Saada Arbane has lived without a voice since her throat was slit during the Algerian civil war. But now, the 31-year-old woman has vowed to make herself heard after she said a best-selling novel plagiarised her life.

Kamel Daoud's novel "Houris" -- banned in Algeria and awarded France's top literary prize Prix Goncourt last year -- tells the story of a child who loses her voice when an Islamist cuts her throat during the 1990s war.

Hundreds of Palestinian Red Crescent staff marched in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday to protest the killing of medical workers in Gaza over the past 19 months of war.

Gathering in the city's Clock Square, medical personnel, support staff and volunteers wore white and orange vests and waved flags bearing the Red Crescent's emblem.

The demonstration marked World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day, usually observed on May 8, and called for the "protection for medical and humanitarian workers".

Gaza is at "critical risk of famine", with 22 percent of the population facing an imminent humanitarian "catastrophe" after more than two months of an aid blockade by Israel, a food security monitor warned Monday.

Gaza's entire population of around 2.4 million people is at risk of a food crisis "or worse" by September, the UN- and NGO-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said in a report.

"Nineteen months into the conflict, the Gaza Strip is still confronted with a critical risk of famine," the IPC said.

A creeping Israeli presence is nothing new for the Bedouins who inhabit the arid hills east of Jerusalem, but a recently approved road in the area means the spectre of annexation now looms large.

Israeli authorities in March green lit the construction of a separate route for Palestinian vehicles to bypass a central stretch of the occupied West Bank –- one of the territory's most disputed parcels of land.

Israel has promoted the project as a way to further facilitate settlement expansion in the area near Jerusalem, which it considers its "eternal and indivisible" capital.

US President Donald Trump's Gulf tour this week will take him to Saudi Arabia, which he would like to see recognise Israel, and the neighbouring UAE which has benefitted from Israeli ties but also paid a price.

During his first term, Trump oversaw a series of normalisation deals between close ally Israel and several Arab countries, stunning public opinion in the Arab world and breaking with the long-held convention that a just resolution to the plight of Palestinians must precede relations with Israel.

France's foreign minister on Monday vowed an immediate and strong response from Paris after Algeria revealed plans to expel more French officials from Algerian territory after a similar move last month.

Relations between Algeria and France, the former colonial power in Africa's largest nation by land area, have been beset by a series of problems in recent months despite attempts by President Emmanuel Macron to promote reconciliation.

Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), is an icon to many Kurds but a "terrorist" to many within wider Turkish society.

After a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state that resulted in more than 40,000 deaths, the PKK on Friday will begin laying down its arms, two months after ending its armed struggle.

The move came after a historic call by Ocalan in February for his fighters to lay down their weapons and disband.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) on Monday announced its dissolution, saying it was ending its armed struggle against the Turkish state and drawing a line under its deadly four-decade insurgency.

Founded in the late 1970s by Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK took up arms in 1984, beginning a string of attacks against the Turkish state that would cost more than 40,000 lives.

The PKK "has decided to dissolve.. and end its armed struggle," it said in a statement issued a week after its leadership held a three-day congress in the mountains of northern Iraq.

The Israeli and German presidents hailed the enduring friendship between their countries on Monday, 60 years after the launch of bilateral relations, but also acknowledged differences over the war in Gaza.

Israel's president, Issac Herzog, was visiting Berlin before he and the German head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, were due to tour Israel on Tuesday and Wednesday along with their wives.

Donald Trump on Sunday defended plans to receive a new Air Force One as a gift, after reports he will accept a luxury Boeing jet from Qatar despite strict rules on presents for US presidents.

Calling the plane a "flying palace," ABC News, which first reported the story, said the Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet gifted from the Qatari royal family would possibly be the most expensive gift ever received by the American government.