Fifteen people died and around a dozen were injured in northern Iraq when a fuel tank exploded, causing a building to collapse, authorities said Friday as search operations ended.

Provincial governor Haval Abu Bakr provided the final toll for Thursday evening's blast in Sulaimaniyah, the second-largest city of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, and declared a day of mourning in the province.

"Most of the victims are women and children," Abu Bakr said, adding that "there are no more bodies under the rubble of the house".

UN climate talks were extended by a day Friday in an effort to break a deadlock as nations tussle over funding for developing countries battered by weather disasters and ambition on curbing global warming.

Representatives from nearly 200 countries have gathered at the COP27 in Egypt for two weeks with the aim of driving forward action on climate change as the world faces a worsening onslaught of weather extremes.

Half a century after jazz great Thelonious Monk appeared on a French television program, a new documentary revisits outtakes from the 1969 interview to cast light on the racism and exploitation of black musicians.

When Monk met fellow musician and French TV producer Henri Renaud at a studio in Paris, it was a chance for the renowned pianist and composer to promote his music in Europe.

A large fire that ripped through a home north of Gaza City where fuel was being stored killed at least 21 people including seven children on Thursday, official and medical sources said.

Hamas Islamists, who control the Israeli-blockaded Palestinian enclave, said firefighters had managed to contain the blaze in Jabalia that left charred walls and mounds of black soot before being put out.

Gaza's civil defence unit confirmed in a statement that 21 people had been killed.

Government action to curb global warming should be a top concern despite inflation, an energy crisis and nuclear sabre-rattling by Russia, according to a YouGov survey in wealthy nations published exclusively by AFP.

Carried out before the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the survey found that more than half of respondents in France, Britain, Italy, Spain, Germany and the United States said halting global warming should be a "key priority" regardless of the state of the economy.

Thirty percent said it should be "paused" so other problems can be addressed.

Sudanese security forces fired tear gas Thursday to disperse thousands of protesters calling for justice for scores of people killed since last year's military coup, which deepened the country's political crisis.

Some protesters flew flags and carried portraits of those killed in earlier crackdowns, while others waved a banner with the crossed out image of army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who led the military takeover last year.

Jailed British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah was "near" to death behind bars, his family told AFP Thursday after the first family visit since he ended a seven-month long hunger strike.

"When we saw him today, he was exhausted, weak and vulnerable," the activist's aunt novelist Ahdaf Soueif said. "He was very, very thin and sometimes leaned against the wall".

The pro-democracy blogger is currently serving a five-year sentence for "spreading false news" by sharing another user's Facebook post about police brutality.

Israel and Jordan agreed Thursday at a UN climate meeting in Egypt to clean up the polluted Jordan river, an essential waterway suffering under decades of pollution and drought.

The Memorandum of Understanding inked at the COP27 stresses the need to rehabilitate the river system which, experts say, has lost roughly half of its biodiversity.

Israel's environmental protection minister, Tamar Zandberg, called the pact "an expression of the close relationship... between the two countries".

UN chief Antonio Guterres urged rich and developing nations to stop the "finger pointing" at deadlocked climate talks on Thursday and reach a deal on covering the losses suffered by vulnerable countries battered by weather disasters.

With the two-week COP27 conference in Egypt officially due to wrap up on Friday, negotiators faced a long night as they scrambled to find a compromise over the contentious issue of "loss and damage" and prevent the talks from collapsing.

Over 1,000 people demonstrated in Tunisia's second city Sfax on Thursday amid an ongoing trash crisis exacerbated by a landfill fire polluting the city's air.

Rubbish has been piling up in the streets of Sfax for months, as available dump sites reach capacity with local residents forced to burn their own refuse.

Protestors, including refuse collectors, gathered in front of the provincial government headquarters chanting: "Sfax is forgotten, rubbish is eating it in every street".