Arab foreign ministers meeting in Amman to discuss Syria's long-running conflict have agreed the return of Syrian refugees was a "top priority", according to a communique released after the talks.

The talks in Jordan's capital brought together foreign ministers from Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Egypt, in the latest regional engagement with the long isolated government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Jordan's top diplomat has said that regional talks with Syria are a step in the right direction to end a decade of the war-torn country's political isolation and bring Damascus back into the Arab fold.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi's remarks came as Jordan hosted a meeting of envoys from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt and Syria. Before the meeting kicked off, Safadi met one-on-one with his Syrian counterpart, Faisal Mekdad.

Israeli airstrikes targeted the international airport in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo early Tuesday, killing one Syrian soldier and putting the airport out of commission, state media said.

Syria's state news agency SANA, citing a military official, said two civilians and five other Syrian soldiers were wounded, and that Israel had launched airstrikes on other unnamed targets around Aleppo.

A high-profile Palestinian prisoner died in Israeli custody on Tuesday after a nearly three-month hunger strike, Israel's prison service announced, at a time of already soaring tensions between Israel and the Palestinians.

Khader Adnan, a leader in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group, is the first Palestinian prisoner to die since Palestinian inmates began staging protracted hunger strikes about a decade ago. His death raises the potential for renewed violence between Israel and Palestinian militant groups as violence surges in the West Bank.

Turkish forces have killed the leader of the Islamic State group during an operation in Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said late Sunday.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan told TRT Turk television in an interview that the IS leader, code-named Abu Hussein al-Qurayshi, was killed in a strike conducted on Saturday.

Tunisian President Kais Saied has preached freedom of thought at a book fair, shortly before authorities confiscated a book comparing him to Frankenstein, its author and publisher said.

Three civilians were wounded Saturday in Israeli air strikes near the Syrian city of Homs, Syrian state media reported, with a war monitor saying a Hezbollah munitions depot was hit.

During more than a decade of war in Syria, Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its territory, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters as well as Syrian army positions.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi will visit Damascus "in the near future," on the first such trip to Syria since the country's civil war began, Iran's foreign minister said.

Private armed guards aboard a famous yacht once owned by the late Welsh actor Richard Burton opened fire on Yemeni Coast Guard members Friday after mistaking them for pirates, sparking a gunfight in the Gulf of Aden, authorities said.

The incident off Yemen shows the danger faced by both shippers and security forces in the waters off the Arab world's poorest country, even as it remains crucial for global commerce.

Israeli security forces said they shot and killed a suspected Palestinian assailant in the West Bank on Thursday, stirring tensions in the occupied territory at a time of unusually high violence.

The Israeli military said it received reports that a Palestinian had tried to carry out a car-ramming attack near the large West Bank settlement of Ariel. Israeli soldiers opened fire at the suspected assailant after they realized he was wielding a knife, the military added. The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the man killed as 39-year-old Ahmed Taha from the northern Palestinian village of Salfit. No other casualties were reported.