Dozens of cars in an Israeli Arab village were vandalised overnight, police said Tuesday, with slogans sprayed on a mosque indicating the involvement of Jewish extremists.

Syrian government and allied forces on Tuesday wrested the last segment of a key highway from rebels in the northwest of the country, a war monitor said.

Throughout Syria's civil war, Maad al-Khalaf helped other Syrians find shelter in the opposition enclave in the northwest as they fled government military advances around the country. Now he's the one in need of refuge as a swift offensive overwhelmed his home village.

He joined hundreds of thousands in Idlib province scrambling to escape the widening, multi-front assault by President Bashar Assad's forces, squeezing into whatever structures they can find in a shrinking territory.

One protester was killed on Monday in Iraq's southern city of Nasiriyah after university security guards opened fire on demonstrators trying to block the campus entrance, medical sources told AFP.

Five Turkish soldiers were killed on Monday by Syrian regime artillery fire in the northwestern province of Idlib, the last major rebel bastion, Turkey's defense ministry said.

A Russia-backed regime offensive on the last major rebel bastion in northwestern Syria has displaced close to 700,000 people since December, the United Nations told AFP on Monday.

An Israeli court Monday sentenced a firebrand Islamic cleric to 28 months in prison for incitement to "terrorism" in connection with deadly unrest at a Jerusalem holy site in 2017.

Raed Salah had been convicted by Haifa magistrates' court of "incitement to terror" for "praising, sympathizing or encouraging terrorism" in remarks made after attackers killed two policemen on the Haram al-Sharif mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

Syrian regime forces Sunday were set to retake a key motorway connecting the capital Damascus to second city Aleppo following weeks of battles in the rebel-held Idlib region, a monitor said.

An Algerian military court Sunday started hearing an appeal against the 15-year jail term for the brother of former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who was brought down amid anti-regime protests last year.

Israel on Sunday imposed a ban on Palestinian agricultural exports, in a move the Palestinians blasted as a "dangerous" escalation in a five-month trade war.