Tens of thousands of Iranians rallied Saturday in Tehran and other major cities to mark the 44th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, as their president said months-long protests had been defeated.

For the past two years, the 1979 overthrow of the Western-backed shah was commemorated mainly by Iranians who drove around cities in their cars or on motorcycles due to Covid restrictions.

But this year, waving flags, they took to the streets of Tehran on foot and converged on Azadi (Freedom) Square, one of the capital's most prominent landmarks, despite chilly temperatures.

Tunisian police on Saturday arrested powerful businessman Kamel Eltaief, a former confidant of ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, as well as two key political activists, lawyers said.

Eltaief, 68, was arrested at his home in the capital Tunis, lawyer Nizar Ayed said without providing further details.

Police also arrested Abdelhamid Jelassi, a former senior leader of the Islamist-inspired movement Ennahdha -- fierce rivals of President Kais Saied -- as well as the political activist Khayam Turki.

Syria's coastal city of Jableh, a regime heartland, was largely spared the worst of war but a massive quake has now joined it in misery with the rest of the battle-scarred country.

With flattened buildings, civilians trapped under rubble and residents forced to flee their homes, Jableh is no longer sheltered from the kind of devastation that has long plagued neighbouring regions.

"It's the first catastrophe of its kind in Jableh," said Abdulhadi al-Ajji. "I am 52 years old and I have never gone through anything like this in my life."

The apartments they once industriously spent so long saving up for, decorating and making comfortable now lie in a heap of rubble after a violent quake hit Turkey.

New and old buildings, some constructed only six months ago, fell apart. Others flattened like concrete pancakes.

The full extent of the damage is unknown from Monday's 7.8-magnitude tremor and ceaseless aftershocks, which unleashed catastrophe in Turkey and Syria, killing more than 23,000 people.

A group of prominent exiled Iranian opposition figures pleaded Friday for unity and an end to infighting to help the nationwide protests of recent months to replace Iran's Islamic theocracy with a secular democracy.

The eight figures, who included Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last shah, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, said they were working on a charter for a transition to a new pluralistic system that would be followed by free elections.

Kurdish militants from the outlawed PKK group announced a temporary halt in fighting to ease recovery work in the wake of a massive earthquake that struck southeastern Turkey and parts of Syria.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Ankara and its Western allies for waging a brutal insurgency that has claimed tens of thousands of lives since 1984.

Ankara is also trying to ban a top opposition party that supports Kurdish causes over its alleged links to the militants.

A senior World Health Organization official bemoaned Syria's "forgotten crisis" on Friday, as aid began trickling into rebel-held areas, days after a devastating earthquake.

As the WHO prepared to fly medical supplies to Syria from Dubai, Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, said a huge backlog of aid was waiting to reach Syria's rebel-held northwest.

The single aid corridor bypassing government-controlled areas and servicing the war-shattered region, which is home to four million people, was temporarily cut off by Monday's massive quake.

Aimilia Balta's mother fled Turkey after a vicious war with Greece a century ago but it has not stopped the elderly Greek donating clothes for the thousands left homeless by the deadly earthquake there.

"People are cold, so we do what we can" to help, Balta -- whose mother survived the Greek-Turkish war of 1922 -- told AFP as she left bags of woollens and overcoats at the town hall of a northern Athens suburb.

Rescuers pulled four people, including a six-year-old, alive from the rubble in Syria Friday, four days after a devastating earthquake killed more than 22,700 people in Syria and neighbouring Turkey, an AFP correspondent and state media reported.

Volunteers in the rebel-held northwestern town of Jandairis pulled shell-shocked Musa Hmeidi from under the wreckage of a crumpled building as dozens of residents cheered them on, the AFP correspondent said.

The United Nations rights chief called Friday for an immediate ceasefire in Syria to facilitate the delivery of aid to all victims of the region's devastating earthquake.

"At this terrible time in Turkey and Syria, we call for urgent delivery of assistance to ALL in need," the UN rights office said in a tweet.

"UN human rights chief Volker Turk calls for immediate ceasefire in Syria, and full respect for human rights and humanitarian law obligations so help can reach everyone," it added.