Crowds of Iranian football fans gave Cristiano Ronaldo a rapturous welcome on Monday as his Saudi team arrived in Teheran for the first home-and-away club tie since the two countries resumed diplomatic relations.

Fans chanted the name of the Portuguese five-time world player of the year as he arrived with his Al Nassr teammates to face Iranian club Persepolis in the Asian Champions League on Tuesday.

The match will be the first since Tehran and Riyadh reached a China-brokered deal announced in March.

Following are key dates in the storied relationship between the United States and its arch-rival Iran since Washington pulled out of a landmark nuclear pact with Tehran in 2018.

- 2018: nuclear deal walkout -

After years of mounting concern over Iran's nuclear enrichment programme, world powers reach a deal with Tehran on sanctions relief in exchange for guarantees it will not build an atomic bomb.

Three years later, then president Donald Trump pulls the United States out of the deal and reapplies the financial pain.

Five Israeli tourists will stand trial next month for allegedly gang-raping a young Briton in the popular Cyprus holiday resort of Ayia Napa, a court ruled on Monday.

The five men, aged between 19 and 20, will appear before a criminal court on October 5, the Famagusta district court decided.

Police said the defendants face charges of rape, sexual coercion, forced sexual intercourse, sexual harassment, abduction and indecent assault against a woman.

It was long past midnight when Abdel Moneim Awad al-Sheikh awoke to desperate screams from outside his home in the Libyan city of Derna, only to find his building engulfed by surging flood waters.

"I took nothing but my glasses and cellphone and fled as the waters shook the iron doors like an earthquake," recounted the 73-year-old survivor of the deadly disaster.

He and his family managed to escape from the first floor and rush up the stairs of the multi-storey building as the raging waters tore away the front door and swept it into the darkness.

The United States and Iran on Monday swapped five prisoners each in one of the arch-foes' first deals in years as Tehran gained access to $6 billion in frozen funds.

The five Americans freed by Iran, including one held for eight years, flew out of Tehran in a Qatari jet, hours after the unblocked funds were deposited in accounts also managed by Qatar.

The freed prisoners walked in the setting sun on the tarmac and within hours a separate US government plane shuttled them to Washington, where some will undergo medical check-ups.

Flames gripped the Sudanese capital Sunday and paramilitary forces attacked the army headquarters for the second day in a row, witnesses reported, as fighting raged into its six month.

"Clashes are now happening around the army headquarters with various types of weapons," one Khartoum resident, who declined to be named, told AFP.

Other witnesses in southern Khartoum said they heard "huge bangs" as the army targeted bases of the Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries with artillery.

UNESCO inscribed the prehistoric site of Tell al-Sultan, near the Palestinian city of Jericho in the occupied West Bank, on its World Heritage List Sunday, in a move criticised by Israel.

Tell al-Sultan, which predates Egypt's pyramids, is an oval-shaped tell, or mound, in the Jordan Valley, and contains the prehistoric deposits of human activity.

The decision by the United Nations cultural organisation, which it posted on X, formerly Twitter, was taken at its 45th world heritage committee meeting held in Riyadh.

In her earthquake-hit Moroccan town, Zina Mechghazzi has improvised a sink by placing a pink bucket and a bar of soap on the dusty ground amid the ruins.

"I haven't taken a shower in seven days," said the woman from Amizmiz at the foot of the High Atlas range, about 60 kilometres (40 miles) southwest of Marrakech.

"I've only washed my armpits and changed my clothes."

Over a week since a 6.8-magnitude quake devastated parts of central Morocco, many worry that the dire living conditions and poor hygiene spell new threats for the survivors.

Solar panels soak up blinding noontime rays that help power a water desalination facility in eastern Saudi Arabia, a step towards making the notoriously emissions-heavy process less environmentally taxing.

The Jazlah plant in Jubail city applies the latest technological advances in a country that first turned to desalination more than a century ago, when Ottoman-era administrators enlisted filtration machines for hajj pilgrims menaced by drought and cholera.

Hundreds of protesters rallied in Libya's disaster-hit Derna on Monday, accusing the authorities of neglect after a huge flash flood devastated the coastal city and swept thousands to their deaths.

Demonstrators gathered outside the city's grand mosque and chanted slogans against the parliament in east Libya and its leader Aguilah Saleh.

"The people want parliament to fall", "Aguila is the enemy of God", "The blood of martyrs is not shed in vain" and "Thieves and betrayers must hang", they shouted.