Angry protesters raided the local offices of the ruling Baath party in a southern Syrian province Wednesday, as protests intensified against the country's government during a severe economic and financial crisis battering the war-torn country.

Opposition activists said protesters also partially blocked a highway that links the Druze-majority Sweida province to the capital Damascus in anti-government rallies that broke out Tuesday night.

Shelling hit the hometown of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the coastal province of Latakia on Wednesday, wounding a civilian, state media said, the second such attack in two months.

"Five shells were fired by terrorist groups deployed in the northern countryside on agricultural lands in the Qardaha area, wounding a citizen," the official news agency SANA said, quoting a police source.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has killed over 200 Palestinians and nearly 30 Israelis so far this year – already surpassing last year's annual figures and the highest number since 2005, the U.N. Mideast envoy said Monday.

Tor Wennesland told the U.N. Security Council that the upswing in violence is being fueled by growing despair about the future, with the Palestinians still seeking an independent state.

Iran's Defense Ministry unveiled a drone on Tuesday resembling America's armed MQ-9 Reaper, claiming that the aircraft is capable of staying airborne for 24 hours and has the range to reach the country's archenemy Israel.

Iran's state-run IRNA news agency published a photograph of the drone, called the Mohajer-10, on display at a conference marking Defense Industry Day with what appeared to be smoke-machine fog underneath it.

One summer night a decade ago, the al-Shami family was woken up by a roaring sound or rockets but it wasn't followed by the usual explosions. Instead, the family members started having difficulty breathing.

Ghiad al-Shami, 26, remembers how everyone tried to run to the rooftop of their apartment building in eastern Ghouta, a Damascus suburb that at the time was held by opposition fighters trying to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The Ethiopian government said Tuesday it will investigate a report by a human rights group of killings of hundreds its nationals at the Yemen-Saudi border.

Ethiopia's Foreign Ministry said the investigation will be done "in tandem with the Saudi authorities."

Israeli troops killed a Palestinian teenager near the West Bank city of Jenin on Tuesday, the Palestinian health ministry said, as violence surged in the occupied territory.

Meanwhile, in the southern West Bank, troops made two arrests in the deadly Monday shooting of a settler near the city of Hebron.

Two fighters backing the Syrian government were killed late Monday in Israeli airstrikes on sites near Damascus, an NGO said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "two pro-regime fighters were killed in Israeli strikes against military positions southwest and southeast of the capital".

A French military trainer was killed in Iraq on Sunday during an exercise, the French presidency said.

Named as Nicolas Latourte, the soldier "lost his life while accomplishing his mission," Emmanuel Macron's office wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

An Israeli woman was shot dead and another man wounded in a suspected shooting attack Monday near the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, medics and the army said.

The incident comes two days after an Israeli father and son were gunned down at a car wash in the town of Huwara, also in the West Bank, amid rising violence in the territory.