Decorated glazed bricks almost 3,000 years old are on display at Iran's National Museum after a four-decade search disrupted by war and an international legal battle.

Lions and winged cows with human heads, horses and bulls with a goat's horn, kneeling men and women and other mythological figures decorate the work, created by the Mannaeans who lived in northwestern Iran in the first millennium BC.

The 51 square bricks are painted with a glazed coating on a black, brown, light blue, yellow or white background.

Envisioned as a lush fortress against worsening desertification and sand storms, the "green belt" of Iraq's Karbala stands as a wilted failure.

Sixteen years after its inception, only a fraction of the 76-kilometre (47-mile) crescent-shaped strip of greenery has materialised, though the years proved a deep need for protection against mounting environmental challenges.

Eucalyptus, olive groves and date palms first took root in 2006 as part of a plan for tens of thousands of the trees to form a green protective shield around the city in central Iraq.

Israel carried out its first air strikes on the Gaza Strip in months early Tuesday in response to a rocket fired from the Palestinian enclave as tensions soar after a weekend of violence around a Jerusalem holy site.

Warning sirens sounded in southern Israel Monday night after the rocket was fired from the enclave controlled by the Islamist group Hamas, the first such incident since early January.

The projectile crashed into the sea off Tel Aviv.

An Egyptian court has reduced TikTok influencer Haneen Hossam's 10-year "human trafficking" sentence to three years, a judicial source told AFP on Monday.

While the jail time was reduced, Hossam was also fined 200,000 Egyptian pounds ($10,800) by the Cairo Criminal Court, said the source.

The targeting of female influencers has rekindled a heated debate in the deeply conservative Muslim country over what constitutes individual freedoms and social values.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is working to hold his fractious coalition together after a split on the right and an Arab-Israeli party's threat to quit over violence in Jerusalem.

Right-winger Bennett, a key figure in Israel's settlement movement, last year ended 12 continuous years of rule by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving premier.

To do so, the former tech tycoon brought together an unlikely grouping united by little other than their opposition to Netanyahu.

Several days of unrest in Sweden, sparked by a far-right group's burning of the Koran, have injured at least 40 people, police said on Monday, calling for more resources to deal with the violence.

More Muslim countries meanwhile protested the burning of their religion's holy book.

Protests have turned violent in several cities since Thursday, leaving 26 police officers and 14 civilians injured, police said at a press conference on Monday. About 20 police vehicles were burned or damaged.

The United States on Monday appeared to dismiss a key Iranian demand to salvage a nuclear accord as Tehran blamed Washington for the prolonged impasse.

Iran and the United States have been negotiating indirectly in Vienna for a year to restore the 2015 agreement, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, from which former US president Donald Trump withdrew.

Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi warned on Monday that the armed forces would not let arch-foe Israel rest if it took action targeting the Islamic republic.

"You must know that if you try to take any action against the Iranian nation... our armed forces will not leave you in peace," Raisi said, during a military parade to mark National Army Day.

His comments come days after he warned neighbouring Iraq against using its territory for activities that disrupt Iran's security.

Breaking a decade-old boycott by Gulf broadcasters over a diplomatic standoff with the Damascus government, a Syrian war drama figures this month on the Ramadan menu of a Saudi-owned television channel.

Syrian dramas have long been popular across the region, but since Arab states in the Gulf suspended ties with President Bashar al-Assad's government in 2012, many broadcasters have shied away from Syrian-produced shows, especially those related to war.

Israel's fractious governing coalition faced a new split on Sunday when Arab-Israeli party Raam "suspended" its membership, after violence around a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site that wounded 170 people over the weekend.

The government -- an ideologically disparate mix of left-wing, hardline Jewish nationalist and religious parties, as well as Raam -- had already lost its razor-thin majority this month when a religious Jewish member quit in a dispute over leavened bread distribution at hospitals.