A major earthquake struck Turkey and Syria on Monday, killing more than 3,000 people and flattening thousands of buildings as rescuers dug with bare hands for survivors.

Dozens of nations have pledged aid since the 7.8-magnitude quake, which hit as people were still sleeping and amid freezing weather that has hampered emergency efforts.

Multi-storey apartment buildings full of residents were among the 5,606 structures reduced to rubble in Turkey, while Syria announced dozens of collapses, as well as damage to archaeological sites in Aleppo.

Mexico's Abraham Ancer held off American Cameron Yong to secure a wire-to-wire win in the Saudi International on Sunday.

Since topping the leaderboard after Thursday's opening round Ancer's rock-solid game withstood Young's challenge and at times tough, windy conditions.

His closing two-under-par 68 left him with a 19-under par total of 261, two shots clear of Young.

As well as Young played, Ancer remarkably made just two bogeys on his way to a fourth professional win, all achieved in different countries.

Qatar's main international airport aims to pass a record 40 million passengers this year as the Gulf state seeks to build on staging the World Cup to bolster its reputation, its tourism chief said Sunday.

Hamad International Airport recorded 39.5 million passengers in 2019 before the coronavirus pandemic struck, and last week announced that with the World Cup in November and December, numbers had recovered to 35.7 million in 2022.

Tourism minister and Qatar Airways chief executive Akbar Al-Baker said capacity restrictions at the airport held back numbers last year.

Iraqi activists protested Sunday to demand a law against domestic violence, days after a YouTuber was strangled by her father in a killing that sparked outrage in the conservative country.

Tiba al-Ali, 22, was killed by her father on January 31 in the southern province of Diwaniyah, interior ministry spokesman Saad Maan had said on Twitter on Friday.

Maan said there had been an attempt to mediate between the young woman and her relatives to resolve a "family dispute". The father later surrendered to the police and confessed to murdering his daughter.

Tens of thousands of Israelis have joined protests against controversial government plans to give lawmakers more control of the judicial system.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies, who have formed the most right-wing government in Israel's history, say the reforms are necessary to correct an imbalance that has given judges too much power over elected officials.

Thousands of Israelis demonstrated in central Tel Aviv Saturday for the fifth consecutive week against controversial legal reforms touted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government.

Crowds carrying blue and white Israeli flags braved the rain, swarming the city's central Kaplan Street, with signs labelling the new government a "threat to world peace".

Another sign read "Save Israel's democracy from Netanyahu".

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and the visiting Iranian foreign minister discussed the need for "vigilance in defending their national interests against external pressures," according to a statement released Saturday.

The Caracas visit Friday by Foreign Minister Ossein Amir-Abdollahian underlined the strength of an alliance between two countries seen as outcasts by much of the international community, both of them subject to US sanctions.

Young girls in colourful dress and traditional jewellery sing at a festival in Libya's Ghadames, an oasis city that was relatively unscathed by the past decade's chaos and is seeking to attract visitors.

Under tents strung up with red and ochre patterned material, baskets were on display as a woman sat weaving one together with a large wooden needle, silver rings tracing the movements of her hands as she worked.

Ghadames, known as the "pearl of the desert", is located nearly 500 kilometres (310 miles) southwest of the capital Tripoli.

US computing giant Microsoft said Friday that it had identified Iranian state actors as those behind the recent cyberattack on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

Clint Watts, the general manager of Microsoft's Digital Threat Analysis Center, said that the hackers, who called themselves "Holy Souls," were Iranian cybersecurity firm Emennet Pasargad.

In early January Holy Souls announced they had obtained the personal information of more than 200,000 Charlie Hebdo customers, and published a sample of the data as proof.

Israeli forces shot dead a Palestinian in the West Bank Friday, the Palestinian health ministry said, in what the army described as an "attack" by an unarmed "suspect" on a military outpost.

Abdullah Sami Qalalweh, 26 was killed by "Israeli occupation bullets near the town of Huwara, south of Nablus", the Palestinian ministry said in a statement.

An AFP photographer saw Qalalweh's body at the morgue of a Nablus hospital.