Christmas arrived around the world Saturday amid a surge in Covid-19 infections that kept many families apart, overwhelmed hospitals and curbed religious observances as the pandemic was poised to stretch into a third year.

Israeli forces clashed with Palestinians in the West Bank in an area that has seen a recent uptick in friction, the Israeli military and Palestinian medics said.

The clashes late Saturday were part of days of tension in the area surrounding a West Bank settlement outpost and a spike in violence elsewhere in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Pope Francis prayed Saturday for an end to the coronavirus pandemic, using his Christmas Day address to urge health care for all, vaccines for the poor and for dialogue to prevail in resolving the world's conflicts.

From Bethlehem and Frankfurt to London and Boston, the surging coronavirus put a damper on Christmas Eve for a second year, forcing churches to cancel or scale back services and disrupting travel plans and family gatherings.

Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard fired more than a dozen surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, the official IRNA news agency reported on Friday.

The report said the Guard fired 16 missiles during an ongoing major military exercise across the country's south. It said the name of missiles were Emad, Ghadr, Sejjil, Zalzal, Dezful and Zolfaghar and that their range is from 350 to 2000 kilometers (220 to 1250 miles). The short-range and medium-range missiles, Iran has said, can reach U.S. bases in the region as well as archenemy Israel.

A Yemeni rebel attack on Saudi Arabia's southern border town of Jizan killed two people and wounded seven more late Friday, Saudi state-run media reported.

Yemen's Houthi rebels launched a projectile that killed a Saudi citizen and Yemeni resident in the southwestern Saudi province of Jizan, the official Saudi Press Agency reported. Six of the wounded are Saudis and one is a Bangladeshi national, Saudi media said.

The biblical town of Bethlehem is gearing up for its second straight Christmas Eve hit by the coronavirus -- with small crowds and gray, gloomy weather dampening celebrations Friday in the traditional birthplace of Jesus.

A ban on nearly all incoming air traffic by Israel -- the main entry point for foreign visitors heading to the occupied West Bank -- kept international tourists away for a second consecutive year. The ban is meant to slow the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant, which has shaken Christmas celebrations around the world.

Negotiators from Iran and five world powers that are trying to revive a tattered 2015 nuclear deal will resume talks in Vienna next week, the European Union said Thursday.

The talks were adjourned nearly a week ago after a round marked by tensions over new demands from Tehran. They are chaired by EU diplomat Enrique Mora.

Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian man who opened fire at them from a passing vehicle in the occupied West Bank late Wednesday, Israeli officials said.

The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the death of Muhammad Issa Abbas, 26, saying he had been shot in the back near the al-Amari refugee camp in Ramallah.

A monument at a Hong Kong university that commemorates the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre was removed by workers early Thursday over the objections of its creator from Denmark.

The 8-meter (26-foot) tall Pillar of Shame, which depicts 50 torn and twisted bodies piled on top of each other, was made by Danish sculptor Jens Galschiøt to symbolize the lives lost during the bloody military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.