A first day of indirect peace talks between Syrian rebels and the regime of Bashar Assad in Kazakhstan's capital Astana ended Monday without any apparent breakthrough, sources told AFP.

The Egyptian army said Monday that assailants killed five soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula, where security forces have been targeted in a spate of jihadist attacks.

Yemeni government forces captured on Monday the port of Mokha as they pushed to oust Huthi rebels from the Red Sea coastline, an AFP journalist said.

Government forces were combing the port, a journalist accompanying the troops said, almost three weeks after the loyalists launched an offensive against the Shiite insurgents and their allies on Yemen's southwestern coast.

Egypt's prosecution said on Sunday it would allow Italy to send experts to try to retrieve video footage related to last January's kidnapping and murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni.

Members of the Syrian opposition delegation arrived Sunday in the Kazakh capital Astana for face-to-face peace talks with the war-torn nation's government.

Iraqi forces used to facing deserted, explosives-rigged streets and booby-trapped buildings have not encountered as many bombs planted by jihadists in Mosul as they did in earlier battles against them.

Israeli authorities on Sunday approved building permits for 566 settler homes in annexed east Jerusalem, plans that had been postponed until U.S. President Donald Trump took office, the city's deputy mayor said.

Four suspected al-Qaida members were killed in drone strikes in central Yemen likely carried out by U.S. forces, a security source said Sunday.

Egypt is working for a political solution to fighting in neighbouring Libya, its foreign minister said Saturday ahead of regional talks on the conflict.

A car bomb blast killed at least four civilians at a camp for displaced Syrians by the border with Jordan on Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

"A car bomb exploded on the outskirts of the Rukban camp on the Jordanian border, killing four displaced people and injuring others," said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based monitor.