Two prominent Egyptian secular activists will stand trial on Sunday for allegedly taking part in a violent and unauthorized protest under a disputed new law, judicial sources said.

The pair, Ahmed Maher and Ahmed Douma, were arrested after Maher's supporters allegedly scuffled with policemen outside a Cairo court, as Maher handed himself in for questioning on suspicion he had organized an illegal protest.

Israel's deputy defense minister ruled out Thursday any security compromise in the Jordan Valley, saying the Jewish state would not give in to U.S. pressure to accept "a bad deal".

Danny Danon, a hardline member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rightwing Likud party, said Israel would never accept a Palestinian presence at the border crossing with Jordan.

Jihadists in northern Syria have kidnapped more than 50 Kurds in the past three days, in the second such case of mass hostage-taking since July, a monitoring group said Thursday.

The kidnappings come months into major battles for control of several parts of northern Syria that have pitted Kurdish fighters against jihadists, chiefly the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Two Libyan soldiers were shot dead in separate incidents Thursday in the increasingly lawless eastern city of Benghazi, security officials said.

The killings are the latest in a spate of attacks in Benghazi on members of the military and the police force, as the North African nation struggles against insecurity.

An Israeli cabinet minister was visiting Turkey on Thursday on the first such trip since the rupture of relations between the two former allies over a deadly raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla three years ago.

Environment Minister Amir Peretz is attending an international U.N. conference in Istanbul about pollution in the Mediterranean Sea.

Ethiopia has repatriated over 100,000 citizens from Saudi Arabia, Addis Ababa's foreign ministry said Thursday, following a violent crackdown against illegal immigrants in the oil-rich kingdom.

Ethiopian Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom said that up to 50,000 more citizens are still expected to come home.

Security forces early Thursday ended an hours-long siege at a mall in the northern city of Kirkuk but not before militants killed nine people, security officials and medics said.

The attack Wednesday on the mall in the oil rich ethnic tinderbox city, which involved a car bomb and would-be suicide bombers, came amid a surge in unrest that has claimed more than 6,200 lives this year.

A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-packed car into the Yemeni defense ministry complex Thursday, followed by an armed assault in which 52 people died, including seven foreign medical staff, officials said.

The brazen daylight attack on the sprawling facility followed a spate of hit-and-run strikes on military personnel and officials, as the country struggles to complete a thorny political transition.

Washington's top diplomat was holding talks on security with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday in their first meeting since a fallout over a nuclear deal struck with Iran.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry landed just before midnight (2200 GMT) on Wednesday for a trip aimed at giving momentum to the direct negotiations, which appear to have made little headway since they began under his patronage in late July.

The United States has reached out to Islamist militias among the Syrian opposition as it seeks to reach a political solution to the civil war, a U.S. official confirmed Wednesday.

But there have been no contacts with groups such as Al-Nusra that are blacklisted by Washington as terror organizations, deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf stressed.