The death toll in coordinated Islamic State group attacks in Syria's Sweida neared 250 on Thursday, the Druze-majority province's heaviest loss of life of the seven-year civil war.

Yemen's Huthi rebels have attacked a Saudi oil tanker in the Red Sea, causing "minor damage" to the vessel, the Saudi-led coalition said on Wednesday.

His face is everywhere, on every public square, market and street corner in Damascus, as well as on the roads and highways leading to the Syrian capital.

Buoyed by successive military advances over the past year and having completely secured Damascus — President Bashar Assad's seat of power — and the surrounding suburbs for the first time in years, the government is openly boasting about its victories.

At least 40 people including civilians were killed in a string of Islamic State group suicide attacks against a regime-held area of southern Syria, a war monitor said Wednesday.

The United States is looking to "build some momentum" towards resolving the Gulf crisis ahead of a possible summit in the autumn, a U.S. diplomat said Tuesday.

Chancellor Angela Merkel met Tuesday in Berlin with Russia's army chief of staff Valery Gerasimov and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov over the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, Berlin and Moscow said Tuesday.

Two people were killed Tuesday and six, including a security commander loyal to Yemen's government, wounded in a suicide attack in Aden, a security source said.

Israel partially reopened its only goods crossing with the Gaza Strip on Tuesday after a two-week closure prompted by border tensions and incendiary kites sparked fears of a severe fuel shortage in the blockaded Palestinian enclave.

A Palestinian wounded in May by Israeli fire during deadly clashes on the Gaza border has died of his injuries, the health ministry in the Palestinian enclave said on Tuesday.

Israel shot down a Syrian fighter jet with surface-to-air missiles Tuesday after the plane infiltrated airspace it controls, the military said, in a rare incident that could provoke tensions.