Hundreds of Syrian “White Helmet” rescue workers and their families fled advancing government forces and slipped over the border into Jordan overnight with the help of Israeli soldiers and Western powers, officials said.

Russian and Syrian jets stepped up their bombing of an Islamic State bastion along the Jordan-Israel border in southwestern Syria, as the militants pushed into areas abandoned by other rebel groups, diplomatic and opposition sources said.

Israeli authorities say hundreds of fires have been started by firebombs since April.

Iran faces increased US pressure and looming sanctions after Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from a 2015 international deal over Iran's nuclear programme.

The Israeli military said that it had completed "a humanitarian effort to rescue members of a Syrian civil organisation and their families".

A ceasefire announced by the Hamas largely held yesterday after a wave of deadly air strikes across Gaza sparked by the death of an Israeli soldier shot near the border.

The Syrian army and its allies made advances in the southwest that bring it closer to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights border, state television and rebels said on Saturday.

Militants killed 10 Iranian Revolutionary Guards in an attack on a post on the Iraqi border on Saturday, Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, the latest deadly clash in an area where armed opposition Kurdish groups are active.

France and Russia on Saturday despatched a plane carrying humanitarian aid to the ravaged former Syrian rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta, which was retaken by government forces in April after a five-year siege.

A ceasefire announced by Hamas largely held Saturday after a wave of deadly air strikes across the Gaza Strip sparked by the death of an Israeli soldier shot near the border.

Opposition authorities are issuing new ID cards in northern Syria with help from neighbouring Turkey, expanding their administration over territory that remains outside President Bashar al-Assad’s expanding area of control.

Syrian rebels began evacuating the border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights yesterday, leaving for the rebel-held north in a surrender deal that restores President Bashar al-Assad’s control of the frontier.