Huthi militiamen who control the Yemeni capital attacked the house of a senior army commander Tuesday, killing one guard and detaining two more, an army source said.

General Mohammed Rajah Laboudha was not home at the time. 

Algerian soldiers killed two Islamist militants and seized guns and explosives southwest of the capital on Tuesday, the defense ministry said.

The two were killed during an early morning sweep of an area near Grabiz, southwest of Ain Defla city, a statement said.

Egypt's state prosecutor Tuesday referred to trial 16 suspects accused of clashing with police that led to a deadly Cairo football stadium stampede, blaming the Islamist opposition for the violence.

At least 19 people died in the stampede after police fired tear gas at fans who tried to push their way into the stadium on February 8.

Arab Israelis formed long lines outside polling stations Tuesday as they turned out to cast their ballots hoping to end the six-year reign of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"This is the first time that I've seen so many people here to vote," said Ehab Hamam, 37, as he waited with some 50 people at a polling station in Haifa, a mixed Jewish-Arab city. 

Abu Azrael -- Father of the Angel of Death -- is the black-bearded, blade-wielding embodiment of the retribution many Iraqis want against brutal jihadists who seized swathes of their country.

A Facebook page dedicated to the fighter in the Imam Ali Brigades Shiite militia lists him as a "public figure" and has been "liked" more than 280,000 times.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Tuesday rubbished suggestions that talks should be held with President Bashar Assad, saying negotiating with the Syrian leader was no different to shaking hands with Nazi tyrant Adolf Hitler.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in a weekend interview that Washington would have to talk with Assad eventually if peace was to be forged, in comments that drew a strong rebuke from Ankara which said there was nothing to negotiate with Assad.

Libya's new army chief Khalifa Haftar on Monday promised his forces would seize Benghazi from Islamist militias within a month and called for wider support from the international community.

In an interview with AFP at his military compound about 100 kilometers (60 miles) northeast of second city Benghazi, he said his forces would press to take the city by the middle of April and urged the international community to "stand with the Libyan army".

Egypt's state prosecutor referred on Tuesday a police officer to trial for allegedly shooting to death a leftist female protester during a peaceful rally in central Cairo.

The death of Shaima al-Sabbagh, which was partly captured by a photographer, prompted President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to publicly demand that the perpetrator be brought to justice.

Saudi Arabia beheaded a Pakistani and two Saudis on Tuesday, bringing to 48 the number of death sentences carried out this year.

That is more than half of the 87 people executed during all of 2014, according to an AFP tally.

The Philippines said Tuesday a media report that the Islamic State group had abducted four Filipino medical workers in the Libyan city of Sirte was wrong.

One report cited members of a rival militia saying four nurses from the Philippines were abducted from Ibn Sina hospital on Monday, while another said about 20 medical workers, including Filipinos, were abducted at the same hospital.