Jordan will meet Tajikistan in the Asian Cup quarter-finals after scoring twice in three minutes deep in stoppage time to stun Iraq 3-2 in a thriller on Monday.

Jordan had a man advantage after the 77th-minute dismissal of Aymen Hussein but looked down and out in injury time, only for Yazan Al-Arab to prod in a 95th-minute leveller.

If that was hard to believe, better was to come two minutes later for Jordan when Nizar Al-Rashdan curled in from well outside the box to fire the underdogs into the last eight and spark wild celebrations.

Iran on Monday hanged four members of its Kurdish minority on charges of spying for Israel, defying a campaign for their lives to be spared by rights groups who had described their trial as grossly unfair.

The four men were executed at dawn after they were convicted of collaborating with Israel on a plan to sabotage an Iranian defence site in the central province of Isfahan, according to the judiciary's Mizan Online website.

Tanks churn through the mud between bombed-out buildings in Gaza's main southern city of Khan Yunis, now the epicentre of the war, as explosions and gunfire reverberate in the distance.

Piles of rubble tower near the entrance to a Hamas tunnel, part of the underground labyrinth the army dubs the "Gaza Metro" and where it says militants are hiding out and holding hostages.

A framework to halt the Gaza fighting and for hostage releases is to be relayed to Hamas, mediator Qatar said Monday, as a bitter row flared around the UN aid agency for Palestinians.

While deadly fighting again rocked Gaza, fears mounted of a widening regional conflict after Israel's top ally Washington vowed to respond to an attack that killed three US troops in Jordan.

Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip killed 215 more people within 24 hours, including 20 members of one family, said the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.

Pakistan and Iran pledged Monday to improve dialogue and swap liaison officers as both nations sought to ease tensions after deadly cross-border strikes threatened diplomatic relations.

The tit-for-tat raids earlier this month in the porous border region of Baluchistan -- split between the two nations -- stoked regional tensions already inflamed by the Israel-Hamas war.

During a visit to Pakistan Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said the hostilities could not be described as a "crisis" because relations had always been strong.

Iran's foreign minister was in Pakistan for talks Monday, as both nations sought to ease tensions after deadly cross-border strikes threatened diplomatic relations.

Pakistan's foreign ministry shared pictures and video of Hossein Amir-Abdollahian arriving in Islamabad late Sunday, saying he would hold talks with his local counterpart Jalil Abbas Jilani and call on caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar.

On January 18 Pakistan launched air strikes on what it called "militant targets" in Iran, two days after similar Iranian strikes on its territory.

More than two months after Yemen's Huthi rebels captured the Galaxy Leader cargo ship and detained its crew, the Iran-backed rebels have turned the vessel into a domestic "tourist attraction".

For about a dollar per trip, male-only groups of visitors can board wooden boats five times a week to the hijacked car carrier, which the Huthis hail as a trophy in their fight in solidarity with the Palestinians.

A video showing renovation work at Egypt's Menkaure pyramid at Giza has triggered social media criticism, with one expert decrying its "absurdity".

Mostafa Waziri, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, has in contrast dubbed it "the project of the century."

In a video posted on Facebook on Friday, Waziri showed workers setting blocks of granite on the base of the pyramid, which sits besides the sphinx and the larger Khafre and Cheops pyramids at Giza.

The White House vowed Monday to respond decisively to an attack in Jordan it blames on Iran-backed militants, in which a drone slammed into a military base and killed three Americans while troops were in their beds.

The casualties -- the first US military deaths in an attack in the Middle East since the Israel-Hamas war began -- raised fears of an escalating conflict, as fighting rages in Gaza and related violence plagues other parts of the region.

The trial of a Swedish EU diplomat wrapped up in Tehran on Sunday, with Iranian prosecutors seeking the maximum penalty for the man accused of spying for Iran's arch-foe, Israel.

The prosecutor said that 33-year-old Johan Floderus -- who works for the European Union diplomatic service -- was charged with "very extensive intelligence cooperation with the Zionist occupation regime", meaning Israel, according to the judiciary's Mizan Online website.