Israeli authorities have freed a prominent Palestinian prisoner, two weeks after striking a release deal that ended his marathon 131-day hunger strike, said a prisoner rights group.

Kayed Fasfous, 32, had remained in an Israeli hospital since ending his strike on Nov. 23. He was the symbolic figurehead of six hunger strikers protesting Israel's controversial policy of "administrative detention," which allows suspects to be held indefinitely without charge.

Pope Francis returned Sunday to the Greek island of Lesbos to offer comfort to migrants at a refugee camp and blast what he said was the indifference and self-interest shown by Europe "that condemns to death those on the fringes."

"Please, let us stop this shipwreck of civilization!" Francis said at the Mavrovouni camp, a cluster of white U.N. containers on the edge of the sea lined by barbed wire fencing and draped with laundry hanging from lines.

Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin will speak in a video call Tuesday, the White House and Kremlin said, as tensions between the United States and Russia escalate over a Russian troop buildup on the Ukrainian border that's seen as a sign of a potential invasion.

Biden will press U.S. concerns about Russian military activities on the border and "reaffirm the United States' support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Saturday, confirming the planned call after first word came from Moscow.

A Saudi-led coalition fighting Iran-backed rebels in Yemen accelerated airstrikes on the capital and elsewhere in the conflict-stricken country in recent weeks, as government forces advanced in the west coast and the key province of Marib, officials said Sunday.

The coalition said it hit military facilities in rebel-held Sanaa and launched airstrikes against Houthi front lines in the strategic Marib and Hodeida provinces.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday urged world powers to take a hard line against Iran in negotiations aimed at reviving an international nuclear deal, as his top defense and intelligence officials headed to Washington to discuss the flailing talks.

Israel has been watching with concern as world powers sit down with Iran in Vienna in hopes of restoring the tattered 2015 deal. Iran last week struck its own hard line as talks resumed in Vienna, suggesting everything discussed in previous rounds of diplomacy could be renegotiated. Continued Iranian advances in its atomic program have further raised the stakes in talks that are crucial to cooling years of tensions in the wider Mideast.

France's president and Saudi Arabia's crown prince held a joint phone call with Lebanon's prime minister during Emmanuel Macron's visit to the kingdom on Saturday, in a significant gesture amid an unprecedented crisis between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.

During the calls with Prime Minister Najib Miqati, Macron said France and Saudi Arabia expressed their commitment to Lebanon, despite Saudi Arabia's uneasiness with Iran's sway over the small Mediterranean country.

U.S. President Joe Biden has pledged to make it "very, very difficult" for Russia's Vladimir Putin to take military action in Ukraine as U.S. intelligence officials determined that Russian planning is underway for a possible military offensive that could begin as soon as early 2022.

The new intelligence finding estimates that the Russians are planning to deploy an estimated 175,000 troops and almost half of them are already deployed along various points near Ukraine's border, according to a Biden administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the finding.

The Kremlin has said that President Vladimir Putin will seek binding guarantees precluding NATO's expansion to Ukraine during a planned call with U.S. President Joe Biden, while a U.S. intelligence report and the Ukrainian defense minister warned of a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine as soon as next month.

With tensions between Russia and the West escalating, Biden said his administration was "putting together what I believe to be the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr. Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he may do" in positioning troops near Ukraine.

A night of violence ignited when a man was shot and killed in an Arab town in northern Israel ended on Friday with police shooting and killing a man involved in an alleged car-ramming attack that wounded two officers, Israeli officials said.

The chaos in the town of Umm al-Fahm comes amid a wave of violent crime in Israel's Arab community that shows no sign of abating, despite far-reaching action announced in recent months by Israeli authorities.

France announced multibillion-euro deals Friday to sell fighter planes and combat helicopters to the United Arab Emirates, aiming to boost military cooperation with its top ally in the Persian Gulf amid their shared concerns about Iran.

The UAE is buying 80 upgraded Rafale warplanes in a deal the French Defense Ministry said is worth 16 billion euros ($18 billion) and represents the largest-ever French weapons contract for export. It also announced a deal with the UAE to sell 12 Airbus-built combat helicopters.