Israeli troops on Friday shot and wounded a Palestinian who the army said was attempting to stab Israelis at a bus stop in the occupied West Bank.

"An assailant attempted to carry out a stabbing attack at the Elias junction, near the community of Kiryat Arba," a military statement said.

In the three days since the Iraqi city of Fallujah was reopened for residents following its recapture from the Islamic State group, just over 500 families have returned home, Maj. Gen. Saad al-Harbea, the head of west Baghdad operations, said.

Hundreds more have massed around the checkpoints that block the city's entrance to await the multiple security approvals required to re-enter Fallujah, which lies 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of the Iraqi capital. But the vast majority of the 300,000 people that made up the city's prewar population remain scattered across the country.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the United States of sending more weapons to a Syrian Kurdish militia in defiance of Ankara's repeated insistence it is a "terrorist" organisation.

Iran on Friday condemned air strikes in Yemen by a coalition led by its regional rival Saudi Arabia that are reported to have killed 20 civilians.

"Sadly, the indifference of the international community and continued sale of all kinds of arms to Saudi Arabia have emboldened this regime in its attacks on the oppressed and defenseless people of Yemen," foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said, quoted by state broadcaster IRIB.

Missiles rained down on rebel-held areas of Syria's Aleppo on Friday, causing widespread destruction that overwhelmed rescue teams, as the army prepared a ground offensive to retake the city.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday convened a crisis meeting of governments with a stake in the Syrian civil war.

Ministers from the 23-nation International Syria Support Group gathered at a New York hotel for the second time in three days to seek a way to revive a plan to re-impose a ceasefire that collapsed this week.

The U.N. Security Council has given a panel investigating chemical weapons use in Syria another month to complete its work and determine who is responsible for chlorine attacks in the war, the United Nations said Thursday.

The U.N.-led joint investigative mechanism (JIM) last month reported that Syrian government forces had carried out at least two chemical attacks in 2014 and 2015 and that Islamic State jihadists had used mustard gas as a weapon.

A Kuwaiti court on Thursday sentenced Shiite lawmaker Abdulhameed Dashti to 11 years' jail in absentia for insults against the emirate's ruler and its neighbor Saudi Arabia.

An apparent U.S. drone strike killed three suspected al-Qaida members Thursday in Yemen, including a mid-ranking commander, security officials said.

Iraq announced Thursday that its forces have recaptured a northern town from the Islamic State group in an operation launched ahead of a push for the city of Mosul.