Pakistan says Qatar's foreign minister will arrive in Pakistan's capital of Islamabad to discuss the latest situation in Afghanistan.

In a statement, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said Qatari chief diplomat Mohammad bin Abdulrahman Al Thani during his day-long visit Thursday will meet with Pakistan's foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and other top officials.

A Tunisian MP arrested at the end of July after criticizing the army and President Kais Saied has gone on hunger strike, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Yassine Ayari, a 40-year-old former blogger, is serving a two-month sentence handed down in late 2018 for comments he posted about the army on Facebook.

Israel flooded the occupied West Bank with reinforcements on Wednesday in the manhunt for six Palestinians who have been on the run for three days after escaping from a top security prison.

The army said in a statement that in order to try to find the men "it has been decided to extend the general closure of Judea and Samaria", Israel's terminology for the West Bank.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who is on a tour of the Gulf, has indefinitely postponed a visit to Saudi Arabia, the Pentagon said Wednesday, citing "scheduling issues."

"The Secretary's trip to Saudi Arabia has been postponed due to scheduling issues. He looks forward to rescheduling at the soonest opportunity," a defense department official told AFP.

Two decades after Saudi Arabian militants masterminded and carried out the September 11 attacks, the desert kingdom is striving for change in a reform drive aimed at updating its ultra-conservative image.

Women can drive and cinemas have reopened in the "new" Saudi Arabia under crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, among many modernizing reforms that some believe can be linked to the trauma of 9/11.

Morocco's long-ruling Islamists have suffered a crushing defeat in parliamentary elections to liberal parties seen as close to the palace, according to provisional results announced early Thursday.

The Justice and Development Party (PJD), which headed the ruling coalition for a decade, saw its support collapse from 125 seats in the outgoing assembly to just 12, Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit said during a press briefing following Wednesday's polls.

Syrian regime forces Wednesday entered part of a southern city retaken from holdout rebels under a ceasefire deal brokered by government ally Russia, official media and a war monitor said.

Daraa province and its capital of the same name, the cradle of Syria's uprising, returned to government control in 2018 under a previous Moscow-backed ceasefire.

Saudi Arabia's King Salman has dismissed the director of public security, Khalid bin Qarar al-Harbi, ordering his investigation on corruption charges, state media reported Wednesday. 

"Khaled al-Harbi's service has been terminated by referring him to retirement and to an investigation," said the official Saudi Press Agency, citing a royal decree. 

Energy ministers from Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon on Wednesday agreed a plan to bring gas and electricity to crisis-hit Lebanon at a meeting in Amman.

Egypt's minister for oil and mines Tarek al-Molla said that his country would "be ready to transfer gas (to Lebanon) as soon as possible" via the transnational Arab Gas Pipeline.

Nearly 80 Yemen rebels and pro-government troops have been killed as fighting intensifies for the northern city of Marib, officials said Wednesday, nearly seven years into a war that has triggered a major humanitarian crisis.

Scores of rebels were killed in airstrikes after they renewed their attempt to capture the strategic city, the internationally recognized government's last outpost in the north, according to loyalists.