Two Palestinians including a Hamas policeman suffocated to death from gas in a cross-border tunnel under Gaza's frontier with Egypt, the enclave's interior ministry said Monday.

Interior ministry spokesman Iyad al-Bozum said 39-year-old major Abdelhamid al-Akar and Sabhy Abu Qarushayn, 28, "suffocated due to the inhalation of toxic gases".

Syrian fighters backed up by artillery fire from a US-led coalition pressed their assault Monday to retake a last morsel of territory from the Islamic State group, a war monitor said.

In the main square in the northern Iraqi town of Bartella stands a large cross, one of the few overt signs the town was historically Christian.

Nearby, a massive billboard shows Shiite Muslim martyrs alongside a photo of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. Posters of Iranian-backed Shiite militiamen killed in fighting with the Islamic State group hang on streets all around the city, along with banners to revered historical Shiite saints.

Nudged by rightwing political rivals after a deadly Palestinian attack on a young Israeli woman, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who seeks re-election pledged Sunday to freeze money transfers to the Palestinian Authority.

Algeria's ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is to seek a fifth term in April elections, state media announced Sunday, despite health issues that have kept him largely out of the public eye for years.

Newborn Yemeni conjoined twins whose plight sparked a plea for urgent medical treatment overseas died in Sanaa Saturday, rebels in the blockaded capital said.

French howitzer-guns deployed in the Euphrates Valley desert just inside Iraq stand ready to pour fury on Islamic State group diehards in their last holdout across the border in Syria.

A Russian official said Sunday that Moscow had repatriated a fresh batch of children whose mothers are being held in Iraq for belonging to the Islamic State group.

The Israeli army said Sunday it had started preparations to demolish the West Bank home of a Palestinian suspected of killing an Israeli woman.

U.S.-backed forces were locked in fierce fighting as they pressed the battle against the last shred of the Islamic State group's "caliphate" in eastern Syria on Sunday, a war monitor said.