UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Iraq to "break cycles of instability and fragility" after talks with senior officials in Baghdad on Wednesday, following a drawn-out political crisis in the war-torn country.

The UN chief's visit comes as Iraq, blighted by corruption and broken infrastructure, prepares to mark the 20th anniversary of the US-led invasion that toppled longtime dictator Saddam Hussein.

Guterres said he wanted to demonstrate "solidarity" with Iraq "in the consolidation of its democratic institutions and advancing peace".

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday urged the international community to help earthquake-hit northwest Syria, on his first ever visit to rebel-held areas of the war-ravaged country.

"The people of northwest Syria need the assistance of the international community to recover and rebuild," Tedros told reporters after entering from neighbouring Turkey via the Bab al-Hawa border crossing.

Haydar Karar spends eight hours a day tidying a carpentry shop and lugging wooden beams, forced like many other Iraqi children into work by poverty and conflict.

Now 13, Karar has been working with his carpenter uncle in the capital Baghdad since the age of eight, his childhood marred by the troubles that have ravaged his country.

"I was expelled from school because of a fight," he said. "The school didn't want to take me back."

Long partial to heavy lunchtime platters of meat and rice, Asim al-Shammari has recently turned to lighter fare from a self-described diet restaurant, swayed by Saudi Arabia's anti-obesity push.

Roughly one in five Saudi adults is obese, according to an in-depth study published by the World Bank last year that described the problem as "alarming".

The Global Obesity Observatory places the kingdom at number 17 in its international rankings of obesity prevalence, three slots below the United States and near neighbours Qatar and Kuwait.

Adversaries Morocco and Algeria are each racing to build a conduit pumping Nigerian gas to European markets, even as the continent aims to wean itself off fossil fuels.

Both countries have moved to revive long-stalled projects in light of a gas supply crunch following Russia's invasion of Ukraine a year ago. Prices surged and Europe -- which was heavily reliant on Russian gas -- had to look elsewhere for energy.

The UN nuclear watchdog confirmed on Tuesday it had detected particles of uranium enriched up just under the 90 percent needed to produce an atomic bomb.

"Discussions are still ongoing" to determine the origin of these particles, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a confidential report seen by AFP.

Shoppers inspect vegetables at a huge market in Sale, near the Moroccan capital Rabat, but exploding prices mean they are keeping their eye on what they spend ahead of Ramadan.

"Everything's more expensive," said Khadija El Asri, a resident of the down-at-heel neighbourhood of Sidi Moussa.

"These last three weeks, I've bought less vegetables and meat than usual."

Dozens of handcarts and boxes of produce line the market street, where the buzz of mopeds mixes with the sound of heated negotiations between struggling shoppers and squeezed merchants.

The United Nations raised around $1.2 billion on Monday to deliver aid this year to millions of people going hungry in war-ravaged Yemen, amid hopes that a fragile truce could foster a lasting peace.

The figure was far short of the $4.3 billion sought from donors at a pledging conference in Geneva, but the UN hoped the figure could reach $2 billion by the end of the week.

It was the seventh donor conference for Yemen in seven years -- but the UN hopes the next such gathering could focus on rebuilding the broken country rather than staving off hunger.

The last survivor of three critically endangered Asiatic cheetah cubs born in captivity in Iran died in hospital Tuesday from kidney failure, state media reported.

"Pirouz who was admitted to the Central Veterinary Hospital due to kidney failure last Thursday, died after undergoing dialysis," the official IRNA news agency said.

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Monday counted the cost of deadly violence and arson by Israeli settlers targeting a town where two Israeli brothers were killed.

The surge in violence continued late Monday when gunfire killed an Israeli-American man near Jericho, an attack the army blamed on suspected Palestinian attackers.

Dozens of Israeli settlers set homes and cars ablaze in the northern town of Huwara overnight Sunday, after a day of Israeli-Palestinian talks in neighbouring Jordan aimed at quelling escalating unrest in the Palestinian territory.