The UN's COP27 climate summit kicked off Sunday in Egypt with warnings against backsliding on efforts to cut emissions and calls for rich nations to compensate poor countries after a year of extreme weather disasters.

An alarming UN report said the past eight years are on track to be the eight warmest on record, with an acceleration in sea level rise, glacier melt, heatwaves and other climate indicators.

"As COP27 gets underway, our planet is sending a distress signal," UN chief Antonio Guterres said in a statement, calling the report a "chronicle of climate chaos".

Tanzanian film "Tug of War", about love and politics during the final years of British colonial Zanzibar, has won the Tanit d'Or at Tunisia's prestigious Carthage Film Festival.

Africa's oldest film festival, held in the capital Tunis, presented a total of 170 films from around 40 countries, and ended with the prizes on Saturday night.

The winning film whose title in Swahili is "Vuta N'Kuvute" was directed by Amil Shivji.

Two other feature-length films also received awards at the 33rd edition of the festival devoted to Arab and African filmmakers.

Pope Francis said Sunday he was praying for "suffering peoples of the Middle East", at the end of a Bahrain visit promoting dialogue with Islam but marked by accusations of rights abuses in the Gulf state.

In a final address, he told Lebanese congregants he was praying for "your beloved country, so weary and sorely tried, as well as (for) all peoples suffering in the Middle East".

Syrian regime rocket fire killed nine people including three children at makeshift camps for displaced people in the country's last major rebel-held bastion early Sunday, a war monitor said.

The dead included three children among seven civilians, and two unidentified individuals, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a broad network of sources on the ground.

An earlier Observatory toll reported six civilians dead, including two youngsters.

Fans in stadiums across Germany on Saturday called for boycotts of the upcoming Qatar World Cup.

In Dortmund, fans in the club's yellow wall - the all-standing southern stand - unveiled a banner saying 'BOYCOTT QATAR 2022' alongside a banner saying 'more dead than minutes of play'.

The sentiment was echoed by Bayern Munich and Hertha Berlin fans in the teams' clash in the German capital, as well as fans at the second-division game between Fortuna Duesseldorf and St Pauli.

Iranian students protested and shopkeepers went on strike Saturday despite a widening crackdown, according to reports on social media, as demonstrations that flared over Mahsa Amini's death entered an eighth week.

The clerical state has been gripped by protests that erupted when Amini, 22, died in custody after her arrest for an alleged breach of Iran's strict dress code for women.

As the working week got underway, security forces adopted new measures to halt protests at universities in Tehran, searching students and forcing them to remove facemasks, activists said.

Marwa Khaled's teenage son was hospitalised with cholera after drinking polluted water in Lebanon's impoverished north -- yet she still buys the same contaminated water, the only kind she can afford.

"People know (the water is contaminated), but they don't have any other choice," said 35-year-old Khaled, standing near her son, who is bedridden at a cholera field hospital.

"Everyone will end up with cholera."

About 30,000 flag-waving worshippers attended an open-air mass held by Pope Francis in mainly Muslim Bahrain on Saturday, marked by a small protest by relatives of death row prisoners.

Police briefly detained around 10 people who had protested outside a school where he was due to speak and asked to meet with the pontiff, according to a London-based human rights group.

Hajer Mansoor, mother of jailed activist Sayed Nizar al-Wadaei, held a placard reading: "Tolerance does not exist for us here in Bahrain."

About 30,000 flag-waving worshippers joined an open-air mass held by Pope Francis in mainly Muslim Bahrain on Saturday, the highlight of his outreach mission to the Gulf.

Some of the congregation had tears in their eyes as they waited to see the 85-year-old at Bahrain National Stadium, the kingdom's biggest venue.

Francis, who uses a wheelchair and walking stick due to knee problems, smiled and waved to the crowds from an open-sided popemobile where he was seated, flanked by more than a dozen suited security guards and attendants.

With its catchy beats and in-your-face lyrics, Egypt's hugely popular electro "mahraganat" music has found millions of fans in the conservative country -- but now officials are pulling the plug.

"Never call it mahraganat again," came an edict from Egypt's musicians' union.

"Anyone who writes the word mahraganat on his videos will have his name immediately crossed out," union head and former star crooner Mustafa Kamel said.