The United States under President Donald Trump has launched a new campaign of intense airstrikes targeting Yemen's Houthi rebels.

This weekend's strikes killed at least 53 people, including children, and wounded others. The campaign is likely to continue, part of a wider pressure campaign by Trump now targeting the Houthis' main benefactor, Iran, as well.

The fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad's government has aggravated already tense relations between Turkey and Israel, with their conflicting interests in Syria pushing the relationship toward a possible collision course.

Turkey, which long backed groups opposed to Assad, has emerged as a key player in Syria and is advocating for a stable and united Syria, in which a central government maintains authority over the whole country.

For several days, Syria's Mediterranean coast has been gripped by extreme violence that has seen mass killings mainly targeting members of the Alawite minority.

Authorities have not provided a toll, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor put the number of dead at 1,225 civilians, mostly Alawites. Human Rights Watch said "hundreds" were killed.

Members of Syria's small Christian community on the coast are living in fear after attacks killed more than 1,000 mostly Alawite civilians, with Christians reportedly caught up in the violence.

Syria's Druze minority has a long history of cutting their own path to survive among the country's powerhouses. They are now trying again to navigate a new, uncertain Syria since the fall of longtime autocrat Bashar Assad.

Members of the small religious sect find themselves caught between two forces that many of them distrust: the new, Islamist-led government in Damascus and Syria's hostile neighbor, Israel, which has used the plight of the Druze as a pretext to intervene in the country.

President Donald Trump 's Tuesday night address to a joint session of Congress highlighted several of the initiatives he's started in his first six weeks in office, but many of his comments included false and misleading information.

Here's a look at the facts.

Residents of southern Lebanon have been gradually returning to their villages to find their homes heavily damaged.

As they scour what remains, they are discovering that the battle-scarred walls of their houses served as a canvas for Israeli soldiers.

Hamas freed six Israelis on Saturday in the last scheduled release of living hostages by the militant group under the current stage of a ceasefire agreement with Israel.

In all, a total of 33 Israelis are being freed during this stage — including eight who are dead. Five Thai hostages have also been freed separately. Sixty-three hostages, including the body of a soldier held since 2014, remain in Gaza.

Ali Qashmar walked into his south Lebanon hometown on the Israeli border Tuesday to find bulldozed fields and piles of rubble where there used to be neighborhoods brimming with life.

"We came back to breathe the air of our lands and village, and we found our homes destroyed," said Qashmar, 74, from Odaisseh.

In a desolate area of Syria where Lebanese militant group Hezbollah once held sway, security forces shot open the gates to an abandoned building and found a defunct drug factory.

Syria's new authorities launched a security campaign last week around Qusayr at the porous Lebanese border, cracking down on drug and weapons smugglers.