Turkey said it evacuated its consulate in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Tuesday for security reasons, a week after Islamist militants attacked its mission in Mosul and kidnapped several dozen Turks.

"In the context of the situation in Iraq, and because of the heightened security risk in the Basra region, our consulate general was evacuated today Tuesday," Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Twitter.

Former Kuwaiti premier Sheikh Nasser Mohammad al-Ahmad al-Sabah said Tuesday he was ready to face a probe over alleged coup plot and corruption that rocked the oil-rich Gulf state.

A senior member of the ruling family who left office in November 2011 after nearly six years in office, he and former parliament speaker Jassem al-Khorafi were accused in a lawsuit filed Monday of major corruption and of plotting a coup.

Iraqi Shiite volunteers, who had been fighting in neighboring Syria, have been heading home to battle an offensive that has brought militants to near Baghdad, a monitoring group said Tuesday.

Thousands of Iraqi Shiites had flocked to Syria to fight alongside President Bashar Assad's forces against mainly Sunni rebels.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Tuesday that developments in Iraq, where jihadist-led militants have seized swathes of the country, emphasize the need to combat terror financing.

Lew told a press conference in Jeddah after talks with Saudi counterpart Ibrahim al-Assaf that close cooperation between the two countries "is even more important given our shared concerns about developments in Iraq".

Some 5,000 Iranians have pledged online to defend Iraq's Shiite Muslim holy sites against Sunni extremists who are waging war against the Baghdad government, a report said on Tuesday.

The pledges were made on the harimshia.org website, which was launched by a group naming itself the Popular Headquarters for the Defense of Shiite Shrines, the conservative website Tabnak reported.

Israel is to rush through a bill allowing force-feeding of hunger-striking prisoners, a newspaper reported Tuesday, as 80 Palestinian inmates were hospitalized after refusing to eat for nearly two months.

Efforts to speed up the passage of the bill, which passed a first reading on June 9, are being led by Miri Regev, a hardline member of the ruling Likud who initiated the legislation, Haaretz newspaper reported.

Yemeni warplanes hit Shiite rebel positions Tuesday in the north, where the army has come under repeated attacks after the collapse of a short-lived truce, local and military officials said.

The latest fighting with Huthi rebels, also known as Ansarullah, erupted Sunday, ending an 11-day truce reached through mediation backed by United Nations envoy Jamal Benomar.

A Turkish court on Tuesday imposed a blackout on media coverage of the kidnapping of dozens of Turks by Islamist militants in northern Iraq, the television watchdog said.

The Supreme Board of Radio and Television (RTUK) has delivered the court ruling to Turkish newspapers, televisions and websites, which were banned from reporting on the abductions and could face penalties if they violate the ban.

Saudi Arabia should be held responsible for militant financing and crimes committed by insurgent groups in Iraq, the Baghdad government charged on Tuesday.

Comments from Riyadh indicates it is "siding with terrorism", the cabinet said in a statement issued by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's office.

The Islamist militant onslaught in Iraq raises the specter of a sectarian conflict spilling across the embattled nation's borders, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon warned on Tuesday.

"I'm deeply concerned about the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Iraq, including the reports of mass summary executions by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)," Ban told reporters in Geneva.