Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that his army was ready to launch operations against Kurdish militants in Syria at any moment following the US announcement that it would not stand in the way.

Top officials from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, key players in a coalition fighting Yemeni rebels, have discussed military cooperation following a positive response by Riyadh to a truce offer from the insurgents.

Iran on Monday reopened a border crossing with Iraq shut days ago at the request of Baghdad which is facing a wave of deadly protests, semi-official news agency ISNA said.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said "enemies" were trying to drive a wedge between Tehran and Baghdad in a tweet on Monday following deadly unrest in neighbouring Iraq.

US troops in northern Syria will no longer be near the border with Turkey, nor will they support Ankara's "long-planned operation" into the country, the White House said on Sunday.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Sunday he was seeking "non-aggression" agreements with Gulf Arab nations that do not formally recognize the country as a prelude to possible future peace deals.

Calm has prevailed in the Iraqi capital following a bloody night when at least 19 people were killed as security forces opened fire to break up anti-government protests.

Students made it to schools at the start of the working week early Sunday and government employees returned to work. But the capital's streets were mostly quiet and traffic thin. Burnt tires and debris littered thoroughfares while security remained heavily deployed in many neighborhoods.

Tunisians headed to the polls Sunday for the third round of legislative elections since the country's 2011 revolution, weeks after a presidential vote swept aside the post-Arab Spring political establishment.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday renewed Turkey's threat to launch an "air and ground" operation in Syria against a Kurdish militia viewed as terrorists by Ankara.

Nine jihadists were killed Saturday in Russian airstrikes on Syria's war-torn province of Idlib, a monitoring group said.