Top diplomats from Saudi Arabia and its allies wrapped up two days of talks in Jordan's Dead Sea resort on Thursday on coordinating policy on the multiple conflicts gripping the region.

The closed-door meetings were a "consultation between brothers and friends", Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said in a terse statement shortly after they ended.

Saudi Arabia announced Wednesday the end of a high-profile anti-corruption probe that boosted the state coffers by more than $100 billion and has left dozens detained.

The U.N. humanitarian chief urged Syria's warring parties on Wednesday to ensure the delivery of desperately needed aid to Syrians stranded near the border with Jordan and warned again that a major military operation in extremist-controlled Idlib would be a humanitarian catastrophe.

Mark Lowcock said the U.N. wants an aid convoy, with more than 100 trucks accompanied by some 250 U.N. and Syrian Arab Red Crescent personnel, to leave for the isolated Rukban camp on the Syria-Jordan border by Feb. 5. Its 42,000 people "remain stranded in deteriorating conditions since the last convoy to the area in early November," which was the first since January 2018, he said.

Yemeni medics scrambled to save a 20-year-old woman after a sniper's bullet tore a gash in her scalp in the port city of Hodeida, where a fragile ceasefire has brought limited respite to war-weary civilians.

Outside a camp for the displaced in northwest Syria, 15-year-old Sabaa al-Jassim hacked away at a mountain of trash hoping to find scraps to sell for food.

Using a hooked metal rod, he stabbed at acrid household waste in the village of Kafr Lusin, looking for plastic to trade for a few dollars to feed his 11-member family.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen released seven Huthi rebel prisoners on Wednesday and returned them to Sanaa, the United Nations said.

U.S. aid to the Palestinian security services will end this week at the Palestinians' request, an official in the West Bank said Wednesday, to preempt lawsuits over alleged support for terrorism.

The Palestinian Authority has demanded the funding stop at the end of January for fear it could expose the PA to costly lawsuits under the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act (ATCA), which comes into force on February 1.

Palestinian and European officials expressed concern and regret Wednesday over Israel's decision not to renew the mandate of an international monitoring group in the  occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

The Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) was established after a massacre of Palestinians in 1994.

Israel has threatened to bar Amnesty International from accessing Israeli territory over its charge Wednesday that digital tourism companies are profiting from "war crimes" in the occupied West Bank.

A Palestinian woman tried to stab Israeli guards at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Jerusalem on Wednesday, Israeli police said, with Palestinian officials reporting she was shot dead.