Israel said Monday that Hamas had yet to clarify whether 34 hostages it said it was ready to free were dead or alive, throwing doubt on the group's assertion that it needed time to ascertain their fate.

The offer from Hamas came as Israel continued to pound the Gaza Strip, where rescuers said 16 people were killed Monday.

In the occupied West Bank, where violence has surged since the Gaza war broke out, Israeli officials said three Israeli citizens were killed when gunmen opened fire on a bus and other vehicles.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy went on trial on Monday charged with accepting illegal campaign financing in an alleged pact with late Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Sarkozy's career has been shadowed by legal troubles since he lost the 2012 presidential election.

He has been convicted in two other cases, charged in another and is being investigated in two more. But he remains an influential figure and is also known to regularly meet President Emmanuel Macron.

His orange henna-dyed beard and striking eyewear would make him easy to pick out in a crowd, but Abdul Qadir Mumin has remained elusive.

The Somalian leader of the Islamic State (IS) group has in all likelihood risen to the status of strongman of the entire organisation, even if he lacks the official title, analysts say.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot on Sunday said he would have preferred if Syria's new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa had shaken the hand of his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock on their visit to Syria last week, but insisted that this was not the point of their trip.

Barrot and Baerbock on Friday became the most senior Western figures to visit the Syrian capital since Islamist-led forces toppled longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad last month.

A Hamas official said Sunday the group was ready to free 34 hostages in the "first phase" of a potential deal with Israel, after Israel said indirect talks on a truce and hostage release agreement had resumed in Qatar.

Mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States have tried for months to strike a deal to end the war. The latest effort comes just days before Donald Trump takes office as president of the United States on January 20.

The talks took place as Israel pounded the Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing at least 23 people according to rescuers, nearly 15 months into the war.

Hundreds protested in Lebanon's second city Tripoli on Sunday, demanding that authorities release Islamists detained during the civil war in neighbouring Syria, an AFP journalist said.

The prisoners include Lebanese who had gone to fight with rebels and jihadists against the forces of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad during the conflict, which began in 2011, and were arrested upon their return to Lebanon.

The rally in Tripoli's Nour Square comes nearly a month after Islamist-led forces toppled Assad.

Determining the fate of those who went missing during Syria's civil war will be a massive task likely to take years, the president of the International Committee for the Red Cross said.

"Identifying the missing and informing the families about their fate is going to be a huge challenge," ICRC president Mirjana Spoljaric told AFP in an interview.

The fate of tens of thousands of detainees and missing people remains one of the most harrowing legacies of the conflict that started in 2011 when president Bashar al-Assad's forces brutally repressed anti-government protests.

More than 100 combatants were killed over the last two days in northern Syria in fighting between Turkish-backed groups and Syrian Kurdish forces, a war monitor said on Sunday.

Since Friday evening, clashes in several villages around the city of Manbij have left 101 dead, including 85 members of pro-Turkish groups and 16 from the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The SDF said it had repelled "all the attacks from Turkey's mercenaries supported by Turkish drones and aviation".

Ministers from Syria's transitional government urged the United States to lift its sanctions on Damascus during their first visit to Qatar since overthrowing president Bashar al-Assad.

In a statement, Qatar's foreign ministry said the Gulf country's premier met with Syria's interim foreign minister, Asaad al-Shaibani, defence minister Murhaf Abu Qasra and the new head of intelligence, Anas Khattab.

On the slopes of Mount Qasyun which overlooks Damascus, a network of tunnels links a military complex, tasked with defending the Syrian capital, to the presidential palace facing it.

The tunnels, seen by an AFP correspondent, are among secrets of president Bashar al-Assad's rule exposed since rebels toppled him on December 8.