Kurdish-led forces were sending reinforcements to eastern Syria's Deir Ezzor province on Monday amid days of clashes with Arab fighters loyal to a detained local official, an AFP correspondent said.

Fighting erupted after the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) detained Ahmad al-Khabil, head of the Deir Ezzor Military Council, on August 27.

Israel's prime minister has floated the idea of building infrastructure projects such as a fiber optic cable linking countries in Asia and the Arabian Peninsula with Europe through Israel and Cyprus.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he's "quite confident" such an infrastructure "corridor" linking Asia to Europe through Israel and Cyprus is feasible.

Israel's foreign minister agreed Monday with his Bahraini counterpart to boost trade relations, during his first visit to one of the two Gulf Arab states to establish ties with Israel.

"The foreign minister and I agreed that we should work together to increase the number of direct flights, the tourism, the trade volume, the investment," Eli Cohen said during a ceremony to inaugurate Israel's new embassy.

U.S.-backed fighters brought in reinforcements into eastern Syria and pushed ahead in their offensive Saturday against local tribespeople, saying that hundreds of pro-government gunmen have joined the worst battles in the region in years.

The clashes that broke out Monday after the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces detained a former ally who headed an Arab-led faction in the region have left more than 50 people dead and dozens wounded.

Demonstrations in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk over the handover of a key facility from federal to local Kurdish authorities turned violent Saturday, and one protester was killed and several were injured, witnesses and local officials said.

Al-Qaida-linked militants attacked an army position in northwest Syria on Friday, killing at least nine government soldiers and wounding others, opposition activists said. There was no immediate word from the government.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said nine soldiers died as well as one of the attackers, who belong to the al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, the strongest insurgent group in northwest Syria. It said 12 soldiers and one HTS member were wounded in the attack.

An Iraqi court has sentenced an Iranian and four Iraqis to life in prison for the murder of a U.S. civilian, in a verdict welcomed by Washington.

Stephen Troell, who had been living in Baghdad with his family, was shot dead in unclear circumstances on November 7, officials said.

Hundreds of Syrians protested Friday in the government-held southern city of Sweida, the biggest in a wave of intensifying demonstrations spurred by economic hardship, activists and witnesses told AFP.

The Israeli military on Friday raided a Palestinian town in the northern West Bank, besieging an apartment and sparking a gunfight with local militants that killed an apparently uninvolved Palestinian teacher, his family and Palestinian health officials said. It was the latest in a series of Israeli army raids in the occupied territory that have resulted in a high Palestinian death toll.

Israeli security forces stormed into a town near Tubas, northeast of the Palestinian city of Nablus, and surrounded a house where militants were believed to be holed up. Israeli soldiers called on the wanted militants through loudspeakers to surrender, residents said.

One of Libya's rival prime ministers has rejected the prospect of normalizing relations with Israel days after news broke of a secret meeting between the countries' two foreign ministers.

Last Sunday, the Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen publicly announced that he and Libya's foreign minister had held a private meeting in Rome the previous week, the first ever between top diplomats from both countries.