Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu informed the country's president Monday he could not form a new government following deadlocked September elections, making way for his opponent Benny Gantz to try.

President Donald Trump said Monday a small number of U.S. troops remain in Syria, some near the border with Jordan and others deployed to secure oil fields.

Iran on Monday denounced as "unacceptable" any move by Turkey to establish military bases in Syria, saying such a step would face opposition from the Islamic republic and other countries.

While President Donald Trump insists he's bringing home Americans from "endless wars" in the Mideast, his Pentagon chief says all U.S. troops leaving Syria will go to western Iraq and the American military will continue operations against the Islamic State group.

They aren't coming home and the United States isn't leaving the turbulent Middle East, according to current plans outlined by U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper before he arrived in Afghanistan on Sunday. The fight in Syria against IS, once spearheaded by American allied Syrian Kurds who have been cast aside by Trump, will be undertaken by U.S. forces, possibly from neighboring Iraq.

Influential Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr has given his supporters the green light to resume anti-government protests, after the movement was interrupted following a deadly crackdown.

A convoy carrying wounded and fighters from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces left the Turkish-besieged Syrian border town of Ras al-Ain on Sunday, an AFP reporter and a war monitor said.

Air strikes by Turkey and mortar fire by its proxies killed nine more civilians near a flashpoint town in northeastern Syria, bringing Friday's civilian death toll to 14, a monitor said.

Turkey on Saturday denied Kurdish forces' claim that Ankara is blocking their pullout from a proposed safe zone along the border under a US-brokered agreement.

An Iraqi man has been charged in Australia with people trafficking in connection with the drowning deaths of more than 350 asylum seekers in 2001, police said Saturday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced hope Friday that a U.S.-brokered ceasefire will hold between Turkey and Syria's Kurds as he discussed the turbulent region with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.