Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denied that an air raid in northwest Iraq earlier this week, in which eight people died, had targeted a clinic, insisting the facility housed members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which Ankara considers a terrorist organization.

Concern is mounting over freedoms in Tunisia as President Kais Saied presses ahead with a "purge" that has seen politicians, judges and businessmen arrested or banned from travel, activists say.

Israeli warplanes bombed Gaza after clashes between its troops and Palestinian protesters left dozens injured, including an Israeli border policeman and a 13-year-old Palestinian boy who were both critically wounded.

Afghanistan's president, driven out by the Taliban, is the latest leader on the run to turn up in the United Arab Emirates. Others who found refuge here include Spain's disgraced former king and two Thai prime ministers.

In nearby Qatar, meanwhile, the Taliban's political leaders have been given refuge for years.

Israel has announced a "new mechanism" for Qatari humanitarian funds to reach Gaza, with money transferred directly to individuals by the United Nations, ending a stalemate over the urgently needed aid. 

Israel has made third booster shots against COVID-19 available to people age 40 and older in an effort to fight a surge of the delta variant.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who is 49, got his jab on Friday. He pledged to share "all the data, all the information, all the insights" of the effort. Israel has been a leader in the fight against the deadly coronavirus and last month became the first country to offer booster shots. The U.S. has approved, but not yet made available, boosters for older Americans as well.

Syria regime shelling has killed eight children and a woman in the country's last major rebel bastion of Idlib in just two days, a war monitor said Friday.

Artillery fire early Friday morning on the village of Kansafra in the northwestern stronghold killed four children from the same family, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Israeli warplanes overflew Lebanon at low altitude on Thursday night and missiles were reportedly seen crossing the Lebanese airspace during an airstrike on the suburbs of the Syrian regions of Damascus and Homs.

The sounds of the fighter jets and missiles sparked panic in the Lebanese capital and other Lebanese regions.

The United Arab Emirates has said that it is hosting former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani "on humanitarian grounds", after he fled his country amid a Taliban takeover.

The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) alliance, led by al-Qaida's former Syria affiliate, has welcomed the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, saying it hoped Syria's jihadists would also be victorious.