The top diplomats of China and Iran agreed Saturday that the Middle East is "not a battleground for the big powers" and should not be an arena of geopolitical competition between countries outside the region.

The Israeli military said it intercepted a missile launched from Yemen early Saturday, a day after the Houthi-held capital Sanaa was hit by fresh air strikes.

The head of Russia's civil aviation agency said Friday that Ukrainian drones were attacking the city of Grozny as an Azerbaijani Airlines plane was trying to land there, before it later crashed in Kazakhstan.

Dmitry Yadrov also said on Telegram that there was heavy fog over Grozny when the incident occurred Wednesday and "conditions that day and in those hours around the airport were very complicated".

Iran's top diplomat warned Friday against "destructive interference" in Syria's future and said decisions should lie solely with the country's people, writing in Chinese state media as he visited Beijing.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier dissolved parliament on Friday and confirmed the expected date for the early general election prompted by the collapse of Olaf Scholz's government last month.

"I have decided to dissolve the 20th German Bundestag to fix the date for an early election for February 23rd," Steinmeier said in a speech, adding that "political stability in Germany is a precious asset".

Azerbaijan Airlines said on Friday it was suspending flights to seven Russian cities after one of its Russia-bound jets veered off course and crashed in western Kazakhstan on Wednesday.

The airline said it was "taking into account the initial results of the investigation into the crash... and taking into account flight safety risks", after reports that investigators had found the plane could have been shot down by a Russian air defense missile.

The Arab League regional bloc has called on Iran not to fuel "strife" in Syria, after the ouster of Tehran ally president Bashar al-Assad ended decades of rule by his clan.

Assad's government crumbled on December 8 and he fled for Russia, another key backer of his rule, after an Islamist-led coalition of fighters wrested control of city after city until they reached Damascus.

The Israeli military said it conducted air strikes on Friday targeting "infrastructure" on the Syrian-Lebanese border near the village of Janta, which it said was used to smuggle weapons to the armed group Hezbollah.

"Earlier today, the IAF (Israeli air force) struck infrastructure that was used to smuggle weapons via Syria to the Hezbollah terrorist organization in Lebanon at the Janta crossing on the Syrian-Lebanese border," the military said in a statement.

A Syria war monitor has said the country’s new authorities have arrested a military justice official under the ousted government of president Bashar al-Assad who issued death sentences in the notorious Saydnaya prison.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Mohammed Kanjo Hassan was arrested in the coastal Tartus province, a stronghold of Assad’s clan, along with 20 members of his entourage.

Yemeni rebels claimed a strike against the airport in Israel's commercial hub of Tel Aviv on Friday, after Israeli air strikes hit rebel-held Sanaa's international airport and other targets in Yemen.