Israel is holding over 1,200 detainees — nearly all of them Palestinians — without charge or trial, the highest number in over three decades, an Israeli human rights group said.

The detainees, 99% of whom are Palestinians, are held under Israel's policy of "administrative detention," without trial and under allegations that Israeli authorities keep secret.

Tunisian President Kais Saied sacked Prime Minister Najla Bouden without explanation Tuesday night and replaced her with former central bank executive Ahmed Hachani, whom he tasked with overcoming the "colossal challenges" facing the cash-strapped North African country.

No official explanation was given for Bouden's dismissal, but several local media outlets highlighted Saied's displeasure over a number of shortages, particularly of bread in state-subsidised bakeries.

A gunman opened fire Tuesday on a group of Israelis in a settlement in the occupied West Bank, wounding four before being "neutralised" by an off-duty border officer, police said.

"A terrorist opened fire at a group of people in Maaleh Adumim," a police statement said.

The Yazidis, who Britain on Tuesday officially acknowledged as victims of "acts of genocide" by the Islamic State (IS), are a Kurdish-speaking ethno-religious minority found mainly in Iraq.

IS jihadists carried out horrific violence against the community in 2014, killing men en masse and abducting thousands of girls and women as sex slaves.

Islamic State group jihadists attacked a convoy of oil tankers guarded by the army in the Syrian desert on Tuesday, killing seven people including two civilians, a war monitor said.

"Five regime forces and two drivers have been killed in the armed attack by IS militants" in the east of Hama province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Israel's Supreme Court said that a full panel of 15 justices would hear petitions in September against a contentious law that was passed last week by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government and which has spurred mass protests.

The law was one of a series of proposed changes to Israel's judiciary put forward by Netanyahu's government earlier this year that seek to curb the power of the Supreme Court. The judicial overhaul plan has been met with months of sustained mass protest against the legislation and drawn criticism from the White House.

Saudi Arabia has approved a $1.2 billion grant to Yemen's internationally recognised government, two officials told AFP on Tuesday, the latest attempt to prop up the war-scarred country's flagging economy.

Yemen's finance minister and central bank governor as well as the Saudi ambassador were expected to disclose details of the grant at a signing ceremony in Riyadh at 5 pm (1400 GMT), said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to confirm the amount.

Palestinian factions have met in Egypt to discuss reconciliation efforts as violence in the occupied West Bank surged between Israel and Palestinian militants.

The main groups, Hamas and Fatah, have been split since 2007 and repeated reconciliation attempts having failed, so expectations for the one-day meeting were low.

Several thousand people briefly took to the streets across the Gaza Strip to protest chronic power outages and difficult living conditions, providing a rare public show of discontent with the territory's Hamas government. Hamas security forces quickly dispersed the gatherings.

Marches took place in Gaza City, the southern town of Khan Younis and other locations, chanting "what a shame" and in one place burning Hamas flags, before police moved in and broke up the protests.

A shooting at a heavily fortified security facility in the restive part of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula has killed at least four police, including a senior officer, two security and health officials said.

At least 21 other forces were wounded in the shooting at the National Security headquarters in el-Arish, the capital city of North Sinai province, they said.