A war monitor said an Israeli strike Thursday in the Syrian-controlled Golan Heights killed two people working with Lebanon's Hezbollah, days after major raids elsewhere in the country.

Syria's official news agency SANA reported that "two citizens were martyred due to an Israeli drone attack that targeted a civilian vehicle with a missile" on the Damascus-Quneitra road, in Quneitra province.

Israel bombed a school housing displaced Palestinians in central Gaza, which rescuers said killed 18 people, including U.N. staffers, while the Israeli army said it hit a Hamas control center.

The Al-Jawni school in Nuseirat had already been bombed several times over the course of the 11-month war in Gaza.

For her 26th birthday in July, human rights activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi gathered friends for a bonfire at one of her favorite places, a sandy beach in Seattle where green-and-white ferries cruise across the dark, flat water and osprey fish overhead.

On Wednesday night, hundreds of people traveled to the same beach in grief, love and anger to mourn her. Eygi was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers last Friday in the occupied West Bank, where she had gone to protest and bear witness to Palestinian suffering.

Hamas released the first public statement from Yahya Sinwar since he was appointed its overall leader in August.

In the written statement late Tuesday, Sinwar congratulated Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on his reelection and thanked the country for its support for the Palestinian cause. Algeria, the Arab representative on the United Nations Security Council, circulated a draft resolution in May demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and a halt to Israel’s military operation in the southern city of Rafah.

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said that “this has been a very painful and difficult morning for the people of Israel” because of an attack in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and a helicopter crash in Gaza.

Speaking in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, Herzog described Wednesday's attack as a “horrific, criminal terror attack” and expressed “sorrow for the pain it has inflicted.” He did not elaborate but was apparently referring to the incident when a fuel tanker crashed into a West Bank bus stop, seriously injuring one person. Israeli officials said it was an attack.

U.S. President Joe Biden says he is “outraged and deeply saddened” by the death of an American activist who was shot by Israeli forces while protesting settlements in the occupied West Bank, calling it “totally unacceptable.”

“There must be full accountability," Biden said in a statement released early on Wednesday. "And Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again.”

Palestinian officials say Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip have killed at least 20 people, including 16 women and children.

An airstrike early Wednesday killed 11 people, including six siblings ranging from 21 months to 21 years old, according to the European Hospital, which received the casualties. The dead from the strike near the southern city of Khan Younis included three other women, a child and a man, according to the hospital.

Iran's new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, began a visit to Iraq on Wednesday, aiming to deepen already close ties with the neighboring country on his first trip abroad since taking office.

The three-day trip comes amid turmoil in the Middle East sparked by the war in Gaza, which has drawn in Iran-backed armed groups around the region and complicated Iraq's relations with the United States.

The Israeli military said Wednesday that a military helicopter crashed in the Rafah area of southern Gaza overnight, killing two soldiers and injuring seven.

"An initial inquiry conducted indicates that the crash was not caused by enemy fire... Two IDF (Israeli army) soldiers were killed as a result of the crash," the military said in a statement, adding that the seven injured had been evacuated to hospital for treatment.

Israel has intensified airstrikes on Iranian-linked targets in Syria, inflicting civilian casualties on at least three occasions, an independent U.N. commission said Tuesday.

Since the Israel-Hamas war began nearly a year ago, Israel has conducted dozens of airstrikes in different parts of Syria. Iran blamed Israel for the April airstrike on Iranian consular offices in Damascus that killed seven people including two Iranian generals, and Tehran responded with an unprecedented attack against Israel almost two weeks later.