The United States military said Friday that coalition forces "engaged and destroyed" two drones in Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen after the Iran-backed rebels launched a ballistic.

U.S.-led coalition forces had also shot down Thursday an anti-ship missile launched by the Houthis.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday told top U.S. diplomat Antony Blinken that the world's two biggest economies should be "partners, not rivals", adding that there were a "number of issues" to be resolved in their relations.

"The two countries should be partners, not rivals," Xi said, according to state broadcaster CCTV, adding: "There are still a number of issues that need to be resolved, and there is still room for further efforts."

Palestinians mourned people killed in Israeli bombardment of Rafah, the crowded southern Gaza city where Israel says it is advancing plans for a ground invasion.

Global concern has mounted over the looming operation against Hamas militants in Rafah, where much of Gaza's population has sought refuge from more than six months of war.

The leaders of the United States, Britain, France and more than a dozen other countries called in a joint statement Thursday for Hamas to release the scores of hostages it is holding, the White House said.

"We call for the immediate release of all hostages held by Hamas in Gaza for over 200 days. They include our own citizens," the leaders said.

The world must agree this year on how to raise billions of dollars to help poorer countries adapt to global warming, the president of the U.N. climate talks said Thursday.

Mukhtar Babayev offered little concrete detail about how to broker this new deal but said climate finance would be a "pillar" of the COP29 summit in the petro-state of Azerbaijan in November.

Ukrainian and Russian forces exchanged drone and artillery fire on Thursday, leaving at least seven dead, regional officials on both sides of the frontline announced.

The uptick in civilian deaths came as Russian forces are pressing in hard in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, ahead of events in Moscow on May 9, hailing the Soviet Union's victory in World War II.

Hezbollah denied on Thursday an Israeli claim that it had killed half of the Iran-backed Lebanese group's commanders in the south of the country, saying only a handful were slain.

The Lebanese group has been exchanging near-daily fire with the Israeli army since the day after its Palestinian ally Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7.

French President Emmanuel Macron Thursday called for a "revision" of EU trade policy to defend European interests, accusing both China and the United States of no longer respecting the rules of global commerce.

"It cannot work if we are the only ones in the world to respect the rules of trade -- as they were written up 15 years ago -- if the Chinese and the Americans no longer respect them by subsidising critical sectors," he said in a keynote speech.

US-led coalition forces shot down four drones and an anti-ship missile launched by Yemen's Houthi rebels, American authorities said Thursday, as the Iran-backed group announced strikes against U.S. and Israeli ships.

A Greek vessel deployed in the Gulf of Aden as part of an EU naval coalition also shot down a drone off Yemen's coast early on Thursday, the Greece general staff said in a statement.

Hezbollah member of parliament Hassan Fadlallah has told the National News Agency during a funeral procession in southern Lebanon that "the targeting of civilians... cannot happen without a concrete response."

"Let us make this enemy understand that... we are ready for any scenario," Fadlallah said.