Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Monday lauded African countries for resisting "colonialism" during a visit by Burkina Faso's foreign minister.

Burkina Faso, as well as Mali, are currently ruled by military juntas that severed military ties with France, a former colonial power, and bolstered relations with Russia.

Niger, where a military junta seized power in July, has been the scene of mass protests calling for troops of former colonial ruler France to leave.

Kurdish-led forces were sending reinforcements to eastern Syria's Deir Ezzor province on Monday amid days of clashes with Arab fighters loyal to a detained local official, an AFP correspondent said.

Fighting erupted after the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) detained Ahmad al-Khabil, head of the Deir Ezzor Military Council, on August 27.

The violence in several towns and villages in Kurdish-controlled areas of Deir Ezzor province has killed 71 people, mostly fighters but also nine civilians.

Israel's foreign minister agreed Monday with his Bahraini counterpart to boost trade relations, during his first visit to one of the two Gulf Arab states to establish ties with Israel.

"The foreign minister and I agreed that we should work together to increase the number of direct flights, the tourism, the trade volume, the investment," Eli Cohen said during a ceremony to inaugurate Israel's new embassy.

Five Israeli tourists were remanded in Cyprus police custody on Monday in connection with an alleged gang rape of a young British woman in the popular resort of Ayia Napa, authorities said.

The five men, aged between 19 and 20, were arrested Sunday after a 20-year-old British tourist told police she was gang raped at a hotel room in the Mediterranean island's premier party spot.

They appeared before Paralimni district court on the southeast coast, where they were ordered held in custody for eight days on suspicion of rape, police said.

Days of deadly clashes between the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and local fighters have rocked eastern Syria's Deir Ezzor province, threatening a fragile balance in the strategic area.

The Kurdish-led SDF spearheaded the offensive that defeated the Islamic State jihadist group's self-declared caliphate in Syria in 2019.

Arab-majority Deir Ezzor province, a resource-rich region which borders Iraq, is bisected by the Euphrates river and is home to dozens of local tribal communities, some of whose fighters joined the SDF in its battle against IS.

The United Arab Emirates has set up a regulatory body for "commercial gaming" -- a step which could potentially allow for casino licences in the Arab Gulf state where gambling is currently banned.

The General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority (GCGRA) will "coordinate regulatory activities, manage licensing... and facilitate unlocking the economic potential of commercial gaming," the official WAM news agency said late Sunday.

Cyprus says it received a diplomatic protest from an unnamed Arab Gulf state after tourists were attacked during anti-migrant violence in the island's second city, Limassol.

Senior diplomat Kyriakos Kouros posted on the X platform, formerly Twitter, Sunday: "I received a demarche from an ambassador of an Arab country."

Kouros, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, added: "A number of its citizens, innocent visitors to our country, were among the victims of the incidents in Limassol, one quite seriously.

Invasive species that destroy forests, ravage crops and cause extinctions are a major and growing threat worldwide, a landmark UN-backed assessment is poised to report.

From water hyacinth choking Lake Victoria in East Africa, to rats and brown snakes wiping out bird species in the Pacific, to mosquitoes exposing new regions to Zika, yellow fever, dengue and other diseases, tens of thousands of alien species have taken root -- often literally -- far from their place of origin.

Israel's foreign minister arrived in Bahrain Sunday for talks with senior officials, state media reported, in his first visit to one of the Gulf Arab states with ties to Israel.

Eli Cohen was accompanied by a political and commercial delegation, and is scheduled to meet Bahrain's king as well as his counterpart in Manama during the two-day trip.

It is his first official visit to one of the signatories of the 2020 US-brokered Abraham Accords, which saw Israel normalise relations with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco.

Algeria said Sunday its security forces had opened fire this week after a group of jet skiers from Morocco ignored warning shots and refused to comply with orders to stop.

Lawyers for two men shot dead in the incident plan to file a complaint in France. One was French-Moroccan and the other held a residence permit in France.

"During a security patrol inside our territorial waters, a coastguard unit intercepted on Tuesday at 7:47 pm (18:47 GMT), three jet skis that clandestinely entered our territorial waters," a defence ministry press release said.