Qatar's ruler on Tuesday hit out at "double standards" unleashed in an "unprecedented campaign" of criticism over his country's rights record ahead of this year's football World Cup.

Just 26 days from the first game, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani gave a rare public airing of the Islamic country's frustration following years of attacks over its treatment of foreign workers and over LGBTQ and women's rights.

When Michel Aoun became president in 2016, putting an end to a two-year power vacuum due to political wrangling, he vowed to be the "strong" president Lebanon so desperately needed.

But as his mandate draws to a close next week, the country is reeling from an unprecedented economic crisis, with Beirut having been ravaged in 2019 by one of the world's biggest non-nuclear explosions.

The blast was preceded by a 2019 mass protest movement that demanded Aoun's departure, along with the rest of Lebanon's entrenched ruling class.

Already reeling from three years of economic meltdown, Lebanon faces the prospect of its multi-faceted crisis deepening further when President Michel Aoun's mandate expires in a week from now.

The deadline looms as the country is headed by a caretaker administration, since key parties have been unable to agree on a proper government to replace one whose mandate expired in May.

Parliament has held four rounds of voting since last month, with no candidate garnering enough support from parties to succeed Aoun, prompting fears of a protracted power vacuum.

A protester was killed in Sudan Tuesday, medics said, as pro-democracy demonstrators marked the first anniversary of a coup that derailed a transition to civilian rule.

Waving Sudanese flags, thousands of protesters in Khartoum and its suburbs defied security forces who have carried out deadly crackdowns on past rallies, demanding that "soldiers go back to the barracks".

Security forces responded with tear gas in some areas.

"No partnership, no negotiation with the putschists," protesters chanted, in what has become a pro-democracy rallying cry.

In the Arab-Israeli town of Rahat, a few trampled political party flyers on the pavement are the only sign that the country is about to go to the polls.

While the campaign ahead of Israel's fifth election in four years has been somewhat lacklustre nationwide, the apathy is especially acute among the Arab minority where turnout is feared to be low.

"The top issue is how do we get Arab citizens from their house to the ballot box," said Fayez Abu Souhaiban, mayor of Rahat, ahead of the November 1 polls.

"This is a big issue and a very big dilemma."

Moroccan rapper ElGrande Toto was taken into custody on Monday evening, following several complaints filed against him for public statements he made about using cannabis, a judicial source said.

The Casablanca-born rapper, who is a massive star in the Arabic-speaking music world, had in late September told reporters who gathered after one of his concerts, "I smoke hash -- so what?... It does not mean I set a bad example."

Amnesty International on Tuesday called for an International Criminal Court (ICC) probe into possible war crimes committed in August by both Israeli forces and Palestinian militants during deadly fighting in Gaza.

Thirty-one civilians were among the 49 Palestinians killed in the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip during the three-day conflict, the global rights group said in a new report.

The London-based organisation pressed the ICC to "urgently investigate any apparent war crimes committed during the August 2022 Israeli offensive" in the Palestinian enclave.

Six Palestinians were killed in sweeping Israeli raids Tuesday in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, in what the army described as an assault targeting the emerging "Lion's Den" armed group.

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said that Wadih Al Houh, a leader of a new coalition of Palestinian fighters dubbed The Lions' Den, had been among those killed in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

The Palestinian health ministry initially reported three dead and 19 wounded shot "by Israeli fire in Nablus".

French World Cup-winning hero Zinedine Zidane said Monday it was "time to forget the controversies and focus on the football" at the upcoming World Cup in Qatar, despite calls to boycott the tournament over the Gulf state's rights record and treatment of migrant workers.

"I hope France have a great tournament but I don't know yet if I will go to Qatar," former Real Madrid coach Zidane, 50, said as he attended the unveiling of his own wax figure at the Musee Grevin in Paris.

In drought-hit Iraq, six out of 10 households have had their access to drinking water disrupted and a quarter of farmers have seen crop yields drastically fall this year, said a survey published Monday.

Iraq has been battered by three years of drought, low rainfall and reduced river flows, and the United Nations has ranked it the fifth most vulnerable country to some key effects of climate change.