Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a "strategic partnership" with Syria on Friday during talks with President Bashar al-Assad, who is seeking financial support to help rebuild his devastated country.

The leaders met on the eve of the Asian Games opening ceremony, which Assad will attend as part of his first visit to China since 2004.

The head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, has visited Syria to oversee a joint military drill, media outlets in the Islamic republic said.

Qaani, appointed Quds Force commander after a U.S. drone strike on Baghdad killed its revered leader Qasem Soleimani in 2020, met senior Syrian officials in Damascus, Tasnim news agency reported late Thursday.

The Israeli military said tanks struck two structures inside a demilitarized zone in Syria, claiming the buildings violated a half-century-old cease-fire agreement between the two countries.

The structures, it said, were being used by the Syrian military, amounting to what the army called a "clear violation" of the 1974 cease-fire. The Israeli army did not provide any information on what the structures were used for or when they were built.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has said there could be no peace in the Middle East without a two-state solution, sending a warning as Saudi Arabia considers recognizing Israel.

"Those who think that peace can prevail in the Middle East without the Palestinian people enjoying their full, legitimate national rights would be mistaken," Abbas told the U.N. General Assembly.

Israeli authorities are trying to figure out how a heavily armored, but unarmed, tank was stolen from a military training zone after finding it discarded in a junkyard.

The Israeli Merkava 2 tank disappeared from a training zone in northern Israel near the coastal city of Haifa, the Israeli army said Wednesday. The training zone is closed to the public when in use, but is otherwise accessible to passersby.

Syrian President Bashar Assad arrived in China on Thursday on his first visit to the country since the start of Syria's 12-year conflict during which Beijing has been one of his main backers.

China's foreign ministry said Assad would attend the opening ceremony of the Asian Games, an international sports event beginning Saturday in the eastern city of Hangzhou.

Saudi Arabia and Israel have voiced optimism that they were moving closer to a historic normalization of ties as Iran -- their common foe -- accused the kingdom of betraying the Palestinians through the U.S.-led effort.

U.S. President Joe Biden is hoping to transform the Middle East -- and score an election-year diplomatic victory -- by securing recognition of the Jewish state by Saudi Arabia, the guardian of Islam's two holiest sites.

Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu have met to smooth over months of tension, eyeing a deal to normalize Israel's ties with Saudi Arabia despite U.S. concerns over the state of Israeli democracy.

Biden said the pair had a "candid, constructive conversation" in New York, their first talks since the Israeli prime minister was reelected in December at the head of a hard-right government.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in New York Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said "ties between the two countries were improving".

After more than a decade of tensions, relations have improved with recent high-level visits, including that of Israeli President Isaac Herzog to Ankara last year.

Syria's President Bashar Assad will head to China later this week in his first visit to Beijing since the start of his country's 12-year conflict during which China has been one of his main backers, his office said Tuesday.

China has been expanding its reach in the Middle East after mediating a deal in March between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and it continues to support Assad in the Syrian conflict, which has killed half a million people and left large parts of the nation in ruins.