Yemen's Houthi rebels said Wednesday that they had fired a ballistic missile at central Israel, with Israeli forces saying they intercepted the attack.

Pakistan air strikes in an eastern border province of Afghanistan killed 46 people, the Taliban government spokesman told AFP on Wednesday, as the defense ministry vowed retaliation.

An Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet with 67 people on board crashed on Wednesday in western Kazakhstan after veering from its scheduled route, officials said.

US group Hostage Aid Worldwide said Tuesday that it believes journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in Syria in 2012, is still alive, though it did not offer concrete information on his whereabouts.

"We have data that Austin is alive till January 2024, but the president of the US said in August that he is alive, and we are sure that he is alive today," Hostage Aid Worldwide's Nizar Zakka said.

United Nations peacekeepers and caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati have called for the Israeli army to speed up its withdrawal from the country, nearly a month into a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

"UNIFIL strongly urges accelerated progress in the IDF's (Israeli military) withdrawal from and the LAF's (Lebanese army) deployment in south Lebanon," the force said in a statement Monday .

Defense Minister Israel Katz has acknowledged that Israel killed former Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran earlier this year, as he warned the military would "decapitate" the leadership of Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

"We will strike hard at the Houthis... and decapitate their leadership -- just as we did with Haniyeh, (Yahya) Sinwar, and (Sayyed Hassan) Nasrallah in Tehran, Gaza, and Lebanon, we will do so in Hodeida and Sanaa," Katz said, in the first public acknowledgement that Israel was behind the killing of Haniyeh in July in the Iranian capital.

In the towns and villages of southern Syria that Israel has occupied since the overthrow of longtime strongman Bashar al-Assad, soldiers and residents size each other up from a distance.

The main street of the village of Jabata al-Khashab is largely deserted as a foot patrol of Israeli troops passes through it.

Lebanese official media said the Israeli army handed over seven people to United Nations peacekeepers at the border on Sunday, amid a delicate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

"The Israeli enemy handed over seven freed citizens, who were detained by the enemy after the ceasefire," the official National News Agency (NNA) reported.

Druze leader Walid Jumblat and an accompanying delegation on Sunday met in Damascus with Syrian rebel leader-turned-interim political leader Abou Mohammad al-Jolani, who now prefers to be called by his real name Ahmad al-Sharaa.

The United States said it struck targets in Yemen's rebel-held capital, hours after a Houthi rebel missile wounded people in Israel's commercial hub Tel Aviv.