The UN Security Council on Tuesday renewed its sanctions regime on Yemen for another year, after tense negotiations between Britain and Russia, which threatened to veto any mention, even implicit, of Iran.

Providing neutral space for talks on ending Afghanistan's 18-year conflict has boosted Qatar's international profile and helped it defy a painful embargo enforced by neighbours and former allies.

Regime air strikes and artillery fire in northwestern Syria, including on schools in the city of Idlib, killed 19 civilians on Tuesday, a war monitor said.

A Bulgarian court handed a Swiss man a five-year jail term for terrorism and arms smuggling after he was caught, heavily armed, on his way to Syria in 2018.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas hailed former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak as a supporter of the Palestinian cause, after he passed away on Tuesday aged 91.

Egypt's former long-time president Hosni Mubarak died Tuesday at age 91 at Cairo's Galaa military hospital, his brother-in-law General Mounir Thabet told AFP.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged Tuesday to build 3,500 new settler homes in a super-sensitive area of the occupied West Bank, just a week before a tight general election. 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday said there was not yet a full accord between Russia, and European Union heavyweights France and Germany to hold a summit over the escalating violence in Syria's Idlib. 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday said two Turkish troops have been killed in Libya, a country wracked by conflict between its UN-recognised government and the forces of strongman Khalifa Haftar. 

Libya's rival camps announced Monday they had suspended their participation in U.N.-sponsored peace talks this week in Geneva, although a United Nations spokesman said negotiations would still go ahead.