, a pick denounced by a senior Palestinian official.

Russian air strikes killed 37 civilians in the Arbin area of the shrinking rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus overnight, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.

Human Rights Watch on Friday urged Tunisia to extend the mandate of a commission set up to examine human rights violations during six decades of dictatorship.

Eastern Ghouta's six-year rebel rule was in its dying moments Friday as fighters evacuated one of the Syrian enclave's three remaining pockets and a deal was reached for another.