The head of the international union that forced Qatar into groundbreaking labour reforms ahead of the upcoming football World Cup vowed Wednesday that other Gulf states will become the next target.

Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (IUTC) chief said Qatar has made "incredible progress" in its treatment of foreign workers to become a country fit to host World Cup.

The football tournament starts on November 20.

A Palestinian was shot dead and at least two others wounded Wednesday by Israeli forces during an operation near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said.

Alaa Zaghal, 21, "died of a bullet wound to the head fired by the occupation (Israeli) army", a statement read.

Two journalists were also hurt during the clashes, an AFP journalist at the scene witnessed.

Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, said the two journalists were employees of state television network Palestine TV.

Even though he has been silenced, Iranian pop singer Shervin Hajipour's impassioned song in support of protests over Mahsa Amini's death in custody remains an unofficial anthem of the movement.

The song "Baraye" notched up 40 million views on Instagram before it was deleted when Hajipour was arrested, but he has since been freed on bail and has distanced himself from politics, likely as a condition for his release.

Iran said on Wednesday it had summoned British ambassador Simon Shercliff to hear a protest over "meddlesome statements" on the unrest sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini.

A wave of unrest has rocked Iran since the 22-year-old Kurd died on September 16 after her arrest by the morality police in Tehran for allegedly failing to observe the Islamic republic's strict dress code for women.

The street violence has led to dozens of deaths -- mostly of protesters but also members of the security forces -- and hundreds of arrests.

Syria's health ministry has recorded 39 deaths from cholera and nearly 600 cases in an outbreak spreading in the war-ravaged country that the United Nations warned is "evolving alarmingly".

"In Syria, more than 10,000 suspected cases of cholera have been reported just in the past six weeks," the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a briefing on Wednesday.

A Lebanese lawmaker entered a bank branch, accompanied by lawyers, and freed more than $8,000 in trapped dollar deposits on Wednesday to pay for surgery, her lawyer said.

Cynthia Zarazir, who was elected to parliament in May, is the latest in a growing number of angry depositors who have forced Lebanese lenders to unlock savings trapped under informal capital controls imposed in the face of an unprecedented financial crisis.

Iranian schoolgirls have come to the fore in protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, removing their hijabs and staging sporadic rallies in defiance of a lethal crackdown by the security forces.

Amini, 22, was pronounced dead days after the notorious morality police detained the Iranian Kurdish woman last month for allegedly breaching the Islamic republic's strict dress code for women.

Concern grew on Wednesday over what caused the death of 16-year-old girl Nika Shahkarami who had joined the protests in Iran, even as the Iranian judiciary rejected accusations she had been killed by security forces.

Reports from Persian media based outside Iran have said that the grieving girl's family were not allowed to bury her body in her hometown, while two close relatives have also reportedly been arrested.

Her aunt Atash Shahkarami wrote on Twitter that Nika went missing after attending a protest in Tehran on September 20.

In the hills of northern Morocco, vast cannabis fields are ready for harvest, but farmers complain that a government plan to market the crop legally is yet to deliver them any benefits.

The marginalised Rif region has long been a major source of illicit hashish smuggled to Europe while Moroccan authorities, wary of social unrest, have often turned a blind eye.

Growers now hope that a change in the law last year will help them profit legally from medicinal cannabis, increasingly used to treat conditions including multiple sclerosis and epilepsy.

An 85-year-old Iranian-American arrested in Tehran more than six years ago who is seeking urgent medical treatment has landed in Abu Dhabi, the State Department said Wednesday, with the United States pressing for the release of three other citizens.

Baquer Namazi, a former UNICEF official, was detained in February 2016 when he travelled to Iran to press for the release of his son Siamak, who had been arrested in October of the previous year.