After paying nearly $100,000 in ransoms to free 10 family members, Khaled Taalou, a member of Iraq's Yazidi minority, is still working to free other missing relatives kidnapped by Islamic State group fighters.

Human Rights Watch on Thursday accused Turkish border guards of shooting, torturing and using excessive force against Syrians seeking to flee their war-racked country into neighboring Turkey.

It urged Ankara to investigate border guards, hold those responsible for "grave human rights violations, including unlawful killings" to account, and end "longstanding impunity for these abuses".

A young man wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with "Dior," women clutching babies wrapped in blankets, children bundled in winter coats. All gingerly stepped from rickety boats into the sturdy craft of the Tunisian Maritime National Guard — and away from their dreams of life in Europe.

Cold, wet and heartbroken, they are among hundreds caught daily in overnight sweeps for migrant boats on the Mediterranean Sea.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption trial has resumed after a month-long break, refocusing the spotlight on the long-serving leader's legal woes after a wave of protests over his government's plan to overhaul Israel's judiciary.

Netanyahu is charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate scandals involving powerful media moguls and wealthy associates. He denies wrongdoing.

Syria has condemned the European Union's new sanctions on Damascus over making and trafficking an amphetamine saying the move was based on lies.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry statement came a day after the EU imposed sanctions on several Syrians, including members of President Bashar Assad's family, blaming them for the production and trafficking of narcotics, notably the amphetamine Captagon.

Syrians living on opposite sides of the largely frozen battle lines dividing their country are watching the accelerating normalization of ties between the government of Bashar Assad and Syria's neighbors through starkly different lenses.

In government-held Syria, residents struggling with ballooning inflation, fuel and electricity shortages hope the rapprochement will bring more trade and investment and ease a crippling economic crisis.

Russia's defense minister has hosted his counterparts from Iran, Syria and Turkey on Tuesday for talks that were part of the Kremlin's efforts to help broker a rapprochement between the Turkish and Syrian governments.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the talks focused on "practical steps to strengthen security in the Syrian Arab Republic and to normalize Syrian-Turkish relations."

Saudi Arabia has announced the seizure of more than 12 million amphetamine pills hidden in a shipment of pomegranate fruit, amid a crackdown on the widely used captagon drug.

Authorities thwarted "an attempt to smuggle 12,729,000 tablets of amphetamine" concealed in the shipment passing through the Jeddah port, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

A ship carrying 1,687 civilians from more than 50 countries fleeing violence in Sudan docked in Saudi Arabia Wednesday, the foreign ministry said, the largest evacuation effort by the Gulf kingdom so far.

Saudi Arabia has received several rounds of evacuees by air and sea since fighting broke out in Africa's third-biggest country on April 15, part of what analysts describe as an effort to position itself as a major player in responding to regional crises.

Israel's foreign minister has called on Jordan to take action to bring to justice a Jordanian lawmaker who was arrested in Israel for allegedly trying to smuggle what appears to have been dozens of guns into the West Bank.

Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said Israel was still investigating the incident, in which the legislator, Imad Al-Adwan, is accused of attempting to bring in weapons and gold illegally. Cohen called it an "irresponsible, criminal act" that cannot go unpunished