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The Tunisian ambassador to the United Nations has called for a Security Council resolution that would send monitors to support Libya's ceasefire.

Tarek Ladeb, who this month holds the council presidency, said the Libyan ceasefire agreed in October had momentum, but was still fragile.

Last week, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres asked for a monitoring group made up of civilians and retired soldiers from the African Union, European Union and Arab League.

Under the ceasefire deal, all foreign forces in Libya are to leave by 23 January, three months after the agreement was signed.

Their departure would be monitored by international observers.

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A court in Algeria has sentenced a man who posted satirical cartoons mocking the authorities on Facebook to three years in prison.

Walid Kechida has been in detention for the past 10 months after he posted a cartoon criticising the Algerian President Abdelmajid Tebboune.

His Facebook page Hirak Memes is named after the anti-government movement that organised mass protests throughout 2019, which helped force the longtime President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to step down.

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Algeria's defence ministry has said three soldiers have so far been killed in an ongoing anti-terror operation in the northern Tipaza region.

The operation started on Saturday when the first "two soldiers and four terrorists were killed", according to the ministry.

On Sunday, one more soldier was killed together with two militants.

Two Kalashnikov machine guns and ammunition were recovered during the operation, the ministry is quoted as saying in a statement.

The counter terrorism operation is aimed at flushing out militants from the Tipaza region.

Public prosecutors in Egypt have launched an investigation after several coronavirus patients died when a hospital reportedly ran out of oxygen.

An image is going viral in Egypt of an exhausted nurse huddled on the ground after reportedly witnessing four Covid-19 patients die because the hospital didn't have enough oxygen to keep them alive.

Doctors and nurses - as well as the head of al-Husseineya hospital in the governorate of Sharqia - have been summoned for questioning by local prosecutors.

Egyptian officials have denied the reports, saying the patients died because of existing chronic conditions - not lack of oxygen.

But - with a similar incident reported at another hospital - anger is rising among Egyptians who accuse their government of failing to do enough to combat the pandemic, with the number of cases doubling in the past two weeks.