Cyprus struck a deal Monday with the European Union to help it handle a large migrant influx to the divided Mediterranean island, which Nicosia says is the highest per capita in the EU.

The agreement will make it easier for Cyprus to send back failed asylum seekers and help upgrade its overcrowded reception facilities.

The Republic of Cyprus accuses Turkey, whose troops have since 1974 occupied the island's northern third, of encouraging much of the influx of Syrian refugees and arrivals from sub-Saharan Africa across the UN-patrolled Green Line that divides the island.

Construction workers at a building site in northern Gaza have uncovered 31 Roman-era tombs dating from the first century AD, the Palestinian territory's Islamist rulers Hamas said Monday.

The tombs were discovered near the town of Beit Lahia as work began on an Egyptian-funded residential area, part of the $500 million reconstruction package Cairo pledged after the 11-day war in May between Israel and armed groups in the Gaza Strip.

The United States and Egypt on Monday launched a working group to prepare for the COP27 climate summit this year, with US envoy John Kerry urging more countries to come on board.

The meeting will take place in November in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, seeking to build on gains made at the previous conference in Glasgow last year.

"In Glasgow, we made significant progress... we now need to bring more countries on board," Kerry told reporters in Cairo.

Kuwait Airways announced Monday an expanded $6 billion deal with Airbus for 31 planes, restructuring an agreement reached in 2014.

The deal comes after what the airline labelled occasionally "heated" negotiations following probes over allegations of kickbacks surrounding the initial order.

"We have managed to agree on a monumental restructuring that will position Kuwait Airways in a much stronger place to succeed for the next 15 years," company chairman Ali Al-Dukhan told a news conference.

When US prosecutors struck a deal with a hedge-fund billionaire to surrender 180 stolen artefacts to their places of origin, they insisted victims of his plunder would see "justice".

But Palestinians doubted it would apply to them.

They saw Michael Steinhardt's December agreement with prosecutors in Manhattan as yet another setback in their ill-fated quest to retain control of precious antiquities found in Israeli-occupied territories.

An Iranian F-5 fighter jet crashed into a school compound in the northwestern city of Tabriz on Monday, killing two crew and a passerby, authorities said.

"Luckily the school was closed because of the Covid-19 pandemic," local official Mohammad-Bagher Honarvar told state television.

The aircraft was on a training mission when it went down around 9:00 am (0530 GMT) in the city's central district of Monajem, said Honavar, who heads a crisis management unit in East Azerbaijan province.

Iran Monday signalled "significant progress" in talks on reviving a stalled accord on its nuclear programme but President Ebrahim Raisi, on his first visit to a Gulf state, again insisted that Washington must lift its crippling sanctions.

Iran's ultraconservative president, a personal target of the US sanctions, spoke out ahead of a summit of natural gas exporting nations in Qatar. The summit will take place against the backdrop of mounting tensions in Ukraine and reported progress in efforts to restore the 2015 deal limiting Iran's nuclear programme.

An Iranian fighter jet crashed Monday in a residential area of the northwestern city of Tabriz killing three people, including two crew, state television reported.

The head of the local Red Crescent organisation said the plane smashed into a school and that one of the dead was a resident of the neighbourhood.

Local official Mohammad-Bagher Honarvar told state television that the school was closed at the time due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Novak Djokovic's season, derailed in January when he was deported from Australia, finally starts on Monday in Dubai with the world number one insisting players in the locker room "have been positive and welcoming" on his return.

Djokovic missed the chance to win a 10th Australian Open, and 21st Grand Slam, due to the cancellation of his visa in Melbourne and eventual deportation as a result of not being vaccinated.

He returns to the tour this week in the Emirates, where he will be competing for the first time since the Davis Cup Finals in Madrid last December.

Gabriel Bach, who as a young Israeli state attorney helped prosecute Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, was buried Sunday following his death at the weekend, aged 94.

Bach, who also served as a judge on Israel's top court, was eulogised by Supreme Court president Esther Hayut as "one of the great jurists" in the nation's history, according to a copy of her remarks released by the court.

The judicial authority had earlier confirmed Bach's death in a statement, without giving the cause.