Ahmed Qureia, a former Palestinian prime minister and one of the architects of interim peace deals with Israel, has died at age 85.

A key player in the 1993 Oslo peace accords, Qureia witnessed the rise of the dream of Palestinian statehood that surged during the negotiations. But he also saw those hopes recede, with the prospect of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict drifting further than ever. Domestically, Qureia was riddled with corruption charges that tainted his reputation.

The Islamic State group has carried out its deadliest attacks in more than a year, killing dozens of civilians and security officers in the deserts of central Syria, even as people of northern Syria have been digging out of the wreckage from the region's devastating earthquake.

The bloodshed was a reminder of the persistent threat from IS, whose sleeper cells still terrorize populations nearly four years after the group was defeated in Syria.

Palestinian militants in Gaza launched rockets at southern Israel and Israeli aircraft struck targets in the coastal enclave early Thursday after a deadly gun battle with Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank killed 10 Palestinians.

The bloodshed extends one of the deadliest periods in years between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, where dozens of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the start of the year. Palestinian attacks on Israelis in 2023 have killed 11 people.

Demolition teams are clearing mounds of rubble from the devastating Feb. 6 earthquake in Turkey and Syria, as emergency responders scramble to shelter survivors — who were traumatized anew by Monday's magnitude 6.4 earthquake in Turkey's already badly battered province of Hatay.

That quake killed eight people in Turkey and Syria and demolished or damaged more buildings, leaving countless homeless. The combined death toll from the Feb. 6 earthquake in both countries stands at around 46,000 — the vast majority in Turkey.

Israel's parliament advanced a bill Wednesday that would enable lawmakers to overturn a Supreme Court decision with a simple majority, a law that critics say would severely erode the country's democratic checks and balances.

The "Supreme Court override" bill's approval in a preliminary vote in the Knesset was the latest step by Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition toward realizing the judicial overhaul that is steaming ahead despite calls for dialogue and consensus from American Jews and Israel's president, and weekly protest by tens of thousands of Israelis.

Iran's top diplomat Hossein Amir-Abdollahian held talks with neighboring ally Iraq Wednesday to discuss stalled talks with arch-rival Saudi Arabia to ease regional tensions, as well as on border security.

Iraq has taken a key role as a mediator between Iran and Saudi Arabia since 2021, after Riyadh broke off diplomatic relations in 2016, but efforts have been deadlocked for several months.

A prominent rights group accused Tunisian President Kais Saied of "racism and hate speech" on Wednesday after he vowed to crack down on sub-Saharan African migrants.

Saied, who has seized almost total power since a dramatic July 2021 move against parliament, had urged his national security council to take "urgent measures" to tackle an influx of migrants.

Israeli troops on Wednesday entered a major Palestinian city in the occupied West Bank in a rare, daytime arrest operation, triggering fighting that killed at least 10 Palestinians and wounded scores of others.

The raid, which reduced a building to rubble and left a series of shops riddled with bullets, was one of the bloodiest battles in nearly a year of fighting. A 72-year-old man was among the 10 killed and 102 people were wounded, Palestinian officials said.

The Israeli military said it has sentenced a member of the Islamic Jihad militant group to 22 months in prison after his arrest helped spark three days of heavy fighting in Gaza last year.

Bassam al-Saadi's sentence was handed down as part of a plea deal that included suspending an additional sentence and ordering al-Saadi to pay compensation, the army said in a statement. Al-Saadi he had been convicted for illegal association, incitement and impersonation.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to step into a legal fight over state laws that require contractors to pledge not to boycott Israel.

The justices rejected an appeal on behalf of an alternative weekly newspaper in Little Rock, Arkansas, that objected to a state law that reduces fees paid to contractors that refuse to sign the pledge.