The number of civilians killed last month in Syria was at its lowest since the start of the conflict more than seven years ago, a war monitor said Monday.

With a deadline for establishing a demilitarized zone around Syria's Idlib inching closer, confusion and apprehension is rife among Turkish-backed rebels who fear it will cost them their last stronghold.

Palestinians held a general strike on Monday to protest Israel's controversial Jewish nation-state law while also commemorating the deaths of 13 people killed in clashes with police in October 2000.

A key rebel alliance in Syria's Idlib has said it was opposed to the deployment of Russian forces in a demilitarised zone to be set up under a Turkey-Russia deal for the opposition bastion.

The deal agreed last month between Ankara and Moscow provides for the establishment of a U-shaped buffer zone around Idlib that would be free of both jihadists and heavy weapons.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said Monday they launched a missile strike against a "terrorist" headquarters in Syria in retaliation for an attack that killed 24 people in the Iranian city of Ahvaz.

More than 18,000 people, nearly half of them civilians, have been killed in Russian air strikes on Syria since Moscow began its game-changing intervention three years ago, a monitor said Sunday.

Syria's foreign minister has denounced U.S., French and Turkish forces operating in his country as "occupying forces" and demanded that they leave immediately.

The U.N. envoy to Libya told AFP that it will be difficult to hold elections as hoped on December 10, following a new wave of fighting in the North African nation.

Voting began Sunday across Iraq's Kurdistan for a new parliament in the autonomous region, which is mired in an economic crisis a year after an independence referendum that infuriated Baghdad.

President Donald Trump has complained that the U.S. is "subsidizing" the military of Middle East ally Saudi Arabia, as well as Japan and South Korea.

The comment, at a West Virginia rally for local candidates of his Republican Party, follows similar jibes at European members of the NATO alliance.