The U.N. chief has expressed hope that Syria's return to the Arab League and its engagement with regional powers could spur progress in resolving the 13-year Syrian civil war, as Damascus faced pressure to be transparent about chemical weapons.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he believes the region "has a vital role to play in the search for settlement of the conflict," which began with an uprising against President Bashar Assad's rule in 2011 that was met with a violent crackdown. The civil war has killed nearly a half million people, and displaced half the country's pre-war population of 23 million.

The Arab League's decision to re-admit Syria after shunning it for 12 years was a significant symbolic victory for Damascus, part of a larger regional realignment and an indication of the United States' waning role, analysts say.

But it may not immediately bring the reconstruction dollars that Syrian President Bashar Assad is hoping for. Nor is it likely to bring the changes Syria's neighbors want, such as an agreement on refugee returns and moves to reduce drug trafficking.

The Israeli military has systematically evaded accountability in the deaths of 20 journalists over the past two decades, launching slow and opaque investigations that have never resulted in prosecution or punishment, an international press-freedom group said in a report Tuesday.

The Committee to Protect Journalists issued its report ahead of the one-year anniversary of the death of Shireen Abu Akleh — a Palestinian-American journalist with the Al Jazeera satellite channel who was killed while covering an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank.

For Nidal Jumaa, a Syrian from Aleppo, life in Turkey is tough. He works part-time at a furniture workshop and collects plastics and cardboard from trash cans that he sells for recycling, but can hardly afford the rent for his run-down house in a low-income neighborhood of Ankara.

Despite the hardship, the 31-year-old would prefer to remain in Turkey than return to Syria where he no longer has a house or a job. Most of all, he worries that his 2-year-old son, Hikmat, who requires regular medical supervision following two surgeries, wouldn't be able to receive the treatment he needs back home.

There was no mourning tent for 23-year-old Palestinian Zuhair al-Ghaleeth. There were no banners with his portrait, no chants celebrating his martyrdom.

Instead, a bulldozer dropped his bullet-riddled body into an unmarked grave, witnesses said.

Israel killed three senior commanders of the militant Islamic Jihad group in targeted airstrikes early Tuesday, the military said. Palestinian health officials said 13 people were killed in all, including the commanders, their wives, several of their children and others nearby.

The attacks in densely populated residential areas set the stage for a new round of heavy fighting. They hit the top floor of an apartment building in Gaza City and a house in the southern town of Rafah. The Palestinian Health Ministry said 20 people were injured, and that ambulances were continuing to evacuate people from the targeted areas.

Lebanon would likely benefit from an end to Saudi-Iranian rivalry, and should the rapprochement solidify it could spell disaster for Israel, The Guardian newspaper said.

"Saudi and Iranian-backed factions have not been able to agree on a replacement (to former president Michel Aoun) despite successive round of voting," the British daily said, as Saudi Arabia refuses to back Hezbollah and Amal's candidate Suleiman Franjieh.

US national security advisor Jake Sullivan discussed efforts to end Yemen's eight-year war during a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the White House said in a statement.

The meeting Sunday night in Saudi Arabia came during a tense period for US-Saudi ties, marred by disputes over human rights issues and oil production.

Ceasefire talks in Saudi Arabia between Sudan's warring generals have yielded "no major progress" so far, a Saudi official told AFP on Monday, dampening hopes for a quick end to the fighting.

Sudan's army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his deputy turned rival Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who heads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), sent representatives to the Red Sea coastal city of Jeddah on Saturday for meetings that Washington and Riyadh have described as "pre-negotiation talks".

An air strike killed a major drug smuggler and his family in southern Syria Monday, a war monitor said, attributing the strike to Jordan though Amman did not immediately confirm.

Drug dealer "Marai al-Ramthan, his wife and six children were killed in a Jordanian air force strike" in the eastern countryside of the Sweida province, near the Syrian-Jordanian border, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.