Iran's president denounced western countries for taking pride in arms sales Tuesday, after France signed a warplanes deal with Qatar, saying weapons agreements add to Middle East instability.

Although he did not name France, Hassan Rouhani's comments came after it agreed a 6.3-billion-euro ($7-billion) contract with Qatari defense officials in Doha.

A car bomb blast near the Baghdad headquarters of a Shiite militia fighting the Islamic State jihadist group in Iraq killed at least four civilians on Tuesday, police said.

A police colonel told AFP that 13 other people were wounded in the explosion near the headquarters of Kataeb Imam Ali in the Karrada area of central Baghdad.

Saudi-led bombing of Yemen's airports is obstructing aid deliveries aimed at easing a "catastrophic" humanitarian situation in the impoverished country, international relief agencies have warned.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said they were "extremely concerned about the severe damage caused by recent coalition attacks on airports in Sanaa" and the western region of Hodeida.

The U.N.'s peace envoy for Syria on Tuesday launched wide-ranging consultations in Geneva with regional and domestic players, including Iran, in a bid to revive stalled talks to end the conflict.

Staffan de Mistura said talks with the Syrian government and some 40 groups, including "political, military actors, women, civil society, victims, the diaspora," would also rope in some 20 regional and international players.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that war-torn Somalia was facing a better future, as he made a landmark visit as the most senior U.S. official to visit since Washington's doomed military intervention more than two decades ago.

The top U.S. diplomat spent just a few hours in the capital, Mogadishu, and did not venture out of the heavily-fortified airport, where he met Somalia's internationally-backed President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmake.

One of the main hospitals in Syria's northern city of Aleppo has been forced to close indefinitely after being targeted by rockets and barrel bombs, a humanitarian group says.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Monday the private Al-Sakhour hospital, serving around 400,000 people as one of the only hospitals in east Aleppo, halted all activities after being bombed twice on consecutive days last week.

Israeli coalition talks took on heightened urgency on Tuesday, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu still short of even the slimmest majority 36 hours from the deadline to form a government.

Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party won 30 seats in the March 17 general election and has so far signed coalition agreements with two ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties and the center-right Kulanu led by Likud defector Moshe Kahlon.

France and Saudi Arabia are discussing economic projects worth tens of billions of euros, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Tuesday.

"If concluded, these 20 projects would be worth tens of billions of euros," Fabius told reporters in Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia's King Salman sacked a senior aide on Tuesday, shortly after a video posted online appeared to show the official slapping a photojournalist, state media said.   

Salman replaced the head of royal protocol Mohammed al-Tobayshi with Khalid al-Abbad, according to a decree published by the SPA official news agency.

Senegal on Monday said it would send 2,100 soldiers to Saudi Arabia to join Riyadh's military coalition battling rebels in Yemen, at the request of Saudi King Salman.

Foreign Minister Mankeur Ndiaye made the announcement in a speech to the National Assembly, according to a copy of the remarks obtained by AFP.