Several hundred supporters of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr launched a sit-in outside Iraq's top judicial body on Tuesday, ratcheting up tensions in a showdown with a rival Shiite alliance.

The Sadrists, who have already been camping outside parliament for the past three weeks, pitched tents outside the gates of the body's Baghdad headquarters, Iraq's official INA news agency reported.

A Palestinian hunger striker held by Israel is in critical condition and could die at any moment from a range of maladies, a doctor who has examined him said, after the country's Supreme Court rejected an appeal to release the man.

Khalil Awadeh, 40, has been on a hunger strike since March to protest his so-called administrative detention, an Israeli policy of holding Palestinians for alleged involvement in militant activity. Detainees can be held without charge or trial for months or years at a time, without seeing the purported evidence against them. Israel describes the policy as a necessary security measure, while critics say it is a violation of due process.

For Mariam Habeib, the grief seems never ending: She lost her older sister, two nieces and a niece's three young children in an intense fire that engulfed a church in Egypt's capital during a recent service and killed 41 people.

The Coptic Christian community is one of the world's oldest, and no stranger to sadness. A minority in Egypt, Coptic Orthodox Christians have faced deadly attacks by Islamic extremists, restrictions on church building and outbursts of sectarian-motivated violence in recent decades. The most recent tragedy brought a flood of sympathy from around the country.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt has met with the leaders of Iraq, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, his office said, as world powers and Iran seek to end 16 months of negotiations over the revival of Tehran's landmark nuclear deal.

El-Sissi and Emirati President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan received King Abdulla II of Jordan, Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi and Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa at the airport in the Mediterranean city of el-Alamein.

Two rival Iranian Kurdish opposition parties based in northern Iraq have announced in a joint statement their reunification 16 years after they split over internal disputes.

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is to host a five-nation Arab summit on Monday with the Ukraine war-related energy and food crisis on the agenda, a government newspaper said.

Israel's Supreme Court has rejected an appeal to release a Palestinian detainee who has been on a hunger strike for several months to protest his detention without charge.

Khalil Awawdeh, 40, is protesting being jailed without charge or trial under what Israel refers to as administrative detention. His family says he has been on a hunger strike for 170 days, subsisting only on water. A photo of Awawdeh taken by his lawyer on Saturday shows him appearing frail and lying in a hospital bed.

A bull escaped from its pen early Monday, setting off a panicked scene in the streets of a central Israeli city before entering an office building and evading capture for half an hour as it scampered through the hallways.

Bank Leumi said the bull entered its offices in an industrial zone in the city of Lod, near Tel Aviv.

Yemeni forces backed by the United Arab Emirates seized control of vital southern oil and gas fields after nearly a week of fierce clashes with their rivals, loyal to the internationally recognized government, officials and tribal leaders said Monday.

The clashes pitted the UAE-backed Giants Brigades and Shabwa Defense Forces on one side and the paramilitary police known as the Special Security Forces on the other.

Israel on Monday launched a scheme allowing Palestinians from the occupied West Bank to fly abroad from an airport in the Negev desert.

Forty Palestinians were aboard the first flight from Ramon airport near the southern Israeli resort city of Eilat, a spokeswoman for the Israel Airports Authority told AFP.