An Algerian human rights campaigner and Mozabite Berber activist died Tuesday in pre-trial detention, his lawyer said, accusing judicial authorities of causing his death.

A Jordanian court has rejected a request from France to extradite a suspect in the 1982 attack on a Jewish restaurant in Paris that left six people dead, his lawyer said Tuesday.

Algeria's armed forces chief on Tuesday called for "mutual concessions" between the country's interim leaders and protesters demanding broader changes nearly two months after long-serving president Abdelaziz Bouteflika resigned.

A Saudi Arabian cargo ship arrived at a port in southern France on Tuesday to pick up munitions, according to an investigative website, rekindling criticism of weapons sales to the Middle Eastern  nation which rights groups say are being used in the devastating war in Yemen.

Leading Palestinian businessmen announced Tuesday they would boycott an economics-focused conference next month in Bahrain that is part of the United States' Middle East peace plan.

U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner is heading to the Middle East, the White House said Tuesday, signalling a fresh push on a long promised but yet to be delivered peace plan for the region.

Kushner is accompanied by Jason Greenblatt, Trump's special representative for international negotiations, and Brian Hook, the special U.S. representative for Iran, the White House said.

At least 21 civilians were killed on Tuesday as Syria's regime intensified its bombardment of the last jihadist stronghold in the country's northwest, a monitor said.

A Baghdad court sentenced two more Frenchmen to death Tuesday for joining the Islamic State jihadist group, raising the number of French IS members on death row in Iraq to six.

New satellite photos show significant damage to Syrian villages and surrounding farmland as a result of a government offensive on the last rebel stronghold in the country.

The images, provided to The Associated Press by the Colorado-based Maxar Satellites on Tuesday, show fires in olive groves and orchards during harvest season around Kfar Nabudah and Habeet, two villages on the edge of Idlib province where fighting has focused. The fires were apparently sparked by intense bombing in the area.

The Iraqi Kurdish parliament on Tuesday elected Nechirvan Barzani, the nephew and son-in-law of veteran leader Massud Barzani, as president of the autonomous region.

The deputy leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party won 68 votes from the 81 members present in the 111-seat chamber, in a poll boycotted by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of late Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, an AFP correspondent said.