Two protesters were shot dead in Baghdad Wednesday and other Iraq cities were shrouded in acrid smoke from burning tires as demonstrators pressed their campaign of anti-government rallies.

Israel struck a series of military targets in the Gaza Strip overnight Wednesday in response to rockets fired from the Palestinian enclave, the Israeli army said.

Denmark's government on Tuesday offered to lead a NATO mission to train Iraqi forces, saying it was prepared to send 200 troops to Iraq at the end of next year.

A car bomb killed at least 17 people and wounded 20 others in the Turkish-controlled region of northern Syria on Tuesday, Turkey's defense ministry said.

Six people were killed in near-simultaneous explosions across various Baghdad neighborhoods late Tuesday, medics and a security source said, amid deadly anti-government protests in Iraq's capital and its restive south.

Senior US officials met with Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar Monday to discuss steps toward ending his offensive on Tripoli, and accused Russia of exploiting the conflict, the State Department said.

The delegation, which included the US ambassador to Libya Richard Norland, aimed to establish "steps to achieve a suspension of hostilities and a political resolution to the Libyan conflict," the statement read.

Russia and the West are braced for a fresh showdown at the world's chemical weapons watchdog this week over a new team that will name culprits for attacks in Syria for the first time.

While noisy protests rage on Iraq's streets, in the backrooms of power political leaders are quietly hashing out ways to keep their posts and the huge financial rewards they bring.

The demonstrations rocking the capital and Shiite-majority south since early October are the biggest grassroots movement the country has seen since the 2003 US-led invasion that ended the Saddam Hussein regime.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's centrist rival Benny Gantz Saturday urged leaders of the premier's Likud party to join him in forming a government after their chief's indictment on corruption charges.

Six protesters were killed Sunday in Iraq's south, where resurging anti-government demonstrations turned up the heat on paralyzed politicians facing the country's largest grassroots movement in decades.