European Union member Cyprus said Friday it has asked the bloc to review whether Syria remains an unsafe country to which member states should be barred from repatriating asylum-seekers.

The move follows a flurry of racially-motivated attacks on foreigners in recent weeks amid growing anti-migrant sentiment on the Mediterranean island.

Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou said he would try to persuade the EU and the United Nations to end Syria’s status as an unsafe country for refugees to be returned to.

A visa-free travel deal between Israel and the United States has raised hopes of easier journeys for Palestinian-Americans, but many still complain of discrimination by Israeli authorities.

The aim of the reciprocal agreement reached in July was for all Americans "to be recognised by Israel as US citizens and receive equal treatment" regardless of their origins, the US State Department said.

Thousands fleeing war in Sudan have taken refuge in the Egyptian city of Aswan on the Nile, where families are helping keep the tourism industry afloat far from the horrors they left behind.

"We finally made it to Aswan," said Hisham Ali, 54, who reached Egypt after an odyssey that took his family south of the fighting in Khartoum, before heading over 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) north again to the Egyptian border.

Thousands of people have been stuck there since Egypt tightened its visa rules in July.

Rescuers sifted through mud and rubble Friday in their search for people missing from the tsunami-sized flash flood that swept through the Libyan port city of Derna, killing more than 3,000.

The surge of water burst two upstream dams on Sunday, turning Derna into an apocalyptic wasteland with entire city blocks and untold numbers of people washed out into the Mediterranean.

The United Nations launched an appeal for more than $71 million to assist hundreds of thousands in need and warned the "extent of the problem" remains unclear.

A Bahraini activist fears she may spend years in prison after she returns this week to support her father, a jailed pro-democracy protest leader who she says is on hunger strike.

Maryam al-Khawaja told AFP she expects to be arrested on arrival in the Gulf kingdom, where she was convicted in absentia of assaulting police on her last visit in 2014, a charge she denies.

Amnesty International secretary general Agnes Callamard will accompany Khawaja because "there is no other other option to save Abdulhadi's life", she said in an interview.

Palestinian fighters agreed a new ceasefire on Thursday after more than a week of deadly violence in Lebanon's largest refugee camp, two Palestinian officials told AFP.

At least 17 people have been killed and around 100 wounded in the fighting in Ain al-Helweh refugee camp, on the outskirts of the port city of Sidon, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent's Lebanon branch.

The clashes have pitted fighters of president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement, which controls the camp, against hardline Islamist militants.

Tunisia's renowned Bardo museum reopened to the public on Thursday, AFP journalists reported, after over two years of closure coinciding with a power grab by President Kais Saied.

The largest museum in Tunisia, with collections of rare mosaics and other artefacts housed in a 19th century Ottoman governor's palace, was closed for renovation, according to the Tunisian Ministry of Culture.

Located near the parliament in the Tunisian capital, the museum was closed after president Kais Saied suspended the legislature and assumed wide-ranging powers on July 25, 2021.

Men draw water from a well to transport it by donkey to the makeshift camp where they have been living since their village was destroyed in the massive earthquake that devastated southern Morocco last week.

Living conditions in Ighermane, a remote village in the High Atlas mountains, have always been rudimentary, but "there was water in the houses," said 28-year-old Mohamed Oublay, after filling plastic containers that will be used to wash utensils and prepare dinner outdoors.

"Now we have gone back to the time of our ancestors."

Saudi Arabia on Thursday said it was hosting a delegation of Yemen's Iran-backed Huthi rebels for talks on ending the impoverished country's brutal war.

Senior Huthi figures took off from Yemen's capital Sanaa, multiple sources said, for their first public visit to oil-rich Saudi since Riyadh began spearheading a military intervention in the neighbouring country in 2015.

Yemen was plunged into conflict when the Huthis overran the capital Sanaa in September 2014, prompting the Saudi-led coalition to launch their offensive the following March.

Mohammed Al Moutawak's village was destroyed by Morocco's powerful earthquake and his apple harvest ruined, but he refuses to leave the land that is vital to small farmers like him.

Drought and extreme weather have long taken a toll on the North African kingdom's growers, but the quake spells new challenges that are just beginning to come into focus.

"We thought hail was our worst enemy, but now we've got another," said the 56-year-old farmer from the mountain village of Ineghede in the worst-hit Al-Haouz region south of Marrakesh.