The US Justice Department has launched an investigation into the possible release of Pentagon documents that were posted on several social media sites and appear to detail US and NATO aid to Ukraine, but may have been altered or used as part of a misinformation campaign.

The documents, which were posted on sites such as Twitter, are labelled secret and resemble routine updates that the US military's Joint Staff would produce daily but not distribute publicly.

They are dated ranging from February 23 to March 1, and provide what appears to be details on the progress of weapons and equipment going into Ukraine with more precise timelines and amounts than the US generally provides publicly.

READ MORE: Attacks in Israel, West Bank kill three in worsening violence

They are not war plans and they provide no details on any planned Ukraine offensive. And some inaccuracies — including estimates of Russian troop deaths that are significantly lower than numbers publicly stated by US officials — have led some to question the documents' authenticity.

In a statement Friday, Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the Defence Department "made a formal referral" of the matter to the Justice Department for investigation.

And the Justice Department, in a separate statement Friday, said, "We have been in communication with the Department of Defence related to this matter and have begun an investigation".

The investigation comes as questions continued to swirl about the origination and the validity of the documents, and as reports suggest more have begun to appear on social media sites.

"It is very important to remember that in recent decades, the Russian special services' most successful operations have been taking place in Photoshop," Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukraine's military intelligence directorate, said on Ukrainian TV.

"From a preliminary analysis of these materials, we see false, distorted figures on losses on both sides, with part of the information collected from open sources."

READ MORE: Russia bombards illegally annexed Ukrainian areas from ground, air

Separately, however, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office released a statement Friday about a meeting he had with his senior military staff, and it noted that "the participants of the meeting focused on measures to prevent the leakage of information regarding the plans of the defence forces of Ukraine".

If the published documents are authentic to any degree, however, the leak of classified data is troubling and raises questions about what other information about the Ukraine war — or any coming offensive — could be distributed.

US officials on Friday provided no clarity on the origin of the documents, their authenticity, or who actually was the first to post them online.

The New York Times was the first to report about the documents. Later Friday, the Times reported that more documents involving Ukraine as well as other sensitive national security topics such as China and the Middle East had begun appearing on social media.

READ MORE: NASA warns of an 'invisible monster on the loose'

One US official said the initial documents resemble data produced daily by the Joint Staff, although some numbers are wrong. Even if they were legitimate, the official said, the US believes there is little real intelligence value to the documents, since much of it is information Russia would already know or could glean from the battlefield.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence documents.

The charts and graphs describe some battlefield status of both sides from a month ago, US military movements during the previous 24 hours, personnel numbers and the local weather outlook.

But there are errors. Under a section titled "Total Assessed Losses," one document lists 16,000-17,500 Russian casualties and up to 71,000 Ukrainian casualties. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said publicly last November that Russia has lost "well over" 100,000 soldiers, and Ukraine had lost about that many also.

Those estimates have continued to climb in recent months, although officials have stopped providing more exact numbers.

Sign up here to receive our daily newsletters and breaking news alerts, sent straight to your inbox.

Strong winds have forced the closure of some runways at Sydney Airport, causing flight delays during one of the busiest weekends of the year.

The two north-south runways are not in operation due to the weather meaning all departures and arrivals are operating on the single east-west runway.

This has impacted both domestic and international services as flights have been prioritised and rescheduled on the single runway.

READ MORE: Chilly conditions forecast for Easter long weekend

The delays for departures are currently between 20 and 40 minutes, Sydney Airport confirmed to 9News.com.au, while arrivals are running on time.

"Sydney Airport is experiencing some traffic delays due to increasing westerly winds," an Airservices Australia spokesperson said.

"This has resulted in one runway in use until wind conditions improve."

A Sydney Airport spokesperson said they were expecting it won't be until around 8pm that all runways will reopen.

No flights have been cancelled, and anyone with questions about their flight is advised to contact the airline directly, rather than the airport.

Westerly wind speeds have been sitting around 40 kilometres an hour at Sydney Airport, and the strongest gust recorded so far was 63km/h at 1.24pm, Senior Meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology Jordan Notara told 9News.com.au.

The warm weather today is increasing the speed of the winds, he explained, but said as the temperature drops this afternoon so will the wind.

"Tomorrow winds will be strong again in the morning before settling," Notara said.

The delays come amid a busy weekend of travel, with people taking advantage of the four-day Easter break to head both interstate and overseas.

Sign up here to receive our daily newsletters and breaking news alerts, sent straight to your inbox.

The trio found themselves in dire straits after their runabout began taking on water.

Kerry and Linda were the sole survivors after their grandfather killed six relatives.

The full story of the trial that had it all.

‘Have moved about 200m in 30 minutes,’ one motorist said.

A quad bike rider has died after a crash with a motorbike on a dirt race track near Alice Springs.

The accident happened about 4pm on the Finke Track – where the Finke Desert Race is held each year – 35 kilometres south of the Stuart Highway intersection.

The 27-year-old quad bike rider died at the scene.

READ MORE: Car rolls down embankment, into freight train

The motorbike rider, 24, was taken to Alice Springs Hospital in a serious condition.

He has since been flown interstate for treatment.

Major Crash Detectives remain on the scene and motorists have been told to avoid the area and follow all traffic directions.

A report will be prepared for the Coroner.

‘I’m not going to beg you any more. I know you’ve done something to her.’

A woman will face court after she allegedly crashed her car while drunk, and sideswiped another vehicle before falling asleep at the wheel.

South Australian Police were called to Kensington Garden in Adelaide's east just before 5.30pm last night after reports a Mitsubishi station wagon collided with a parked car.

A member of the public said the driver of the station wagon had side-swiped the parked car and then fell asleep at the wheel.

READ MORE: Chilly conditions forecast for Easter long weekend

At the scene, a 44-year-old woman from Prospect was breath tested and allegedly returned a result of 0.289 – more than five times the legal limit.

Her licence was immediately suspended for a year and her car was impounded for 28 days.

She will appear in court at a later date.

"Fortunately no one was injured as a result of the crash," South Australian Police said.

Palestinian assailants carried out a pair of attacks yesterday, killing three people and wounding at least six as tensions soared after days of fighting at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site, officials said.

Earlier in the day, retaliatory Israeli airstrikes had hit Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, sparking fears of a broader conflict.

Israeli authorities said an Italian tourist was killed and five other Italian and British citizens were wounded when a car rammed into a group of tourists in Tel Aviv, Israel's commercial hub.

READ MORE: Locals among four killed in 'horrific' head-on crash in country NSW

In a separate incident, two British-Israeli women were shot to death near a settlement in the occupied West Bank.

The spasm of violence in Israel and the West Bank heightened fears of an even more intense surge, with the rare convergence of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, the Jewish Passover holiday and Easter currently underway.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was calling up all reserve forces in Israel’s border police, a paramilitary force usually deployed to suppress Palestinian unrest, “to confront the terror attacks".

The additional border police would be activated Sunday and join other units that have recently been deployed in Jerusalem and Lod, a town in central Israel with a mixed Jewish and Palestinian population.

Israel had unleashed rare airstrikes on Lebanon and bombarded the Gaza Strip yesterday morning, but later in the day there were signs that both sides were trying to keep the border hostilities in check. The fighting subsided after dawn, and midday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem- a flashpoint for violence in recent days – passed peacefully.

READ MORE: Car rolls down embankment, gets wedged under train line after crash

The round of violence erupted after Israeli police raided the mosque earlier in the week, sparking unrest in the contested capital and outrage across the Arab world.

Militants fired an unusually large rocket barrage at Israel from southern Lebanon on Thursday – some of the heaviest and most serious cross-border violence since Israel’s 2006 war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants – as well as from Gaza.

In the Tel Aviv car-ramming late yesterday, the alleged attacker rammed his vehicle into a group of civilians near a popular seaside park, police said. Israel’s rescue service said a 30-year-old Italian man was killed, while five other British and Italian tourists – including a 74-year-old man and a 17-year-old girl – were receiving medical treatment for mild to moderate injuries.

Police said they shot and killed the driver of the car and identified him as a 45-year-old Palestinian citizen of Israel from the village of Kafr Qassem.

A video circulating on social media showed the car hurtling along a sidewalk for several hundred metres before crashing out of control.

Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni’s office expressed “closeness to the family of the victim" and "solidarity with the Israel for the vile attack". She identified the man killed as Alessandro Parini from Rome.

READ MORE: Most of the country set to see some rain across Easter long weekend

The shooting in the West Bank meanwhile killed the two sisters, who were in their 20s, and seriously wounded their 45-year-old mother near an Israeli settlement in the Jordan Valley, Israeli and British officials said. The family lived in the Efrat settlement, near the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, said Oded Revivi, the settlement’s mayor.

Medics said they dragged the unconscious women from their smashed car, which appeared to have been pushed off the road.

No groups claimed responsibility for either attack. But the Hamas militant group that rules Gaza praised both incidents as retaliation for Israeli raids earlier this week on the Al-Aqsa mosque – the third-holiest site in Islam. On Tuesday, police arrested and beat hundreds of Palestinians there, who responded by hurling rocks and firecrackers at officers.

Friday's airstrikes on neighbouring Lebanon targeted Hamas militant sites, the Israeli military said, accusing the group of firing the nearly three dozen rockets that slammed into open areas and towns in northern Israel on Thursday. The bombardment seemed designed to avoid drawing in Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shiite group that Israel considers its most immediate threat.

There were no reports of serious casualties from the airstrikes, but several people in the southern Lebanese town of Qalili, including Syrian refugees, said they were lightly wounded.

“I immediately gathered my wife and children and got them out of the house,” said Qalili resident Bilal Suleiman, who was jolted awake by the bombing.

A flock of sheep was killed when the Israeli missiles struck a field near the Palestinian refugee camp of Rashidiyeh, according to an Associated Press photographer. Other airstrikes hit a bridge and a power transformer in nearby Maaliya, and damaged an irrigation system.

In the Gaza Strip, Israel's military pounded what it said were Hamas weapons production sites and underground tunnels. A children’s hospital in Gaza City was among sites sustaining damage, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

After the retaliatory strikes, Israelis living along the southern border returned home from bomb shelters. Most missiles that managed to cross into Israeli territory hit open areas, but one landed in the town of Sderot, sending shrapnel slicing into a house.

There were no reports of casualties on either side of the southern border.

The Israeli military said everyone wanted to avoid a full-blown conflict. “Quiet will be answered with quiet,” said spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht. A Qatari official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the emirate was mediating.

Even as a fragile calm took hold along the Lebanese and Gaza borders, the West Bank remained volatile. Violence has surged to new heights there in recent months, with Palestinian health officials reporting the start of 2023 to be the most deadly for Palestinians in two decades.

Nearly 90 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since the start of the year, at least half of them affiliated with militant groups, according to an Associated Press tally. During that time, 17 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks on Israelis – all but one of them civilians.

“It's just a matter of time, and not much time, until we settle the score,” Netanyahu said as he toured the site of the deadly shooting in the West Bank with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. “We acted in Lebanon, we acted in Gaza, we beefed up forces in the field."

Al-Aqsa has long been a nexus of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the skirmishes between Palestinian worshippers and Israeli police at the holy compound this week spiralled into a regional confrontation. The mosque sits on a hilltop sacred to both Muslims and Jews. In 2021, an escalation triggered by clashes there spilled over into an 11-day war between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

Before dawn prayers Friday, chaos erupted at an entrance to the esplanade as Israeli police wielding batons descended on crowds of Palestinian worshippers who chanted slogans praising Hamas as they tried to squeeze into the site. Later, people leaving prayers staged a large protest on the limestone courtyard, raising their fists, shouting against Israel and waving Hamas flags. Israeli police said they forced their way into the compound in response to “masked suspects” who threw rocks toward officers at a gate.

Israeli authorities control access to the area but the compound is administered by Islamic and Jordanian officials.

The unrest comes at a delicate time for Jerusalem's Old City, which was suffused with religious fervour and teeming with pilgrims from around the world. The Christian faithful retraced the route Jesus is said to have taken for Good Friday and Jews celebrated the weeklong Passover holiday, while Muslims prayed and fasted for Ramadan.