The UN chief warned Wednesday against ethnic cleansing in Gaza as he rejected US President Donald Trump's bombshell proposal for the United States to take control of the Palestinian territory and displace all its people.

Trump, in a White House news conference on Tuesday alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, stunningly proposed "long-term ownership" of Gaza by the United States, triggering an international uproar.

The remarks came after he has repeatedly called in recent days for the war-ravaged territory's residents to move to Jordan or Egypt.

Donald Trump's stunning proposal that the United States could take control of the Gaza Strip has drawn criticism from governments around the world.

But the US president's apparent plan -- announced at the White House alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- remains thin on details.

It came in the context of mediated negotiations between Israel and Hamas to reach the "second phase" of a ceasefire deal that would bring a more permanent end to the devastating war in Gaza.

This is what Trump said at Tuesday's news conference:

- 'Long-term ownership' -

The leaning minaret of Mosul in northern Iraq has been restored using its original brickwork, years after it was reduced to rubble under Islamic State group rule.

The Al-Hadba or "hunchback" minaret is part of the historic Al-Nuri Mosque from where former IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in July 2014 declared his "caliphate" that committed atrocities across swathes of both Syria and Iraq.

The mosque and minaret were destroyed in June 2017 during the battle to oust IS from Mosul, and Iraq's authorities accused the jihadists of planting explosives before their withdrawal.

The Aga Khan, imam of the Ismaili Muslims and head of a major development aid network, has died in Lisbon at the age of 88, his foundation announced on Wednesday.

He was the founder and president of the Aga Khan Development Network, which employs 96,000 people and finances development programmes particularly in Asia and Africa.

At the bottom of Nisrine Ezzedine's garden, cement blocks mark the graves of her husband, son and nephew, all killed by foreign jihadists in Syria's Alawite minority heartland.

After Islamist-led rebels ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad on December 8, the new authorities sought to reassure minorities in multi-ethnic multi-confessional Syria that they will be protected.

World leaders and people should respect Palestinians' desire to remain in Gaza, the Palestinian envoy to the United Nations said Tuesday, after US President Donald Trump said he believed people from the territory should be resettled elsewhere "permanently."

"Our homeland is our homeland, if part of it is destroyed, the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian people selected the choice to return to it," said Riyad Mansour. "And I think that leaders and people should respect the wishes of the Palestinian people."

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said Palestinians would "love" to leave their embattled homeland in Gaza and live elsewhere if given an option.

They would "love to leave Gaza," he told reporters as he signed a raft of initiatives at the White House. "I would think that they would be thrilled."

"I don't know how they could want to stay. It's a demolition site," he said, more than 15 months after US ally Israel launched a punishing invasion of the territory in retaliation for attacks launched by Palestinian militant group Hamas.

A former minister under ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has turned himself in, the interior ministry said Tuesday, making him one of the highest-profile figures captured by the new authorities.

"The minister of interior in the government of the defunct regime, Mohammed al-Shaar, surrendered himself to the General Security Department," an interior ministry statement said.

Shaar, the target of US and EU sanctions, was interior minister from 2011 to 2018 at the height of Syria's 13-year civil war.

Israeli military offensives in two West Bank refugee camps have displaced nearly 5,500 Palestinian families since December, local and UN officials said Tuesday, amid escalating violence in the occupied territory.

The Israeli military describes its ongoing operations as "counterterrorism" efforts aimed at rooting out Palestinian militancy.

Jonathan Fowler, spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said an estimated 2,450 to 3,000 families have been displaced from the Tulkarem refugee camp.

Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday hailed Syria's Ahmed al-Sharaa for his "strong commitment" to fighting terror as the newly installed interim president made his first visit to Turkey.

Sharaa flew to Ankara from Saudi Arabia where he had sought Riyadh's support to fund Syria's reconstruction and revive its economy after 13 years of civil war.

"I would like to express our satisfaction for the strong commitment my brother Ahmed al-Sharaa has shown in the fight against terrorism," Erdogan said after the pair held talks.