Iraq on Monday arrested three police officers and an electoral commission employee after a fire that ravaged a warehouse where votes from May's legislative election were stored, authorities said.

Egypt allowed 32 Ethiopian prisoners to fly home Monday, sources said, after apparent progress in talks between the leaders of the two countries over a controversial dam Ethiopia is building.

The prisoners, who had been detained for minor breaches including trespass and immigration offenses, flew home on the same plane as Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, diplomatic and airport sources said.

Syria regime forces ousted the Islamic State group from a town near the border with Iraq on Monday after days of clashes to end a deadly incursion there, a monitor said.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday said Turkey was pressing an operation against bases of outlawed Kurdish militants in northern Iraq with intense air strikes that were far from over.

Speaking less than two weeks ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections, Erdogan told a rally that the Turkish air force had destroyed 14 key targets of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the Qandil mountain area of northern Iraq.

Qatar said Monday it filed a case against the United Arab Emirates at the United Nations' highest court, accusing Abu Dhabi of "discrimination against Qatar and Qatari citizens" amid a yearlong boycott of Doha by four Arab nations. An Emirati minister dismissed the filing as a stunt.

The case before The Hague-based International Court of Justice focuses on the UAE's decision to expel Qatari citizens, block Qatar from accessing its airspace and other matters arising as part of an ongoing diplomatic dispute, Doha said in a statement.

While they are long accustomed to the stench of corruption, two grim and eerily similar tragedies have shocked even hardened Iraqis, who blame graft and negligence for deaths and much more.

More than 920,000 people were displaced inside Syria during the first four months of 2018, the highest level in the seven-year conflict, the United Nations said Monday.

The fire that ravaged a Baghdad warehouse where votes from May's legislative election were stored ahead of a recount was started "deliberately", Iraqi Interior Minister Qassem al-Araji said Monday.

Huthi rebels in Yemen fired a "projectile" at the southwestern Saudi province of Jazan killing three civilians, the Saudi-led coalition fighting the insurgents said.

A failed Iraqi asylum seeker arrived by plane back in Germany on Saturday after admitting raping and murdering a teenage girl, Iraqi Kurdish officials and German media reports said.