The head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees has resigned amid an internal probe into alleged mismanagement and ethical abuses at the organization, the United Nations said Wednesday.

The new leader of the Islamic State group is "a nobody" with little apparent reputation but the United States hopes he will be killed soon, a U.S. official said Wednesday.

Air strikes by regime ally Russia killed six civilians in an embattled anti-government bastion in northwestern Syria Wednesday, a Britain-based war monitor said.

Iraqi security forces fired live ammunition at protesters in the capital Wednesday as tensions rose elsewhere in the country between persistent anti-government demonstrators and paralyzed politicians.

Eight people, including four tourists, were wounded in a knife attack on Wednesday at the famed archeological site of Jerash in northern Jordan, a security spokesman told AFP.

Two Libyan policemen were killed in an air strike on a police station in the suburbs of Tripoli late Tuesday, the UN-recognised Government of National Accord said.

As anti-government protests sweep his country, Iraq's embattled premier has found his decision-making powers clipped by rivals and his entourage subject to increasing pressure from Iran, Iraqi officials told AFP.

Adel Abdel Mahdi, 77, came to power last year as the product of a tenuous alliance between populist cleric Moqtada Sadr and pro-Iran paramilitary chief Hadi al-Ameri, with the required blessing of Iraq's Shiite religious leadership.

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has stepped aside temporarily as an internal probe into alleged mismanagement at the organisation proceeds, it said on Wednesday.

Pierre Krahenbuhl, commissioner general of the agency known as UNRWA, will be replaced on an interim basis by the agency's acting deputy chief Christian Saunders, it said.

Riyadh has an "open channel" with Yemen's Iran-backed rebels with the goal of ending the country's civil war, a Saudi official said Wednesday, weeks after the rebels offered to halt attacks on the kingdom.

The comment comes after Saudi Arabia separately brokered a power sharing agreement between Yemen's internationally recognized government and southern separatists, which observers say could pave the way for a wider peace deal.

Yemen's internationally recognized government signed a power-sharing deal with southern separatists Tuesday, in a Saudi-brokered initiative to end a conflict simmering within the country's civil war.