A former British soldier who sparked a manhunt after escaping from prison before his trial was sentenced by a UK court on Monday to 14 years for spying for Iran.

Ukraine on Monday stepped up its bombing campaign of Russian energy sites with aerial attacks on two oil facilities in the west of the country, Kyiv's military said.

A car bomb on Monday killed 15 people, mostly women farm workers, in the northern Syrian city of Manbij where Kurdish forces are battling Turkey-backed groups, state media reported.

Citing White Helmet rescuers, SANA news agency said there had been a "massacre" on a local road, with "the explosion of a car bomb near a vehicle transporting agricultural workers" killing 14 women and one man.

The office of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas denounced an Israeli operation in the occupied West Bank as "ethnic cleansing" on Monday, with the health ministry saying Israeli forces killed 70 people in the territory this year.

In a statement, spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the Palestinian presidency "condemned the occupation authorities' expansion of their comprehensive war on our Palestinian people in the West Bank to implement their plans aimed at displacing citizens and ethnic cleansing."

Hamas is ready to begin talks on the details of a second phase of the ongoing truce in Gaza, two officials from the Palestinian militant group told AFP on Monday.

The widow of slain Lebanese intellectual Lokman Slim, a critic of Hezbollah, has denounced a judge investigating his murder four years ago for allegedly closing the probe.

Syria's interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa said Saudi Arabia had a "genuine desire" to support his war-torn country, after meeting on Sunday with the oil-rich Gulf state's crown prince.

Iran on Monday condemned U.S. President Donald Trump's proposal to relocate Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, warning it would amount to "ethnic cleansing".

Syria's interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa will visit Turkey on Tuesday on his second international visit since the toppling of Bashar al-Assad in December, the Turkish presidency said.

The funeral for Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, killed last September in an Israeli strike, will be held on February 23, the group's current chief Sheikh Naim Qassem said on Sunday.

Qassem also confirmed for the first time that leading official Sayyed Hashem Safieddine had been chosen to succeed Nasrallah before he too was killed in an Israeli raid in October.