Saudi King Salman on Wednesday pledged the kingdom's support for east Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state during talks with President Mahmoud Abbas.

Yemen's president has raised the bar for dialogue with the Huthi rebels controlling Sanaa, saying they must surrender their weapons before the start of any peace talks.

Heavily armed troops and anti-riot police locked down Iraqi Kurdistan's second city Sulaimaniyah on Wednesday after two days of protests killed five people and wounded nearly 200 across the region.

Since Syrian government forces recaptured the whole of second city Aleppo a year ago, they have retaken much of the country with the help of allies Russia and Iran.

Qatar's emir was to tour six West African nations starting Wednesday in search of new markets, six months after Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries cut ties with the wealthy emirate.

The Saudi-led coalition targeted rebel positions near Yemen's capital with air strikes Wednesday, witnesses said, a day after Riyadh said it intercepted a missile fired by the Huthi insurgents.

Israeli forces arrested a third Palestinian woman on Wednesday in connection with a viral video showing Israeli soldiers being slapped in the occupied West Bank.

Overnight air strikes killed 19 civilians, seven of them children, in a residential district of a town in northwestern Syria, a monitor said on Wednesday.

"Suspected Russian air strikes targeted several houses in Maarshurin," a rebel-held town in Idlib province, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. 

US Ambassador Nikki Haley on Tuesday warned countries that she will report back to President Donald Trump with the names of those who support a draft resolution rejecting the US decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Tehran strongly denied on Wednesday that it had supplied weapons to Yemeni rebels which they used in attacks on its archfoe Saudi Arabia as alleged by both Riyadh and Washington.