About 40 trucks are loaded and ready to ferry relief supplies to Syria's bomb-and-siege shattered Eastern Ghouta, but there has been no let up in fighting despite a U.N. ceasefire resolution, a top U.N. official said Wednesday.

Egypt's state prosecution said on Wednesday it would monitor media for "false" news and take "necessary" action, after the government demanded the BBC retract a report on rights abuses in the country.

The report, aired over the weekend, mentioned the case of a young woman whose mother said had been the victim of an enforced disappearance.

Civilians in Syria's Eastern Ghouta enclave shunned Russia's offer of safe passage for a second day Wednesday, as rebels and Moscow blamed each other for the humanitarian deadlock.

Two children were killed and eight wounded in an air strike on the northern Yemeni rebel stronghold of Saada, a U.N. agency said Wednesday.

In Syria's rebel-held Eastern Ghouta enclave, the bombs have stopped falling from the sky but the dead are still being raised from the rubble.

Israel's supreme court on Wednesday agreed to a government request to extend a deadline to demolish 15 settler homes found to have been built partly on private Palestinian land.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is to visit the United States from March 19-22, for the first time as heir to the throne, a Saudi government source told AFP on Wednesday.

At least 10 people were killed and 15 wounded Wednesday as two trains collided in Egypt, the latest in a string of deadly accidents on the North African country's railways, the health ministry said.

The collision between a freight train and a passenger train took place in the northern province of Behaira, it said in a statement.

Syrian regime forces clashed Wednesday with rebels on the outskirts of Eastern Ghouta despite a "humanitarian pause" announced by Russia and now in its second day, a monitor said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that rebels in Syria's Eastern Ghouta were responsible for ensuring that a "humanitarian pause" in the area delivers relief for devastated civilians. 

"Russia together with the Syrian government have already announced the establishment of humanitarian corridors in Eastern Ghouta," Lavrov told the UN Human Rights Council.