Iraqi commanders were plotting a strategy for flushing out the few remaining Islamic State group jihadists from central Tikrit, a city one commander said Saturday would be liberated within three days.

The massively outnumbered IS fighters are completely boxed in but protected by snipers and thousands of bombs they planted across the city.

Kuwait has arrested the leader of the Islamist Ummah Party for allegedly insulting the neighboring Gulf state of Saudi Arabia on television, the interior ministry said.

Hakem al-Mutairi was arrested at the instruction of the public prosecutor for "grossly insulting Saudi Arabia" during an interview, the ministry said in a statement.

The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group launched air strikes against the jihadists in a key Syrian village overnight after Kurdish forces appealed for action, a monitor said Saturday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes near the northeastern village of Tal Tamr were the first by the U.S.-led coalition in the area since an IS advance there began in late February.

CIA Director John Brennan said Friday the United States does not want to see a chaotic collapse of the Syrian regime as it could open the way to Islamist extremists taking power.

The spy agency chief said Washington had reason to worry about who might replace President Bashar al-Assad if his government fell, given the rise of the Islamic State group and other jihadists in Syria.

The U.S. has failed to live up to its promises to help Iraq fight Islamic State extremists, unlike the "unconditional" assistance being given by Iran, the commander of Iraq's powerful Shiite militias alleged Friday.

In a battlefield interview near Tikrit, where Iraqi forces are fighting to retake Saddam Hussein's hometown from the militants of the so-called Islamic State, commander Hadi al-Amiri criticized those who "kiss the hands of the Americans and get nothing in return."

Egypt plans to build a new administrative and business capital east of Cairo that will house five million people and feature a theme park "four times bigger than Disneyland", a minister announced at a global investor conference.

Housing Minister Mustafa Kamel Madbuli said the new city would relieve pressure on overcrowded Cairo, with its population of 18 million expected to double in coming decades.

Aid agencies have found themselves frustrated and increasingly bitter as the Syrian conflict enters a fifth, blood-soaked year and those in need of help become ever-harder to reach.

"By comparison, Somalia and Afghanistan seem simple," said Jean-Herve Bradol of the Centre For Reflection on Humanitarian Knowledge and Action, a French think-tank linked to Doctors Without Borders.

A U.S. Army soldier has been slightly wounded by gunfire at a base in Iraq where American troops are training their Iraqi counterparts, the Pentagon said Friday.

The incident marked the first time an American soldier was wounded on the battlefield in Iraq since U.S. forces returned to the country last year to help troops take on the Islamic State group. 

Israeli security officials have recommended building a barrier along the border with Jordan -- Israel's only frontier that does not yet feature a fence.

"Security officials recommended the construction of a security barrier to protect the new airport which will be built at Timna" some 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of resort city Eilat, an army spokeswoman said, without elaborating.

The EU is considering a possible civil or military mission in Libya if talks on forming a unity government succeed, sources said Friday, as concern grows over the threat posed by insecurity in the North African nation.

Foreign ministers from the 28 European Union nations meeting in Brussels on Monday are set to discuss ways of supporting any new administration that would be formed by a deal between Libya's warring factions.