A bull escaped from its pen early Monday, setting off a panicked scene in the streets of a central Israeli city before entering an office building and evading capture for half an hour as it scampered through the hallways.

Bank Leumi said the bull entered its offices in an industrial zone in the city of Lod, near Tel Aviv.

Yemeni forces backed by the United Arab Emirates seized control of vital southern oil and gas fields after nearly a week of fierce clashes with their rivals, loyal to the internationally recognized government, officials and tribal leaders said Monday.

The clashes pitted the UAE-backed Giants Brigades and Shabwa Defense Forces on one side and the paramilitary police known as the Special Security Forces on the other.

Israel on Monday launched a scheme allowing Palestinians from the occupied West Bank to fly abroad from an airport in the Negev desert.

Forty Palestinians were aboard the first flight from Ramon airport near the southern Israeli resort city of Eilat, a spokeswoman for the Israel Airports Authority told AFP.

Two bodies were recovered on Monday from a shrine in Iraq's Karbala province after a landslide caused it to partially collapse, bringing the overall toll to seven dead, rescue services said.

"Unfortunately, we found this morning two bodies, a man and a woman", under the rubble of Qattarat al-Imam Ali, Jawdat Abdelrahman, director of the civil defense media department, told AFP.

A Palestinian rights campaigner said that Israel tried to summon him for questioning, as it pressed ahead with a crackdown on Palestinian rights groups based in the West Bank.

European and U.S. diplomats have pushed back against the claim by Israeli officials that the targeted groups are linked with terrorism.

Qatar recently arrested at least 60 foreign workers who protested going months without pay and deported some of them, an advocacy group said, just three months before Doha hosts the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

The move comes as Qatar faces intense international scrutiny over its labor practices ahead of the tournament. Like other Gulf Arab nations, Qatar heavily relies on foreign labor. The workers' protest a week ago — and Qatar's reaction to it — could further fuel the concern.

The United Arab Emirates plans to reinstate its ambassador to Iran for the first time in six years, the Emirati Foreign Ministry has announced, as the Gulf Arab federation accelerates efforts to improve ties with the nation it has long viewed as a regional threat.

The Emirates' ambassador to Iran, Saif Mohammed Al Zaabi, will return to Tehran in the coming days to "continue pushing bilateral relations forward to achieve the common interests of the two neighbors and the region," the UAE's state-run WAM news agency reported.

Thousands of supporters of Iraq's powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr stepped up their pressure tactics Friday with a weekly prayer session in the high-security Green Zone they have occupied for three weeks.

The United Nations voiced outrage Friday at a Saudi court decision to sentence a woman to 34 years behind bars for tweets critical of the government, demanding she be released.

Iran said on Friday it is "using all its power" to secure the release of one of its nationals arrested in Saudi Arabia during the hajj pilgrimage last month.

Khalil Dardmand was arrested by police in the holy city of Mecca after completing his hajj rituals, Iran's foreign ministry said in a statement, without providing other details about the case.