Thousands of empty seats told the sad story as Qatar's long-awaited World Cup debut ended in a bad case of stage fright on Sunday.

Long before the final whistle at the spectacular Bedouin tent-inspired Al Bayt Stadium, the host nation's fans among the 67,372 crowd had started heading for the exits.

The exodus began soon after Ecuador striker Enner Valencia headed his second goal shortly after the half-hour mark against the outclassed World Cup hosts.

Almost from the start, Egypt came under fire over its handling of the UN COP27 climate talks tasked with responding to the growing threat of global warming.

As the negotiations drew to a close nearly two days late with a historic win for vulnerable countries on funding for climate "loss and damage", exhausted delegates lined up to voice hope -- and frustration at the lack of progress on tackling emissions.

Facing calls to do more to resolve global crises, the world's French-speaking leaders met in Tunisia Sunday to discuss growing instability and popular discontent in francophone Africa.

But tensions crept into the International Organisation of La Francophonie (IOF) conference itself when the Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde, refused to pose for a photo next to Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda.

Bahrain has elected a record eight women and many first-time lawmakers to its 40-seat parliament, according to results announced Sunday of this week's polls held without opposition candidates.

The official Bahrain News Agency published the list of 34 candidates who won seats in the second round of parliamentary elections on Saturday, adding to six confirmed after a first round on November 12.

Two major opposition groups, the Shiite Al-Wefaq and the secular Waad, were prevented from presenting candidates. These parties were dissolved in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

Turkey has launched a string of offensives in neighbouring Syria since 2016 targeting Kurdish militias, Islamic State group jihadists and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

The latest, in Iraq and Syria and dubbed Operation Claw-Sword, come ahead of a general election in June that will see Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lean heavily on his nationalist supporters to try and win.

His government says it must protect Turkey's volatile southern regions along the Syrian border from attacks by fighters from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG).

Activists on Sunday expressed alarm that Iran was implementing a major crackdown in a Kurdish-populated town that has seen intense anti-regime protests in the last few days.

Reinforcements of security forces were sent to the city of Mahabad in western Iran, rights groups said, while images and audio of heavy gunfire and screams were posted overnight.

Iran's clerical leadership has been shaken by more than two months of protests sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman of Kurdish origin who had been arrested by Tehran's morality police.

The World Cup kicked off in Qatar on Sunday as the month-long football showpiece finally got under way after a tortuous 12-year build-up dogged by off-field controversies.

Qatar's Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thami was present in the impressive Al Bayt Stadium in Al Khor, 50 kilometres (31 miles) outside of Doha, to watch the host nation face Ecuador.

In a breathless start to the match in the stadium shaped like a Bedouin tent, Ecuador's Enner Valenica headed the ball into the net after three minutes but the goal was disallowed for offside.

Syrian refugee swimmer Yusra Mardini, who almost drowned at sea fleeing her war-torn country before competing at two Olympics, hopes a new film about her life will help other displaced people.

Yusra, 24, believes "The Swimmers", chronicling the perilous journey across Europe she and her elder sister Sarah undertook in 2015, has "an amazing message" that will give viewers "joy, hope, tears, sadness".

Vulnerable nations least responsible for planet-heating emissions have been battling for three decades to get wealthy polluters to pay for climate damages.

Their final push took barely two weeks.

The "loss and damage" inflicted by climate-induced disasters was not even officially up for discussion when UN talks in Egypt began.

But a concerted effort among developing countries to make it the defining issue of the conference melted the resistance of wealthy polluters long fearful of open-ended liability, and gathered unstoppable momentum as the talks progressed.

Turkey announced on Sunday it had carried out air strikes against the bases of outlawed Kurdish militants across northern Syria and Iraq, which it said were being used to launch "terrorist" attacks on Turkish soil.

The overnight raids in northern and northeastern Syria killed at least 31 people, said the British-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. They were mainly against positions held by Syrian Kurdish forces.