President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday accused the United States of siding with "terrorists" after blaming outlawed Kurdish militants of executing 13 Turks in northern Iraq.

Erdogan's comments came a day after Ankara said Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels had killed 13 captives -- most of them Turkish soldiers and police officers -- they had allegedly abducted in southeast Turkey and kept in an Iraqi cave.

Israel fired several missiles early on Monday targeting areas near the Syrian capital, Damascus, Syria's state news agency reported. An opposition war-monitoring group said the strikes killed nine Iran-backed fighters.

The SANA news agency claimed that Syrian air defenses shot down most of the missiles, which it said were fired from Syria's Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Iraqi security forces have arrested four individuals in the southern city of Basra suspected of killing anti-government protesters and vocal journalists, two senior security officials told AFP on Sunday.

Small and sporadic demonstrations took place in Bahrain on Sunday amid a hefty police presence, marking a decade since the Gulf nation's Arab Spring-inspired uprising. 

One migrant is dead and 22 others are missing after their boat sank in the Mediterranean sea off the Italian island of Lampedusa, the Tunisian navy said.

The UAE's "Hope" probe sent back its first image of Mars, the national space agency said Sunday, days after the spacecraft successfully entered the Red Planet's orbit.

Dozens were killed in overnight clashes in Yemen as Iran-backed Huthi rebels intensified attacks to seize the government's last northern stronghold, officials said Sunday. 

The Gulf state of Bahrain was rocked a decade ago by Shiite-led protests calling for reforms from their Sunni rulers, who unleashed a backlash of repression.

About 400,000 children under the age of five are in danger of dying of acute malnutrition in war-torn and impoverished Yemen, UN agencies warned Friday.

A deal reached between Palestinian rivals Fatah and Hamas to hold elections is aimed at renewing confidence in Palestinian governance ahead of a diplomatic push and talks with Israel, experts said.