Four Bangladeshi workers were among five people killed when fire engulfed their sleeping accommodation in Saudi Arabia, Dhaka's embassy said on Thursday.

The blaze erupted at about 1:30 am on Monday (2230 GMT Sunday) in the container in which the workers slept, the embassy's labor counselor told AFP.

The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday called for the stepping up of U.N.-brokered talks on ending a growing crisis in Yemen after President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi's escape from house arrest.

The Western-backed president was ousted by the Shiite Huthi militia last month and placed under house arrest in Sanaa, but at the weekend he managed to flee the capital and resurfaced in the southern port city of Aden.  

A counter-terrorism conference attended by senior Muslim scholars from around the world on Wednesday called for education reform to tackle religious extremism.

Participants at the meeting in the Saudi holy city of Mecca urged Muslim leaders to review the religious messages in education, "to achieve a more moderate approach."

Saudi Arabia beheaded a Jordanian Wednesday for drug smuggling, bringing to 32 the number of death sentences carried out in the first two months of the year.

Omar Mohammed Abdul Muti al-Rubai was executed in northwestern Jawf region after his confession and conviction for trying to smuggle a large amount of amphetamines, the interior ministry said, cited by the official Saudi Press Agency.

A female Saudi film-maker won an award for best drama at the Saudi Film Festival, the chief juror said Wednesday, hailing a higher quality of entries despite the kingdom's cinema ban.

The five-day festival was only the second in seven years, and aired films at an arts and cultural centre in the Gulf coast city of Dammam.

France said on Wednesday that it will begin shipping $3 billion worth of weapons paid for by Saudi Arabia to the Lebanese army in April.

The Defense Ministry said in a statement that the deal, first announced in 2013, will supply French armored vehicles, warships, attack helicopters, munitions and communications gear.

The chain-link fences, topped with coils of barbed wire, rise and fall like a serpent's back across the desert scrubland between Saudi Arabia and the jihadist threat across the Iraqi border.

A double-fence system and complementary hi-tech surveillance tools, officially opened in September, have become the front line of efforts to protect the kingdom from Islamic State (IS) group extremists who have seized vast areas of Iraq as well as Syria.

Grand Mufti Abdul Latif Daryan has warned that the failure to elect a new president will lead to more crises in the country, calling on MPs to choose a head of state to revitalize state institutions.

“The delay in the election of a president will create more crises,” Daryan old members of the Lebanese community in the Saudi city of Jeddah on Monday.

An international health mission said Monday more measures are needed to combat the spread of MERS in Saudi Arabia, the country worst hit by the coronavirus.

The team of experts said it identified with health authorities in the kingdom the need for "understanding the animal/human interface" including the "modes of infection and transmission."

The Lebanese state has accomplished most of the contracts under a $1 billion aid by Saudi Arabia as a batch of the arms is expected to be handed over “soon” to security agencies.

A prominent security source stressed in comments published in al-Mustaqbal newspaper on Monday that the Lebanese military finalized all the deals linked to its $500 million as a batch of light arms is “on its way” to be delivered.