Saudi authorities said Wednesday they had intercepted an unmanned boat rigged with explosives that was sent by Yemeni Huthi rebels to target an oil plant on the kingdom's southwestern coast.

The boat, sent from a small island off the Yemeni coast, was targeting a petroleum products distribution terminal run by Saudi oil giant Aramco when it was intercepted on Tuesday, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by the SPA state news agency. 

After simmering for months, a crisis between Israel and Germany has erupted into the open, putting serious strain on a special relationship painstakingly built up after the Holocaust.

A Human Rights Watch director said Wednesday he had received permission to work in Israel, months after Israeli authorities barred his entry and accused the group of "anti-Israel" bias.

A suspected member of the Islamic State group has confessed to plotting attacks on targets in Kuwait including the U.S. military and a Shiite religious hall, local media reported Wednesday.

A report by French intelligence services blames Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime for a suspected chemical attack in rebel-held Syria that killed 87 people, Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Wednesday.

Pope Francis heads to Egypt Friday to bolster relations with Muslims and show solidarity with the largest Christian community in the Middle East following devastating attacks.

The two church bombings that killed dozens in Egypt this month targeted unity among Muslims and Christians in the most populous Arab nation, Coptic Pope Tawadros II said Tuesday.

Iraq is holding hundreds of millions of dollars Qatari negotiators had brought to Baghdad as ransom money for the release of kidnapped hunters, the prime minister said Tuesday.

The United States is "deeply concerned" by Turkish air strikes that reportedly killed more than two dozen Kurdish fighters in Iraq and Syria, the State Department said Tuesday.

The strikes underscore the delicate political tightrope the United States is treading in Syria -- and to a lesser extent in Iraq -- where it is relying heavily on Kurdish forces to conduct the ground fight against the Islamic State group.

A commander for Kurdish forces battling jihadists in northern Syria urged the U.S.-led coalition backing the offensive to prevent further Turkish strikes on their forces.