The United Nations on Monday removed the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen from a blacklist of child rights violators after Riyadh angrily protested the decision.

Saudi Arabia had demanded that a U.N. report be "corrected" after it concluded that the coalition was responsible for 60 percent of the 785 children killed in Yemen last year.

Jordan's King Abdullah II vowed on Tuesday to act decisively against anyone who threatens the kingdom's security, a day after a lone gunman shot dead five intelligence officers.

Syrian President Bashar Assad hardened his position on U.N.-sponsored peace talks in his first address to the newly elected parliament broadcast on state television on Tuesday.

"We will not agree to any topic outside the statement of principles we presented to the U.N. We just won't accept it," Assad told lawmakers.

Thousands of civilians on Tuesday fled a key town along the Islamic State group's supply lifeline in northern Syria as US-backed fighters closed in from three sides.

The offensive on the town of Manbij is one of two major assaults on the jihadist supply line from the Syrian-Turkish border to IS's bastion of Raqa.

The Israeli army denied on Tuesday that a second Palestinian killed in March was shot dead while already wounded, after claims by a human rights group.

A previous such case has led to widespread controversy and rocked Israeli politics, with the far right defending the soldier involved and the military putting him on trial for manslaughter.

Controversy over contributions to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a French tycoon on trial for fraud deepened on Tuesday after the Frenchman disputed the premier's version of events.

With the issue receiving widespread coverage in Israel and the country's attorney general examining it, Netanyahu acknowledged on Monday that Arnaud Mimran, currently on trial in Paris, had given him $40,000.

Thirty-one migrants who survived when their boat sank off Crete last week arrived in Egypt on Monday along with the bodies of nine people who died, police told AFP.

The Roman Catholic church on Monday swore in a new guardian of its sites in the Holy Land for the first time in over a decade.

A Palestinian wounded during clashes with Israeli soldiers escorting Jewish pilgrims at a holy site in the occupied West Bank died from his injuries on Monday, the Palestinian health ministry said.

Jamal Dweikat, 20, was shot in the head on Friday near Joseph's Tomb on the outskirts of Nablus. The tomb is the site of regular clashes.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini asked the U.N. Security Council Monday to authorize the EU naval force in the Mediterranean to enforce the arms embargo on Libya.