Gun battles between the two leading armed groups in Tripoli killed two people and forced the closure of the Libyan capital's only civilian airport, officials said on Tuesday.

Libya has seen more than a decade of stop-start conflict since the 2011 NATO-backed revolt that toppled strongman Moamer Kadhafi, with a myriad of militias forming opposing alliances backed by foreign powers.

A period of relative stability had led the United Nations to express hope for delayed elections to take place this year, and the latest fighting triggered international calls for calm.

An Iranian immigrant to the United States who was jailed in Tehran and his son camping outside the White House have together gone on hunger strikes to win the elder's freedom after he was not included in a deal to free US citizens.

Shahab Dalili -- who is a US permanent resident but not a citizen -- was jailed in 2016 after he said he returned to Iran for his father's funeral. He was handed 10 years in prison on espionage-related charges he strongly denies.

The leader of Lebanon's powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah movement said Monday his group could send Israel "back to the stone age", in tit-for-tat threats following similar Israeli remarks as border tensions brew.

During a tour of the Lebanese-Israeli border last week, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant had threatened to send Lebanon "back to the stone age" should Hezbollah escalate tensions at the border.

Egypt's president on Monday welcomed the Palestinian and Jordanian leaders, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's spokesman said, with a source adding they discussed speculations over Saudi Arabia moving to normalise ties with Israel.

Sisi met with King Abdullah II of Jordan and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in the northern coastal city of El Alamein, Egyptian presidential spokesman Ahmed Fahmy said.

Fighting between the forces of Sudan's rival generals rocked Monday the capital Khartoum and a major city in the western Darfur region, witnesses told AFP, displacing thousands within days.

Residents of violence-wracked Nyala, Sudan's second city and state capital of South Darfur, awoke to "the sound of artillery strikes", witnesses said

Hundreds had on Sunday fled paramilitary attacks in the city as fighting intensified in recent days in the restive region bordering Chad.

At least five people died Monday and seven others are missing after their Europe-bound migrant boat sank off Tunisia's coast, a judicial official in the city of Sfax told AFP.

Sfax has emerged as a major hub for migrants from Tunisia and other parts of Africa attempting perilous voyages across the Mediterranean, often in rickety boats in hopes of a better life.

Court spokesman Faouzi Masmoudi said "35 people, most of them Tunisians" including women and children were on board the boat that went down "shortly after departing from the coast of Sidi Mansour" near Sfax.

Iranian security forces have arrested eight foreign suspects after detaining a gunman in the killing of two people at a Shiite Muslim shrine, authorities said on Monday.

The attack on the Shah Cheragh mausoleum in Shiraz, capital of Fars province in Iran's south, came less than a year after a mass shooting at the same site later claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.

Iranian state media on Sunday reported that one person was killed and eight others were wounded.

A pair of Siberian tigers pant incessantly beside a pond at their zoo enclosure in the scorching summer heat of the Iraqi capital.

Temperatures on Monday breached 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in Baghdad for the second day in a row -- making life outdoors unbearable for both humans and animals.

The orange, striped felines from far-eastern Russia are more suited to living "where temperatures drop to as low as minus 20 degrees" than in one of the hottest cities in the world, said Wassim Sarih, the veterinarian at Baghdad's only zoo.

Iranian security forces have arrested eight foreign suspects after detaining a gunman in the killing of one person at a Shiite Muslim shrine, state media reported on Monday.

The attack came less than a year after a mass shooting at the same holy site, the Shah Cheragh mausoleum in Shiraz, capital of Fars province in Iran's south.

"Eight people suspected of links with the terrorist attack... have been arrested," according to the judiciary's Mizan Online website, quoting Fars province chief justice Kazem Mousavi.

A photograph of Mourad Allafi hangs in the family farmhouse in western Libya three years after he was found in a mass grave. His father wants his killers dead.

Mohamad Allafi believes the prison terms of six years to life handed down by a military court in February to 30 people convicted of murder are not enough.

And relatives of the hundreds of others who were tortured, killed and dumped in row upon row of mass graves in Tarhuna agree with him.