The Biden administration says it has decided not to pursue a $10 million reward it had offered for the capture of a Syrian rebel leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which led the ouster of President Bashar Assad. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated a foreign terrorist organization.

The first U.S. diplomats to visit Syria since President Bashar Assad’s ouster earlier this month are in Damascus to hold talks with the country’s new leadership and seek information on the whereabouts of missing American journalist Austin Tice.

The U.S. had more than doubled the number of American troops in Syria to counter the Islamic State group before the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad’s government almost two weeks ago, the Pentagon said Thursday.

The village, on the western edge of Syria’s southern Daraa province, is outside of a buffer zone in the Golan established by a 1974 ceasefire agreement with Syria. Israel seized a swath of southern Syria shortly after Syrian President Bashar Assad was ousted by rebels on Dec. 8.

Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of causing the deaths of thousands of Palestinians by systematically restricting and targeting Gaza’s water supply. The rights group was the latest among a growing number of critics to accuse Israel of genocidal acts. Israel vehemently denies the allegations.

A series of intense Israeli airstrikes shook Yemen’s rebel-held capital Sanaa and a port city early Thursday and killed at least nine people, officials said, shortly after a Houthi missile targeted central Israel.

Many relatives of people held in Gaza find no reprieve in reports that negotiations toward a deal are progressing. The renewed ceasefire talks are just the latest twist in what’s been more than 14 months of anguish, despair and uncertainty.

The Syrian National Army, which is funded and advised by Turkey, has seized two towns since late November from the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish group that has been a key ally in the U.S.’s fight against Islamic State.

Tens of thousands of Syrians are believed to be buried in mass graves scattered around the country, victims of the security agencies of ousted President Bashar Assad. Experts are quickly working to secure the sites so the longer task of unearthing the dead, documenting them and trying to identify them can begin.

The legislation, which was approved by the parliament in September 2023, won’t be sent to the government to enact. Many believe the law could have reignited the protests that engulfed the Islamic Republic after the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini.