President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that Turkey was not looking to seize any Syrian territory despite stepping up its attacks against Kurdish forces in the war-torn country's north.

Erdogan's comments came days after a Turkish air strikes on a Syrian border post run by regime forces reportedly killed 17 fighters.

A rocket attack on a crowded market in a town held by Turkey-backed opposition fighters in northern Syria Friday killed at least nine people and wounded dozens, an opposition war monitor and a paramedic group reported.

The attack on the town of al-Bab came days after a Turkish airstrike killed at least 11 Syrian troops and U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, blamed Syrian government forces for the shelling, saying it was in retaliation for the Turkish airstrike.

A Palestinian man was killed Friday by Israeli forces during a raid in the north of the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said.

Salah Sawafta, 58, "died of critical wounds, sustained by live bullets from the occupation (Israeli military) in the head, in Tubas this morning," a ministry statement said.

Berlin police said Friday they have launched an investigation into Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas over his comments on the Holocaust during a recent visit to the German capital.

Police have received a complaint accusing Abbas of "relativizing the Holocaust" and are investigating "on suspicion of inciting hatred", a police spokeswoman told AFP.

Only ever found in incomplete, clandestine translations in Arabic, "The Satanic Verses" could have gone largely unnoticed in the Arab world, were it not for the Iranian religious edict against its author Salman Rushdie.

Then supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's fatwa calling for Rushdie's death, issued on February 14, 1989, struck a nerve with Arab authors, themselves often in danger of ruffling authoritarian feathers and "offending moral values".

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Israel's prime minister Thursday that he condemns any attempts to deny or downplay the Holocaust, offering reassurance after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sparked outrage with remarks to that effect earlier this week.

Speaking at a joint news conference with Scholz in Berlin, Abbas on Tuesday accused Israel of committing "50 Holocausts" against Palestinians over the years. Scholz, who was standing next to Abbas, didn't immediately react to the comments but later strongly criticized them.

A Palestinian shot by Israeli troops during clashes near a flashpoint holy site in the occupied West Bank died of his wounds on Thursday, Palestinian officials said.

A hospital official in Nablus in the northern West Bank said the 20-year-old was shot overnight.

Israel raided the offices of several Palestinian advocacy groups it had previously designated as terrorist organizations, sealing entrance doors and leaving notices declaring them closed, the groups said Thursday.

Israel has claimed some of these groups had ties to the militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular, left-wing movement with a political party as well as an armed wing that has carried out deadly attacks against Israelis. The groups deny Israel's claim.

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said Wednesday his government will restore full diplomatic ties with Turkey, following years of strained relations between the Mediterranean nations.

Egypt's central bank governor resigned Wednesday as the country struggles to address its economic woes.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi accepted the resignation of Tarek Amer and named him a presidential adviser, the Egyptian leader' office said in a statement.