The United States is "very optimistic" that France and Britain will participate in a residual force that U.S. President Donald Trump wants to leave in Syria, his national security advisor said Sunday.

"Certainly in conversations this past week with my British and French counterparts, I'm very optimistic that they're going to participate," John Bolton said, in an interview with ABC's "This Week."

U.S.-backed forces said Sunday time was up for Islamic State group jihadists hunkering down in their eastern Syrian holdout and an assault was imminent.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi warned Sunday against the dangers of protesting, in the wake of widespread demonstrations in Algeria and neighbouring Sudan.

Striking train workers and students shut the Algerian capital's rail network and most of the country's secondary schools Sunday, in protest against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's fifth term bid, witnesses said.

U.S.-backed Syrian forces awaited orders Sunday to relaunch their push against the Islamic State group's final scrap of territory as an earlier exodus of civilians from the redoubt slowed to a trickle.

The Syrian Democratic Forces renewed their offensive against the jihadists on March 1 after a weeks-long pause to empty the bombed-out bastion of non-combatants.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Sunday he would appoint a senior military officer as transport minister after a recent train crash at Cairo's central station killed 22 people.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in full campaign mode ahead of April 9 polls, on Sunday said Israel "was not a state of all its citizens" in a reference to the country's Arab population.

The prime minister, in comments on Instagram, went on to say all citizens, including Arabs, had equal rights, but referred to a deeply controversial law passed last year declaring Israel the nation-state of the Jewish people.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appointed longtime ally Mohammad Shtayyeh as prime minister on Sunday, a senior official said, in a move seen as part of efforts to further isolate Hamas.

An Israeli officer shot dead a masked Palestinian on Sunday as he accelerated his car toward an officer at a checkpoint set up to apprehend thieves in the occupied West Bank, police said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hamas Sunday that Israel would not hesitate to launch a "large-scale operation" in Gaza, as daily exchanges with the Palestinian territory threatened a wider escalation.