Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo on Wednesday urged Iran's president to "immediately" set free an aid worker held by Tehran in a case denounced as hostage diplomacy.

Iran arrested Olivier Vandecasteele, 42, in February 2022 and sentenced him at the start of this year to more than 12 years behind bars for "espionage" as well as ordering him to be subjected to 74 lashes.

"My message was very clear: Olivier Vandecasteele is an innocent man and must be released immediately," De Croo tweeted after a phone call with Iran's Ebrahim Raisi.

Supermarkets in Lebanon started pricing items in US dollars on Wednesday instead of the nose-diving local currency, after a government announcement allowing the practice in a country heavily reliant on imports.

Since late 2019, Lebanon has been facing a dramatic economic crisis that has seen poverty rates climb to reach more than 80 percent of the population, according to the United Nations.

The local currency, now officially pegged at 15,000 to the greenback, was trading Wednesday at almost 90,000 to the dollar, compared to 60,000 in late January.

Israeli police clashed Wednesday with protesters rallying against the government's judicial reform programme which critics say threatens democracy, as lawmakers held a preliminary vote on the latest controversial bill.

Demonstrators in Tel Aviv blocked some streets, and police employed stun grenades, water cannon and officers on horseback in a rare use of force in the coastal city, AFP journalists said.

Some 39 people were arrested for "allegedly rioting and not obeying instructions by police officials", police said in a statement.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Iraq to "break cycles of instability and fragility" after talks with senior officials in Baghdad on Wednesday, following a drawn-out political crisis in the war-torn country.

The UN chief's visit comes as Iraq, blighted by corruption and broken infrastructure, prepares to mark the 20th anniversary of the US-led invasion that toppled longtime dictator Saddam Hussein.

Guterres said he wanted to demonstrate "solidarity" with Iraq "in the consolidation of its democratic institutions and advancing peace".

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday urged the international community to help earthquake-hit northwest Syria, on his first ever visit to rebel-held areas of the war-ravaged country.

"The people of northwest Syria need the assistance of the international community to recover and rebuild," Tedros told reporters after entering from neighbouring Turkey via the Bab al-Hawa border crossing.

Haydar Karar spends eight hours a day tidying a carpentry shop and lugging wooden beams, forced like many other Iraqi children into work by poverty and conflict.

Now 13, Karar has been working with his carpenter uncle in the capital Baghdad since the age of eight, his childhood marred by the troubles that have ravaged his country.

"I was expelled from school because of a fight," he said. "The school didn't want to take me back."

Long partial to heavy lunchtime platters of meat and rice, Asim al-Shammari has recently turned to lighter fare from a self-described diet restaurant, swayed by Saudi Arabia's anti-obesity push.

Roughly one in five Saudi adults is obese, according to an in-depth study published by the World Bank last year that described the problem as "alarming".

The Global Obesity Observatory places the kingdom at number 17 in its international rankings of obesity prevalence, three slots below the United States and near neighbours Qatar and Kuwait.

Adversaries Morocco and Algeria are each racing to build a conduit pumping Nigerian gas to European markets, even as the continent aims to wean itself off fossil fuels.

Both countries have moved to revive long-stalled projects in light of a gas supply crunch following Russia's invasion of Ukraine a year ago. Prices surged and Europe -- which was heavily reliant on Russian gas -- had to look elsewhere for energy.

The UN nuclear watchdog confirmed on Tuesday it had detected particles of uranium enriched up just under the 90 percent needed to produce an atomic bomb.

"Discussions are still ongoing" to determine the origin of these particles, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a confidential report seen by AFP.

Shoppers inspect vegetables at a huge market in Sale, near the Moroccan capital Rabat, but exploding prices mean they are keeping their eye on what they spend ahead of Ramadan.

"Everything's more expensive," said Khadija El Asri, a resident of the down-at-heel neighbourhood of Sidi Moussa.

"These last three weeks, I've bought less vegetables and meat than usual."

Dozens of handcarts and boxes of produce line the market street, where the buzz of mopeds mixes with the sound of heated negotiations between struggling shoppers and squeezed merchants.