In a Jordanian church, Sarah Nael sews a shirt for a project that has provided scores of women who fled violence in neighbouring Iraq with skills to earn a living.

Many of the women escaped the extreme violence carried out by the Islamic State group's self-declared "caliphate" that cut across swathes of Iraq and Syria, before they eventually ended up in Jordan -- where they found themselves without work.

An Israeli air strike on Tuesday killed two Syrian civilians, state media reported, the fourth such attack on government-held areas of the war-torn country in less than a week.

During more than a decade of civil war in Syria, Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its territory, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters as well as Syrian army positions.

"The Israeli enemy carried out an air strike" shortly after midnight, resulting "in the death of two civilians", Syrian state news agency SANA reported, quoting a military source.

Meeting world targets to limit climate change would avert hundreds of thousands of heat-related deaths in the Middle East and North Africa, scientists said on Tuesday, urging the region to adapt better.

A modelling study published in The Lancet Planetary Health journal found slashing carbon emissions to limit the rise in Earth's average temperature to two degrees Celsius would reduce heat-related deaths in the region by 80 percent compared to a high-emissions scenario.

Palestinian and Israeli forces battled in the air and on the ground Monday, with a drone downed and missiles fired over Gaza, and two militants killed in the occupied West Bank in what the army called a raid targeting gun attack suspects.

Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip said they fired missiles at an Israeli warplane after it shot their drone down.

The violence followed a weekend of deadly incidents which ended a relative calm since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan 10 days ago.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi met Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler on a brief visit late on Sunday, state media said, as the North African country grapples with severe economic difficulties.

Sisi was greeted at Jeddah airport by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and was waved off again several hours later by the 37-year-old, according to the Saudi Press Agency.

Few details were given about the meeting, but import-dependent Egypt's economic fortunes have plunged since Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent wheat prices soaring, fuelling rampant inflation.

Tunisian President Kais Saied appeared in a video posted Monday on his official Facebook page, dismissing "mad" reports over his health following almost two weeks with no public engagements.

The North African country's main opposition coalition had pressed the government earlier to explain Saied's public "absence", saying it had information that he was sick.

"These people deserve nothing but contempt," Saied said in the video, referring to his political rivals.

"The president is absent for two or three days, he gets a cold and that becomes a problem, a power vacuum?"

Russia alleged on Monday the "terrorist attack" that killed a top military blogger the day before was orchestrated by Ukraine with the help of supporters of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

Russian investigators detained 26-year-old Darya Trepova, who was said to have links to Navalny, and posted a video in which she is heard saying she brought to the cafe a statuette rigged with an explosive device.

The trial of a 69-year-old Lebanese-Canadian charged over a fatal 1980 bomb attack outside a Paris synagogue opened on Monday after more than four decades of legal wrangling.

Canada-based Hassan Diab, who denies any involvement in the attack which killed four and wounded dozens, told the court during preliminary hearings that he would not show up for the trial, after accusations against him had been dropped in an earlier investigation.

Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians Monday in a morning raid in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said, in what the army described as "counterterrorism activity".

"Two martyrs shot by the occupation (Israel) in Nablus," the ministry confirmed in a brief statement, without elaborating on their identities.

The Israeli army said it had carried out the raid to apprehend two individuals linked to a shooting attack in which two Israeli soldiers were injured last month in the West Bank town of Huwara.

A former headmistress was found guilty on Monday of sexually assaulting two sisters at an ultra-orthodox Jewish school in Australia, 15 years after she escaped arrest by fleeing to Israel.

Malka Leifer was guilty on 18 charges, the jury said, including raping a student during a sleep-over and sexually assaulting another teenage pupil during a school camp.

She was cleared of a further nine charges.

Leifer was the principal of the Adass Israel School in Melbourne when she was first accused of sexual assault in 2008.