From cancelled iftar feasts to suspended mosque prayers, Muslims across the Middle East are bracing for a bleak month of Ramadan fasting as the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic lingers.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will meet Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on Monday, Tehran said over the weekend, in what would be their first official meeting in a year.

Israel has approved some easing to its tight coronavirus restrictions while pointedly avoiding announcing the first stage of an exit from lockdown.

A man in his fifties has become the first person to die from the novel coronavirus outbreak in the Kurdish-dominated northern part of war-torn Syria, UN officials said Friday.

As governments in the Middle East isolate their populations to prevent the spread of coronavirus, attention is turning to the region's jails, where detainees face a more punishing form of lockdown.

"Because of the pandemic, confinement is an additional punishment for the prisoners," said Kaddour Chouicha, 63, an engineering professor at Algeria's University of Oran and a human rights activist.

Volunteers stack thousands of trays of steaming curry in a Doha kitchen, readying them to be distributed to low-income migrant workers facing food shortages while under lockdown due to COVID-19.

Israel's parliament was tasked with forming a government on Thursday after speaker Benny Gantz and Prime Minister Benjamin missed a deadline to seal an alliance, but negotiations between the sides were ongoing. 

Israel's deeply divided 120-member parliament has no clear path towards a stable governing coalition, so the move risks prolonging the country's worst-ever political crisis. 

Yemen's war shows no signs of abating, one week after the Saudi-led military coalition declared a unilateral truce due to the coronavirus threat looming over the impoverished nation.

Qatar reported on Wednesday that five coronavirus cases have been detected in workers at three World Cup stadiums, the first confirmed instances among those involved in 2022 tournament projects.

Some 74 million people in the water-scarce Arab region are at greater risk of catching the novel coronavirus because they lack a sink or soap at home, the United Nations said Wednesday.