The U.S. military is flying "a few" armed drones over Baghdad to defend American troops and diplomats in the Iraqi capital if necessary, a senior U.S. official said Friday.

"For the last 24 to 48 hours, we've started that," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Agence France Presse.

The U.N.'s human rights office on Friday urged Israel and its adversaries to exercise restraint amid a crackdown on Palestinians during a hunt for three Jewish teenagers missing in the West Bank.

"Clearly these boys need to be found, that's totally understandable, but the scale of operations and the number of people they are affecting is deeply disturbing," said its spokesman Rupert Coville.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on Friday executed and crucified one of its own men for corruption in Syria, a watchdog and jihadist sites said.

Photographs posted on websites showed the body and bloodied head of a bearded man with a placard reading: "Guilty: Abu Adnan al-Anadali. Sentence: execution and three days of crucifixion. Motive: extorting money at checkpoints by accusing drivers of apostasy."

Human Rights Watch on Friday demanded a clarification from Saudi Arabia over allegations from security researchers that the kingdom is infecting and monitoring dissidents' mobile phones with surveillance malware.

The New York-based rights watchdog said surveillance software allegedly made by Italian firm Hacking Team mostly targeted individuals in Qatif district in Eastern Province, which has been the site of sporadic Shiite-led protests since February 2011.

U.S. special Mideast envoy Martin Indyk resigned on Friday after nearly a year of unsuccessful efforts to forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement that Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, would return to his position as vice president and director of foreign policy at The Brookings Institution think-tank in Washington but would continue to serve as special adviser on Mideast peace issues.

A Moroccan man is on hunger strike after being jailed for six months for a text message sent from his phone stating that the king's life was in danger, his brother said Friday.

Mohamed Zoujani, 28, was jailed at the beginning of June for "humiliating public authorities with false information," after several people received a text from his phone stating: "the king is in danger in Russia," his brother Mamdouh told Agence France Presse.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi landed in Islamist neighbor Sudan on Friday for what an analyst said would be an attempt to shore up a regional alliance against Islamic "terrorism".

An AFP photographer at Khartoum airport confirmed the Egyptian leader's plane had touched down.

Syrian rebels can help push back jihadists in Iraq, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday as Washington unveiled plans to boost Syria's opposition with $500 million in arms and training.

The top U.S. diplomat, who landed in the Red Sea city of Jeddah in the afternoon, also met Saudi King Abdullah a day after hosting urgent talks in Paris with the Saudi, Jordanian and UAE foreign ministers on the widening crisis in Iraq and Syria.

Iraq's top Shiite cleric on Friday urged the country's fractious political leaders to unite and form a government to help see off advances by Sunni militants who have overrun swathes of territory.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is revered within the Shiite majority and whose stature dwarfs that of any politician, also insisted that divisions were not an option, with militants holding parts of five provinces and Kurdish authorities exerting greater control over areas adjacent to their autonomous region.

The International Organization for Migration warned Friday that aid workers could not reach tens of thousands of Iraqis displaced by the violence rocking the country, urging the establishment of humanitarian corridors to access those in need.

"The only way to respond (to the needs of the displaced) is to create humanitarian corridors," IOM spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume told reporters in Geneva.