Tunisia's justice ministry said Monday it had set up a special commission to examine files relating to the investigation and prosecution over the 2013 killings of two prominent left-wing opponents.

The murders of Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi, coming just two years after the Arab Spring uprisings that began in the North African country, sparked a major political crisis.

At a hospital in northwest Syria, Osama Abdel Hamid was holding back tears as he recalled on Monday the massive earthquake that toppled his home just hours earlier.

"We were fast asleep when we felt a huge earthquake," Abdel Hamid told AFP at Al-Rahma hospital in Idlib province, where he was being treated for a head injury.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government was preparing to send medical and rescue assistance to Turkey following Monday's earthquake that killed hundreds in the country.

The 7.8 magnitude quake struck near the Turkish city of Gaziantep before dawn, killing more than 900 people in Turkey and more than 380 in neighboring Syria.

At least 473 people were killed in Syria on Monday as buildings collapsed after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck neighboring Turkey, state media and a medical source said.

AFP correspondents in northern Syria said terrified residents ran out of their homes after the earthquake hit before dawn near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Syrian border.

Israeli forces on Monday killed five alleged Palestinian gunmen in a raid in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli official said, after a days-long search for suspects in a shooting near Jericho.

Hamas Islamists confirmed its fighters were among the dead, saying in a statement the Gaza-based group was mourning members of its military wing killed "in an armed clash with the Zionist occupation".

The most powerful earthquake in nearly a century struck Turkey and Syria early Monday, killing over 1,200 people in their sleep, leveling buildings and causing tremors felt as far away as Iraq.

The 7.8-magnitude quake wiped out entire sections of major Turkish cities in a restless region filled with millions of people who have fled the civil war in Syria and other conflicts.

A former Israeli prime minister who served briefly as a mediator at the start of Russia's war with Ukraine says he drew a promise from the Russian president not to kill his Ukrainian counterpart.

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett emerged as an unlikely intermediary in the war's first weeks, becoming one of the few Western leaders to meet President Vladimir Putin during the war in a snap trip to Moscow last March.

The Islamist rulers of Gaza, Hamas, have condemned Sudan for agreeing to move ahead with normalising ties with Israel, breaking with decades of support for Palestinian militant groups.

The United States has stepped up pressure on Middle East allies to expel the Wagner Group, a military contractor with close ties to Russia's president, from chaos-stricken Libya and Sudan where it expanded in recent years, regional officials told The Associated Press.

The U.S. effort described by officials comes as the Biden administration is making a broad push against the mercenaries. The U.S. has slapped new sanctions on the Wagner Group in recent months over its expanding role in Russia's war in Ukraine.

An ivory spoon dating back 2,700 years that was recently repatriated to the Palestinian Authority from the United States has sparked a dispute with Israel's new far-right government over the cultural heritage in the occupied West Bank.

The clash brings into focus the political sensitivities surrounding archaeology in the Middle East, where Israelis and Palestinians each use ancient artifacts to support their claims over the land.