Candidates in Kuwait's parliamentary elections have focused their campaigns on unpopular government austerity measures as the oil-dependent Gulf country faces financial stress due to low crude prices.

Kuwait, which sits on around seven percent of the world's proven crude reserves, has resorted to a series of measures to cut spending and boost non-oil revenues in a bid to diversify its economy.

The executive body of the global chemical arms watchdog took the unprecedented step Friday of condemning Syria and Islamic State jihadists for using toxic weapons and called for stepped up inspections, sources and officials said.

It is the first time the watchdog has found a state member to have violated the Chemical Weapons Convention, and came during a rare vote by its 41-member executive council, sources who attended the closed session told AFP.

U.S. president-elect Donald Trump pledged Friday to work for a "just, lasting peace" between Israel and the Palestinians, in his first public message on the issue since his upset victory.

Egyptian police quashed a few small protests across the country on Friday and arrested dozens of protesters as calls for an uprising against the rising prices largely went unheeded.

Iraqi Kurdish forces are building a berm near Mosul, a line in the sand that may mark a boundary of territory they aim to keep after recapturing it from jihadists.

Islamic State group fighters reportedly shot dead more than 60 people this week and hung some of their bodies from poles after alleging they had collaborated with Iraqi troops, the United Nations said Friday.

After a swift initial thrust into the Islamic State group's bastion in Libya, six months on unity government forces still face dogged resistance from jihadist holdouts cornered in the Mediterranean city of Sirte.

Forces loyal to Libya's Government of National Accord (GNA) announced the launch of the battle for Sirte, 450 kilometres (280 miles) east of Tripoli, on May 12.

Troops of Iraq's elite Counter-Terrorism Service resumed their offensive against the Islamic State group on the streets of Mosul on Friday after several days of relative quiet, officers said.

The battle to retake Mosul, the jihadists' last major bastion in Iraq, is now in its fourth week, and while troops have pushed into the east of the city, there are weeks, if not months, of fighting still to go.

The Russian military said Friday it has evidence of the use of chemical weapons by rebels in Syria's besieged eastern city of Aleppo.

"Experts from the Russian defence ministry have found unexploded artillery ammunition belonging to terrorists which contains toxic substances," the military said in a statement.

Egyptian authorities have frozen the assets of a prominent human rights group that works with torture victims, the head of the organization said on Thursday.