In the heart of Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, Palestinians with learning disabilities are front and centre at a new boutique hotel welcoming guests from across the globe.

Showcasing their skills at the hotel is intended to make Palestinians with disabilities more visible and overhaul perceptions within the community.

The hotel is located near the Church of the Nativity, one of the most important sites in the Holy Land, where Christians believe Jesus was born and crowds of pilgrims stroll early on a hot summer morning.

An Iranian ship seized an American military unmanned research vessel in the Gulf but released it after a US Navy patrol boat and helicopter were deployed to the location, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

The US Central Command's 5th Fleet said a support ship from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, the Shahid Baziar, was spotted towing the seven-meter (23-foot) Saildrone Explorer unmanned surface vessel (USV) late Monday.

Russia has begun receiving Iranian combat drones to be used in the Ukraine war, but many of them have already proven faulty, the US military said Tuesday.

"Russian transport aircraft loaded the UAV equipment at an airfield in Iran and subsequently flew from Iran to Russia over several days in August," said Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder, using the initials for unmanned aerial vehicle.

"It's likely part of Russia's plans to import hundreds of Iranian UAVs of various types," he said.

The UN appealed Tuesday for the last $14 million needed to try and prevent a stricken oil tanker from triggering a disaster off Yemen that could cost $20 billion to clean up.

The decaying 45-year-old FSO Safer, long used as a floating storage platform and now abandoned off the rebel-held Yemeni port of Hodeida, has not been serviced since Yemen was plunged into civil war more than seven years ago.

If it breaks up, it could unleash a potentially catastrophic spill in the Red Sea.

An Israeli court on Tuesday sentenced the former Gaza head of a major US-based aid agency to 12 years in prison for funnelling millions of dollars to Islamist group Hamas.

The Beersheba district court in southern Israel issued a sentence of "12 years' prison time, less the detention" already served for World Vision's Mohammed al-Halabi.

The court had ruled in June that Halabi was guilty of siphoning off millions of dollars and tonnes of steel to Hamas, which controls the Palestinian enclave.

An Israeli court on Tuesday sentenced the former Gaza head of a major US-based aid agency to 12 years in prison for funnelling millions of dollars to Islamist group Hamas.

The Beersheba district court in southern Israel issued a sentence of "12 years prison time, less the detention" already served for World Vision's Mohammed al-Halabi, who has been jailed throughout the past six years of court proceedings.

Palestinians opened fire at Israeli Jews who snuck into an occupied West Bank city to visit a shrine, wounding two of them, the Israeli army and medical sources said Tuesday.

The incident in Nablus was followed by an unrelated Israeli military raid nearby in which four Palestinians were shot.

The army said the earlier shooting happened when "a number of civilians entered Nablus".

The Israelis were headed to Joseph's Tomb, believed to be the last resting place of the biblical patriarch Joseph, a flashpoint for violence in the West Bank, and revered as a holy site.

Lithuania on Monday said it had finished building a fence along its border with Belarus to fight illegal immigration which the West accuses Minsk of orchestrating.

Illegal immigration has soared in EU member Lithuania this year, with around 4,200 migrants mainly from the Middle East and Africa crossing the border from neighbouring Belarus.

The West has accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's regime of manipulating the migrant flows with its ally Russia as part of "hybrid" warfare, which Minsk denies.

Residents of Libya's capital expressed shock and apprehension after weekend clashes between rival militias that left more than 30 people dead and reignited fears of a renewed conflict.

"It was a real war," said local resident Manal, whose name has been changed for security reasons.

"I was afraid for my family... My baby woke up many times because of the bombardments. I didn't know when it would end," said the woman in her 40s, adding that she feared fighting would resume.

When he raises his index finger and frowns, Iraq holds its breath. The mercurial Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr has yet again showed his strength in Iraqi politics, able to mobilise his loyalists with a tweet.

On Monday, in a short message, he announced his "definitive retirement" from politics and the closure of all institutions linked to his movement.

Shortly thereafter, thousands of his supporters mobilised, storming the government palace in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone and prompting the army to declare a curfew.