A former Twitter worker was found guilty on Tuesday of spying for Saudi officials keen to unmask critics on the platform.

Ahmad Abouammo was pronounced guilty on criminal counts including money laundering, fraud, and being an illegal agent of a foreign government, according to a copy of the verdict.

Prosecutors in federal court in San Francisco told jurors that Abouammo sold Twitter user information for cash and an expensive watch some seven years ago.

Iranian authorities have allowed a French-Iranian academic held in the country for the last three years to take brief leave from prison, her supporters said on Tuesday.

Fariba Adelkhah has been given a five-day furlough, which can be extended, from Tehran's Evin prison where she is being held in a case that has raised tensions between Tehran and Paris, a statement from her support group said.

Turkey on Tuesday sent its newest drill ship on the first eastern Mediterranean energy exploration mission in nearly two years.

The search for natural gas in energy-rich waters around the divided island of Cyprus has turned into an irritant in Turkey's ties with the European Union.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the Abdulhamid Han drill ship -- the fourth built by Turkey -- will be sent to an undisputed area about 55 kilometres (34 miles) south of the city of Gazipasa.

Palestinian mother Rasha Qadoom clutches tight the tiny pink rucksack belonging to her five-year-old daughter Alaa -- which will never again be carried on her little back.

Alaa was the first of 16 children killed in three days of intense conflict between Israel and Islamic Jihad militants in the densely populated Palestinian enclave of Gaza.

"It was a Friday like any other," said Qadoom, 27, remembering how Alaa had been dressed in a pink T-shirt to match her pink bag with a pink ribbon tied in her hair.

"She was happy, she wanted to go to the park with her aunt."

Lebanon's Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah warned Israel on Tuesday against reaching for offshore gas reserves at a time US-mediated talks are aiming to settle a maritime border dispute.

"The hand that reaches for any of this wealth will be severed," Nasrallah, head of the Iran-backed Shiite Muslim political and military movement, told supporters in southern Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold.

Hundreds of thousands of Shiite Muslims on Tuesday marked the festival of Ashura in Iraq's holy city of Karbala, the burial place of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed.

The emotional event commemorates the 7th century battlefield martyrdom of Hussein, whom Shiites view as the rightful successor to the Prophet Mohammed, the issue at the heart of a schism with Sunni Islam.

To mourn his death in the year 680, Shiite worshippers wearing black cry and beat their chests in unison and some flagellate themselves with swords and knife-edged chains.

Israeli forces killed four people Tuesday in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said, including two teens and a man Israel said was a senior militant commander.

The latest violence comes two days after a truce halted deadly conflict between the Israeli military and Islamic Jihad militants in the coastal Palestinian enclave of Gaza, and as Israeli forces continue months of at times deadly raids in the West Bank.

An Iranian satellite launched by Russia blasted off from Kazakhstan Tuesday and reached orbit amid controversy that Moscow might use it to boost its surveillance of military targets in Ukraine.

As Russia's international isolation grows following Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin is seeking to pivot towards the Middle East, Asia and Africa and find new clients for its embattled space programme.

Two Palestinians, including a senior militant commander, were killed Tuesday as Israeli forces raided a house in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, the army said.

"The terrorist Ibrahim al-Nabulsi was killed in the city of Nablus," the army said in a statement, adding that "another terrorist who was staying in the house" also died.

Nabulsi was a commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, one of the main militant groups present in the West Bank operating under the ruling Fatah party.

Kurdish Iraqi farmer Azad Muhamad has become a social media star by sharing tips on growing fresh fruit and vegetables in the sun-parched country that is highly vulnerable to climate change.

The moustachioed 50-year-old with almost half a million Facebook followers posts weekly videos on topics such as protecting fruit trees, dealing with insects and helping people get more from their farms and gardens.

"They should make you agriculture minister," one of his fans, Ahmed Hassan, commented on a recent video.