Turkey's president told journalists that Ankara remains committed to rooting out a Syrian Kurdish militia from northern Syria.

"Like I always say, we'll come down on them suddenly one night. And we must," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on his plane following his Saturday visit to Azerbaijan, according to daily Hurriyet newspaper and other media.

Egypt on Monday displayed a trove of ancient artifacts dating back 2,500 years that the country's antiquities authorities said were recently unearthed at the famed necropolis of Saqqara near Cairo.

The artifacts were showcased at a makeshift exhibit at the feet of the Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, 24 kilometers (15 miles) southwest of the Egyptian capital.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards on Monday accused "Zionists" of shooting dead a colonel in Tehran earlier this month, days after Israel reportedly told the US it was behind the killing.

Guards Colonel Sayyad Khodai, 50, was fatally shot on May 22 outside his home in the east of the Iranian capital by assailants on motorcycles. He was hit with five bullets, according to official media.

Salah Chelab crushed a husk of wheat plucked from his sprawling farmland south of Baghdad and inspected its seeds in the palm of one hand. They were several grams lighter than he hoped.

"It's because of the water shortages," he said, the farm machine roaring behind him, cutting and gathering his year's wheat harvest.

Thousands of Israeli nationalists, some of them chanting "Death to Arabs," have paraded through the heart of the main Palestinian thoroughfare in Jerusalem's Old City, in a show of force that risked setting off a new wave of violence in the tense city.

The crowds, who were overwhelmingly young Orthodox Jewish men, were celebrating Jerusalem Day -- an Israeli holiday that marks the capture of the Old City in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians see the event, which passes through the heart of the Muslim Quarter, as a provocation. Last year, the parade helped trigger an 11-day war with Gaza militants, and this year's march drew condemnations from the Palestinians and neighboring Jordan.

A far-right Israeli lawmaker, joined by scores of ultranationalist supporters, entered Jerusalem's al-Aqsa Mosque compound early Sunday, prompting a crowd of Palestinians to begin throwing rocks and fireworks toward nearby Israeli police.

The unrest erupted ahead of a mass ultranationalist Israeli march planned later Sunday through the heart of the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. Some 3,000 Israeli police were deployed throughout the city ahead of the march.

The Al-Jazeera news network says it will submit a case file to the International Criminal Court on the killing of reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, who was shot dead earlier this month during an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank.

The Qatar-based network and the Palestinian Authority have accused Israeli soldiers of deliberately killing her. Israel rejects those allegations as a "blatant lie." It says she was shot during a firefight between soldiers and Palestinian militants, and that only ballistic analysis of the bullet — which is held by the PA — can determine who fired the fatal shot.

Iraqi lawmakers on Thursday passed a bill criminalizing normalization of ties and any relations, including business ties, with Israel. The legislation says that violation of the law is punishable with the death sentence or life imprisonment.

The law was approved with 275 lawmakers voting in favor of it in the 329-seat assembly. A parliament statement said the legislation is "a true reflection of the will of the people."

The United States on Thursday urged Yemen's Houthi rebels to release all U.S. Embassy local staffers that they had detained, following the death of one of them after seven months in captivity.

The Iran-backed Houthis seized the headquarters of the U.S. Embassy in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa last October. They detained dozens of former staffers, many of whom were later released but at least 11 remained in the rebels' custody.

One of Libya's rival prime ministers told The Associated Press that he has no immediate plans to rule from the capital of Tripoli, after his attempted move there last week sparked clashes and fears of a return to widespread civil strife.

In an interview late Wednesday, Prime Minister Fathi Bashagha said that his government will work from its headquarters in Sirte, a city on the Mediterranean coast about halfway between the country's east and west. Rival administrations from each end of Libya claim to be its legitimate rulers until elections are held.