An Israeli airstrike targeted suspected Hezbollah posts in Syria's coastal Tartus province on Saturday morning, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Protesters have stormed Libya's parliament in the eastern city of Tobruk and set parts of it ablaze, venting their anger at deteriorating living conditions and months of political deadlock.

Tunisian President Kais Saied on Friday unveiled a new draft constitution that would bestow broad powers to the president and curtail the authority of the prime minister and parliament.

A referendum on the constitution is scheduled for July 25, exactly to the day when a year earlier Saied suspended parliament and seized power. He said the move was necessary to "save the country" from political and economic crisis, prompting strong criticism from the opposition, which accuses him of slide toward totalitarianism.

Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip systematically torture critics in detention, a practice that could amount to crimes against humanity, an international rights group said Friday.

Human Rights Watch called in its report for donor countries to cut off funding to Palestinian security forces that commit such crimes and urged the International Criminal Court to investigate.

After two days of U.N.-mediated talks in Geneva, two senior Libyan officials from the country's rival camps failed to reach an agreement on a constitutional framework for national elections, the United Nations envoy to Libya said.

According to Stephanie Williams, the U.N. special adviser on Libya, the influential speaker of the country's east-based parliament, Aguila Saleh, and Khaled al-Meshri, head of the government's Supreme Council of State, based in the west in the capital of Tripoli, could not reach an agreement on the eligibility criteria for presidential nominees.

Pro-government television presenters and state newspapers in Egypt are at the forefront of a "campaign against journalism", Reporters Without Borders (RSF) charged Thursday.

The media watchdog, in a report entitled "The Puppets of President" Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, said Egyptian journalists were operating in an "unsustainable working environment", faced with "campaigns of hatred, denigration and defamation".

Some in Israel dismissed Yair Lapid as just another media star when the former news anchor, ad pitchman and soap actor launched his bid for political power a decade ago.

But the 58-year-old, who is set to become the Jewish state's next prime minister at midnight, has a history of surpassing expectation during a political career which, even by Israeli standards, has been turbulent.

Young musicians, dancers, actors and comedians from across the Arab world took to the stage in Tunisia to express their visions of freedom, more than a decade after the Arab Spring uprisings.

The show, performed under the stars at a seaside theatre in the resort of Hammamet and broadcast across the region, featured winners of an online video competition to complete the phrase: "I will only be free when..."

Israeli lawmakers dissolved parliament on Thursday, forcing the country's fifth election in less than four years, with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid set to take over as caretaker prime minister at midnight.

The final dissolution bill, which passed with 92 votes in favor none against, ends the year-long premiership of Naftali Bennett, who led an eight-party coalition that was backed by an Arab party, a first in Israeli history.

Palestinian gunmen opened fire at Jewish worshipers on Thursday at a flashpoint holy site in the occupied West Bank, wounding an Israeli military officer and two civilians, the Israeli army said.

The Palestinian official news agency Wafa said a Palestinian teenager was wounded by live fire and 16 others by rubber bullets in clashes with Israeli forces at the site near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, a frequent point of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.