U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led fighters captured the last town held by the Islamic State group on Friday, after days of intense battles in the militants' single remaining enclave in eastern Syria, activists said.

The fall of Hajin is a blow to the extremists. The town was their main stronghold in the last pocket of land they control in eastern Syria, near the Iraqi border. IS still holds some villages nearby.

The UN Security Council on Thursday approved a one-year extension of humanitarian aid deliveries across war-scarred Syria.

A murdered Saudi journalist. A scrapped Iran nuclear deal. The two events alone have undone years of diplomacy in the Middle East, testing old alliances and shaking up the regional balance of power, analysts say.

In another turbulent year for the tinderbox region, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad appeared ever more powerful and Washington's promised Israeli-Palestinian peace plan seemed ever more elusive.

The United Arab Emirates, a key ally of Yemen's government in a Saudi-led coalition fighting the Huthi rebels, on Thursday welcomed a UN-brokered ceasefire for the battleground port city of Hodeida.

The United Nations secretary general on Thursday announced that Yemen's warring sides have agreed after week-long peace talks in Sweden to a province-wide cease-fire in Hodeida and a withdrawal of troops from the contested Red Sea port city.

Antonio Guterres thanked the Yemeni delegations for what he called "an important step" and "real progress toward future talks to end the conflict" and also said that the next round of talks is planned for the end of January.

Senators are expected to vote Thursday on a resolution that would call on the U.S. to pull assistance from the Saudi-led war in Yemen, a measure that would rebuke Saudi Arabia after the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The Senate may also consider a separate resolution condemning the journalist's killing as senators have wrestled with how to respond to the Saudi journalist's murder. U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman must have at least known of the plot, but President Donald Trump has been reluctant to pin the blame.

Kurdish-led forces on Thursday moved deep into Hajin, the main village in the last pocket still held by the Islamic State group in eastern Syria, a war monitor said.

The Islamic State group's "deliberate, wanton annihilation" of agricultural lands in Iraq's northern Sinjar amounts to war crimes, haunting farmers a year after the jihadists' defeat, Amnesty International said Thursday.

Any unilateral military action in northern Syria would be "unacceptable", the Pentagon said Wednesday after Turkey announced it would launch an operation against a US-backed Kurdish militia.

A Palestinian shot dead two Israelis and wounded at least two others at a bus stop in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, the army said.