Heavy clashes between Houthi rebel troops and Yemen's pro-government forces have killed at least 8 people, a security official confirmed. The fresh round of violence comes amid heightened tensions following last week's failure to extend a cease-fire between the warring sides.

The official said exchanges of fire broke out late Thursday night in the contested western area of Yafa, killing four troops from either side and injuring five others. Local witnesses said both Houthi troops and forces under the Southern Transitional Council, which is backed by the United Arab Emirates and is a major pillar of the Saudi coalition fighting in Yemen, deployed machine guns and mortars during the clashes.

The severed head and decapitated torso of a 25-year-old Palestinian were discovered on the side of a road in the occupied West Bank, police said Friday, confirming gruesome details of a killing that shocked Palestinian society.

But accounts that the victim, Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh, was a gay man who feared persecution for his sexuality and had sought asylum in Israel two years ago turned the terrible crime into a socially and politically explosive case.

The mother of a 16-year-old Iranian girl has disputed official claims that her daughter fell to her death from a high building, saying the teen was killed by blows to the head as part of the crackdown on anti-hijab protests roiling the country.

Nasreen Shakarami also said authorities kept her daughter Nika's death a secret for nine days and then snatched the body from a morgue to bury her in a remote area, against the family's wishes. The bereaved mother spoke in a video message Thursday to Radio Farda, the Persian-language arm of the U.S.-funded station Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

U.S. forces killed three senior Islamic State leaders in two separate military operations in Syria Thursday, including a rare ground raid in a portion of the northeast that is controlled by the Syrian regime, U.S. officials said.

According to officials, U.S. special operations forces conducted a raid near the village of Qamishli, killing IS insurgent Rakkan Wahid al Shamman, wounding another and capturing two others.

U.S. President Joe Biden has effectively acknowledged the failure of one of his biggest and most humiliating foreign policy gambles: a fist-bump with the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, the crown prince associated with human rights abuses.

Biden's awkward encounter with Mohammed bin Salman in July was a humbling attempt to mend relations with the world's most influential oil power at a time when the US. was seeking its help in opposing Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the resulting surge in oil prices.

Lebanon's health minister said on Friday that authorities are inspecting suspected cases of cholera, less than a day after the cash-strapped country confirmed its first case of the illness since 1993.

The news came almost a month after an outbreak of the illness in neighboring war-torn Syria.

The leaders of historic foes Turkey and Armenia have held their first face-to-face meeting since the two countries agreed to improve relations.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met in Prague on the sidelines of a summit by the leaders of 44 countries to launch a European Political Community aimed at boosting security and economic prosperity across Europe. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev was also present at what appeared to be an informal gathering of the three leaders.

Protests in Iran over the death of a 22-year-old woman detained by the country's morality police have stretched into a third week, even after authorities disrupted the internet, deployed riot troops and attacked perceived enemies abroad.

That playbook of repression has worked before, but the spontaneous demonstrations over the death of Mahsa Amini persist and keep changing. In one recent incident, high school students chased away a hard-liner while famous politicians and actresses abroad now are cutting off their hair with scissors, following Iranian women protesters who have done the same.

The U.S. Navy held a joint drone drill with the United Kingdom on Friday in the Persian Gulf, testing the same unmanned surveillance ships that Iran twice has seized in recent months in the Middle East.

The exercise comes as the U.S. Navy separately told commercial shippers in the wider Mideast that it would continue using drones in the region and warned against interfering with their operations.

Lebanon's health ministry on Thursday announced the crisis-hit country's first case of cholera in decades.

The announcement comes as neighboring war-torn Syria is struggling to contain a cholera outbreak that has spread across the country over the past month.