Israel's figurehead president arrived in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday in the first official visit by the country's head of state, the latest sign of deepening ties between the two nations as tensions rise in the region.

The UAE and Israel normalized relations in the fall of 2020, part of a series of U.S.-brokered diplomatic deals between Israel and Arab states that had long avoided formal relations with Israel over its decades-old conflict with the Palestinians.

Iran's foreign ministry on Saturday condemned a rocket attack against Baghdad airport that took place the previous day as an act that seeks to "destabilize" Iraq.

Kurdish-led forces in northeast Syria on Friday found the bodies of 18 fellow fighters inside a prison that the Islamic State group attacked last week, a war monitor reported.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said Wednesday that they had recaptured the sprawling complex in the city of Hasakeh following a January 20 IS jailbreak attempt that sparked days of clashes inside the facility and in surrounding areas.

The attack by Islamic State militants on a Syrian prison holding around 3,000 of its fighters and about 700 children is a predictable tragedy spotlighting the need for urgent international action to deal with those allegedly linked to the extremist group in prisons and camps in the country's northeast, the U.N. counter-terrorism chief said.

Undersecretary-General Vladimir Voronkov told the U.N. Security Council that the Islamic State group "has been highlighting and calling for jail breaks," and "there have been previous instances in Syria and elsewhere in the world."

At least three rockets struck near Baghdad's international airport and an adjacent military base that hosts U.S. and other coalition advisors on Friday, damaging an abandoned commercial plane but causing no casualties, Iraqi officials said.

The rockets struck in the early morning hours, and landed between the civilian and military areas of the airport, two security officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the press.

The Saud Arabia-led coalition at war in Yemen has announced it is investigating an airstrike on a detention facility there that killed dozens of people.

The strike last week on the prison in the north of the country was one of the deadliest single attacks in the yearslong war between the coalition and the Houthi rebels. It came as hostilities have increased in recent weeks.

An autopsy has found that a 78-year-old Palestinian man who was pronounced dead shortly after being detained by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank died of a heart attack caused by "external violence."

The autopsy, undertaken by three Palestinian doctors, confirmed that Omar Asaad, who has U.S. citizenship, suffered from underlying health conditions. But it also found bruises on his head, redness on his wrists from being bound, and bleeding in his eyelids from being tightly blindfolded.

A long-abandoned fuel tanker off the coast of war-torn Yemen poses a "grave threat" to millions of the impoverished country's residents, potentially exacerbating its humanitarian crisis, Greenpeace warned on Thursday. 

Kurdish-led forces on Thursday found dozens of jihadists holed up in a Syrian prison as they carried out mop-up operations after recapturing the facility from Islamic State group jihadists.

Forces of Yemen's internationally recognized government and their Emirati-backed allies have swept through a strategic province, forcing Houthi rebels out of its second largest district, officials said.

The development in Marib province is another setback for the Iran-backed Houthis, who for a year attempted to take control of the oil-rich province. Their offensive crumbled when the United Arab Emirates-backed Giants Brigades helped reclaim the nearby Shabwa province earlier this month before advancing in Marib under air cover from the Saudi-led coalition.