At least 32 people were killed in Syrian regime air raids on two rebel-held towns near Damascus on Sunday, a monitoring group said.

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights head Rami Abdel Rahman said 17 people were killed in Douma, northeast of the capital, and 15 others in Kfar Batna, to the east of Damascus.

Israel on Sunday opted to unilaterally redeploy its troops in Gaza without the need for dialogue with Hamas, which it has been battling since July 17.

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni also appeared to rule out talks on long-term arrangements or even on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, saying: "Hamas can carry on waiting."

A Palestinian delegation including Hamas agreed joint demands Sunday to present to Egyptian mediators in Cairo for a truce with Israel, including an end to the Gaza blockade, officials said.

The delegation, which includes members of President Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian Authority and Gaza's Hamas rulers, will meet the Egyptian mediators later on Sunday.

A British navy ship evacuated British nationals from Libya on Sunday, the defense ministry said, as worsening security there is forcing thousands to flee.

The HMS Enterprise, which had been on a Mediterranean deployment,  evacuated 110 people, mostly British, from the capital Tripoli, ambassador to Libya Michael Aron wrote on Twitter.

The capture of the Iraqi town of Sinjar by jihadist fighters has sent up to 200,000 people into flight and sparked a "humanitarian tragedy" amid fears for their lives, the United Nations said Sunday.

"A humanitarian tragedy is unfolding in Sinjar," the top UN envoy in Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, said in a statement after the Islamic State (IS) group captured the northern town, which lies near the Syrian border and was already home to thousands of previously displaced families.

Thousands of Egyptians who have been seeking to flee strife-torn Libya for days were being airlifted home Sunday after Tunisia's initial refusal to let them in sparked clashes at the border.

Buses picked up dozens of them on Saturday afternoon at the Ras Jedir border crossing to take them to Jerba airport, 100 kilometers (60 miles) north, where flights were to evacuate them to Egypt, Agence France-Presse journalists said.

The European Union on Sunday urged Israel's military and the Palestinian group Hamas to "immediately stop" their hostilities over Gaza, and condemned the large loss of life in the conflict, as Britain said the situation in the war-battered enclave is “intolerable.”

"The bloodshed needs to stop," said a statement signed by the EU and European Commission presidents on behalf of the bloc's 28 member states.

Two people aboard a gyrocopter were killed Sunday when the light aircraft crashed in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah, aviation authorities said.

The "gyrocopter crashed and caught fire near the runway at Sama aviation club in Jeddah... killing two people on board," the authorities said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

Ask any child in Gaza to do a drawing and the resulting picture is likely to be a house being bombed by a fighter plane.

In the strife-torn Palestinian enclave, thousands of children are suffering from the trauma of war but resources to help them are scarce.

Fighters from the Islamic State jihadist group on Sunday wrested control of the northwestern Iraqi town of Sinjar, near the Syrian border, from Kurdish forces, Kurdish officials said.

"The (Kurdish) peshmerga have withdrawn from Sinjar, Daash has entered the city," Kheiri Sinjari told AFP, using IS' former Arabic acronym.