LONDON (Reuters) -Britain set out emergency funding support for those affected by the recent earthquakes in Afghanistan, saying it would ensure that the aid does not go to the South Asian country's current Taliban administration by channelling it through its partners.

Sunday's disaster - one of Afghanistan's worst earthquakes - has killed more than 800 people and injured at least 2,800, authorities said on Monday, as rescue operations continued. The country's response to the crisis has been hampered by the shrinking of funding for Afghanistan, led by U.S. aid cuts.

By Francois Murphy

VIENNA (Reuters) -The U.N. nuclear watchdog has found traces of uranium in Syria in its investigation into a building Israel destroyed in 2007 that the agency has long believed was probably an undeclared nuclear reactor, it said in a report to member states on Monday.

The government of now-deposed Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad said the Deir al-Zor site that included the building was a conventional military base.

By Charlotte Greenfield

KABUL (Reuters) -The shrinking of funding for Afghanistan, led by U.S. aid cuts, was hampering the response on Monday to a powerful earthquake in the east, with dozens of clinics closed and a helicopter out of use, humanitarian officials said.

The magnitude 6 tremor hit overnight, levelling villages, killing at least 800 people and injuring more than 2,800 in remote mountainside areas.

DUBAI (Reuters) -UN Security Council permanent members China and Russia backed Iran on Monday in rejecting a move by European countries to reimpose UN sanctions on Tehran loosened a decade ago under a nuclear agreement.

A letter signed by the Chinese, Russian and Iranian foreign ministers said a move by Britain, France and Germany to automatically restore the sanctions under a so-called "snapback mechanism" was "legally and procedurally flawed".

ANKARA (Reuters) -Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian on Monday that he believes it was useful for Tehran to continue nuclear negotiations and that Ankara would maintain its support for Iran on the matter, Turkey's presidency said.

In a meeting on the sidelines of a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in China, Erdogan also said that cooperation between the neighbours, namely in energy, was to the benefit of both sides, the presidency said in a statement.

(Reporting by Tuvan GumrukcuEditing by Ece Toksabay)

GENEVA (Reuters) -The U.N. refugee agency plans to scale back its budget by nearly a fifth to $8.5 billion even as displacement continues to rise due to crises like the war in Sudan, a copy of its budget showed on Monday.

The Geneva-based agency plans to spend $8.5 billion versus its $10.2 billion 2025 budget amid financial constraints, the document showed.

(Reporting by Emma FargeEditing by Riham Alkousaa)

By Ezgi Erkoyun

ISTANBUL (Reuters) -In a brightly lit treatment room at a private hospital in Istanbul, doctor Erdal Dilekci makes dozens of small, quick incisions on a patient's back as part of a centuries-old therapy known as wet cupping.

The patient, 26-year-old nurse Furkan Ali Sayan, lies quietly as the doctor then places eight suction cups designed to draw out toxins and ease his neck and back pain.

Over the next 15 minutes, the cups slowly fill with blood.

By Ali Sawafta and Nuha Sharaf

KFAR MALIK, West Bank/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank are facing severe water shortages that they say are being driven by increasing attacks on scarce water sources by extremist Jewish settlers.

Across the West Bank in Palestinian communities, residents are reporting shortages that have left taps in homes dry and farms without irrigation.

Tunisia's brutalist landmark the Hotel du Lac -- a 1970s postcard icon said to have inspired a desert-roving vehicle in "Star Wars" -- is being demolished, sparking calls from architects, historians and activists to save it.

Built by Italian architect Raffaele Contigiani in central Tunis, the concrete-and-steel inverted pyramid opened in 1973 during a push to boost post-independence Tunisia's tourism industry.

Its daring silhouette has since enraptured brutalism and modernist architecture admirers from across the globe.

Fierce Mediterranean winds forced a Gaza-bound flotilla carrying humanitarian aid and hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists, including environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg, to return to Barcelona, organisers said on Monday.

Around 20 vessels left the Spanish city on Sunday aiming to "open a humanitarian corridor and end the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people" amid the Israel-Hamas war, said the Global Sumud Flotilla -- sumud being the Arabic term for "resilience".