Close to 1.5 million Syrian refugees have voluntarily returned to their home country over the past year.

UNHCR Estimates that 383,326 have returned from Lebanon to Syria since the fall of the Bashar Assad regime in December 2024.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has picked his military secretary, a general with no background in intelligence, as the next head of the country's foreign intelligence agency Mossad.

In a statement Thursday, Netanyahu's office announced the decision to appoint Major General Roman Gofman as head of the spy agency, saying he would replace current Mossad chief David Barnea, whose five-year term ends in June 2026.

In a sign for the potential for turmoil, the leader of an Israeli-backed Palestinian militia, Yasser Abu Shabab, was shot to death during a dispute with another family in southern Gaza, his militia said Thursday. The killing could be a setback for Israeli efforts to prop up its own alternative to Hamas in Gaza.

The Popular Forces is one of several armed Palestinian groups supported by Israel and operating in Israeli-controlled zones. The groups tout themselves as anti-Hamas nationalist forces but have been denounced by many Palestinians, including Abu Shabab’s family, as tools of the Israeli military.

Tunisian opposition veteran Ahmed Nejib Chebbi was arrested at his home Thursday, his daughter said, following his sentencing to 12 years in jail for plotting against the state in a trial denounced by rights groups as politically motivated.

Chebbi, 81, is the co-founder of the National Salvation Front (FSN), Tunisia's main opposition coalition.

A United Nations Security Council delegation arrived in Syria on Thursday, state media reported, the first-ever visit to the country just days before the anniversary of the ousting of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad.

Israel said it launched an airstrike on a Hamas militant in southern Gaza late Wednesday in retaliation for an attack earlier in the day that wounded five Israeli soldiers.

The strike was the latest test for a fragile ceasefire that has mostly held up since early October, despite claims of violations by both Israel and Hamas. Hamas put out a statement condemning the Israeli strike in Khan Younis.

Israel's army said Thursday the remains of the second-to-last Gaza hostage -- a Thai national -- to be handed over had been identified.

It comes as a U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas remains fragile, with both sides accusing each other of violating the terms.

Egypt denied on Wednesday that it had agreed with Israel the opening of the Rafah crossing to Gaza for residents of the Palestinian territory to exit, insisting it be opened in both directions.

"If an agreement is reached to open the crossing, it will be in both directions, to enter and exit the Gaza Strip, in accordance with the plan of US President Donald Trump," the state information service said in a statement, quoting an official Egyptian source.

Officials from Hamas and Islamic Jihad told AFP the two Palestinian militant groups would on Wednesday send to Israel a sample from a body recovered in the Gaza Strip.

A Hamas official said a team from the two groups' armed wings "found remains that are possibly those of an Israeli hostage" under the rubble in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza, and that the Red Cross would transfer a sample to the Israeli side for examination.

The European Union on Wednesday issued updated guidance for asylum applications by Syrian nationals that reflects new conditions in Syria a year after the fall of the Bashar Assad. The changes may influence the result of asylum requests of some 110,000 Syrians who were still awaiting an asylum decision at the end of September.

The European Union Agency for Asylum said opponents of Assad and military service evaders "are no longer at risk of persecution."