A top official from Iraq's Sadrist movement Tuesday urged followers who have occupied parliament for four days to move their protest outside, as calls mount for dialogue between political rivals.

Supporters of powerful preacher Moqtada Sadr -- whose political bloc in October won the largest share of seats in elections -- stormed parliament on Saturday to protest against a rival Shiite faction's pick for prime minister.

Nearly 10 months on from the elections, the oil-rich country still has no government and no new prime minister or president.

A Syrian ship cleared for release by Lebanon after it was seized over allegations it was carrying flour and barley stolen from Ukraine left port on Thursday, officials said.

The Laodicea, which was docked in the northern port of Tripoli, was cleared to leave after investigations failed to prove it carried stolen goods, officials said.

It set sail at 8:00 am (0500 GMT), according to Lebanese state media, and was later reported by authorities in Damascus to have arrived at the Syrian port of Tartous to unload its cargo.

Iran's ultraconservative President Ebrahim Raisi plans to travel to New York for the UN General Assembly next month despite US sanctions against him, the government's spokesman said on Tuesday.

"The preliminary planning has been done for the president's attendance at the UN General Assembly session," Ali Bahadori-Jahromi told a weekly press briefing.

Israel's army closed areas near the Gaza border to civilians Tuesday, citing a risk of reprisals, following the overnight arrest of two senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad members, the military and Palestinian sources said.

A 17-year-old Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli forces during a late Monday raid in the flashpoint West Bank district of Jenin.

Islamic Jihad identified the teenager as Dirar al-Kafrayni, and said he was a member of the group and "our heroic martyr".

The army said it had operated alongside police, who arrested "two wanted terror suspects."

A year after Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi took power, his government has curbed the Covid pandemic but faces a sharp downturn of the sanctions-hit economy as nuclear talks remain stalled.

Having pledged to help especially the poor, the ultraconservative cleric now faces runaway consumer prices that have sparked protests.

Raisi was elected in June last year in a ballot for which less than half of voters turned up, after his major rivals had been disqualified by electoral bodies.

A man has been arrested after he was found with an assault rifle outside the New York City home of an Iranian-American journalist who has been critical of Iran's regime.

The journalist -- 45-year-old Masih Alinejad -- was the target of a kidnap plot by Iranian intelligence agents last year, according to US prosecutors.

On Wednesday and Thursday of last week, suspect Khalid Mehdiyev was spotted acting suspiciously outside a house in Brooklyn, the FBI said in documents filed in a Manhattan criminal court.

Iranian authorities have stepped up persecution of the Bahais with a wave of arrests of prominent members of the country's biggest non-Muslim minority, leaving the battered community in shock, activists said on Monday.

The Bahais in Iran, who have been subjected to harassment ever since the inception of the Islamic republic in 1979, had already complained that dozens of community members had been arrested, summoned or subjected to house searches in June and July.

Thousands of Iraqis took to the streets of Baghdad Monday in counter-protests as rival supporters of Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr extended their occupation of parliament into a third day.

Almost 10 months after Iraqis went to the polls, a political standoff pits two key factions of the Shiite political scene, between the populist Sadr with a devoted following of millions, and the powerful pro-Iran Coordination Framework.

Iraqi security forces were on high alert in Baghdad on Monday as tensions soared after rivals of Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr, whose supporters are occupying the parliament, called for counter-demonstrations.

A political standoff 10 months after Iraqis went to the polls pits Sadr -- a populist with a devoted following of millions among the country's majority Shiite population -- against the powerful pro-Iran Coordination Framework, another Shiite alliance.

Thirty aid agencies working in war-torn Yemen on Monday called on rival forces to extend a four-month long truce helping millions of struggling civilians, one day before it expires.

Yemen's conflict, pitting the Saudi-backed government against Iran-backed Huthi rebels, has killed hundreds of thousands directly or indirectly and pushed the country to the brink of famine.

A UN-brokered truce that took effect in early April has provided a rare respite from violence for much of the country and alleviated some of the suffering.