Behind a dark and opaque storefront in Tel Aviv, an Israeli company is speeding up online shopping by replacing staff with robots that manoeuvre around small storerooms.

Whirring along a rail between two long shelves packed with coffee capsules, a robot stopped, pivoted to the right, shone a light before grabbing an item and dropping it into a paper bag.

"Shoppers want to receive their items faster and faster," said Eyal Yair, co-founder and CEO of 1MRobotics, which built the automated storeroom late last year.

Egypt, sapped dry of dollars despite a $3 billion International Monetary Fund bailout loan, is seeking to boost its coffers by selling state assets to wealthy Gulf nations.

Experts say the deals could be a win-win for all sides, but unlike old Gulf largesse of unconditional aid, the new deals will require reforms.

Cairo hopes the cash injection will plug what the IMF warns is "a financing gap of about $17 billion over the next four years".

Western tourists, who flocked to Iran just a few years ago, are being advised by their governments to stay away, forcing the Islamic republic's struggling tourism industry to look elsewhere.

Hoping for better days, tourism professionals are wooing visitors from countries like China and Russia which maintain good ties with Iran.

Westerners have long been attracted to Iran's many ancient and Islamic sites, its mountain scenery and its millennia-old culture.

Archaeologists in southern Iraq have uncovered the remains of a tavern dating back nearly 5,000 years they hope will illuminate the lives of ordinary people in the world's first cities.

The US-Italian team made the find in the ruins of ancient Lagash, northeast of the modern city of Nasiriyah, which was already known to have been one of the first urban centres of the Sumerian civilisation of ancient Iraq.

The headscarf-covered woman could not contain her rage.

Selva was certain that dozens of her loved ones remained buried in the rubble of Turkey's catastrophic quake.

"But the rescuers have left," Selva cried beside one of the myriad bonfires protecting survivors from the bitter cold.

The 48-year-old woman watched Turkish and international teams scour through the remains of her building in Turkey's shattered Syrian border region city of Antakya.

Each one of them gave up before finding her relatives.

A Saudi Arabian plane carrying aid to quake-hit Syria landed in second city Aleppo Tuesday -- the first in more than a decade of war, a transport ministry official told AFP.

Planeloads of foreign aid have landed in Syria since a 7.8-magnitude quake struck the war-torn country and neighbouring Turkey killing more than 35,000 people.

"This is the first plane from Saudi Arabia to land on Syrian territory in more than 10 years," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to speak to the press.

An aid convoy on Tuesday passed through a newly re-opened border crossing into rebel-held north Syria, where help has been slow to arrive since last week's earthquake, which killed nearly 40,000 people in the region.

Rare survivors were pulled from the debris eight days after the 7.8-magnitude quake struck Syria and Turkey, but the focus has switched from rescue to providing food and shelter to millions in need.

Chinese President Xi Jinping hailed Beijing's "solidarity" with Iran on Tuesday as he hosted the Islamic republic's President Ebrahim Raisi at the start of a three-day trip.

For the first state visit by an Iranian president to China in more than 20 years, Raisi has brought a large trade and finance delegation to Beijing and was earlier greeted by Xi on a red carpet.

An Israeli policeman was killed Monday in a stabbing attack carried out by a Palestinian boy in annexed east Jerusalem, police said, triggering a raid on a refugee camp amid a spike in violence.

The border policeman was stabbed on Monday afternoon while searching a bus at the entrance to east Jerusalem's Shuafat refugee camp, officers said, who arrested a 13-year-old Palestinian from the camp.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad called Monday for international aid for reconstruction in the quake-struck country during a meeting with United Nations relief chief Martin Griffiths, the presidency said.

After more than a decade of war, Assad's government remains a pariah in the West, complicating international efforts to assist those affected by the quake.

Assad "stressed the importance of international efforts focused on helping to rebuild infrastructure in Syria," the statement said.