Turkey said Tuesday that its restoration of full diplomatic relations with Israel did not mean a shift in Middle Eastern allegiances as it warmly welcomed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

The Palestinian leader met President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for talks and a private dinner on his second visit to Turkey in a year.

The talks came just a week after Turkey and Israel sealed a rapprochement from a decade of rocky relations by announcing plans to reappoint ambassadors for the first time in four years.

Eight more grain silos at Beirut port toppled Tuesday, succumbing to damage from a devastating 2020 explosion in the third such collapse in a month, AFP correspondents reported.

A cloud of dust rose over the port after the collapse, which brought down the last of the northern block of silos that was more heavily damaged in the blast and where a fire had been burning since last month.

The remaining southern block is more stable and not at imminent risk of collapse, said French civil engineer Emmanuel Durand, who has installed sensors on the silos.

Washington is "deeply concerned" about a recent flare-up of violence along Syria's northern border with Turkey, a State Department spokesman said Monday.

"The United States is deeply concerned about recent attacks along Syria’s northern border and urges all parties to maintain ceasefire lines," said spokesman Ned Price, days after increased bombardments in the area reportedly killed at least 21 civilians -- including children.

From card games to horse rides, women in Gaza are spending their summer nights outdoors to seek solace from daily hardships in the Palestinian enclave.

"We wait for the sun to be gone to escape to the sea," said Yusra Hmedat, 43, while playing cards at a beachfront cafe in Gaza City.

"Women leave their houses, from the pressures of life, and try to stay out as long as possible," said the civil servant, as she put her cards in order.

Ben & Jerry's lost its bid Monday to block its parent company Unilever from selling its ice cream in West Bank settlements, which the US firm said would run counter to its values.

The company, known for its political activism, took the unusual step seeking an injunction after London-based Unilever announced it had sold its interest in the ice cream to an Israeli license-holder.

However, a US federal judge ruled Monday the ice cream company had "failed to demonstrate" that the move to sell the goods in the Israeli-occupied settlements caused it "irreparable harm."

China has gained a major foothold in oil-rich Iraq, shaking up Western domination in fields from energy to construction, even as some warn that infrastructure projects could leave Baghdad in debt.

After decades of conflict, Iraq is "badly in need of foreign investment, and specifically investment in energy sector infrastructure", said John Calabrese of the Middle East Institute in Washington.

China, with its soaring energy needs, has stepped in to fill that gap, and is expanding its presence in Iraq under a 2019 "oil for construction" deal.

A group of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank flew abroad from an airport in Israel's Negev desert for the first time Monday, arriving in Cyprus under a newly launched pilot scheme.

"This is the first trip for us from Ramon" airport, said Sofiane, a Palestinian pharmacist who declined to provide his surname.

"We got this opportunity for the first time as Palestinians," he said, adding that the group was made up of pharmacists from around the West Bank.

The body of an eighth pilgrim was pulled from an Iraqi shrine on Monday, two days after its partial collapse in a landslide, with rescuers announcing an end to the search for more victims.

The Iraqi civil defence authorities said that the body of a woman had been pulled from the rubble and debris from the shrine known as Qattarat al-Imam Ali near the Shiite holy city of Karbala, bringing the total number of victims to eight.

Two bodies were recovered on Monday from a shrine in Iraq's Karbala province after a landslide caused it to partially collapse, bringing the overall toll to seven dead, rescue services said.

"Unfortunately, we found this morning two bodies, a man and a woman", under the rubble of Qattarat al-Imam Ali, Jawdat Abdelrahman, director of the civil defence media department, told AFP.

So far, the bodies retrieved from the site were a child, four women and two men, while three children had been rescued and rushed to hospital.

Rabbi Shalom Cohen, the spiritual leader of Israel's largest ultra-Orthodox political party, died in hospital Monday aged 91, his family said, as tens of thousands packed Jerusalem streets for his funeral.

Cohen, who headed the Council of Torah Sages, the highest body in the Shas party, had been at Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem when his health deteriorated on Sunday evening, according to his family.

Shas head Aryeh Deri said he was "heartbroken" over Cohen's death.