Languishing in a tent in northern Iraq, Nour yearns to return home but can't because she is accused of supporting jihadists -- an allegation she insists has been designed to obscure a land dispute.

A planned court appearance next week by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his much anticipated trial for corruption has been indefinitely delayed in the face of Israel's freshly tightened coronavirus lockdown, the judges announced on Friday.

Tunisia has arrested a suspected branch leader of al-Qaida in North Africa, along with several others suspected of planning "terrorist" attacks, a judicial spokesman said Friday.

The UAE will reopen its borders to Qatar from Saturday, its official news agency said, making it the first of several boycotting countries to do so after a more than three-year blockade.

The Gulf states will restore travel, trade and transport links with Qatar within a week, the UAE said Thursday, after a landmark deal to normalize ties ended a damaging rift.

Strikes conducted overnight by Israel in Syria left three fighters from Iran-backed groups dead, a war monitor reported Thursday.

Syrian air defense forces responded late Wednesday to "Israeli aggression" in the south of the country, state news agency SANA said.

The agency reported Sana reported heavy blasts in southern Syria, indicating that "our air defenses have responded to Israeli aggression," without providing further details. 

The United States and Sudan on Wednesday signed the "Abraham Accords" under which the mainly Arab Muslim country agreed to normalize ties with Israel, the U.S. embassy in Khartoum said.

Amnesty International on Wednesday called on Israel to provide coronavirus vaccine doses to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, saying the Jewish state was obligated to do so under international law.

Tunisia, the current president of the U.N. Security Council, called Monday for a resolution sending international monitors to support Libya's brittle ceasefire to be adopted as soon as possible.

"We hope that it will be adopted as soon as possible" because "there is a momentum, yet it's a little bit fragile," said Tunisian ambassador to the U.N. Tarek Ladeb, referring to the negotiations between Libyan parties and the U.N. mission there.