Air strikes shook a besieged rebel-held town east of the Syrian capital on Monday, sparking fears among civilians of a fate similar to battered Aleppo city.

Moroccan police have arrested 10 women who had allegedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State jihadist group and planned to carry out suicide bombings across the country, authorities said Monday.

Suicide bombers struck two Shiite-majority areas of the Iraqi capital on Monday, killing at least 10 people and wounding more than 30 others, security and medical officials said.

At least two people were killed on Monday in rare suicide blasts in the central Syrian city of Hama, claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.

The Palestinian high court on Monday ordered municipal elections to be held only in the West Bank and not in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, though a new date for the suspended polls was not set.

The ruling could bring to an end hopes that the municipal elections would be the first polls since 2006 in which both Islamist movement Hamas and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah, which runs the West Bank, would participate.

Forces loyal to Libya's unity government said Monday at least 80 jihadists were killed at the weekend in the city of Sirte, a former stronghold of the Islamic State group.

"Commanders of front line units have counted at least corpses (of jihadists) killed as they tried in vain to attack behind the lines" of the loyalists, said the media office of forces loyal to the Government of National Accord (GNA).

Bahrain's top court rejected Monday a request to release Shiite opposition chief cleric Ali Salman, who is serving a nine-year jail term on charges of inciting hatred and forceful regime change.

The head of the Al-Wefaq group had been sentenced in July 2015 to four years in jail after being convicted of inciting hatred in the Sunni-ruled Gulf kingdom.

At least 21 Syrian rebels fighting alongside Turkish troops in northern Syria against the Islamic State group were killed Sunday by landmines laid by the jihadist group, a monitor said Monday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the toll was the highest loss of life for forces involved in the Turkish-led operation in northern Syria since it began in late August.

Three photojournalists have been detained on charges of spreading false information after conducting interviews on the streets with members of the public in central Cairo, officials said Sunday.

The frail cries of four-month-old Wahida made the rescue worker who carried her out of the rubble in Syria's Idlib break down in sobs. The full story is one of tragedy.