An Iraqi interior ministry official said the Islamic State group's head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is alive and being treated at a field hospital in Syria after being wounded in an air strike.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday he has discussed legislation with the United States that would annex settlements in the occupied West Bank, but the White House denied it in a rare show of disunity.

Leaping bronze stallions adorn the lobby, Western consultants hobnob over tea and scones and a sumptuous buffet is laid out —- Riyadh's Ritz-Carlton appears exactly as it was before it became a gilded prison.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson held talks Monday in Cairo with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry at the start of a Middle East tour.

Tillerson landed in Cairo late Sunday and had dinner with Shoukry.

A major operation against jihadists in Egypt has killed 28 fighters in the Sinai Peninsula since it was launched by the military on Friday, the army said on Monday.

Another 126 jihadists have been arrested since "Operation Sinai 2018" was launched in the Sinai across from Israel, the central Nile Delta and the Western Desert near the border with Libya, the army said.

An Iraqi court on Monday sentenced a Turkish woman and a Syrian man to life in jail over ties to the Islamic State group, a judicial spokesman said.

The Philippines Monday expanded a ban on its citizens working in Kuwait after President Rodrigo Duterte angrily lashed out at the Gulf state over reports of Filipino workers suffering abuse and exploitation.

Iraq needs $88.2 billion to rebuild after years of war against the Islamic State group, Planning Minister Salman al-Jumaili said Monday, as an international conference on the country's reconstruction opened in Kuwait.

France's Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian visited Iraq on Monday to discuss the war-torn country's reconstruction after Baghdad declared victory against the Islamic State jihadist group.

"I have come to tell you of France's support and to accompany you. We will always be there. We were there to participate in the coalition. We will also be there in the reconstruction phase," Le Drian said.

In Iraq's Sunni-dominated Anbar province, residents struggling to rebuild after years of Islamic State group rule are adamant: there will be no return for the families of jihadists.