Yemen's Huthi rebels have made major advances on Marib city, the government's final holdout in the country's north, after hours of clashes, government military sources said on Friday.

Intensive care beds for coronavirus patients in Syria's capital Damascus were full Thursday, a health ministry official said, in the first such announcement since the start of the pandemic.

A shallow 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck off the Algerian coast on Thursday, the US Geological Survey said.

The UAE will not get involved in Israeli electioneering, an Emirati official said Wednesday, in pointed comments amid new reports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is planning to visit ahead of elections next week.

Israel and the UAE established ties last year in a diplomatic coup for Netanyahu brokered by his staunch ally, former US president Donald Trump. 

Yemen's Huthis expressed "deep regret" Wednesday over the deaths of dozens of migrants in a fire which Human Rights Watch said started when the rebels fired projectiles into a detention centre.

Egyptian troops have demolished more than 12,300 buildings in the Sinai Peninsula since 2013 in a campaign of forced evictions that likely amount to "war crimes", Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

Gunmen killed 21 Syrian soldiers in an ambush in the southern province of Daraa on Tuesday, a Britain-based war monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 21 "members of the Fourth Armored Division and the regime's intelligence units were killed in an ambush by militants."

Israel's Naftali Bennett is a multi-millionaire former high-tech entrepreneur who made a name in politics with hardline religious-nationalist rhetoric and who could be the kingmaker following Israel's election next week.

Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that "unidentified projectiles" launched by Yemen's Huthi rebels caused a March 7 blaze that killed dozens of migrants at a holding facility in the capital. 

Palestinian rival factions Fatah and Hamas will hold a new round of talks Tuesday in the Egyptian capital to push on with plans for forthcoming elections.