Thousands of Israeli academics and artists have urged U.S. President Joe Biden and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to shun Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to the United States next week, underlining the divide between Israel's far-right government and segments of the country's population.

In an open letter published Wednesday, over 3,500 signers, including well-known Israeli writer David Grossman and painter Tamar Getter, called on Biden and Guterres not to meet with Netanyahu or invite him to speak at the U.N. General Assembly's yearly meeting of world leaders.

Two landmines exploded early Wednesday along the Lebanon-Syria border wounding three Syrians trying to illegally cross into Lebanon, the Lebanese Army said in a statement.

The army said the mines exploded on the Syrian side of the border and that the wounded were rushed by the Lebanese Red Cross to a hospital in northern Lebanon for treatment.

A fire in a nine-story apartment building in Vietnam's capital killed at least 10 people, including four children, and injured more than 50 others, state media reported Wednesday.

The fire has been extinguished and rescue operations were continuing, the official Vietnam News Agency reported. Authorities have not confirmed the exact number of deaths. Initial reports had suggested a higher death toll as the injured and dead were taken to different hospitals across the city.

A Ukrainian attack on a strategic shipyard in Russia-annexed Crimea wounded 24 people, damaged two ships undergoing repairs and caused a fire at the facility Wednesday, Russian authorities reported.

The attack in the port city of Sevastopol, which serves as the main base for Russia's Black Sea Fleet, took place as Moscow launched drones against southern Ukraine's Odesa region. The pre-dawn onslaught there damaged port and civilian infrastructure in the region's Izmail district - not far from the Crimean city — and wounded seven people, three seriously, Gov. Oleh Kiper said.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offered Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday his country's "full and unconditional support" for Russia's "sacred fight" to defend its security interests, in an apparent reference to the war in Ukraine, and said Pyongyang will always stand with Moscow on the "anti-imperialist" front.

Kim also called North Korea's relations with Russia "the first priority."

The death toll from flooding that hit the eastern Libyan city of Derna reached more than 5,000 and was expected to rise further, a local health official said Wednesday, as authorities struggled to get aid to the coastal city where thousands remained missing and tens of thousands were homeless.

Aid workers who managed to reach the city, which was cut off Sunday night when flash floods washed away most of the access roads, described devastation in the city's center, where search and rescue teams combed shattered apartment buildings for bodies and retrieved floating bodies offshore.

They contended with bloody uprisings, destabilizing wars and even the assassination of a prime minister during their service. But for dozens of former Israeli security commanders, the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government are the biggest threat yet to the country's future.

In unprecedented opposition, more than 180 former senior officials from the Mossad, the Shin Bet domestic security agency, the military and the police have united against steps they say will shatter Israel's resilience in the face of mounting threats from the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran.

A top Hamas leader has arrived in Beirut to push for an end to clashes in Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp that resumed despite multiple cease-fire agreements.

Days of fighting in the Ain el-Helweh refugee camp near the southern port city of Sidon left at least six people dead and over 50 others wounded, according to medical officials and state media. Stray bullets and shells hit residential areas in the country's third-largest city, wounding five Lebanese soldiers at checkpoints near the camp on Monday.

The U.S. Treasury on Tuesday slapped terrorism sanctions on a family network of seven individuals and businesses in Lebanon and South America accused of financing the militant group Hezbollah, including a Lebanese man who officials say was involved in two deadly attacks in Argentina in the 1990s.

Amer Mohamed Akil Rada was described as "one of the operational members" who carried out the attack on the Argentine-Israelite Mutual Association in Buenos Aires in 1994, which killed 85 people and wounded hundreds. A 1992 attack on the Israeli Embassy in Argentina killed 29 people.

Rainstorms battering southern China have killed at least seven people and allowed dozens of crocodiles to escape from a farm.

Nearby residents were advised to stay at home after more than 70 crocodiles escaped in Maoming, a city near the coast in western Guangdong province, according to Chinese media reports.