FIFA on Friday faced calls to sanction Iran and even throw its team out of the 2022 World Cup finals over the Islamic republic's renewed failure to allow women to attend an international football match.

Iranian news agencies this week confirmed that 2,000 women who had bought tickets for Tuesday's World Cup qualifier against Lebanon in the northeastern city of Mashhad could not enter the stadium.

Activists based outside Iran accused the authorities of using pepper spray at close range to disperse women who then protested the ban outside the venue.

The draw for this year's World Cup takes place in the shadow of Doha's skyscrapers on Friday, with the focus for the evening on the actual football after a build-up dominated by the many off-field issues surrounding the awarding of the tournament.

It is the most controversial World Cup in history, with Qatar dogged ever since it was named host in 2010 by accusations of vote-buying –- which were hotly denied –- and questions over the country's suitability.

An Italian aid worker described being beaten with a rubber cable and waterboarded in harrowing testimony Thursday at the trial of a jihadist accused of being one of his Islamic State captors known as the "Beatles."

Federico Motka is the first former IS hostage to testify at the trial of El Shafee Elsheikh, a former British national accused of the murders of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.

Germany and Spain will clash at this year's World Cup after Friday's glitzy draw ceremony in Doha placed the two former winners in the same group, while bitter political rivals the United States and Iran were also drawn together.

Four-time winners Germany were in Pot Two, making them the obvious team to avoid for the top seeds in the Qatari capital. They were knocked out at the group stage in Russia in 2018.

The speaker of Tunisia's parliament on Thursday rejected President Kais Saied's dissolution of the assembly the previous day, which deepened an eight-month power grab.

"We consider that the parliament remains operational," Rached Ghannouchi told AFP in an interview.

"The president does not have the constitutional right to dissolve parliament."

Saied had dissolved the chamber on Wednesday, dealing another blow to the political system in place since the North African country's 2011 revolt which sparked the Arab Spring.

Israeli security forces on Thursday raided a West Bank city after three fatal attacks rocked the Jewish state in a week, with two Palestinians shot dead and a third killed after launching a stabbing attack on a bus.

The violence comes after a Palestinian armed with an M-16 assault rifle killed two Israeli civilians, two Ukranian nationals and an Israeli-Arab policeman in the streets of Bnei Brak, an Orthodox Jewish city near Tel Aviv, on Tuesday night.

Dubai shuttered Expo 2020 with a colourful closing ceremony punctuated by fireworks on Thursday, leaving a multi-billion dollar mini-city in the desert and heightened expectations for future hosts.

Six months after the delayed opening of the $7 billion, purpose-built site, Christina Aguilera, Nora Jones and cellist Yo-Yo Ma performed at the LCD-lit Al Wasl Dome, Expo's centrepiece, as pyrotechnics lit up the sprawling site.

A senior World Bank official called for more support for poor people globally Thursday as the war in Ukraine sends food prices soaring.

Developing and import-dependent countries have been heavily impacted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine -- the two countries that account for more than a quarter of the world's annual wheat sales.

"It's not so much about food availability," Mari Pangestu, the World Bank's managing director for development policy, told AFP during Middle East and North Africa Climate Week in Dubai.

A Sudanese protester was killed Thursday as thousands rallied against last year's military coup and worsening living conditions, medics and an AFP correspondent said.

"The military should go back to the barracks", protesters in the capital Khartoum chanted. "Down with the government of hunger", they added.

A 23-year-old protester was killed after he took "a live bullet to the chest by coup forces" in Khartoum during Thursday's demonstrations, according to the Central Committee of Sudan Doctors.

Dubai will bid farewell to its extravagant Expo 2020 world fair on Thursday, leaving a multi-billion dollar mini-city in the desert and heightened expectations for future hosts.

Six months after the delayed opening of the $7 billion, purpose-built site, the Middle East business hub will close the shutters with performances from Christina Aguilera and DJ Tiesto, and fireworks that will go on past 3:00 am local time.