A fake video that ricocheted across the internet claiming tensions between France and the United Arab Emirates after Telegram CEO Pavel Durov's detention in Paris likely came from Russia, an analysis by The Associated Press shows, despite Moscow's efforts to maintain crucial ties to the UAE.

It remains unclear why Russian operatives would choose to publish such a video falsely claiming the Emirates halted a French arms sale, which appears to be the first noticeable effort by Moscow to target the UAE with a disinformation campaign. The Emirates remains one of the few locations to still have direct flights to Moscow, while Russian money has flooded into Dubai's booming real estate market since President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

An elite Israeli army unit conducted a "highly unusual raid" in Syria earlier this week and destroyed an underground precision missile factory that Israel and the U.S. claim was built by Iran, three sources briefed on the operation told U.S. news portal Axios.

The World Health Organization says medical teams in Gaza are wrapping up the final day of an emergency polio vaccination campaign following the discovery of the territory’s first-known case of the illness in more than 25 years.

Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the U.N. health agency’s representative, told reporters in a news conference from Gaza that the health workers had reached more than an estimated 552,000 children under the age of 5. They used a new oral polio vaccine targeting the specific type of polio seen in Gaza, which is a mutated strain that originated in an older oral vaccine.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the United States will continue to urge Israel to do more to spare humanitarian sites in the Gaza Strip after an Israeli airstrike on a U.N. school complex sheltering displaced Palestinians killed six U.N. staffers.

When asked on Thursday at a news conference in the Polish capital about Israel’s bombing of the school complex in central Gaza the day before, Blinken told reporters that “we need to see humanitarian sites protected.”

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian arrived Thursday in Iraqi Kurdistan to meet the autonomous region's leaders, on the second day of a visit aimed at deepening ties with the neighboring country.

It is Pezeshkian's first foreign trip abroad since he took office in July.

A war monitor said an Israeli strike Thursday in the Syrian-controlled Golan Heights killed two people working with Lebanon's Hezbollah, days after major raids elsewhere in the country.

Syria's official news agency SANA reported that "two citizens were martyred due to an Israeli drone attack that targeted a civilian vehicle with a missile" on the Damascus-Quneitra road, in Quneitra province.

Israel bombed a school housing displaced Palestinians in central Gaza, which rescuers said killed 18 people, including U.N. staffers, while the Israeli army said it hit a Hamas control center.

The Al-Jawni school in Nuseirat had already been bombed several times over the course of the 11-month war in Gaza.

For her 26th birthday in July, human rights activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi gathered friends for a bonfire at one of her favorite places, a sandy beach in Seattle where green-and-white ferries cruise across the dark, flat water and osprey fish overhead.

On Wednesday night, hundreds of people traveled to the same beach in grief, love and anger to mourn her. Eygi was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers last Friday in the occupied West Bank, where she had gone to protest and bear witness to Palestinian suffering.

Hamas released the first public statement from Yahya Sinwar since he was appointed its overall leader in August.

In the written statement late Tuesday, Sinwar congratulated Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on his reelection and thanked the country for its support for the Palestinian cause. Algeria, the Arab representative on the United Nations Security Council, circulated a draft resolution in May demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and a halt to Israel’s military operation in the southern city of Rafah.

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said that “this has been a very painful and difficult morning for the people of Israel” because of an attack in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and a helicopter crash in Gaza.

Speaking in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, Herzog described Wednesday's attack as a “horrific, criminal terror attack” and expressed “sorrow for the pain it has inflicted.” He did not elaborate but was apparently referring to the incident when a fuel tanker crashed into a West Bank bus stop, seriously injuring one person. Israeli officials said it was an attack.