A Lebanese judge Monday issued an arrest warrant for ex-central bank chief Riad Salameh, a judicial official said, after the embattled former governor was questioned in an embezzlement case.

Salameh, 74, who headed the central bank for three decades, faces numerous charges including embezzlement, money laundering and tax evasion in separate probes in crisis-hit Lebanon and abroad.

The most senior Lebanese figure to be arrested in the wake of the country's dramatic economic collapse in 2019, Salameh has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Syria's health minister said Monday that overnight Israeli strikes killed 18 people in central Hama province, updating earlier figures, while a war monitor gave a higher death toll for the raids on military sites.

The Israeli military, which has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since its civil war started in 2011, declined to comment on the latest reported attack.

"The number of martyrs of the brutal Israeli aggression reached 18 martyrs and 37 wounded," Syria's Health Minister Hassan al-Ghabash told AFP.

Jordanians will head to the polls on Tuesday to vote for a new parliament amid widespread frustrations over a lagging economy and the ongoing war in Gaza.

Just two days ahead of the vote, in a rare surge of violence, a Jordanian killed three Israeli guards at the border crossing between Jordan and the occupied West Bank.

The elections, which take place every four years, are the first to be held under a law passed in January 2022 that increased the overall number of seats in the house, reserved a higher number for women and lowered the minimum age for candidates.

Shelling killed at least 21 people at a market in southeast Sudan Sunday, a day after the country's rulers rejected a call by UN experts for an independent force to protect civilians from the devastating civil war.

The Sudan Doctors Network blamed the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for the shelling, which happened in the town of Sennar. As well as the 21 killed, it said more than 70 people had been wounded in the attack.

A truck driver shot dead three Israeli guards at a border crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan Sunday before being "eliminated", Israel's military said, as it pounded Gaza with new strikes.

Jordan's interior ministry identified the shooter as Jordanian national Maher Diab Hussein al-Jazi, citing "preliminary investigations".

The rare attack at the Allenby Bridge crossing comes amid soaring violence in the West Bank with major Israeli raids and attacks by Palestinians, and against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas Gaza war, now in its 12th month.

Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian will visit neighbouring Iraq on Wednesday, state media reported Sunday, in what will be his first trip abroad since he took office in July.

Pezeshkian will head a high-ranking Iranians delegation to Baghdad to meet senior Iraqi officials.

The visit comes at the invitation of Iraq's premier, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, the official IRNA news agency quoted Iran's ambassador to Baghdad Mohammad Kazem Al-Sadegh as saying.

The two countries will sign memoranda of understanding on cooperation and security, Sadegh said, without elaborating.

The head of a United Nations body investigating crimes by the Islamic State group in Iraq expressed regret over "misunderstandings" that led to the premature end of its crucial mission, at Baghdad's request.

IS seized vast swathes of Iraq and neighbouring Syria and proclaimed a "caliphate" in 2014, carrying out abductions, beheadings, ethnic cleansing, mass killings and rapes.

Reconstruction has been slow in the year since a deadly earthquake struck Morocco's High Atlas region, with only a fraction of the damaged homes rebuilt, authorities said.

The 6.8-magnitude September 8, 2023 quake shook the remote mountainous area some 300 kilometres (185 miles) south of the capital Rabat, killing nearly 3,000 people and destroying or damaging around 60,000 homes.

More than 55,000 permits have been issued but just 1,000 homes have so far been rebuilt, the authorities said this week.

Sudan has rejected a call by UN experts for the deployment of an "independent and impartial force" to protect millions of civilians driven from their homes by more than a year of war.

The conflict since April last year, pitting the army against paramilitary forces, has killed tens of thousands of people and triggered one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

The independent UN experts said Friday their fact-finding mission had uncovered "harrowing" violations by both sides, "which may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity".

The Israeli military said a truck driver opened fire on Sunday at an Israeli border crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan, killing three Israeli guards before being "eliminated".

The deadly attack at the Allenby Bridge crossing, also known as King Hussein Bridge crossing, comes amid surging violence in the West Bank, with major Israeli military raids and attacks by Palestinians.

The military said "a terrorist" reached the area of the crossing, in the Jordan Valley, in a truck "from Jordan".