Uzbekistan on Thursday said it had repatriated 156 citizens, mostly women and children, caught up in unspecified Middle East armed conflicts, a day after Kurdish authorities in Syria said they had handed over scores of Uzbeks linked to IS.

Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser al-Thani arrived in Saudi Arabia on Thursday to attend three summits, state media said, the highest ranking official to visit the kingdom since the start of a two-year-old Riyadh-led boycott.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday he was sorry to see Israel forced into an election rerun, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a governing coalition.

An Italian mafia fugitive wanted for drug trafficking, murder, extortion and other alleged crimes has been arrested in Morocco, authorities in the North African country said Thursday.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister on Thursday urged Muslim nations to confront with "all means of force and firmness" recent attacks in the Persian Gulf that U.S. and some Arab officials have blamed on Iran.

Ibrahim al-Assaf made the comments at a preparatory meeting of foreign ministers of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, or OIC, ahead of a trio of summits in the kingdom's holy city of Mecca.

Syrian rescue workers and activists say government warplanes have bombed the last rebel stronghold in the country again, levelling a building and killing five people inside it, including three members of a single family.

The Syrian Civil Defense, known as White Helmets, says its volunteers pulled bodies and survivors from under the collapsed building in Maaret al-Numan, a town in southern Idlib that was hit in an airstrike on Thursday.

The United States and Russia are in talks on a "potential way forward" that would see Syria come out of international isolation if it agrees to a series of steps including a ceasefire in Idlib, the U.S. envoy for Syria said.

Arab and Muslim leaders began gathering in the holy city of Mecca on Thursday for three summits, as host Saudi Arabia seeks to rally support against Iran after a series of attacks that have sparked fears of a regional conflagration.

US President Donald Trump's son-in-law and aide Jared Kushner was in Jerusalem on Thursday as part of a Middle East trip focused on the White House's expected plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was confronted with one of the biggest defeats of his political career Thursday after failing to form a coalition and opting instead to hold an unprecedented second election.