The United Nations on Wednesday agreed to start negotiating a world-first global treaty on plastic pollution in what has been hailed a watershed moment for the planet.

Nearly 200 nations at the UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi unanimously agreed to create an intergovernmental committee to negotiate and finalise a legally binding plastics treaty by 2024.

UNEA chair Espen Barthe Eide declared the resolution passed with a strike of the gavel as the assembly hall erupted into cheers and applause.

For three years, Umm Mohammed Iali has been longing to embrace her granddaughters stuck in Syria since her two sons died fighting for the Islamic State group there.

Like thousands of other relatives of jihadist fighters, the three Lebanese girls and their mother are being indefinitely held in the northeast Syrian camp of Al-Hol.

Sitting in her grandchildren's bedroom in her home in the city of Tripoli in northern Lebanon, tears stream down Umm Mohammed's face.

Clashes in Syria's northeast between regime troops and forces aligned with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces killed two from each side on Tuesday, a war monitor said.

Syria's Kurds set up a semi-autonomous administration in the country's northeast in 2013 after government troops withdrew. The SDF, a key US partner in fighting the Islamic State jihadist group, is the Kurdish administration's de-facto army.

Clashes between Kurdish and regime forces are rare in the region.

Libya found itself with rival governments on Tuesday after parliament approved a new cabinet in a challenge to unity premier Abdulhamid Dbeibah, who has refused to cede power until elections.

In a vote some fear could help tip the conflict-scarred nation into another round of violence, the cabinet of former interior minister Fathi Bashagha was approved by 92 of 101 members present, speaker Aguila Saleh said.

The House of Representatives (HoR) in the eastern city of Tobruk had designated Bashagha as prime minister earlier this month.

Israel's Supreme Court on Tuesday froze the eviction of four Palestinian families from the flashpoint east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where Jewish settler groups have sought to seize control.

Justice Isaac Amit, in a ruling by a three-judge panel, wrote the families would be recognised as protected tenants, and would pay a Jewish settler group a symbolic annual rent of 2,400 shekels (about $740) "until a determination of ... land rights".

Israel's Supreme Court on Tuesday froze the eviction of four Palestinian families from the flashpoint east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where Jewish settler groups have sought to seize control.

Justice Isaac Amit, in a ruling by a three-judge panel, wrote the families would be recognised as protected tenants, and would pay a Jewish settler group a symbolic annual rent of 2,400 shekels (about $740) "until a determination of ... land rights".

Iran's supreme leader on Tuesday said US policies are to blame for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, calling for an end to the war that broke out last week.

"The root cause of the Ukraine crisis is the US and the West's policies," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a televised speech marking a Muslim religious anniversary.

"The United States regime is a crisis-creating and crisis-living one. It feeds on crisis.

Israelis, Arabs and Iranians landed back in their home countries Tuesday to the tearful relief of relatives, as evacuations of nationals caught up in the Russian invasion of Ukraine gathered pace.

The Middle Eastern evacuees had been forced to make harrowing escapes through the war zone to board repatriation flights in neighbouring countries, after Ukraine closed its airspace to civilian traffic at the start of the invasion last week.

One of the first flights, bringing home Israeli evacuees, landed at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv from Romania.

A fire in a shopping centre in the Syrian capital Damascus killed at least 11 people early Tuesday, the interior ministry said, in one of the deadliest blazes of recent years.

Many of those killed were security guards or other staff on duty overnight in the six-storey building, civil defence director Ahmad Abbas said.

The cause of the blaze was not immediately clear.

"Eleven people have died as a result of the fire in the La Mirada mall, and two people have been rescued," the interior ministry said.

The world has been stunned by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but shock quickly gave way to indignation in other strife-torn parts of the world over media commentary many saw as racist against them.

"This isn't a place -- with all due respect, you know -- like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades," said Charlie D'Agata of US network CBS News.

"This is a relatively civilised, relatively European -- I have to choose those words carefully too -- city where you wouldn't expect that or hope it is going to happen."