Saudi Arabia has said it had rescued two young American women from Yemen in a joint special operations mission with the United States.

The Saudi defense ministry said the women, both Yemeni-American teenagers, were being held by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa after having been taken captive while visiting their grandmother.

The Kremlin said Friday that fighters from Syria and the Middle East would be allowed to fight for Russia in Ukraine, after President Vladimir Putin backed a plan to send volunteers to battle there.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russia's defense minister had said that "most of those who want and who asked (to fight) are citizens of Middle East countries and Syrians".

Israel's parliament has renewed a temporary law dating back to 2003 that bars Israeli citizens from extending citizenship or even residency to Palestinian spouses from the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Israel says the law, which was first enacted during a Palestinian uprising, is needed for security. Critics view it as a racist measure aimed at maintaining the country's Jewish majority. The law is aimed at Palestinians and does not apply to Jewish settlers in the West Bank as they already have Israeli citizenship.

Besieging cities, shelling civilian infrastructure and arranging "safe corridors": the tactics used by Russia in its war on Ukraine mirror those it tested and fine-tuned to drain resistance in Syria's conflict.

But unlike its Syria play book, the challenge Russia faces from a Western-backed army in Ukraine dwarfs that of Syrian rebels who lacked military might or broad international backing, analysts said.

The growth of Israel's West Bank settler population accelerated last year, according to figures released by a pro-settler group on Thursday, despite renewed American pressure to rein in construction on occupied territory that the Palestinians want for a future state.

The figures show that a settlement surge initiated when President Donald Trump was in office shows no sign of slowing down. Trump provided unprecedented support for Israel's claims to land seized in war, reversing decades of U.S. policy.

Israel's president on Thursday ended his landmark trip to Turkey with a visit to the Jewish community in Istanbul, a day after the two countries hailed a new era in relations.

Isaac Herzog held talks in Ankara on Wednesday with Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the first visit by an Israeli president since 2007.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has exposed a once unthinkable divergence between Washington and key Middle East allies Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the oil giants that are increasingly independent on the international stage.

The wealthy Gulf nations, which host U.S. forces and have dependably backed Washington for decades, have notably refrained from supporting President Joe Biden's administration as it tries to choke Moscow's lifelines, from energy to diplomacy.

Israeli army chief Aviv Kohavi arrived Wednesday in Bahrain for a historic first visit by an Israeli army commander to the tiny Gulf kingdom, the Israeli army said.

He was welcomed by Chief of Staff of the Bahraini Defense Force, Lieutenant General Theyab Bin Saqer al-Noaimi.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog travels to Turkey on Wednesday, becoming the first Israeli leader to visit in 14 years, as the two countries move to turn a new page in their troubled relationship.

Herzog is scheduled to hold talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara before traveling to Istanbul for meetings with Turkey's Jewish community there.

Air defense systems have been front and center at Saudi Arabia's first defense show as drone and missile attacks increase in the energy-rich Gulf.

Deadly strikes on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates claimed by Yemeni rebels have been the talk of shows held in the two countries in recent weeks.