Iran's foreign minister met Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler on Friday during his first visit since the Middle East rivals announced a surprise rapprochement, officials said.

The United States has imposed sanctions on two Turkey-backed Syrian militias and the groups' leaders accused of human rights abuses in Syria's northwestern, opposition-held enclave.

The groups are operating in the town of Afrin, which has been under Turkish-backed opposition forces since 2018, following an Ankara-backed military operation. That offensive pushed Syrian Kurdish fighters and thousands of Kurdish residents from the area.

The global cat cafe trend, where people pay to have coffee and hang out with cats, has finally come to the besieged Gaza Strip.

In the impoverished Palestinian enclave run by the Hamas militant group and crippled by a 17-year blockade, residents seeking to escape the territory's troubles flocked on Thursday to the new Meow Cafe — Gaza City's answer to the quirky concept tried successfully around the world.

Last month, after the biggest Israeli military raid on a Palestinian refugee camp in the occupied West Bank in years, Palestinians turned their wrath on their own security forces.

They unleashed gunfire, firebombs and pipe bombs at Palestinian security buildings in an outpouring of rage against the Palestinian Authority's failure to protect them from the devastating July 3 raid and a long-running, deeply unpopular security alliance with Israel.

Sweden's Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has said that Hezbollah and other "terrorist groups" have urged their sympathizers to take revenge for the Quran burnings that have taken place in Sweden.

He said that Swedish interests abroad had already been targeted, including an attempted attack on the diplomatic mission in Beirut last week and the storming of Sweden's Embassy in Baghdad last month.

Iran's foreign minister traveled to Saudi Arabia on Thursday, marking the first trip to the kingdom by Tehran's top diplomat in years after the two nations reached a détente with Chinese mediation.

The visit by Hossein Amirabdollahian comes as both Saudi Arabia and Iran try to ease tensions between their nations, which long have viewed each other as archrivals for influence across the wider Middle East. Challenges remain, however, particularly over Iran's advancing nuclear program, the Saudi-led war in Yemen and security across region's waterways.

A Libyan militia leader whose detention sparked clashes that killed 55 people in the capital Tripoli this week has been released, a military official said Thursday.

Gun battles had raged on the streets of Tripoli from Monday night through Tuesday after 444 Brigade leader Mahmoud Hamza was apprehended by the rival Al-Radaa Force.

Jordan's army said it shot down a drone Wednesday loaded with TNT explosives trying to enter its airspace from Syria, in the latest incident of trafficking of arms or drugs.

"Border guards... detected a drone trying to cross the border illegally" from Syria, it said in a statement, adding that the aircraft was "shot down over Jordanian territory".

Threats to return to war in Yemen are hindering efforts to start peace talks as the Arab world's poorest country faces an increasingly dire economic situation, a senior U.N. official said.

Hans Grundberg, the U.N. special representative for Yemen, told the Security Council that hostilities between Houthi rebels and government forces haven't returned to levels before a six-month truce that ended in October, but he said intermittent fighting and exchanges of fire have continued.

Across the dusty villages of the occupied West Bank, where Israeli water pipes don't reach, date palms have been left to die. Greenhouses are empty and deserted. Palestinians say they can barely get enough water to bathe their children and wash their clothes — let alone sustain livestock and grow fruit trees.

In sharp contrast, neighboring Jewish settlements look like an oasis. Wildflowers burst through the soil. Farmed fish swim in neat rows of ponds. Children splash in community pools.