The UN’s humanitarian chief said Tuesday he was "very alarmed" by a Huthi rebel advance on the Yemeni government’s last northern stronghold, saying an assault on Marib could endanger millions of civilians.

The United Nations warned Tuesday Iraq could spin out of control after a rocket attack on the Kurdish regional capital Arbil killed a foreign contractor and wounded several Iraqis and foreigners. 

Algeria on Monday sentenced several Hirak protest activists to jail, days before the second anniversary of the popular uprising that led to the ouster of former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Qatar's foreign minister met his Iranian counterpart Monday, after Doha signaled its intention to mediate between Tehran and Washington over a landmark nuclear deal, an AFP journalist said.

A rocket attack targeting an airbase in Iraq's Kurdistan region late on Monday killed a foreign civilian contractor and wounded five others and a U.S. soldier, the U.S.-led coalition said.

At least three rockets targeted the Kurdish regional capital of Arbil, with one hitting a military complex at the Arbil airport where U.S.-led coalition troops are based. 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on Monday that "PKK terrorists" bore responsibility for the deaths of Turkish hostages in northern Iraq.

Israeli environmentalists are warning that a UAE-Israeli oil pipeline deal threatens unique Red Sea coral reefs and could lead to "the next ecological disaster." 

Iraq will re-impose partial lockdown measures until early March after detecting a new strain of the coronavirus, including among children, its health minister announced on Monday. 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday accused the United States of siding with "terrorists" after blaming outlawed Kurdish militants of executing 13 Turks in northern Iraq.

Erdogan's comments came a day after Ankara said Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) rebels had killed 13 captives -- most of them Turkish soldiers and police officers -- they had allegedly abducted in southeast Turkey and kept in an Iraqi cave.

Israel fired several missiles early on Monday targeting areas near the Syrian capital, Damascus, Syria's state news agency reported. An opposition war-monitoring group said the strikes killed nine Iran-backed fighters.

The SANA news agency claimed that Syrian air defenses shot down most of the missiles, which it said were fired from Syria's Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.