U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited American troops in Saudi Arabia Thursday after talks with King Salman on the second day of a visit focused on countering Iran.

Mustafa and Ines were helping their parents load the van once again to flee advancing Syrian troops, when bombardment hit the area and sewed panic on the street.

Nineteen children were among at least 31 civilians killed in air strikes on rebel-held northern Yemen last week, the United Nations said on Thursday.

Israel has ended its ban on Palestinian agricultural exports after the Palestinian Authority lifted its curb on calf imports from Israeli livestock farmers, the defence ministry said Thursday, seemingly resolving a months-long trade dispute.

The UN refugee agency on Thursday appealed to Turkey to take in more refugees from Syria, as hundreds of thousands flee the regime's brutal assault on the last rebel enclave.

Libya's unity government has announced it is halting its participation in UN talks aimed at brokering a lasting ceasefire in the war-torn country where a fragile truce has been repeatedly violated.

Egypt has begun building a concrete wall along its border with Gaza, said AFP journalists and a Palestinian security official from Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the enclave, on Wednesday.

Eight of the Yemeni defense minister's bodyguards were killed Wednesday when their vehicle hit a landmine east of the capital Sanaa, but the official was unhurt, a ministry source said.

The U.N. envoy to Syria said Wednesday that the country was on the brink of worsening violence after an exchange of threats between key players Turkey and Russia.

Turkey and Russia exchanged warnings on Wednesday after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened an "imminent" operation in Syria to end the regime's brutal assault on the last rebel enclave.