Israel has told the United States it was responsible for the killing of an Iranian Revolutionary Guards colonel last week, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

A United Arab Emirates company signed a contract with the Taliban authorities Tuesday to provide ground handling services at Afghanistan's three airports, officials said, as the country seeks to resume international transit.

Capital Kabul's only airport was trashed in August when tens of thousands of people rushed to evacuate as the US-led forces withdrew.

Israeli authorities said Tuesday they have foiled a wide-ranging plot by Palestinian militant Hamas group to shoot a member of parliament, kidnap soldiers and bomb Jerusalem's light rail system during a surge of violence that has left dozens dead in recent weeks.

The police and Shin Bet security services said in a statement that five Palestinian men from east Jerusalem had been arrested for allegedly planning a shooting attack against far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir and other targets at a time of heightened tensions in the flashpoint city.

A gas cylinder explosion in the capital of the United Arab Emirates has killed two people and injured 120 others, police said, hours after authorities downplayed the incident and warned the public not to share images of the aftermath.

The explosion struck a restaurant just after 1 p.m. in Abu Dhabi's Khalidiya neighborhood, just a few blocks from the capital's beachfront corniche. Initially, Abu Dhabi police vaguely referred to damage and injuries, showing pictures of glass and debris littering the street.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to launch a new military operation in Syria to secure Turkey's southern border.

Speaking following a Cabinet meeting, Erdogan said the aim of the operation would be resume Turkish efforts to create a 30-kilometer (20 mile) safe zone along its border with Syria.

A sandstorm blanketed parts of the Middle East on Monday, including Iraq, Syria and Iran, sending people to hospitals and disrupting flights in some places.

It was the latest in a series of unprecedented nearly back-to-back sandstorms this year that have bewildered residents and raised alarm among experts and officials, who blame climate change and poor governmental regulations.

Almost two weeks after the death of the veteran Palestinian-American reporter for Al Jazeera, a reconstruction by The Associated Press lends support to assertions from both Palestinian authorities and Abu Akleh's colleagues that the bullet that cut her down came from an Israeli gun.

Any conclusive answer is likely to prove elusive because of the severe distrust between the two sides, each of which is in sole possession of potentially crucial evidence.

The ruler of Qatar called out Monday double standards in the West while evoking the killing of a Palestinian-American journalist during an Israeli raid this month.

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that “we should not accept a world where governments have double standards about the value of people based on their region, race or religion."

An Arab Israeli lawmaker who quit the ruling coalition said Sunday that she was returning to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's 60-member alliance, ending a crisis that lasted just a few days.

Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi said Thursday that she was quitting Bennett's coalition, leaving it with with just 59 members in Israel's 120-seat parliament. She cited the government's hardline policies in Jerusalem and West Bank settlement construction that she said have alienated her constituents, fellow Palestinian citizens of Israel.

A homicide investigation was opened on Monday after a security guard at the Qatari Embassy in Paris was killed and a suspect arrested, the prosecutor's office said.

The circumstances of the killing, including the method used, were not immediately clear. The prosecutor's office said that "the use of a weapon is not at this time confirmed."