Libya's parliament wants presidential and legislative elections to be held within a year, keeping up its rejection of a U.N.-backed unity government in Tripoli, a spokesman said Wednesday.

People-smugglers have killed 22 African migrants on a beach in western Libya, a security source said Wednesday. 

A Moroccan parliamentarian has been shot dead in Casablanca, local media reported Wednesday.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif held talks Wednesday with the emir of Qatar, on his first visit to the Gulf state since July 2015.

British foreign minister Boris Johnson said Wednesday his government remained committed to a two-state solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict as he visited for talks with leaders from both sides.

Air raids and shelling hit Syria's rebel bastion of Eastern Ghouta on Wednesday, a monitor said, less than 24 hours after Russia announced a freeze on fighting there. 

Yemen's al-Qaida has detained two militants accused of being US informants in a district targeted by multiple air raids over the past week, a tribal leader said Wednesday. 

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) arrested two of its operatives in Mawjan district in the southern Abyan province on accusations they were "spying for the United States", a tribal leader there said on condition of anonymity. 

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Wednesday that he will not hesitate to strike "terrorist sites" in neighboring countries, after Baghdad carried out air raids in Syria last month.

"I will not hesitate to strike terrorist sites in neighboring countries, if they threaten the security of Iraq," Abadi said in a speech in north Iraq, footage of which was posted online.

Police in Saudi Arabia have shot dead an Islamic State group member, and an officer was gunned down in a separate incident, the interior ministry said Wednesday.

Officers were called at 6:00 pm (1500 GMT) on Tuesday to an apartment in Riyadh's Al-Rayan district where a suspect was "flaunting his support" for the IS extremist group, the interior ministry said in a statement.

A ceasefire has been declared in Syria's Eastern Ghouta, a rebel bastion near Damascus, to run from midnight last Sunday to March 20, Russia's defense ministry said.