Israel hit southern Syria with a series of strikes overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, a rights NGO said, as Israel said it had targeted weapons belonging to Syrian authorities following the launch of projectiles.

"Violent explosions shook southern Syria, notably the town of Quneitra and the Daraa region, following Israeli aerial strikes" that caused no casualties, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, with Israel blaming the Damascus government for the two projectiles launched onto its territory from Syria.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa bears responsibility for two projectiles that the Israeli military earlier said had been fired from Syrian territory.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday demanded Yemen's Houthi rebels release dozens of aid workers, including UN staff, a year after their arrest.

The United States has begun reducing its military presence in Syria with a view to eventually closing all but one of its bases there, the U.S. envoy for the country has said in an interview.

Syrian authorities and a Kurdish-led force exchanged Monday more than 400 prisoners as part of a deal reached earlier this year between the two sides.

The exchange in the northern city of Aleppo is a step in the process of confidence- building measures between the government in Damascus and the U.S.-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. A similar exchange took place in April.

The Israeli army said on Tuesday that three of its soldiers were killed in northern Gaza.

The latest deaths bring to 424 the number of Israeli troops killed in the Palestinian territory since the start of the conflict.

Palestinian health officials and witnesses say Israeli forces fired on people as they headed toward an aid distribution site on Tuesday, killing at least 27, in the third such incident in three days. The army said it fired "near a few individual suspects" who left the designated route, approached its forces and ignored warning shots.

The near-daily shootings have come after an Israeli and U.S.-backed foundation established aid distribution points inside Israeli military zones, a system it says is designed to circumvent Hamas. The United Nations has rejected the new system, saying it doesn't address Gaza's mounting hunger crisis and allows Israel to use aid as a weapon.

Iranian, Egyptian and U.N. leaders met in Cairo on Monday to discuss Iran's nuclear program after a report from the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said that Iran is further increasing its stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director-general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, said that the agency compiled the report, because Iranian's uranium enrichment was an ongoing concern for the IAEA's board of governors.

Gaza's civil defense agency said an Israeli strike on a home in the northern town of Jabalia killed 14 people on Monday.

"The number of martyrs from the targeting of the Al-Bursh family home has risen to 14, including six children and three women, in addition to more than 20 missing individuals still under the rubble," agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Monday for an independent investigation into the deaths of at least 31 Palestinians near a U.S.-backed aid distribution site in Gaza, after rescuers blamed the deaths on Israeli gunfire.

"I am appalled by the reports of Palestinians killed and injured while seeking aid in Gaza yesterday. It is unacceptable that Palestinians are risking their lives for food," Guterres said in a statement. "I call for an immediate and independent investigation into these events and for perpetrators to be held accountable."