Palestinian housing minister Mufid al-Hasayneh laid a brick Wednesday for the first Gaza home to be rebuilt since the Israel-Hamas war a year ago, as frustration mounts over the slow pace of reconstruction.

The 50-day war in July-August 2014 killed 2,200 Palestinians, 73 on the Israeli side, and destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of homes in the besieged Gaza Strip.

A young Turkish doctor who was pictured holding the hand of her friend in the aftermath of the suicide bombing on the Syrian border has survived her injuries and been transported to Istanbul for treatment, the Hurriyet daily said Wednesday.

In a picture that rapidly went viral on social media, two women were shown lying flat on their backs on the ground following the attack in the border town of Suruc that killed 32 people.

Tunisian lawmakers began a three-day debate Wednesday on a new anti-terrorism bill aimed at beefing up powers to confront a jihadist threat following a spate of deadly attacks.

President Beji Caid Essebsi imposed a state of emergency after a student went on a shooting rampage at a beach resort last month, killing 38 foreign tourists, most of them Britons.

Turkey on Wednesday identified the perpetrator of a deadly suicide bombing blamed on Islamic State (IS) extremists as a 20-year-old man from its southeast, as the government prepared new measures to protect the porous border with Syria.

With the country still shaken by Monday's bombing in Suruc, close to the Syrian border, two police were found shot dead in their homes in a nearby town but it was unclear if there was a terror link.

Saudi leaders on Wednesday sought reassurance from U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter over a deal curbing Iran's nuclear program in exchange for an easing of economic sanctions.

Carter held talks in the Red Sea city of Jeddah with King Salman and his powerful son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is defense minister and second-in-line to the throne.

Car bomb attacks in Baghdad and the Iraqi province of Diyala, mostly claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group, have killed at least 30 people, police and medical sources said Wednesday.

The deadliest of the attacks was in the Iraqi capital's eastern district of Baghdad al-Jadida, a predominantly Shiite area that has been one of the most targeted by car bombs in recent years.

Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian near the city of Jenin in the northern West Bank on Wednesday in clashes following an arrest raid, medical and security sources said.

The shooting came after weeks of low-level violence in the occupied Palestinian territories, and amid regular Israeli arrests in the West Bank.

At least 40 people have been killed in a week of ethnic clashes in southern Libya between rival gunmen from the Toubou and Tuareg minorities, a local official said.

The latest fighting centered on the oasis city of Sabha, the largest in the Libyan Sahara, the official said.

The military wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) said on Wednesday it killed two Turkish police officers in a town on the Syrian border as a reprisal for a suicide bombing blamed on jihadists that killed 32.

"A punitive action was carried out... in revenge for the massacre in Suruc," the People's Defense Forces (HPG) said in a statement on its website, accusing the two officers of cooperating with the jihadists.

The Jordanian intelligence services have been holding an uncle of the man who killed five U.S. troops in Tennessee last week, his lawyer told AFP on Wednesday.

"The intelligence services have been illegally detaining my client, university lecturer Assaad Ibrahim al-Haj Ali, since Friday," the day after the attack, Abdelkader al-Khatib said.