A landmark Palestinian unity deal poses a dilemma for the international community if it succeeds: how to deal with Hamas, Israel's longtime foe which is considered a terrorist organization by much of the world.

Relatives of Tunisians who drowned after a migrant boat collided with a navy vessel at the weekend have set fire to a local government building in protest, officials and an NGO said.

Interior ministry spokesman Yasser Mesbah said around 40 Tunisians torched the building in the central town of Souk Lahad and tried to set a police station on fire.

As U.S.-backed forces fight to oust the Islamic State group from its last hideouts in Syria's Raqa, a city council-in-exile is already working to bring life back to its devastated home town.

From a buzzing headquarters in Ain Issa, 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Raqa, Syrian engineers and lawyers are setting priorities for rebuilding their battle-scarred city.

Candidates from Qatar and France dueled Friday to become the new head of the U.N.'s embattled cultural agency where Gulf tensions and accusations of anti-Israel bias loomed over the politically charged contest.

The Iraqi army launched an operation to retake Kurdish-held positions around the disputed oil city of Kirkuk on Friday amid a bitter row with the Kurds over a vote for independence last month.

The Turkish army has begun setting up "observation posts" in Syria's largely jihadist-controlled northwestern Idlib province as part of its efforts to create a de-escalation zone, the military said on Friday.

The United Arab Emirates on Thursday announced it had stopped issuing visas to North Korean nationals and downgraded diplomatic relations with Pyongyang, following similar moves by Kuwait and Qatar.

Dozens of desperate civilians streamed out of battlefront districts of Syria's Raqa on Thursday after a ferocious resumption in bombardment against Islamic State group holdouts in the city. 

Four soldiers and nine rebels were killed in southern Yemen on Wednesday, army sources said, as clashes flared in the last rebel pocket in mainly government-held Shabwa province. 

Between 300 and 400 Islamic State group jihadists remain in their one-time Syrian bastion of Raqa where a Kurdish-Arab force is fighting to seize full control, its U.S.-led coalition backer said Thursday.