A bomb killed six people and wounded scores on Thursday when it exploded near the Sayeda Zeinab mausoleum in Damascus, Syria's most visited Shiite pilgrimage site, the authorities said.

The deadly blast south of the capital came ahead of the annual commemoration of Ashura, when Shiites remember the death of the Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, in a seventh century battle.

The interior ministry gave a death toll of six, state news agency SANA reported, revising an earlier death toll of five.

Egypt's prime minister announced a number of measures Thursday, including planned power cuts, to cut down on energy consumption as the country and wider region endure a brutal heatwave.

Civil servants will work from home one day a week in an attempt to ease the load on local electricity networks, Mostafa Madbouli said in televised remarks, as temperatures surpassing 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) were recorded in parts of the country this week.

Jordan's parliament on Thursday approved a cybercrime bill despite warnings from rights groups and civil society that it would curb freedom of expression in the kingdom.

The bill was approved by the house of representatives following a public session, with some of the proposed penalties reduced from an initial draft version, though prison terms remain a possibility for those found to be in violation of the law.

The bill must also be approved by the senate before being ratified by King Abdullah II and published in the official gazette.

Once a year, in central Iran's city of Noosh Abad, men don warrior costumes and children portray supernatural beings to usher in one of the holiest commemorations in Shiite Islam.

Ashura falls on the tenth day of the Islamic month of Muharram, and commemorates the 7th century killing of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, during the battle of Karbala in modern-day Iraq.

In Noosh Abad, Iranian devotees stage a parade called the "Caravan", when they march through the streets two days ahead of Ashura.

A helicopter belonging to the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq crashed Thursday, a Kurdish security official said, after what the coalition described as an "in-flight mishap".

"There were no coalition casualties nor damage to coalition or civilian infrastructure. The coalition aircraft was damaged," the coalition said in a statement, adding that the incident occurred at 12:15 pm (0915 GMT).

Around war-torn Syria's biggest freshwater dam reservoir, fishermen say their catch is now a fraction of what it used to be as environmental pressures have decimated aquatic life.

Ismail Hilal, 50, sat on the hull of his rowboat -- now lodged firmly on the shores of Lake Assad -- as gentle waves washed in, talking about the way of life he has lost.

After 37 years as a fisherman, he has retired his nets, declaring defeat as fish stocks have declined, water levels have dropped and pollution has worsened in the Euphrates and the dam reservoir it feeds.

More than 900 migrants have drowned off Tunisia's coast so far this year as they tried to reach Europe by boat, the North African country's government said Thursday.

In a warning of further tragedy, the United Nations said it was deeply concerned for the safety of hundreds of migrants stranded in Tunisia following their removal to remote parts of the country.

The Tunisian interior ministry said 901 bodies had been recovered by July 20 following maritime accidents in the Mediterranean Sea.

Iraq has arrested a suspect in one of the most notorious war crimes of the Islamic State group, the 2014 massacre of up to 1,700 captive cadets, authorities said Thursday.

After overrunning the air force academy at Camp Speicher where thousands of cadets were being trained, the Sunni extremists of IS separated out the Shiites and Christians among them and gunned them down one by one before dumping their bodies in mass graves or in the nearby Tigris River.

Kuwait put to death five people on Thursday, including a man convicted of involvement in a 2015 Islamic State group suicide bombing that killed 26 people, the Public Prosecution said.

The multiple executions in the Gulf emirate -- relatively rare compared to neighbouring Saudi Arabia -- are the first since seven people were put to death in November last year ending a five-year moratorium.

In a statement, the Public Prosecution said it oversaw the "implementation of the death sentence in Kuwait's Central Prison" against five people, most of them convicted of murder.

Tucked amid shell-pocked buildings and roadside tributes to fallen fighters, a less obvious byproduct of wartime is spreading across Yemen's capital: speciality coffee houses serving steaming cups of top-rated pour-over.

The Arabian Peninsula's most impoverished country, locked in an eight-year conflict between Iran-backed Huthi rebels and forces supporting the internationally recognised government, has deep ties to coffee.

Legend has it that Sufi mystics on Yemen's western coast were the first people to brew coffee beans back in the 15th century.