Palestinian Christians call themselves "living stones" and say they have lived continuously in the Holy Land for the last 2,000 years. Maybe not for much longer, believes Reverend Mitri Raheb.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed a defense agreement on Friday that would treat an attack on one as an attack on all three, Turkish and Pakistani officials said, solidifying cooperation between the three regional powers at a time of growing security concerns.

The agreement was signed in the Saudi holy city of Mecca during a meeting between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Syria's Health Ministry said Friday that 14 people were wounded, three of them critically, but that there were no fatalities in the explosion of a minivan taxi a day earlier in a Damascus suburb.

The Health Ministry had said Thursday night that two people were killed in the blast. In a statement Friday, it said the fatalities had been incorrectly recorded based on three severed limbs that were pulled from the wreckage.

A Houthi drone attack on Yemen's Marib province killed three members of government forces on Friday and wounded another four, a Yemeni military source told AFP.

"Three killed and four wounded in a preliminary toll from the Houthi drone attack on the Harib area, in the south of Marib," the source said, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Yemen's Houthis late Thursday wounded 11 people in an attack on southern Saudi Arabia, a Riyadh-led coalition said, the highest toll in the kingdom from an attack by the rebels in years.

The attacks come as Yemen is increasingly drawn into the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, with the rebels stepping up attacks against both Yemen government forces and neighboring Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally and supporter of the internationally recognized Yemeni government.

To reach a deal with Iran that reopens the economically vital Strait of Hormuz, President Donald Trump may need to do something out of character — compromise.

Any concession would be tough for the Republican president, who has insisted there is no truth to his sagging poll numbers, the sluggish economy and the U.S. military's dwindling stockpiles of key weapons following the Iran war he launched with Israel more than five months ago.

Houthi rebel attacks Thursday in central and eastern Yemen killed at least 30 government troops and wounded at least 50 others, Yemeni government officials said.

The assaults hit camps for forces of the internationally recognized government in the provinces of Marib and Hadhramaut, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Iran intensified its threats towards its Gulf neighbors last week, conveying messages that it would "black out" the entire region if the United States struck its power plants and rattling off a list of specific targets, two officials told AFP.

The warning followed threats by U.S. President Donald Trump of a massive attack against Iran, which he later walked back over the weekend citing requests from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar and hope for a breakthrough in talks.

Authorities in Kuwait ordered the closure of a local Iranian school, a source at the education ministry told AFP on Thursday, after the country came under repeated Iranian attack during the Middle East war.

The ministry source did not specify the reason for shutting the country's only Iranian school, though similar measures were taken in the UAE at the start of the war against schools and a hospital that authorities deemed to be linked to the Iranian government.

Israeli prosecutors Thursday charged a settler for the killing of a Palestinian community leader last year in the occupied West Bank, according to an indictment filed in district court.

In the document, prosecutors accuse Yinon Levi, who lives in the south of the West Bank, of reckless manslaughter in the death of prominent Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen in July 2025. The charge holds a lesser punishment than murder under Israeli law. The indictment also charges Levi with armed trespassing and malicious property damage.