Egypt's official news agency said Sunday police killed nine suspected militants when they raided two apartments in a densely populated Cairo neighborhood.

The Middle East News Agency said five policemen were wounded in Sunday's early morning exchange of fire in the Ard el-Liwa district. It said police found rifles, ammunition, bomb-making materials and explosive devices at the apartments.

The Saudi king and Russia's foreign minister have met in Saudi Arabia ahead of a possible visit by the monarch to Russia next month.

Saudi Arabia's state news agency said King Salman and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Sunday discussed the war in Syria and an Arab diplomatic crisis with Qatar.

German authorities believe the Islamic State group holds some 11,100 blank Syrian passports that can be completed with any individual's details, weekly newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported Sunday.

Iraqi officials say they are holding more than 1,300 foreign women and children, the families of Islamic State fighters, at a camp for displaced people in northern Iraq.

Syrian troops have broken the Islamic State group's siege of the eastern Deir Ezzor military airport, state media reported, days after ending another siege on residential districts of the city.

State news agency SANA said the breach came "after the forces advancing from the cemetery southwest of the city linked up with the forces holding the airbase."

US-backed fighters launched a new offensive on Saturday to oust the Islamic State group from swathes of Syria's eastern Deir Ezzor province, a top commander announced.

The Syrian Democratic Forces are already fighting for IS's de facto capital in Raqa, and they will now aim to clear the jihadists from territory east of the Euphrates River, said Ahmad Abu Khawlah in a statement.

Leaders in Qatar and Saudi Arabia spoke by telephone early Saturday in their first high-level contact since an Arab diplomatic crisis engulfed Doha three months ago, but now even terms of what they discussed have created a new dispute.

That even this small step toward a resolution creates new tension shows how deeply the boycott of Qatar has cut across the typically clubby politics of the Gulf Arab states.

Syria has pushed back against the U.N., saying the report accusing its air force of using sarin gas to attack civilians is politically motivated and baseless.

Only one health facility remains operational in the Islamic State-held part of Raqqa, serving thousands of civilians trapped in the Syrian city with virtually no emergency services or rescue personnel as the intense U.S.-backed campaign to liberate the city continues, Physicians for Human Rights said Friday.

The New York-based group described "nightmarish" conditions in the ever-shrinking area controlled by IS militants amid an incessant bombing campaign. The wounded civilians are left under the rubble because civilians fear being struck by further airstrikes. The lone operating hospital is using salt water to sanitize wounds and treatment of traumatic injuries is limited to stopping the bleeding, the group said based on interviews it carried out with survivors, physicians and aid workers from the city.

An international rights group has denounced a Saudi-led military coalition for failing to investigate airstrikes in Yemen that led to the killing of civilians, saying members of the coalition are fearful of international legal liability.

Human Rights Watch said in a report Friday that it received no response from any coalition members to requests for information on airstrikes.