Mother-of-two Zoubiba Mohamed fled Ethiopia seeking a better life only to be ensnared by Yemen's bitter civil war, and now ekes out an existence in a squalid refugee camp.

She hoped to use Yemen as a stepping stone on her route to reach oil-rich Gulf nations, but like thousands of migrants, she became embroiled in its seven-year-old war between Huthi rebels and government forces.

"We have no life here," 34-year-old Mohamed said, showing her identification card issued by the UN's refugee agency UNHCR. "We are between life and death."

Five-year-old Amina Nasser hugs her toys in a decrepit cancer ward in Yemen, her life in the hands of a healthcare system pushed to the brink of collapse by grinding conflict.

Rudimentary equipment, peeling paint and the stench of urine are constant reminders of how Yemen's seven-year-old war has ravaged essential public services.

Amina, two months into her treatment for leukaemia at the Al-Sadaqa hospital in Yemen's southern port city of Aden, is one of millions whose lives have been upended.

Yemen's Sira Fortress withstood attacks by the Portuguese and the Turks, but years of war have left the 11th century citadel in disrepair, defaced by graffiti and littered with rubbish.

Overlooking the southern port of Aden, Sira sits atop a rocky mountain island in the historic district of Crater, a strategic position that once made it a base for British colonial forces.

Around its ancient walls, cigarette butts litter the ground and a visitor has scrawled the words "I love you" on one of the towers of the redoubtable fortress.

The deal to release British-Iranian detainees was given vital impetus by nuclear talks in Vienna and the West's evolving energy needs in the face of Russia's war in Ukraine, analysts said on Thursday.

Tehran's high-profile release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori on Wednesday came as the UK paid nearly £400 million ($523 million, 474 million euros) to settle a debt dating back to the 1970s amid sign of a potential thaw in Iran's relations with the West.

A Lebanese judge on Thursday arrested the brother of Central Bank governor Riad Salameh, both of whom are suspected of embezzlement and money laundering, judicial sources said.

Judge Ghada Aoun arrested Raja Salameh "after questioning him for three hours", a court official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Riad Salameh himself has so far ignored a warrant issued by Aoun, who is the Mount Lebanon public prosecutor and has turned up the heat on the Salameh brothers and on banks withholding small depositors' savings.

Soaring bread prices sparked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine have bitten into the purchasing power of consumers in Egypt, a leading importer of wheat from the former Soviet states.

For the first time since he took office, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Tuesday ordered a price cap on unsubsidised bread after the cost of the Egyptian staple rose by as much as 50 percent.

Dubai-owned P&O Ferries on Thursday suspended sailings as it axed 800 jobs, or more than a quarter of staff, to keep the company afloat.

"As part of the process we are starting today, we are providing 800 seafarers with immediate severance notices," the company owned by DP World said in a statement.

It comes after P&O earlier Thursday suspended its passenger and freight ships.

P&O Ferries operates four routes serving Britain, France, Ireland and the Netherlands.

"P&O Ferries is not going into liquidation," it said.

The families of two British-Iranians who returned to the UK after years imprisoned in Tehran on Thursday spoke of their overwhelming relief and gratitude at finally being reunited.

Charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, and 67-year-old retired engineer Anoosheh Ashoori landed at a Royal Air Force base in southern England in the early hours.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe's jubilant seven-year-old daughter Gabriella shouted "Mummy!", before she and her father Richard Ratcliffe were together again.

An Emirati cargo ship sank in Gulf waters off Iran, triggering a search and rescue operation in heavy seas Thursday which recovered all but one of its 30 crew, Iranian media reported.

"All but one of the 30 crew members have been rescued," the crisis management director for Bushehr province on Iran's Gulf coast told state news agency IRNA.

He said the search was continuing for the final missing crew member with two rescue vessels combing the waters.

Yemen's Al-Heswa nature reserve was once hailed as a beacon of conservation efforts by the United Nations, but civil war has turned it into a rubbish-strewn wasteland reeking of sewage.

The ticket office has been abandoned at the entrance to the 19-hectare (47-acre) site in Yemen's southern city of Aden, where trees have been cut down and construction waste dumped.

What was long a haven for flamingos and other migratory birds is now swarmed by crows.