Yemen's economy is collapsing, its humanitarian crisis is worsening, and the conflict in the Arab world's poorest nation is growing more violent, the U.N.'s deputy humanitarian chief said Thursday.

The grim remarks by Assistant Secretary-General Ramesh Rajasingham came during a briefing to the U.N. Security Council. More than 20 million Yemenis — two-thirds of the population — need humanitarian assistance, but aid agencies, he said, "are, once again, starting to run out of money."

The Israeli military on Thursday said that troops shot and killed a Palestinian who was throwing firebombs at cars on a main highway in the occupied West Bank.

A military statement said that soldiers opened fire at two suspects spotted throwing firebombs near Beit Jala, a Palestinian town south of Jerusalem. It said one of the suspects was hit and died of his wounds, while the second was detained.

Schools, banks and government offices across Lebanon shut down Friday after hours of gun battles between armed groups killed seven people and terrorized the residents of Beirut and its suburbs.

The government called for a day of mourning following the armed clashes, in which gunmen used automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades on the streets of the capital's edge and suburbs, echoing the nation's darkest era of the 1975-90 civil war. The gun battles raised the specter of a return to sectarian violence in a country already struggling through one of the world's worst economic crises of the past 150 years.

Drilling by ExxonMobil set for late next month to confirm how much natural gas is contained in a sizable deposit off Cyprus' southwestern coast will map out how the fuel will reach potential markets in Europe and Asia, the island nation's energy minister said on Wednesday.

Minister Natasa Pilides says the "significant" drilling at the 'Glaucus-1' well inside block 10 of Cyprus' exclusive zone scheduled to start in 6-8 weeks will determine if the deposit is at the higher or lower end of its estimated size of 5-8 trillion cubic feet (142-227 billion cubic meters) of natural gas.

A man armed with a bow fired arrows at shoppers in a small Norwegian town Wednesday, killing five people before he was arrested, authorities said.

The police chief in the community of Kongsberg, near the capital of Oslo, said there was "a confrontation" between officers and the assailant, but he did not elaborate. Two other people were wounded and hospitalized in intensive care, including an officer who was off duty and inside the shop where the attack took place, police said.

A 4.5-magnitude earthquake shook La Palma in Spain's Canary Islands in what was the strongest recorded temblor since volcanic eruptions began 26 days ago, authorities said Thursday.

The quake was one of around 60 recorded overnight, Spain's National Geographic Institute said, as the Cumbre Vieja volcano continued to spew fiery rivers of lava that are destroying everything in their path and dumping molten rock into the Atlantic Ocean.

A Palestinian driver struck and moderately wounded a member of Israel's paramilitary Border Police at a major checkpoint north of Jerusalem overnight, the police said Thursday.

The United States does not support efforts to normalize relations with the government of President Bashar Assad or lift sanctions imposed on Damascus until there is progress in the political process in the war-torn country, the U.S. secretary of state said Wednesday.

Antony Blinken's comments come as some Arab countries recently began improving relations with Syria. Assad and King Abdullah II of Jordan spoke over the phone last week for the first time since Syria's conflict began in March 2011. Syria's defense minister last month visited Jordan and met with Jordanian military officials.

Syrian air defenses responded Wednesday to an Israeli airstrike targeting areas close to the historic Syrian town of Palmyra in the central province of Homs, state television reported.

The reported quoted an unidentified military official as saying the strike occurred shortly before midnight and targeted a telecommunications tower and some posts around it, only causing material damage.

At least 250 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel have begun a hunger strike to protest their relocation to isolated cells, officials said.

The hunger strike, led by the militant Islamic Jihad group, comes amid heightened tensions in Israeli detention facilities following the escape of six prisoners from a high-security prison last month. All six were recaptured within a couple of weeks, but the escape embarrassed Israeli authorities and was hailed as a stroke of defiance by Palestinians.