When football fanatic Othman al-Kinani became blind in 2008, the loss of his sight hit him hard, not least because he thought he'd have to hang up his boots for good.

Now aged 51, Kinani described his struggle to rebuild his life. "I even forgot how to walk," he told AFP.

"I had to rely on my hearing for everything," he explained, after losing his sight to glaucoma, itself according to him the result of using incorrect medicines to treat allergies.

What made the situation worse "was being separated from football," the Arabic language teacher added.

David, a 61-year-old Israeli, has been on edge ever since his soldier son was deployed to Gaza, where the war sparked by Hamas's October 7 attack shows little sign of abating.

"As a father, I'm always nervous," David told AFP at the family's northern Israel home, just after his son Yonatan, 22, left to join his army unit in Rafah, the focus of recent fighting in the southern Gaza Strip.

The family has asked to use first names only for safety reasons.

In the Libyan village of Kabaw in the Nafusa Mountains, M'hamed Maakaf waters an ailing fig tree as climate change pushes villagers to forsake lands and livestock.

Once flourishing and known for its figs, olives, and almonds, fields around Kabaw, located some 200 kilometres (124 miles) southwest of Tripoli, are now mostly barren and battered by climate change-induced drought.

The area was once "green and prosperous until the beginning of the millennium," Maakaf recalled. "People loved to come here and take walks but today it has become so dry that it's unbearable."

By taking one of the first direct pilgrimage flights between Syria and Saudi Arabia in over a decade, Osama Kabbara realised two dreams: performing hajj and reuniting with his son.

"For me, it's a double joy," said the emotional 70-year-old, who had not seen Maher, his eldest son, since 2015.

One of the five pillars of Islam, the hajj pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia must be performed by all Muslims with the means to do so at least once in their lives.

But for Syrians living in government-controlled areas, it has long been out of reach.

In tents in the stifling heat and in bombed-out mosques, Gazans marked Sunday the start of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, devoid of the usual cheer as the Israel-Hamas war raged on.

"There is no joy. We have been robbed of it," said Malakiya Salman, a 57-year-old displaced woman, now living in a tent in Khan Yunis city in the southern Gaza Strip.

Gazans, like Muslims the world over, would usually slaughter sheep for the holiday -- whose Arabic name means "feast of the sacrifice" -- and share the meat with the needy.

Gaza saw its first day of relative calm in months Sunday, after Israel's military said it would "pause" fighting daily around a southern route to facilitate aid flows, following repeated UN warnings of famine in the Palestinian territory.

"Compared with the previous days, today, the first day of Eid al-Adha, is considered near calm and the calm has prevailed across all of Gaza," Mahmud Basal, spokesman for the civil defence agency in Hamas-ruled Gaza, told AFP.

Pilgrims on Sunday performed the last major ritual of the hajj, the "stoning of the devil", in western Saudi Arabia as Muslims around the globe celebrated the Eid al-Adha holiday.

As one of the world's largest annual religious gatherings wound down, authorities from multiple countries said at least 22 people had died, many of them from "extreme heat", highlighting the acute physical toll of the annual rites which in recent years have fallen during the oven-like Saudi summer.

Palestinian teenagers bounced on trampolines and jumped through hoops inside a towering tent on the outskirts of Ramallah, the financial hub of the occupied West Bank.

But the circus students weren't the only ones bending over backwards in the pavilion: the school's director faced financial hurdles to buy the tent from Europe and trampolines from Asia.

"We are suffering with international payments," said Mohamad Rabah, head of the Palestinian Circus School, describing a bureaucratic process that could delay equipment delivery by up to a month.

An exiled Iranian opposition group and activists on Saturday slammed as shameful Sweden's freeing in an apparent swap for two Swedes of a former Iranian official jailed over his role in the mass executions of dissidents in 1988.

Hamid Noury, a former Iranian prison official, had been convicted and jailed in Sweden under the principle of universal jurisdiction which allows states to try crimes carried out in other countries. It remains the only such case concerning atrocities in Iran.

France said Thursday one of its citizens detained in Iran has been released, leaving at least over half a dozen European passport holders still held in the country.

Olivier Grondeau, 34, detained since October 2022 on security charges, arrived in France on Monday after an almost 900-day ordeal, the Elysee Palace and a diplomatic source told AFP.

Human rights groups say those still in custody are being kept by Iran for use as bargaining chips in negotiations with foreign governments.