Chinese President Xi Jinping opened the 19th Asian Games in a colourful ceremony in Hangzhou on Saturday, launching a two-week sporting extravaganza that boasts more athletes than the Olympics.

After being delayed by a year because of China's now-abandoned zero-Covid policy, more than 12,000 competitors from 45 nations and territories will battle it out in 40 sports.

In front of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and other visiting leaders, Xi officially opened the Games at the 80,000-capacity Hangzhou Olympic stadium, also known as "the Big Lotus".

Chinese President Xi Jinping will declare the Asian Games open at a glittering ceremony in Hangzhou on Saturday, kickstarting a sporting behemoth that boasts more athletes than the Olympics.

After being delayed by a year due to China's strict zero-Covid regime, more than 12,000 competitors from 45 nations across Asia and the Middle East are in the eastern city to compete in 40 sports.

Xi is scheduled to open proceedings officially in one of the country's most prosperous regions, in front of invited guests including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The Israeli military said it hit three Hamas targets in Gaza Friday after new protests along the border sparked clashes in which health officials said 28 Palestinians were wounded.

There have been repeated clashes along the border fence since September 13, with Palestinians protesters throwing stones and petrol bombs at Israeli troops who have responded with tear gas and live bullets.

On September 15, Israel launched its first air strike on Gaza since early July, targeting the territory's Islamist rulers Hamas.

As much of the world's attention has been focused on the port city of Derna since last week's flooding in eastern Libya, other cities are mired in the resulting damage.

Ahmed Saleh, a 34-year-old civil engineer clad in a traditional white jalabiya, is still in shock at the scale of the destruction in his home city, Susa.

More than 10 days after the deadly storms lashed eastern Libya, he says they still have great difficulty accessing drinking water after a desalination plant was badly damaged.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday warned Iran at the United Nations of a "nuclear threat" in what his office quickly walked back as a slip of the tongue.

The hawkish prime minister said that alarm over Tehran's clerical leaders was driving Israel closer to the Arab world, with his government on the "cusp" of a historic breakthrough with Saudi Arabia.

Netanyahu, who has repeatedly used the UN stage to issue dark warnings about Tehran, briefly gave pause at the General Assembly when he appeared to threaten nuclear attack if Tehran pursues its own atomic bomb.

Iran says it has received thousands of Achaemenid-era clay tablets from the United States in the fifth such instalment, following a drawn-out legal effort to repatriate the antiquities.

"After the two-year follow-up of the government... the Achaemenid tablets confiscated by the American government were returned to the country," said a statement posted on Iran's presidency website late Thursday.

The 3,506 tablets were repatriated on the plane that also brought home the Iranian delegation from New York after it attended the United Nations General Assembly.

In the sandy courtyard of a school turned shelter in northern Sudan, two children idly pass a football back and forth. Around them, dozens of adults wait, trapped between a war and a border.

There is little else to do in the border town of Wadi Halfa, where a local support group says upwards of 20,000 displaced people live in limbo, unable to cross the northern frontier into Egypt and escape the five-month war between the Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a "strategic partnership" with Syria on Friday during talks with President Bashar al-Assad, who is seeking financial support to help rebuild his devastated country.

The leaders met on the eve of the Asian Games opening ceremony, which Assad will attend as part of his first visit to China since 2004.

China is one of only a handful of countries outside the Middle East that Assad has visited since the 2011 start of a civil war that killed more than half a million people, displaced millions and battered Syria's infrastructure and industry.

The head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, has visited Syria to oversee a joint military drill, media outlets in the Islamic republic said.

Qaani, appointed Quds Force commander after a US drone strike on Baghdad killed its revered leader Qasem Soleimani in 2020, met senior Syrian officials in Damascus, Tasnim news agency reported late Thursday.

They held discussions on ways to "confront the military and security challenges facing Syria" and supervised a joint Iran-Syria military exercise, Tasnim said.

Abir Jassem is busy preparing stuffed vegetables at a kitchen in Iraq's Mosul, where after years of unrest a women-run catering service has helped single mothers like her achieve financial security.

The 37-year-old, who lost her husband while the city was under the control of the Islamic State (IS) group, said she had to get a job to put food on the table for her and her children.

"If I didn't work, we wouldn't have anything to eat," said Jassem.