The UN General Assembly on Thursday created an independent body to "clarify" the fate of thousands of people who remain missing in Syria since war broke out in 2011, overriding objections from Damascus.

According to non-governmental groups, some 100,000 people have disappeared since the start of a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests. More than half a million people have been killed.

Canada, Britain, Sweden and Ukraine said Thursday they will take Iran to the International Court of Justice "as soon as possible" to seek damages for families of passengers on a jetliner downed by Tehran.

Iranian forces shot down Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 shortly after takeoff from Tehran on January 8, 2020, killing all 176 people on board.

Three days later, Iran admitted that its military had targeted the Kiev-bound Boeing 737-800 plane by mistake.

More than 2,000 people have suffered heat stress during the hajj pilgrimage, Saudi officials said Thursday, after temperatures soared to 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit) during the annual rites.

Over 1.8 million Muslim worshippers performed the days-long hajj, mostly held outdoors at the height of the Saudi desert summer. Many elderly were among the pilgrims after a Covid-era maximum age limit was scrapped.

Iraqi protesters breached Sweden's embassy in Baghdad on Thursday, angered by a Koran burning outside a Stockholm mosque that sparked condemnation across the Muslim world.

A crowd of supporters of firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr stayed inside the compound for about 15 minutes, then left as security forces deployed, an AFP photographer said.

"Our constitution is the Koran," read a message on leaflets carried by the protesters, and a message sprayed on the compound's gate said "Yes, yes to the Koran".

Saudi authorities were investigating Thursday after an assailant and a security guard were killed in an exchange of gunfire outside the US consulate in Jeddah, the gateway city for the massive hajj pilgrimage taking place in Mecca.

The gunman and a Nepalese security guard both died after the exchange of fire outside the consulate on Wednesday evening, officials said, giving no possible motive for the incident.

Many masterpieces of Iraqi painting were looted or destroyed during the years of war, but now the country's artistic heritage faces another threat: rampant counterfeiting and illicit trafficking.

Adorning a wall of Baghdad's modern art museum, the painting "Death to Colonialism", with its sombre blues and greys, by pioneering Iraqi artist Shakir Hassan al-Said is one of the rare pieces from its era still on public display.

Ten years ago, Egypt's then-defence minister Abdel Fattah al-Sisi rallied citizens by promising to move the country out of the "terrorist" shadow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

Today, the former general rules a nation where expressions of dissent have been quashed, the media is muzzled and the justice system is a labyrinth even legal experts say they cannot navigate.

Over the decades, Egypt -- the most populous Arab nation and a key US ally -- "was never a very liberal democracy", said Hossam Bahgat, founder of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

Gulf oil states are using their vast wealth to build influence across the far-flung South Pacific, experts have told AFP, tearing a page straight out of China's Belt and Road playbook.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- two of the world's biggest crude oil producers -- have been ramping up efforts to shed their reputations as global climate laggards.

Both have been lavishing money and attention on small, isolated and often indebted Pacific nations, where rising sea levels are already creeping up on low-lying coastal communities.

A security guard and a gunman were killed in an exchange of gunfire in front of the US consulate in the Saudi coastal city of Jeddah on Wednesday, officials said.

No Americans were harmed in the shooting outside the consulate, which was put under lockdown, the State Department said.

"At 6:45 pm (1545 GMT), a man stopped in a car in front of the consulate building and got out with a weapon in his hand," the official Saudi Press Agency quoted a police spokesman as saying.

"Security forces reacted... resulting in an exchange of fire that killed the assailant," it said.

Four Israelis suspected of committing violence against Palestinians last week in the occupied West Bank have been detained under a controversial security measure, a senior security official said Wednesday.

In a rare move, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant issued administrative arrest warrants against them, a measure usually reserved for Palestinians.

Administrative detention is a controversial measure under which suspects are held without charge or trial for renewable periods of up to six months.