Syria strongly condemned foreign intervention in the country following a rare Israeli strike near Damascus on Wednesday amid deadly sectarian violence.

Syria said the Israeli strike killed at least one security officer and injured several other people.

Earlier on Wednesday Israel’s military said it had carried out a strike on the outskirts of the Syrian capital saying it was targeting an “extremist group” that had attacked the Druze community, a religious minority in the country.

In a joint statement on Wednesday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said the operation in the town of Sahnaya, southwest of Damascus, was a “warning action” against an unidentified armed group “preparing to continue attacking the Druze population.”

Syria’s foreign ministry reacted saying it had an “unwavering commitment” to protecting all Syrian people, including the “honorable Druze community.”

According to Syria’s state news agency SANA, Syrian government forces launched a wide-scale operation in the area surrounding Sahnaya to arrest “outlawed gangs” after an unidentified armed group attacked a Syrian government checkpoint late Tuesday, wounding three officers.

Other groups simultaneously opened fire on civilian and security vehicles in nearby areas. Recent violence left at least 11 people dead and dozens injured.

Syria’s top Muslim cleric Osama al-Rifai has called on all Syrians to keep calm and not escalate the situation.

“Everyone must… stay away from calls for revenge and retaliation, and allow justice to take its course,” Rifai said regarding the “recent events,” in Sahnaya,in a statement on Wednesday as cited by SANA.

Since the fall of the Bashar Al Assad regime, Israel has positioned itself as the protector of Syria’s Druze, an Arab community that follows an offshoot of Islam and is predominantly present across Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Wary of a new regime led by former jihadists, a small minority of Druze have welcomed Israel’s overtures, but many others have publicly denounced them.

A sizeable number of Druze live within Israel’s internationally recognized borders, have Israeli citizenship and serve in its military. A large Syrian-Druze population is also present in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and most have rejected Israeli citizenship and do not traditionally serve in the Israeli military. Within Syria, many Druze live in the south of the country, parts of which Israel declared a buffer zone after Assad’s fall.

“On this Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen soldiers, as we honor the Druze community’s contribution to Israel’s security, we stress our commitment to protect their brethren in Syria,” the joint statement added.

Israeli officials also urged the Syrian government to prevent harm to the Druze community.

On Wednesday evening, the Israeli military said that three Syrian Druze citizens were evacuated into Israel for medical treatment after they were injured in Syria.

The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen has expressed his deep concern “at unacceptable violence in Syria especially in suburbs of Damascus,” and ” alarmed at reports of Israeli attacks,” in a statement on Wednesday

” These attacks must stop,” Pedersen said and called for “full respect of Syria’s sovereignty.”

China restated its case that Covid-19 may have originated in the United States in a white paper on its pandemic response released on Wednesday, after President Donald Trump’s administration blamed a lab leak in China.

The White House launched a Covid-19 website on April 18 in which it said the coronavirus came from a lab leak in China while criticizing former President Joe Biden, former top US health official Anthony Fauci and the World Health Organization (WHO).

In the white paper, released by the official Xinhua news agency, China accused the US of politicizing the matter of the origins of Covid-19. It cited a Missouri lawsuit which resulted in a $24 billion ruling against China for hoarding protective medical equipment and covering up the outbreak.

China shared relevant information with the WHO and the international community in a timely manner, the white paper said, emphasizing that a joint study by the WHO and China had concluded that a lab leak was “extremely unlikely.”

The US should not continue to “pretend to be deaf and dumb,” but should respond to the legitimate concerns of the international community, the white paper said.

“Substantial evidence suggested the Covid-19 might have emerged in the United States earlier than its officially-claimed timeline, and earlier than the outbreak in China,” it said.

The CIA said in January the pandemic was more likely to have emerged from a lab in China than from nature, after the agency had for years said it could not reach a conclusion on the matter. It said it had “low confidence” in its new assessment and noted that both lab origin and natural origin remain plausible.

An official at China’s National Health Commission said the next step in origin-tracing work should focus on the US, according to Xinhua, which cited a statement about the white paper.

Kenya’s police have said the fatal shooting of a lawmaker by a gunman aboard a motorcycle in the capital Nairobi on Wednesday evening appeared to be targeted and premeditated.

Charles Were, a member of parliament representing Kasipul constituency in Kenya’s west, was shot dead at around 7:30 p.m. (11.30 a.m. ET) when his vehicle was stopped at a traffic light on Ngong Road, police said in a statement released late on Wednesday.

According to witnesses, the shooter was riding as a passenger on a motorcycle that stopped alongside the car, police said.

“The pillion passenger approached the vehicle and fired shots at the passenger side before jumping back onto the motorcycle and speeding away,” police said. “The nature of this crime appears to be both targeted and premeditated.”

Political assassinations are unusual in Kenya, a relatively stable country in a region that has experienced several civil conflicts in recent years.

Were was a member of the opposition ODM party led by veteran politician Raila Odinga, who lost to William Ruto in the last election in 2022.

“Were is no more; mercilessly and in cold blood, gunned down by an assassin in Nairobi this evening,” Odinga wrote on X.

Odinga rejected the 2022 election result, alleging irregularities, but Odinga and some of his allies have since struck agreements to work with Ruto to address Kenya’s economic and political challenges.

The United States and Ukraine have signed an “economic partnership agreement” that will give Washington access to Kyiv’s rare earth minerals in exchange for establishing an investment fund in Ukraine.

The US and Ukraine have been trying to hammer out the natural resources agreement since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January.

The deal comes after weeks of intense negotiations that at times turned bitter and temporarily derailed Washington’s aid to Ukraine.

Speaking Wednesday in a call with NewsNation, Trump said he told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during their weekend meeting on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ funeral that “it’s a very good thing” if he signed the deal because “Russia is much bigger and much stronger.”

Trump said he made the deal to “protect” Washington’s contribution to the Ukrainian war effort.

“We made a deal today where we get, you know, much more in theory, than the $350 billion but I wanted to be protected,” Trump told NewsNation. “I didn’t want to be out there and look foolish.”

The actual total contribution the US has made to Ukraine is closer to $123 billion since Russia invaded in February 2022.

The US Treasury Department on Wednesday announced that both countries signed the agreement. “As the President has said, the United States is committed to helping facilitate the end of this cruel and senseless war,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.

“This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump Administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine over the long term,” Bessent said. “And to be clear, no state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.”

Ukraine’s Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko was in Washington to sign on behalf of the Ukrainian government

Among the terms of the agreement are “full ownership and control” staying with Ukraine, she posted to X on Wednesday.

“All resources on our territory and in territorial waters belong to Ukraine,” she said, adding: “It is the Ukrainian state that determines what and where to extract. Subsoil remains under Ukrainian ownership — this is clearly established in the Agreement.”

The signing comes hours after a last-minute disagreement over which documents to sign Wednesday threatened to derail the deal.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky was expected to strike the deal during his trip to Washington in February – but the agreement was left unsigned when that visit was cut short following the contentious Oval Office meeting.

Previous sticking points

Among the key sticking point of the negotiations was the question of security guarantees – and whether the US would provide them as part of the deal. Trump initially refused that, saying he wants Ukraine to sign the agreement first and talk about guarantees later.

At that time, Zelensky described the draft agreement as asking him to “sell” his country. Ukrainian officials have since indicated they believed that US investment and the presence of American companies in Ukraine will make the US more interested in Ukraine’s security.

Shortly after the doomed White House visit, Trump ordered US aid to Ukraine to be suspended. While the assistance has since been restored, the episode became a major wakeup call for Ukraine’s European allies, who have pledged to step up their help to the country.

Trump has largely billed the agreement as Ukraine “paying back” for the aid the US has provided to Ukraine since Russia launched its unprovoked full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.

Speaking to Fox News Wednesday, Bessent said the deal is “a signal to the American people, that we have a chance to participate, get some of the funding and the weapons, compensation for those.”

The details of the agreement have not been made public. However, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Sunday that the deal “will not include assistance provided before its signing.”

Speaking on Wednesday, Shmyhal described the deal as “a strategic agreement on the establishment of an investment partnership fund.”

“It is truly an equal and beneficial international agreement on joint investments in the development and recovery of Ukraine between the US and Ukrainian governments,” he added.

Under the deal, the US and Ukraine will create a joint investment fund in Ukraine with an equal contributions from both and equal distribution of management shares between them, Shmyhal said.

“The American side may also count new, I emphasize new, military aid to Ukraine as a contribution to this fund,” Shmyhal said.

Mineral riches

Kyiv’s allies have long eyed the country’s mineral riches. Ukraine has deposits of 22 of the 50 materials classed as critical by the US Geological Survey.

These include rare earth minerals and other materials that are critical to the production of electronics, clean energy technologies and some weapon systems.

The global production of rare earth minerals and other strategically important materials has long been dominated by China, leaving Western countries desperate for other alternative sources – including Ukraine.

A memorandum of understanding prepared under the Biden administration last year said the US would promote investment opportunities in Ukraine’s mining projects to American companies in exchange for Kyiv creating economic incentives and implementing good business and environmental practices.

Ukraine already has a similar agreement with the European Union, signed in 2021.

This story has been updated with developments.