In the Iranian shrine city of Qom, huge street banners remind voters to head to the polls in Friday's parliamentary elections, held as the Gaza war stokes Middle East tensions.

Voters in the Islamic republic will pick a new parliament for another four years, as well as members of the Assembly of Experts in charge of electing Iran's supreme leader.

Hezbollah on Monday fired a volley of rockets at an Israeli military base, the Lebanese group said after Israel's first strikes on Lebanon's east in months of hostilities linked to the Gaza war.

It was the first Israeli attack on Hezbollah outside Lebanon's south since war erupted on October 7 between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas, a Hezbollah ally.

Hezbollah and arch-foe Israel have exchanged near-daily fire, but strikes have been largely contained to the border area.

Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh announced Monday the resignation of his government, which rules parts of the Israeli occupied West Bank, citing the need for change after the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza ends.

Shtayyeh submitted the resignation to the leader of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, president Mahmud Abbas, 88, whose office later said he accepted it.

The United States and other powers have called for a reformed Palestinian Authority to take charge of all Palestinian territories after the end of the war sparked by Hamas's October 7 attack.

A US airman has died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington at the weekend in protest over the war in Gaza, the Air Force said Monday.

The shocking act was an escalation of recent protests across the United States against Israel's actions in Gaza, where with US support it is waging a retaliatory war for an attack on October 7 by Hamas militants.

Emergency responders on Sunday had rushed to the scene in response to a "call for person on fire outside the Israeli Embassy," the capital city's fire department said.

The World Trade Organization pushed for reform at a high-level ministerial meeting in Abu Dhabi on Monday, warning that economic headwinds and geopolitical tensions are threatening global commerce and multilateral trading systems.

The WTO's 13th ministerial conference (MC13), scheduled to run until Thursday in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, is the first in two years.

The WTO is hoping for progress, particularly on fishing, agriculture and electronic commerce.

The UN chief warned Monday that an invasion of Rafah in far-southern Gaza would "put the final nail in the coffin" of aid operations, after Israel said its army had readied a plan to move civilians out of the packed city.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Rafah -- where around 1.4 million Palestinians have sought refuge near the Egyptian border -- is also "the core of the humanitarian aid operation" in the Gaza Strip where Israel has been fighting Hamas militants for nearly five months.

Authorities loyal to the army in war-ravaged Sudan have blocked cross-border aid to the western Darfur region, a move decried by aid workers and the United States.

The vast Darfur region, bordering Chad, has been one of the hardest hit parts of Sudan since war began 10 months ago between the Sudanese Armed Forces and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

RSF are descendants of the Janjaweed militia which began a scorched earth campaign in Darfur more than two decades ago.

Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, whose country has played the key mediation role in the Gaza war, visits Paris this week for talks with President Emmanuel Macron, the French presidency said Sunday.

The ruler's trip on Tuesday and Wednesday will be his first state visit to France since he became emir of the small but gas-rich and hugely influential emirate in 2013, according to the Elysee.

An Austrian far-right extremist who visited Afghanistan reportedly to prove it was a safe country was released on Sunday after nine months in detention there.

Herbert Fritz, 84, who according to Austrian media has close links to the far-right extremist scene, arrived in the Qatari capital Doha after being freed by Taliban authorities.

Fritz was arrested in May after defying Austria's long-standing warning against travel to Afghanistan, which in 2021 returned to the rule of the Taliban who imposed a strict interpretation of Islam.

Four Egyptian construction workers died Sunday when their boat sank in a canal near Giza, state media reported, adding that five others were rescued and four passengers were still missing.

The small boat was carrying 13 workers when it went down near the northern Giza village of Nekla, around 30 kilometres (18 miles) northwest of the capital Cairo, state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram said.

"Rescuers managed to recover the bodies of four victims and save five others," while efforts to find the remaining four passengers were ongoing, the paper said.