The bodies of eight migrants have been found at sea off the coast of Libya by rescuers coming to the aid of four rubber dinghies, the Italian coastguard said Tuesday.

Turkey on Tuesday lashed out at what it called "unacceptable" remarks by a senior US official suggesting Ankara had encouraged the rise of Al Qaida-linked groups in Syria's Idlib province.

Brett McGurk, the senior US envoy to the international coalition fighting the Islamic State group, said Idlib province had become "the largest Al-Qaida safe haven".

US-backed forces battling to oust the Islamic State group from its Syrian bastion Raqa have advanced in the city's south, seizing a new neighbourhood, a spokesman and monitor said Tuesday.

Thousands of Jews attended prayers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem to observe the start of the Tisha B'av fasting day on Monday night, days after violence shook the city.

Five men suspected of belonging to al-Qaida were killed in Yemen Monday in a drone strike likely to have been carried out by the United States, a security official said.

Food access in Syria's battle-torn Raqa is now at "a critical turning point," aid organizations said Monday, with markets shuttered and residents depending fully on their dwindling stockpiles.

The Algerian army on Monday killed six armed Islamists during an ongoing security operation west of Algiers, the defense ministry said.

Thousands of people gathered in the rebel-held Yemeni capital Monday to witness the public execution of a man convicted of raping and murdering a three-year-old girl.

A region besieged by the regime forces east of Syria's capital on Sunday received U.N. aid for the first time in five years, a U.N. source said.

Iraq's influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is on a rare visit to Saudi Arabia.

Al-Sadr's office released a statement Sunday saying he'd been invited to the Sunni kingdom.