TUNIS/PARIS (Reuters) -Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has granted a pardon to French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal following a request from German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Algerian presidency said on Wednesday.

Algerian authorities arrested Sansal a year ago and a court sentenced him in March to five years in jail for undermining national unity.

Sansal, 81, who has long been a critic of Algerian authorities and had been living in France, denied the charge against him, saying he never intended to offend Algeria or state institutions.

VIENNA (Reuters) -Iran still has not let inspectors into the nuclear sites Israel and the United States bombed in June, the U.N. atomic watchdog said in a confidential report on Wednesday, adding that accounting for Iran's enriched uranium stock is "long overdue".

The IAEA's own guidelines stipulate that it should verify a country's stock of highly enriched uranium, such as the material enriched to up to 60% purity in Iran, a short step from the roughly 90% of weapons grade, every month.

Jailed French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal arrived in Germany for medical treatment on Wednesday after Algiers agreed to a German request that he be pardoned.

A spokeswoman for German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who on Monday had urged Algeria to free the 81-year-old given his "fragile health condition", confirmed to AFP that Sansal had landed in Germany and was being taken straight to hospital.

Earlier Steinmeier had thanked Algeria's President Abdelmadjid Tebboune for the "humanitarian gesture".

According to his family Sansal has prostate cancer.

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) -Fourteen-year-old Mohammed Wael Helles has been waiting for surgery on a serious spinal injury caused by an Israeli airstrike for nearly two months, one of thousands of Gazans waiting for urgent treatment in Gaza's battered health system.

Helles was a top student with aspirations of becoming a doctor when he was wounded weeks before a ceasefire that paused two years of warfare. The attack, which killed the driver of his vehicle, tore his spinal cord and fractured three vertebrae.

By Parisa Hafezi

DUBAI (Reuters) -Iran is grappling with its worst water crisis in decades, with officials warning that Tehran — a city of more than 10 million — may soon be uninhabitable if the drought gripping the country continues.

President Masoud Pezeshkian has cautioned that if rainfall does not arrive by December, the government must start rationing water in Tehran.

"Even if we do ration and it still does not rain, then we will have no water at all. They (citizens) have to evacuate Tehran," Pezeshkian said on November 6.

Syrian authorities have temporarily closed the national museum in Damascus and launched an investigation after thieves made off with several pieces, an official told AFP on Wednesday.

The robbery took place overnight Sunday to Monday in the so-called classical wing of the facility, which was spared during Syria's civil war between 2011 and late last year and which houses priceless artefacts dating back to antiquity.

When engineer Tarek Mazraani started campaigning for the reconstruction of war-battered southern Lebanon, Israeli drones hovered ominously overhead -- their loudspeakers sometimes calling him out by name.

Despite a ceasefire struck last November aiming to put an end to more than a year of fighting with Hezbollah, Israel has kept up near-daily strikes on Lebanon.

In addition to hitting alleged militants, it has recently also targeted bulldozers, excavators and prefabricated houses, often saying they were part of efforts to restore Hezbollah infrastructure.

Incumbent Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani claimed victory for his coalition on Wednesday in Iraq's general election after preliminary results showed it had secured a decisive lead.

Supporters of Sudani, who is vying for a second term, flocked late in the evening to Tahrir Square in Baghdad to celebrate with fireworks and music, according to AFP correspondents.

Casting the victory as one for all Iraqis in a televised speech, Sudani congratulated the country "on your coalition winning first place in the parliamentary elections".

A Danish court put two Swedish teenagers on trial on terrorism charges for having thrown two hand grenades at the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen last year.

The two men, aged 18 and 21, have also been charged with aggravated assault and attempted murder.

"My client pleads not guilty to the charge of terrorism," Jakob Buch-Jepsen, the lawyer for the 18-year-old, told the court. The defendant pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of aggravated assault.

ROME (Reuters) -Millions more people risk famine in at least a dozen crisis spots around the world, including Sudan and Gaza, two U.N. agencies warned on Wednesday, appealing for funds to address a shortfall amid global cuts to international aid.

In a joint report, the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization also listed Haiti, Mali, South Sudan and Yemen as countries facing "an imminent risk of catastrophic hunger", meaning famine.