Iran said on Monday it awaited the US response to "solutions" discussed with the EU envoy for breaking a stalemate in talks aimed at restoring the 2015 nuclear deal.

The European Union's coordinator for nuclear talks with Iran, Enrique Mora, held two days of discussions with the Islamic republic's chief negotiator Ali Bagheri in Tehran last week, leading the EU to say talks had been unblocked.

The negotiations, aimed at bringing the US back into the deal and Iran to full compliance with it, had stalled for about two months.

Another sandstorm that descended Monday on Iraq sent at least 2,000 people to hospital with breathing problems and led to the closure of airports, schools and public offices across the country.

It is the eighth duststorm since mid-April to hit Iraq, which has been battered by soil degradation, intense droughts and low rainfall linked to climate change.

The last one earlier this month led to the death of one person while 5,000 others had to be hospitalised for respiratory problems.

The first commercial flight in nearly six years took off from Yemen's rebel-held capital Monday, a major step forward in a peace process that has provided rare relief from conflict.

The Yemenia plane carrying 126 passengers, including hospital patients needing treatment abroad and their relatives, took off from Sanaa to the Jordanian capital Amman just after 9:00 am (0600 GMT).

Before take-off, the plane with red-and-blue tail livery taxied through an honour guard of two fire trucks spraying jets of water.

An election in crisis-hit Lebanon appears to have dealt a setback to the biggest bloc, led by the Iran-backed Shiite Muslim Hezbollah party, and boosted reformists, provisional results showed Monday.

Counting was ongoing and official results were only available for 99 of the 128 seats up for grabs a little before midnight (2100 GMT), fuelling opposition fears of foul play in some of the closest races.

The United States will remove a Jewish extremist group linked to late rabbi Meir Kahane as well as a Palestinian militant group from a terror blacklist after years without violence, an official said Sunday.

The State Department designated Kahane Chai as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997, three years after its supporter Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

The group was founded by Kahane, a US-born rabbi and former Israeli MP who advocated the expulsion of Arabs from Israel and was assassinated in New York in 1990.

A Briton and a German allegedly found with ancient pottery shards in their luggage told the start of their trial Sunday in Iraq that they had no intention of breaking the law.

James Fitton, 66, a retired British geologist, and Volker Waldmann, 60, a Berlin psychologist, appeared dressed in the yellow uniform of detainees for the two-hour hearing at a Baghdad criminal court.

The two men, who did not know each other before they travelled to Iraq on an organised tour, were arrested March 20 at Baghdad airport.

After voting in Lebanon's elections Sunday, Beirut blast survivor Nessrin hoped the ink on her finger would be a toe in the door of parliament for new candidates fighting corruption.

The capital's Karantina district where she cast her ballot was one of the worst hit by the August 2020 explosion that killed more than 200 people, wounded thousands and devastated swathes of the city.

Palestinians rallied Sunday to mark the "Nakba," or catastrophe, 74 years after Israel's creation, with condemnation spreading over a police raid on the funeral of a slain journalist.

The annual demonstrations across the occupied West Bank, annexed east Jerusalem and inside Israel came with tensions high over the killing of 51-year-old Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh.

The United Arab Emirate's new president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, met his French and British counterparts Sunday as world leaders offered congratulations and paid tribute to his late predecessor.

French President Emmanuel Macron, on the maiden foreign trip of his second term, was the first of a number of Western leaders to meet "MBZ", the oil-rich Gulf state's long-time de facto ruler who was appointed on Saturday, a day after the death of his ailing half-brother Sheikh Khalifa.

In an Iraqi province where unemployment is about 40 percent, a lucky few hoped to find work Sunday at a university job fair attended by French firms alongside local companies.

The three-day event is taking place at the University of Mosul in Iraq's war-ravaged second city, where reconstruction has been slow five years after the Iraqi army backed by US-led coalition air strikes pushed out Islamic State jihadists.