Energy ministers from Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon on Wednesday agreed a plan to bring gas and electricity to crisis-hit Lebanon at a meeting in Amman.

Egypt's minister for oil and mines Tarek al-Molla said that his country would "be ready to transfer gas (to Lebanon) as soon as possible" via the transnational Arab Gas Pipeline.

Nearly 80 Yemen rebels and pro-government troops have been killed as fighting intensifies for the northern city of Marib, officials said Wednesday, nearly seven years into a war that has triggered a major humanitarian crisis.

Scores of rebels were killed in airstrikes after they renewed their attempt to capture the strategic city, the internationally recognized government's last outpost in the north, according to loyalists.

Israeli troops have arrested at least five family members in the occupied West Bank of the Palestinians who escaped from a high-security jail this week, a Palestinian prisoners' group said Wednesday.

The six Palestinians fled Monday through a hole dug under a sink in a Gilboa prison cell in northern Israel.

Libyan authorities said Tuesday that government forces have arrested a senior Islamic State group (IS) figure in an operation south of the capital Tripoli.

Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah of the North African country's interim government wrote on Twitter that the capture of Embarak al-Khazimi was "a great success for our security forces".

Moroccans head to the ballot box on Wednesday for parliamentary and local elections that will decide the fate of Islamists who have governed the kingdom since the Arab Spring uprisings.

Doors will open at polling stations at 8:00 am (0700 GMT) and close at 7:00 pm for the 18 million on the electoral roll, who will vote for 395 MPs and more than 31,000 local and regional officials.

The trial in Egypt of Hossam Bahgat, one of the country's most prominent human rights advocates, for a tweet criticizing alleged electoral fraud, was postponed Tuesday, his lawyer said.

Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, is already banned from travelling and his assets have been frozen because of a separate case in which he remains indicted.

Qatar said the Taliban have demonstrated "pragmatism" and should be judged on their actions as the undisputed rulers of Afghanistan, but stopped short of announcing formal recognition of the Islamists.

Qatari Assistant Foreign Minister Lolwah al-Khater told AFP in an exclusive interview that it would be up to the Afghans to determine their future, not the international community.

Workshops in Syria's Aleppo used to clatter on into the night before the war, but these days the machines grind to a halt at 6:00 pm sharp because of power cuts.

Fighting ended almost five years ago in the country's former economic hub, but limited electricity supply has hampered a full return to work in its manufacturing neighborhoods that produce everything from plastic to food.

Israeli authorities remained short on answers Tuesday over how six Palestinian prisoners' escape from a high-security jail went unnoticed and where they could have gone, with a vast manhunt still underway.

The group's early-morning flight, through a hole made below a sink in a Gilboa prison cell to a tiny tunnel exit discovered by guards and police early Monday morning, sounds almost like a plotline from Israeli-Palestinian conflict drama "Fauda".

As night falls on the Gaza Strip, Palestinian protesters approach the border fence with Israel, carrying homemade stun grenades and Molotov cocktails to hurl toward the enemy soldiers.

The aim of these so-called disruption operations, sponsored by the Islamist armed group Hamas that rules Gaza, is to harass the Israeli border forces -- but analysts warn it is a dangerous game.