Saudi Arabia launched two airstrikes on Friday targeting the airport of the strategic city of Mocha, now under Houthi control, according to the Iran-backed group's Al-Masirah TV channel.

Iran's government on Friday called for an end to Saudi Arabia's blockade of Yemen and the immediate resumption of talks, in its first public statement since Iran-backed Houthi rebels entered a key Yemeni port and intensified their threat to a key global shipping alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

In a statement carried by the state-run IRNA news agency, Iran's foreign ministry said Yemen's sovereignty must be respected and its problems cannot be resolved through a blockade or military alliances.

In recent weeks, the United States has succeeded in loosening Iran's grip over the Strait of Hormuz while virtually shutting down Iran's own oil exports, accelerating its economic free fall.

But the war launched by the U.S. and Israel in February — intended to last a few weeks — is still far from over, and the stalemate is costly for both sides. An agreement reached in June quickly crumbled, with no sign of diplomatic progress since then. Low-level fighting persists, and the U.S. does not seem to have an exit strategy.

Algeria said Thursday it was cutting diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates following years of tension, with Algiers accusing Abu Dhabi of interfering in national and regional affairs.

"Algeria has decided to cut diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, following the exhaustion of all means to preserve bilateral relations," Algeria's state television announced.

emen's Houthi rebels seized control of the strategic Red Sea port city of Mokha on Thursday and were advancing towards the Bab al-Mandab strait, a Yemeni military source told AFP.

Witnesses told AFP they saw rebel forces entering the city while chanting "death to America, death to Israel".

Israel opened its first embassy in Slovenia on Wednesday, boosting relations with the small European Union nation even as ties sour with some longtime allies over its policy on illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar travelled to Ljubljana, Slovenia's capital, for the occasion that asserts a shift in Slovenia's policy toward Israel under the current right-wing Prime Minister Janez Jansa.

An Israeli strike killed at least four people in northern Gaza.

Two children were among the dead after Israel carried out a new strike in the northern Gaza community of Beit Lahiya, according to Shifa hospital, where the bodies were taken.

Yemen's Houthi rebels reported about 40 airstrikes launched by Saudi forces on Thursday in a fresh salvo following attacks by the Iran-backed group against the kingdom.

"The Saudi enemy's air force conducted around 40 strikes in recent hours in the governorates of Taiz, Hodeida, Al-Jawf and Marib," Houthi news agency Saba said.

An explosion at an arms depot in Syria's northwestern Idlib province killed 14 people on Wednesday, the local health department said, without specifying the cause of the blast.

"The toll from the explosion in a temporary storage for collecting weapons and war remnants near the city of Sarmada... registered 14 killed and 11 injured in a preliminary count," the Idlib health department said.

Rescuers dug through the rubble of a Houthi-run prison that was hit in an airstrike in northern Yemen earlier this week, even as the Saudi-led coalition renewed its attacks on rebel areas Wednesday. Rescuers recovered four bodies, raising the death toll at the prison to 23 people, the Houthis said.

The prison collapsed on Monday after it was hit when the coalition targeted the strategic city of Hazm in the northern Jawf province, which in turn prompted the Houthis to launch a wave of missile and drone strikes on southern Saudi Arabia that wounded 73.