Iran set preconditions on Saturday for a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, including compensation for war damages, complicating a potential deal to open the waterway essential to the world economy.

Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels said on Sunday they had struck an oil facility on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast after the Gulf kingdom said it had extinguished a fire at the site.

Palestinian Christians call themselves "living stones" and say they have lived continuously in the Holy Land for the last 2,000 years. Maybe not for much longer, believes Reverend Mitri Raheb.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed a defense agreement on Friday that would treat an attack on one as an attack on all three, Turkish and Pakistani officials said, solidifying cooperation between the three regional powers at a time of growing security concerns.

The agreement was signed in the Saudi holy city of Mecca during a meeting between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Syria's Health Ministry said Friday that 14 people were wounded, three of them critically, but that there were no fatalities in the explosion of a minivan taxi a day earlier in a Damascus suburb.

The Health Ministry had said Thursday night that two people were killed in the blast. In a statement Friday, it said the fatalities had been incorrectly recorded based on three severed limbs that were pulled from the wreckage.

A Houthi drone attack on Yemen's Marib province killed three members of government forces on Friday and wounded another four, a Yemeni military source told AFP.

"Three killed and four wounded in a preliminary toll from the Houthi drone attack on the Harib area, in the south of Marib," the source said, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Yemen's Houthis late Thursday wounded 11 people in an attack on southern Saudi Arabia, a Riyadh-led coalition said, the highest toll in the kingdom from an attack by the rebels in years.

The attacks come as Yemen is increasingly drawn into the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, with the rebels stepping up attacks against both Yemen government forces and neighboring Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally and supporter of the internationally recognized Yemeni government.

To reach a deal with Iran that reopens the economically vital Strait of Hormuz, President Donald Trump may need to do something out of character — compromise.

Any concession would be tough for the Republican president, who has insisted there is no truth to his sagging poll numbers, the sluggish economy and the U.S. military's dwindling stockpiles of key weapons following the Iran war he launched with Israel more than five months ago.

Houthi rebel attacks Thursday in central and eastern Yemen killed at least 30 government troops and wounded at least 50 others, Yemeni government officials said.

The assaults hit camps for forces of the internationally recognized government in the provinces of Marib and Hadhramaut, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Iran intensified its threats towards its Gulf neighbors last week, conveying messages that it would "black out" the entire region if the United States struck its power plants and rattling off a list of specific targets, two officials told AFP.

The warning followed threats by U.S. President Donald Trump of a massive attack against Iran, which he later walked back over the weekend citing requests from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar and hope for a breakthrough in talks.