Israel approved nearly 1,800 new homes in settlements in the occupied West Bank Thursday, the country’s right-wing Defense Minister announced, four days ahead of a general election.

Turkey-backed Syrian opposition fighters on Thursday retook a strategic northwestern town in Syria that was recently captured by government forces, and cut the highway linking the capital, Damascus, with the northern city of Aleppo days after the government reopened it for the first time since 2012.

The retaking of Saraqeb which sits on the highway is a setback for Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces who have scored major gains in a weeks long Russian-backed campaign in the last rebel stronghold in Idlib province. Officials had hailed the reopening of the motorway, known as the M5, as a major victory in the nine-year conflict.

The Syrian town of Kafranbel was long a symbol of humourous defiance to Damascus, famed for its witty posters, murals and cartoons, so its recapture by regime forces spells a heavy blow, activists say.

Tunisia's new government won a confidence vote in parliament on Thursday, after more than four months of political wrangling since elections.

Two Turkish soldiers have been killed and two others wounded in an air strike in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib, the defence ministry said on Thursday. 

U.N.-hosted talks between the warring sides in Libya that were supposed to start on Wednesday were clouded in uncertainty after participants said they were staying away.

Local authorities in embattled northwestern Syria on Wednesday suspended school in Idlib city and surrounding areas a day after reported strikes on educational facilities.

Israeli police said they were investigating Wednesday after vandals damaged cars and daubed racist graffiti in a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, in a suspected "price tag" attack.

Israel's plan to build new settler homes in a particularly sensitive area of the occupied West Bank would destroy the prospect of a two-state solution, Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki said Wednesday.

The plan to build 3,500 new homes in an area known as E1 "is so dangerous, more dangerous than any other settlement plans in the West Bank," al-Maliki told reporters on the sidelines of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Egypt was to hold a military funeral Wednesday for former president Hosni Mubarak, whose three decades of strong-arm rule ended in the Arab Spring protests of 2011.