Two Palestinians were killed by Palestinian fire during separate clashes with the Israeli army in the occupied West Bank early Thursday, Palestinian sources said.

The Palestinian health ministry said that Samer Khaled, 25, from Al-Ain camp in Nablus, was killed by a gunshot to the neck, while Yazan Afana, 26, from Qalandia camp outside Jerusalem, died from a shot to the heart.

The Palestinians' official Wafa news agency said Khaled was killed during an Israeli army raid on Balata refugee camp outside Nablus.

Veteran rights campaigner Shawan Jabarin peers down the street from his office in the occupied West Bank as if awaiting the imminent arrival of Israeli forces after a crackdown on NGOs.

"I dislike going to jail, but if this is the price to defend human rights and to keep speaking out in the face of the oppressive regime, I'm ready for that," said 62-year-old Jabarin, doyen of the small world of Palestinian non-governmental organisations.

Volodymyr is celebrating a major milestone on Wednesday -- it's his final day of taking a new treatment hailed as a turning point in the fight against drug-resistant tuberculosis.

The 25-year-old doctor in Ukraine's capital Kyiv said he had nasty neurological side effects when he was on a previous drug regimen, which takes up to two years, involves a huge number of pills and is less than 60-percent effective.

But the new treatment course took just six months, and gave him very few side effects. "It was very easy," he told AFP.

A Palestinian prisoner held by Israel said Wednesday an agreement had been reached to release him and that he was therefore ending a hunger strike he began five months ago.

Khalil Awawdeh, a militant from the southern West Bank, has been held without charge by Israel since December and had been refusing food since March, apart from a respite of a few days.

The 40-year-old, held in custody in an Israeli hospital, was said to be in critical condition and his life in danger.

The EU's foreign policy chief voiced hope Wednesday at reviving the Iran nuclear deal within days as Israel's leader, a strong opponent, made his case with US President Joe Biden.

The Biden administration is eager to restore the deal trashed by former president Donald Trump and says that Iran has backed down on some demands that held up diplomacy for a year and a half.

"I am hoping that in the coming days we are not going to lose this momentum and we can close the deal," top EU diplomat Josep Borrell said after an informal meeting of the bloc's foreign ministers in Prague.

Technology giant Microsoft announced Wednesday it will create 36,000 jobs in Qatar to boost the Gulf state's efforts to move away from reliance on its oil and gas industry.

Created with support from the Qatar government, the new cloud data centre will be one of the US firm's biggest international projects.

Microsoft Qatar general manager Lana Khalaf said it will help the tiny Gulf state become a "digital hub for the region and the world".

Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr may have declared his "definitive retirement" from politics this week, but the violence that erupted after his announcement points to murkier intentions, analysts believe.

"Sadr is looking to become the most powerful Shiite political player in Iraq," Renad Mansour of British think tank Chatham House told AFP.

"That is his agenda, and part of achieving that requires destabilising not just the political system as such, but particularly the Shiite house and building it back up with him at the centre of it."

Iran's judiciary said on Wednesday that 21 people including high-ranking local officials have been jailed after they were convicted over the deadly collapse of a building that triggered widespread anti-corruption protests.

The 10-storey Metropol building that was under construction in the city of Abadan in southwestern Khuzestan province collapsed on May 23, leading to the deaths of 43 people.

Iran wants stronger guarantees included in a text put forward by the EU aiming to salvage Tehran's landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Wednesday.

"We are thinking about how to reach a strong text on the issue of the guarantee, and to obtain stronger guarantees," he told a joint news conference in Moscow with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

Israeli archaeologists on Wednesday displayed a rare tusk half a million years old, from an enormous now-extinct elephant, which scholars see as testament to a social ritual by prehistoric humans.

The 2.6-metre (8.5-foot) artifact, weighing approximately 150 kilos (330 pounds), was discovered by biologist Eitan Mor at an excavation site near Revadim, a village in southern Israel.

The excavation was managed by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), which said the fossil tusk was the largest to be found in the Near East.