Six people including four Pakistanis were killed and nearly 30 wounded in a shooting near a Shiite mosque in the Omani capital Muscat, officials said Tuesday, a rare attack in the country that was claimed by Islamic State.

Monday's mosque attack came as Shiites this week mark Ashura, an annual day of mourning that commemorates the seventh-century death in battle of Imam Hussein, regarded by the branch as the rightful successor to the Prophet Mohammed.

Israel's deadly strike on Al-Mawasi, one of the bloodiest attacks in more than nine months of war in Gaza, used massive payload bombs provided by the United States, according to weapons experts.

The bombing of the Israeli-declared "safe zone" transformed the tent city on the Mediterranean coast into a charred wasteland, with nearby hospitals overrun with casualties.

According to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, the barrage killed at least 92 people and wounded more than 300.

Four people were killed and multiple others wounded in a shooting near a mosque in Oman's capital Muscat, police said Tuesday.

"The Royal Oman Police have responded to a shooting incident that occurred in the vicinity of a mosque in the Al-Wadi Al-Kabir area," police said in a statement.

The force gave an initial toll of four killed and "several others" wounded at the mosque in eastern Muscat.

Such an attack is rare in the Sultanate, which has regularly played the role of mediator in regional conflicts.

Syrians in government-held areas were voting Monday in their fourth parliamentary election since civil war erupted in 2011, a poll expected to keep President Bashar al-Assad's ruling Baath party in power.

The election came amid overtures from Ankara towards Damascus, after ties were severed following the start of Syria's war in 2011, with Assad saying he was open to meeting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan depending on the encounter's "content".

UK police on Monday arrested two pro-Palestinian demonstrators after a protest at Britain's Cenotaph war memorial in central London.

A Palestinian flag was laid in front of the Cenotaph and "180,000 killed" spray-painted on the ground in front of the monument, photos and video footage showed.

The Cenotaph is the focus every year of of national events to commemorate Britain's war dead.

Syrians in government-held areas were voting Monday in their fourth parliamentary election since civil war erupted in 2011, a poll expected to keep President Bashar al-Assad's ruling Baath party in power.

While voting was calm in most areas, a war monitor and a local media outlet reported protests against the election in southern Sweida province, the heartland of Syria's Druze minority, which has seen regular demonstrations for almost a year.

Israeli air and artillery fire pounded the Gaza Strip on Monday, more than nine months into the war between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants as peace hopes faded.

Fallout from the fighting again spread to the surrounding region. Two ships were attacked off Yemen, according to security agencies, while a war monitor said an Israeli strike near the Syria-Lebanon border killed a Western-sanctioned businessman who was close to Syria's president.

Hamas's armed wing said militants had fired a missile at two Israeli tanks in the Tal al-Hawa district of Gaza City, in the north.

Syrians in government-held areas were voting Monday in their fourth parliamentary election since civil war erupted in 2011, a poll expected to keep President Bashar al-Assad's ruling Baath party in power.

The Baath party -- in power since 1963 -- and its secular left-wing and Arab nationalist allies are running virtually unopposed, with independents the only alternative.

More than 1,500 people are standing for 250 seats in the largely rubber-stamp parliament, after some 7,400 candidates withdrew in recent days, according to Syria's Supreme Judicial Elections Committee.

The civil defence agency in Hamas-run Gaza said Sunday that 15 people were killed in a strike on a school sheltering war displaced where the Israeli military said it had targeted "terrorists".

The strike on the UN-run Abu Araban site in central Gaza's Nuseirat camp was the fifth on a school-turned-shelter in eight days.

The Abu Araban school was housing "thousands of displaced people," civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP, adding that most of the dead were women and children.

Eight Palestinian athletes taking part in the Paris Olympics will be symbols of "resistance" during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, a Palestinian minister said Sunday as the official delegation left the occupied West Bank.

This will be the eighth time Palestinian athletes have taken part in the Olympics since 1996, but Olympic committee head Jibril Rajoub said the athletes had never felt so much attention.