A Tunisian court has sentenced ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to 10 years in jail for abuse of power, the prosecution said Friday, in the latest case against him.

Libya's authorities that are backed by an internationally recognized parliament said Friday they oppose a U.N.-backed unity government from starting work inside the country.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wants the divided Security Council to clarify its stance on the U.N. dispute with Morocco over Western Sahara, his spokesman said Friday.

The 15-member council discussed the escalating row during a closed-door meeting on Thursday after Rabat ordered drastic cuts to the staff of the U.N. mission in Western Sahara.

A former energy minister has returned to Algeria from three years in exile in the US after an arrest warrant against him for a corruption case was lifted, local media said Friday.

Campaigners delivered fake missiles to Downing Street on Friday to protest Britain's continued supply of arms to Saudi Arabia despite concerns they are being used against civilians in Yemen.

Amnesty International activists wearing white mechanics' boiler suits delivered five replicas of the 1.8-meter-long Paveway-IV weapons used by British-supplied Saudi jets outside Prime Minister David Cameron's office.

In the sun-soaked coastal city of Latakia, a stronghold of Syria's President Bashar Assad, shopkeeper Khaled says he already misses the sound of Russian warplanes screaming overhead.

When the stylish young man heard that Moscow would pull the bulk of its airforce out of Syria, he was devastated.

At least 16 civilians, among them eight children, were killed on Friday in air strikes on the northern Syrian city of Raqa by unidentified planes, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said five women were also among the dead in Raqa, the main Syrian bastion of the Islamic State jihadist group.

Russian jets are flying some 25 bombing raids daily to back up a Syrian government offensive to recapture the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State jihadists, the armed forces said Friday.   

A Palestinian tried to stab Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank on Friday before being shot dead, the army said, the latest in a months-long wave of violence.

"An assailant, armed with a knife, exited his vehicle and charged at the soldiers guarding the (Gush Etzion) junction," an army statement said, referring to a popular road crossing near Hebron in the southern West Bank.

Dozens of Syrian rebel factions on Friday condemned a Kurdish declaration of a federal region in the war-ravaged country's north as a step towards partition.

"We categorically reject the declaration... regarding an autonomously-run or federal region in northern Syria and we consider it to be a dangerous step aimed at partitioning Syria," some 70 rebel factions said in a statement posted online.