Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Tuesday to fight an "Iranian curtain" descending on the Middle East, pledging to prevent Tehran from ever establishing a permanent foothold in Syria.

Netanyahu -- who in recent years has coined his own sort of theater at the annual United Nations speech marathon with podium props and dramatic warnings -- was in a lighter mood for 2017, cracking jokes and rejoicing over the rise of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Two prominent Saudi human rights defenders were arrested last weekend, campaigners said Tuesday, amid an ongoing crackdown on dissenters in the kingdom.

Two suicide bombers killed at least three people and wounded 34 on Tuesday in a northern Iraq restaurant frequented by militiamen battling the Islamic State group, security sources said.

Iraqi security forces and paramilitary units launched a dawn assault Tuesday against one of the Islamic State group's last bastions in the vast western province of Anbar bordering Syria.

A jihadist offensive in a region of northwestern Syria where a safe zone deal had brought months of relative calm prompted heavy government and Russian air strikes on Tuesday, a monitor said.

Qatar accused Bahrain on Tuesday of abusing a routine fisheries enforcement case to deepen a three-month diplomatic crisis between the emirate and its Gulf neighbours.

A Hamas militant died in an incident in a tunnel in Gaza, the Islamist movement which controls the territory said on Tuesday, the third such death in five days.

Rebel shelling of a residential neighbourhood of Yemen's third-largest city Taez killed four boys aged between seven and 15, a local official said on Tuesday.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi met Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu publicly for the first time in New York to discuss Middle East peace after US President Donald Trump said he would push for resuming stalled negotiations.

Monday's meeting, which follows mediation in Cairo between Palestinian arch-rivals Fatah and Hamas, reflects Egypt's will to return to the forefront of the Middle East diplomatic scene.

Iraqi forces backed by paramilitary units were preparing Monday to attack the last stronghold of the Islamic State group in the western desert bordering Syria, an AFP correspondent said.