Israel's defense minister on Monday said that Israel is helping build a U.S.-led regional air-defense alliance against Iran, and that the partnership has already thwarted attempted Iranian attacks.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz said he expected the upcoming visit by President Joe Biden to the region to further strengthen this alliance.

Rival Libyan factions failed to reach an agreement after wrapping up a third round of U.N.-mediated talks in Egypt, the United Nations said Monday, further complicating international efforts to find a way out of the country's decade-old chaos.

According to the U.N. special adviser on Libya, Stephanie Williams, lawmakers from Libya's east-based parliament and the High Council of State, based in the capital of Tripoli in the country's west, concluded their final round of negotiations on constitutional amendments for elections late Sunday in Cairo without a breakthrough.

A jihadist ambush on a bus in remote eastern Syria left at least 15 pro-government fighters dead on Monday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The war monitoring group said it was not immediately clear if those killed were from the regular army or allied militia.

Weeks of negotiations on safe corridors to get grain out of Ukraine's Black Sea ports have made little progress, with urgency rising as the summer harvest season arrives.

Countries like Lebanon, Somalia, Libya, Egypt and Sudan are heavily reliant on wheat, corn and sunflower oil from Ukraine and Russia.

A new ambassador from Bahrain formally has taken up his post in Syria, the country's first full diplomatic mission there in more than a decade as Damascus continues to improve its relations with Gulf Arab states.

President Bashar Assad received the credentials of Ambassador Waheed Mubarak Sayyar in an official ceremony also attended by Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad. Sayyar was appointed in December and recently moved to Damascus.

Israeli forces have shot and killed a Palestinian man, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, after the Israeli military said he tried to illegally cross the separation barrier that divides Israel and the occupied West Bank.

In a statement, the military said soldiers saw the man "sabotaging" the barrier outside the West Bank city of Qalqilya and "attempting to illegally cross into Israeli territory." Forces opened fire to get him to stop and shot him, the statement said.

Israeli air strikes hit Hamas military sites in the Gaza Strip on Saturday in response to rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave run by the Islamist movement, the Israeli army said.

Israeli forces shot dead three Palestinians and wounded eight others early Friday during a military operation in the occupied West Bank town of Jenin, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The military said the troops traded fire with militants.

The Israeli military has been carrying out near-daily raids in the occupied West Bank since a string of attacks earlier this year killed 19 people in Israel. Many of the arrest raids have been launched in and around Jenin, the hometown of several of the attackers.

The Al Jazeera news network has published an image of the bullet that it says killed its veteran reporter Shireen Abu Akleh while she was covering an Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank last month.

It identified the bullet as a U.S.-made 5.56mm round fired from an M4 rifle, commonly used by Israeli forces. The Israeli military says Palestinian militants use the same ammunition.

An Israeli police investigation has found that police engaged in misconduct during the funeral of slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, but those who supervised the event will not face serious punishment, an Israeli newspaper has reported.

Israeli riot police pushed and beat mourners at the funeral, causing the pallbearers to nearly drop the casket in a shocking start to the May 14 procession in east Jerusalem.