The United States has requested a closed door U.N. Security Council meeting Thursday for President Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, to present the administration's new Mideast peace plan, diplomatic sources told AFP Monday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Sudan's leader Monday to discuss "normalization" between the two states, his office said.

Whether in protests, elections, secret negotiations or government formations, one man always seems to have the last word in Iraq's tumultuous political scene: sharp-tongued cleric Moqtada Sadr.

The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation on Monday rejected US President Donald Trump's peace plan for the Middle East, calling on its 57 member states not to help implement it.

Protests camps in Iraq's capital and the south began to fracture on Monday, activists and AFP reporters said, split over whether to back prime minister-designate Mohammad Allawi. 

Critically ill Yemenis in need of medical care are to be flown out of rebel-held Sanaa on Monday, an airport official said, under a United Nations humanitarian evacuation plan for the war-torn country. 

Turkey warned Russia not to get involved as it retaliated against Syrian government forces for killing four of its soldiers in northwest Syria on Monday.

Militants blew up a gas pipeline Sunday in Egypt's restive Sinai Peninsula, security sources said.

Turkish and Syrian troops traded fire in northwest Syria on Monday, with more than 20 reported dead, further raising tension between Ankara and regime backer Moscow over the war-torn Idlib rebel enclave.

Russian air strikes also killed 14 civilians in the same area, where a government offensive has caused one of the worst displacement waves of the nine-year-old Syrian conflict, a monitoring group said.

Air strikes by the regime and its Russian ally on Sunday killed nine civilians in the last major opposition bastion of Idlib in northwestern Syria, a Britain-based war monitor said.