An exiled Iranian opposition group said Friday that it would hold a demonstration in central Paris at the weekend after a French court overturned a police ban on the event.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the de facto political wing of the People's Mujahedin (MEK) group outlawed by Tehran, said it would hold the protest on Saturday on Place Vauban in central Paris.

Paris police had angered the group last week by saying the rally had been banned because of the risk of tensions with other Iranian factions and the danger of an attack.

Tens of thousands of Muslims streamed out of Islam's holiest city on Friday after completing the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia's scorching summer heat, an AFP correspondent said.

This year more than 1.8 million worshippers performed the hajj, which is one of the five pillars of Islam and is among the world's largest religious gatherings.

On Friday, two days after the last major ritual, tens of thousands of people packed roads and boarded buses out of Islam's holiest sites in Mecca, bringing the hajj to a close, the AFP correspondent said.

Hoping to escape a dire economy and bleak prospects, Egyptians are increasingly attempting the perilous sea crossing to Europe that this month claimed dozens of lives in a shipwreck off Greece.

"I spoke to my son for the last time on the evening of June 7. He told me they were taking off" two days later, said the father of a 14-year-old who had disappeared in the Mediterranean.

The US pointman on Iran has been placed on leave, the State Department said Thursday, as reports said that his handling of sensitive material was under review.

Special envoy Rob Malley, in a statement to several news outlets, confirmed that his security clearance was under review and said he hoped the investigation would be resolved "favorably."

CNN, quoting anonymous sources, said the review related to his handling of classified documents.

The UN General Assembly on Thursday created an independent body to "clarify" the fate of thousands of people who remain missing in Syria since war broke out in 2011, overriding objections from Damascus.

According to non-governmental groups, some 100,000 people have disappeared since the start of a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests. More than half a million people have been killed.

Canada, Britain, Sweden and Ukraine said Thursday they will take Iran to the International Court of Justice "as soon as possible" to seek damages for families of passengers on a jetliner downed by Tehran.

Iranian forces shot down Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 shortly after takeoff from Tehran on January 8, 2020, killing all 176 people on board.

Three days later, Iran admitted that its military had targeted the Kiev-bound Boeing 737-800 plane by mistake.

More than 2,000 people have suffered heat stress during the hajj pilgrimage, Saudi officials said Thursday, after temperatures soared to 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit) during the annual rites.

Over 1.8 million Muslim worshippers performed the days-long hajj, mostly held outdoors at the height of the Saudi desert summer. Many elderly were among the pilgrims after a Covid-era maximum age limit was scrapped.

Iraqi protesters breached Sweden's embassy in Baghdad on Thursday, angered by a Koran burning outside a Stockholm mosque that sparked condemnation across the Muslim world.

A crowd of supporters of firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr stayed inside the compound for about 15 minutes, then left as security forces deployed, an AFP photographer said.

"Our constitution is the Koran," read a message on leaflets carried by the protesters, and a message sprayed on the compound's gate said "Yes, yes to the Koran".

Saudi authorities were investigating Thursday after an assailant and a security guard were killed in an exchange of gunfire outside the US consulate in Jeddah, the gateway city for the massive hajj pilgrimage taking place in Mecca.

The gunman and a Nepalese security guard both died after the exchange of fire outside the consulate on Wednesday evening, officials said, giving no possible motive for the incident.

Many masterpieces of Iraqi painting were looted or destroyed during the years of war, but now the country's artistic heritage faces another threat: rampant counterfeiting and illicit trafficking.

Adorning a wall of Baghdad's modern art museum, the painting "Death to Colonialism", with its sombre blues and greys, by pioneering Iraqi artist Shakir Hassan al-Said is one of the rare pieces from its era still on public display.