The United States has denied accusations it is pressuring banks to stop dealing with the Palestinian government, whose relations with Washington have been plummeting.

Acting Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan made an unannounced visit to the Iraqi capital on Tuesday for talks on the sensitive issue of a continued US troop presence after Washington withdraws from neighbouring Syria.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday denied Washington was "covering up" the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and promised further action. 

Food aid in a warehouse on the frontlines of the Yemen war is at risk of rotting, the U.N. said Monday, leaving millions of Yemenis without access to life-saving sustenance.

Qatar and France signed a deal Monday to cooperate on security and economic matters, in a boost to the tiny Gulf state still locked in a diplomatic rift with neighboring Saudi Arabia and its allies.

Two Palestinians including a Hamas policeman suffocated to death from gas in a cross-border tunnel under Gaza's frontier with Egypt, the enclave's interior ministry said Monday.

Interior ministry spokesman Iyad al-Bozum said 39-year-old major Abdelhamid al-Akar and Sabhy Abu Qarushayn, 28, "suffocated due to the inhalation of toxic gases".

Syrian fighters backed up by artillery fire from a US-led coalition pressed their assault Monday to retake a last morsel of territory from the Islamic State group, a war monitor said.

In the main square in the northern Iraqi town of Bartella stands a large cross, one of the few overt signs the town was historically Christian.

Nearby, a massive billboard shows Shiite Muslim martyrs alongside a photo of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. Posters of Iranian-backed Shiite militiamen killed in fighting with the Islamic State group hang on streets all around the city, along with banners to revered historical Shiite saints.

Nudged by rightwing political rivals after a deadly Palestinian attack on a young Israeli woman, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who seeks re-election pledged Sunday to freeze money transfers to the Palestinian Authority.

Algeria's ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is to seek a fifth term in April elections, state media announced Sunday, despite health issues that have kept him largely out of the public eye for years.