"I'm sorry, I can't let you through without orders," said the Iraqi civilian manning the makeshift checkpoint, smirking at the befuddled policeman he had waved down in the capital Baghdad.

After a month of defying official curfews and road closures to protest, Iraqis have flipped the rule book.

Five candidates, including two former prime ministers, will run to replace ousted Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the country's election authority said, amid widespread protests against the vote.

Protesters in Iraq's capital and the country's south shut down streets and government offices in a new campaign of civil disobedience Sunday, escalating their month-long movement demanding change to the political system.

An air strike Saturday by key Damascus ally Russia killed six civilians including a child in the embattled opposition bastion of Idlib in northwestern Syria, a war monitor.

A Palestinian was killed by Israeli airstrikes on Saturday, the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said, in an attack launched in response to rocket fire.

Iraq's top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani warned foreign actors on Friday against interfering in anti-government protests that erupted early last month and urged political factions to avoid "infighting".

Turkish troops on Friday began joint patrols with Russian forces in northern Syria as part of a deal to ensure the withdrawal of Kurdish fighters from the border, an AFP journalist reported.

The patrols began at around midday (0900 GMT) in a village in the Al-Darbasiyah region, the journalist reported from the Turkish side of the border where government officials had invited reporters to witness the event.

By claiming a right to Syria's oil, President Donald Trump has added more complexity — as well as additional U.S. forces and time — to an American military mission he has twice declared he was ending so the troops could come home.

Extending the mission to secure eastern Syria's oilfields happens to fit neatly with the Pentagon's view — supported by some Trump allies in Congress — that a full withdrawal now could hasten a revival of the Islamic State group, even after the extremists lost their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a U.S. raid.

The Israeli army said Thursday it had targeted two Hamas military posts in Gaza after a rocket was fired from the Palestinian enclave, after almost a month of calm.

Israel has approved the construction of 2,342 settler homes in the occupied West Bank, settlement watchdog Peace Now said on Thursday.