Canadian special forces have twice exchanged gunfire with Islamic State fighters in Iraq since the first confirmed ground battle between Western troops and IS earlier this month, a senior officer said Monday.

Recalling the first incident, Captain Paul Forget told a briefing: "Two similar events have occurred over the last week and, in both cases, Canadian special operations forces, again acting in self-defense, effectively returned fire, neutralizing the threat."

Egyptian police arrested more than 500 supporters of the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood when deadly violence erupted on the anniversary of the 2011 uprising, the interior minister said Monday.

Protesters and security forces clashed Sunday after Islamists called for demonstrations against President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's government as Egypt marked the fourth anniversary of the toppling of ex-strongman Hosni Mubarak.

The Islamic State group's Egyptian affiliate, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, claimed in a video released Monday the killing of a police officer whose body was found almost two weeks ago.

Egyptian troops found the body of Ayman al-Desouky, who had been kidnapped from near the town of Rafah on the border with the Gaza Strip, during a search operation in North Sinai on January 13.

The Islamic State (IS) group, which has sown a trail of terror across Syria and Iraq, is neither a state nor justified by Islam, Egypt's top Muslim cleric said Monday.

"We have already asserted that we should never use the term Islamic State for ISIS," Egypt's Grand Mufti Sheikh Shawky Allam said at a public forum in Singapore.

Turkey on Sunday opened its biggest-ever refugee camp to host thousands of Syrian Kurds who fled an onslaught on the town of Kobane by Islamist militants, Turkey's emergency management agency said.

The camp, located in the Turkish border town of Suruc, will initially house a relatively small number of refugees, but will eventually be able to accommodate up to 35,000 people, an official told AFP on Monday. 

Iraqi forces have "liberated" Diyala province from the Islamic State jihadist group, retaking all populated areas of the eastern region, a top army officer said on Monday.

The symbolic victory for Baghdad, which has at times struggled to push IS back, could clear the way for further advances against the jihadists

Tunisia's prime minister designate is to put his cabinet line-up to parliament Tuesday with the vote expected to be tight for the first government since landmark free elections last year.

Parliament will convene at 10 am (0900 GMT) for the confidence vote, its website said.

An Egyptian appeals court on Monday sentenced a doctor to more than two years in jail for performing a female circumcision that killed a teenage girl, overturning an acquittal.

A lower court in November had acquitted the doctor and the father of 14-year-old Sohair al-Bataa in the first such case brought to the courts since the procedure was banned in 2008.

Saudi Arabia on Monday beheaded a serial child rapist, in the first execution since King Salman's rise to the throne in the conservative Muslim monarchy, official media said.

"Mousa bin Saeed Ali al-Zahrani lured several underage girls and kidnapped them. He also threatened them and their relatives and physically assaulted them in his home," the Saudi Press Agency said, citing the interior ministry.

Syrian opposition figures met in Moscow on Monday as part of a new Russia-coordinated bid to wind down the war in Syria, although there was little hope of a breakthrough.

The main opposition group, the exiled National Coalition, has boycotted the talks while Syrian President Bashar Assad cast doubt on the Moscow initiative bearing any fruit.