The head of the CIA on Thursday briefed US President Donald Trump on the latest developments in the investigation of the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi after a fact-finding mission to Turkey, officials said.

CIA Director Gina Haspel delivered her report to Trump at the White House with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also present, State Department spokesman Robert Palladino said.

At least 20 people, most of them school pupils, have been killed in flash floods in Jordan, the emergency services said Friday in an updated toll.

The UN Security Council will meet Friday to discuss Syria, diplomatic sources told AFP Thursday, as no progress appears to have been made with Damascus on establishing a post-war constitution.

The son of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi has left Saudi Arabia after the kingdom revoked a travel ban and allowed him to come to the United States.

State Department spokesman Robert Palladino says Washington welcomes the decision.

An election poster at the entrance to Majdal Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights offers a rare reminder that the Druze community is about to vote for the first time in more than 50 years.

Supporters, friends and relatives of journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Thursday held a candlelight vigil outside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to demand justice for his "barbaric" murder.

The eldest son of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Salah, and his family have left the Gulf kingdom after the government lifted a travel ban, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.

Iraq's cabinet met Thursday for the first time outside the Green Zone, the fortified Baghdad district set up 15 years ago in the wake of the U.S. invasion. 

French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to bring to France 100 Yazidi women who were victims of assault by Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq beginning in 2014, his office said Thursday.

Dozens of civilians were killed in strikes on Yemen's embattled Hodeida province, the United Nations said Thursday, as Huthi rebels blamed air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition.