For the first time in more than three decades, Sudanese journalists have formed an independent union to shore up hard-won press freedoms that have been imperilled since last year's military coup.

The journalists' syndicate held elections on Saturday, the first since ousted president Omar al-Bashir dissolved independent unions after rising to power in 1989.

"It's a big step towards building the civilian democratic state that Sudanese people aspire to," said Mohamed Abdelaziz, a member of the newly formed union.

Doctors in the occupied West Bank are struggling to save Palestinians from permanent disability after being shot in an upsurge of violence linked to Israeli raids targeting Palestinian militants.

At Rafidia Surgical Hospital in Nablus, in the northern West Bank, a teenager with bandaged legs was carried up the stairs by another boy.

He had been shot below the knee in overnight clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian residents of Balata, a refugee camp on the edge of the city.

A months-long political crisis in Iraq showed little sign of abating Wednesday despite a fresh push for negotiations after nearly 24 hours of deadly violence between rival Shiite factions ended.

Baghdad's Green Zone, home to government buildings and embassies, returned to normality after 30 people were killed and 570 wounded in clashes pitting supporters of powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr against pro-Iran factions.

In the heart of Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, Palestinians with learning disabilities are front and centre at a new boutique hotel welcoming guests from across the globe.

Showcasing their skills at the hotel is intended to make Palestinians with disabilities more visible and overhaul perceptions within the community.

The hotel is located near the Church of the Nativity, one of the most important sites in the Holy Land, where Christians believe Jesus was born and crowds of pilgrims stroll early on a hot summer morning.

An Iranian ship seized an American military unmanned research vessel in the Gulf but released it after a US Navy patrol boat and helicopter were deployed to the location, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

The US Central Command's 5th Fleet said a support ship from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, the Shahid Baziar, was spotted towing the seven-meter (23-foot) Saildrone Explorer unmanned surface vessel (USV) late Monday.

Russia has begun receiving Iranian combat drones to be used in the Ukraine war, but many of them have already proven faulty, the US military said Tuesday.

"Russian transport aircraft loaded the UAV equipment at an airfield in Iran and subsequently flew from Iran to Russia over several days in August," said Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder, using the initials for unmanned aerial vehicle.

"It's likely part of Russia's plans to import hundreds of Iranian UAVs of various types," he said.

The UN appealed Tuesday for the last $14 million needed to try and prevent a stricken oil tanker from triggering a disaster off Yemen that could cost $20 billion to clean up.

The decaying 45-year-old FSO Safer, long used as a floating storage platform and now abandoned off the rebel-held Yemeni port of Hodeida, has not been serviced since Yemen was plunged into civil war more than seven years ago.

If it breaks up, it could unleash a potentially catastrophic spill in the Red Sea.

An Israeli court on Tuesday sentenced the former Gaza head of a major US-based aid agency to 12 years in prison for funnelling millions of dollars to Islamist group Hamas.

The Beersheba district court in southern Israel issued a sentence of "12 years' prison time, less the detention" already served for World Vision's Mohammed al-Halabi.

The court had ruled in June that Halabi was guilty of siphoning off millions of dollars and tonnes of steel to Hamas, which controls the Palestinian enclave.

An Israeli court on Tuesday sentenced the former Gaza head of a major US-based aid agency to 12 years in prison for funnelling millions of dollars to Islamist group Hamas.

The Beersheba district court in southern Israel issued a sentence of "12 years prison time, less the detention" already served for World Vision's Mohammed al-Halabi, who has been jailed throughout the past six years of court proceedings.

Palestinians opened fire at Israeli Jews who snuck into an occupied West Bank city to visit a shrine, wounding two of them, the Israeli army and medical sources said Tuesday.

The incident in Nablus was followed by an unrelated Israeli military raid nearby in which four Palestinians were shot.

The army said the earlier shooting happened when "a number of civilians entered Nablus".

The Israelis were headed to Joseph's Tomb, believed to be the last resting place of the biblical patriarch Joseph, a flashpoint for violence in the West Bank, and revered as a holy site.