Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized Sunday after facing criticism for comments in which he seemed to compare a soldier currently on trial for manslaughter with troops killed in combat.

A suicide bomber killed six people in western Baghdad on Sunday, a security spokesman said, a day after bomb and gun attacks hit a city north of the capital.

A prominent and outspoken Jordanian writer on Sunday was shot dead in front of the courthouse where he had been on trial for sharing a cartoon deemed offensive to Islam.

There were no immediate details on the identity or motive of the gunman. But a witness described the shooter, who was immediately arrested, as wearing a long grey robe and long beard characteristic of conservative Muslims. The shooting was the latest in a string of deadly security lapses in Jordan.

The attacks on civilians in the Syrian city of Aleppo amount to a "breach of international humanitarian law," top EU officials said Saturday, urging the international community to intensify peace efforts.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting in support of Yemen's government has killed a senior Yemeni rebel leader on the border, a source close to the coalition said on Saturday.

A U.N. official says nearly 2 million people in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo are without running water as security conditions deteriorate.

Hanaa Singer, UNICEF representative in Syria, says intense attacks after midnight Thursday have damaged the Bab al-Nairab station that supplies some 250,000 people in rebel-held eastern parts of the contested city with water.

Militants killed 12 people in a shooting and a suicide bombing on Saturday in the northern city of Tikrit, which was recaptured from the Islamic State group last year, police said.

Residents in rebel-held areas of Syria's Aleppo cowered in their homes on Saturday as relentless missile strikes and barrel bomb attacks pounded the besieged eastern half of the divided city.

An apparent US drone strike has killed five suspected al-Qaida members in Yemen in the third such attack this week, a security official said on Saturday.

An Israeli official has confirmed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on Sunday.

Netanyahu is in the United States, where he met with President Barack Obama and addressed the U.N. General Assembly this week.