The United Nations has postponed a conference against torture due to be held in Cairo after fierce criticism of Egypt's rights record, a U.N. spokesman said.

After Egypt's president appointed top judges for the first time in the country's modern history, criticism of the judiciary's lack of independence is rampant.

A large explosion hit an arms depot belonging to an Iranian-backed militia faction north of Baghdad on Tuesday, the latest in a series of mysterious blasts at military bases and munitions depots around the country in the past few weeks.

Egyptian security forces killed 11 militants in the restive North Sinai region, the interior ministry said Tuesday, 18 months into an operation against an Islamic State group affiliate based there.

The U.N.'s special envoy to Yemen warned Tuesday that the war-ravaged country faced the prospect of breaking apart unless an agreement ending the decades-long conflict is found urgently.

Algerians launched an unprecedented protest movement in February, filling the streets of cities across the country and forcing the president out of office.

China's Syria envoy said Tuesday that "terrorist organisations" including the Islamic State group are being revived in the war-ravaged country, urging the international community not to ignore the "early warning" signs. 

Xie Xiaoyan, Beijing's pointman for the Syrian conflict, made the comments after meeting in Geneva with the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir O. Pedersen.

Separatists surrounded two government military bases in Yemen's south and demanded elements inside surrender, sources on both sides said Tuesday, ten days after the secessionists seized defacto capital Aden.

The flare-up, in Abyan province, comes after the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) partially withdrew from key sites it occupied in Aden, and the Saudi-led military coalition -- which backs the government -- said Riyadh and Abu Dhabi had "succeeded in calming the situation".

Turkey warned Damascus on Tuesday "not to play with fire" a day after a Turkish military convoy was cut off by an air strike in northwest Syria.

"The regime should not play with fire... As we have previously said, we will do whatever is necessary to ensure the security of our soldiers and observation posts," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in Ankara.

Jihadists and allied rebels withdrew from a key area of northwestern Syria Tuesday as President Bashar al-Assad's forces pressed an offensive against the jihadist-run Idlib region, a war monitor said.

The town of Khan Sheikhun on the region's southern edge has been a key goal for the government as it lies on the main highway through Idlib province connecting the capital Damascus with second city Aleppo.