Turkey and the United States can join forces to turn the Islamic State group's de-facto capital of Raqa in neighboring Syria into a "graveyard" for the jihadists, the Turkish president said on Saturday.

"The huge America, the coalition and Turkey can join hands and turn Raqa into a graveyard for Daesh," Erdogan told an Istanbul meeting, using an alternative name for the IS group. His comments come ahead of a meeting with President Donald Trump in mid-May in the United States.

Pope Francis led a jubilant mass for thousands of Egyptian Catholics on Saturday during a visit to support the country's embattled Christian minority and promote dialogue with Muslims.

Worshippers released yellow and white balloons with Francis, flanked by security, circling the Cairo stadium on a golf cart and waving to the crowds as a chorus sang a joyous hymn.

U.S. armored vehicles are deploying in areas in northern Syria along the tense border with Turkey, a few days after a Turkish airstrike that killed 20 U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters, a Syrian war monitor and Kurdish activists said Friday.

Footage posted by Syrian activists online showed a convoy of U.S. armored vehicles driving on a rural road in the village of Darbasiyah, a few hundred meters from the Turkish border. Clashes in the area were reported between Turkish and Kurdish forces Wednesday a day after the Turkish airstrike which also destroyed a Kurdish command headquarters.

Fierce clashes between jihadists and Islamist rebels near Damascus left at least 40 dead and 70 wounded on Friday, a monitoring group said.

Palestinians clashed with Israeli soldiers across the occupied West Bank on Friday in support of hundreds of Palestinians on hunger strike in Israeli prisons.

New clashes erupted Friday between the Turkish army and a Syrian Kurdish militia seen as a terror group by Ankara but as a key ally by the United States in the fight against jihadists, the Turkish army said.

Experts from the world's watchdog tasked with destroying chemical weapons are probing reports that toxic arms have been used 45 times in Syria since late last year, the body's chief said Friday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday slammed Germany's foreign minister as "insensitive" over refusing to cancel meetings with rights groups critical of Israel's government, amid rising tensions between the two allies.

Netanyahu had scrapped talks with Sigmar Gabriel at the last minute, after Germany's top diplomat pressed on with plans to meet with Israeli rights groups Breaking The Silence and B'Tselem.

Yemen's internationally backed president has fired a Cabinet minister and the governor of the southern port city of Aden, two figures known to be close to the United Arab Emirates, a key member of a Saudi-led coalition fighting Shiite rebels in Yemen since 2015.

The firing late Thursday of Minister of State Hani Bin Braik and Aden Gov. Aidarous al-Zubaidi appears to be the latest chapter in a stand-off between President Abded Rabbo Mansour Hadi and the UAE.

Pope Francis pleaded for peace in a visit to Egypt on Friday as he attended a service in solidarity with the embattled Coptic minority at a church bombed by the Islamic State group.