The Al-Qaida military chief in Yemen has vowed to launch fierce attacks against Shiite Huthi militiamen sweeping across the country, in an audio message posted Friday on jihadist websites.

"To the Huthis we say: brace yourselves for horrors that will make the hair of children turn white," said Qassem al-Rimi, the military chief of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

Gunmen from the Islamic State jihadist group on Friday publicly executed two young men for allegedly cooperating with Iraqi security forces, officials and witnesses said.

The killings were carried out in the middle of the crowded main market in the Zab area of Kirkuk province.

The Islamic State group launched a major attack on the Iraqi city of Ramadi Friday, attempting to seize one of the last urban pockets under government control in troubled Anbar province.

Parts of Ramadi, the provincial capital, and all of Fallujah to its east, fell to anti-government forces in January.

Bahrain's Shiite opposition warned Friday ahead of elections that failure by the kingdom's Sunni rulers to loosen their grip on power could trigger a surge in violence.

The government of the key U.S. ally said that it was ready for a dialogue with the opposition, which is boycotting Saturday's legislative and municipal polls.

Syrian President Bashar Assad said on Thursday that "international cooperation" was necessary to crush the Islamic State group, which is the target of a U.S.-led campaign.

"The region is going through decisive times" and the most important factor in determining the outcome is whether there is "real and sincere international cooperation" against the jihadists, Assad said.

Israel's Shin Bet domestic security service said Thursday that security forces had caught a Hamas group in the West Bank planning to assassinate hawkish Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

It said three suspects in custody "collected advance intelligence on the minister's convoy," on its journeys to and from his home in the West Bank settlement of Nokdim and sought to procure an RPG launcher with which to target his vehicle.

Israeli police said they do not plan to bar young Muslim worshipers from Friday prayers at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque, for the second week running after months of restrictions.

"So far, restrictions on entry of worshipers will not be imposed," police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement late Thursday.

A Tunisian court sentenced two policemen to 15 years Thursday for the rape of a woman who was herself almost put on trial, in an appeal that doubled their initial penalty.

Monia Bousselmi, a lawyer for the victim, hailed the ruling as "a great step" forward for such cases in the Muslim country.

The Islamic State jihadist group on Thursday claimed a rare suicide car bombing in the usually secure capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region that killed four people. 

IS boasted in an online statement  that it had "breached all the security checkpoints of the agent Kurdistan government and reached the heart of the city of Arbil."

An Israeli mayor came under government fire on Thursday after ordering a ban on some Arab municipal workers in the wake of Tuesday's deadly attack on a Jerusalem synagogue.

"We must not generalize about an entire public due to a small and violent minority," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said following Ashkelon mayor Itamar Shimoni's announcement barring Arab construction workers from projects in his city's kindergartens.