The Pentagon said Sunday President Donald Trump had ordered the withdrawal of up to 1,000 troops from northern Syria -- almost the entire ground force in war-torn country -- amid an intensifying Turkish assault on Kurdish forces.

Egypt has detained two prominent activists who played key roles in the 2011 revolution, activists and a rights group said, the latest in a wave of arrests in recent weeks.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday that threats of sanctions and arms embargoes by Western powers would not stop Turkey's military offensive against Kurdish militants in Syria. 

At least 14 civilians were killed on Sunday in fighting in northern Syria where Turkey is carrying out an offensive against Kurdish forces, a war monitor said.

Turkey's deadly assault on Kurdish positions in northeastern Syria has forced 130,000 people to flee their homes, the UN said Sunday, adding it was preparing for that figure to more than triple.

France said Sunday it was "worried" after Kurdish authorities reported that hundreds of relatives of foreign jihadists had escaped from a displacement camp in northern Syria, under Turkish assault.

Tunisians voted on Sunday in a presidential runoff pitting a conservative academic against a media magnate fresh out of jail, reflecting a shift in the country's post-revolution political landscape.

Iraqi authorities, under pressure from the streets as well as political and religious forces, on Saturday increased the number of commissions to investigate the deaths of more than 100 people in recent protest.

From October 1 to 6, at least 108 people were killed and more than 6,000 wounded, according to the government's Human Rights Commission. 

Tunisia prepared for Sunday's presidential runoff after the two finalists, both political outsiders, went head-to-head in a rare television debate in a last bid to woo the country's seven million voters.

A US withdrawal from Syria's northern border this week has exposed Washington's Kurdish partners to a Turkish assault, creating conditions for a rapprochement with Damascus that both sides need badly, analysts said.

The main US partner in the years-long battle against the Islamic State group, Kurdish forces were left to fend for themselves after allied US forces pulled back on Monday.