A drone strike on a house killed three Al-Qaida suspects in the restive Yemeni province of Marib on Saturday, a security official said.

The United States is the only country operating drones over Yemen, but U.S. officials rarely acknowledge the covert program.

Displaced Iraqis, many from the Yazidi minority, have been stranded in a jihadist-hemmed mountain for a week and will die en masse if not rescued urgently, an MP said Saturday.

"We have one or two days left to help these people. After that they will start dying en masse," Yazidi parliamentarian Vian Dakhil told AFP.

A reporter working with Kurdish news agency Firat was killed Friday when jihadist fighters attacked a camp in Iraq, one of her employers said on their website.

Deniz Firat was hit in the heart by shrapnel during an attack by Islamic State fighters on a camp in the town of Makhmur where families of Turkey's PKK Kurdish rebels have been living.

International airlines steered clear of Iraq on Friday after Washington banned American air carriers from Iraqi skies in the immediate wake of US air strikes on Islamist fighters.

Flights to and from the Gulf and beyond, which typically would have taken airways through Iraq, favored parallel routes via Iran instead, according to real-time flight tracking websites.

Israeli warplanes pummeled Gaza with 50 air strikes that killed eight Palestinians Saturday as militants slammed 24 rockets into Israel amid mounting calls for a fresh ceasefire.

Britain, France and Germany on Saturday urged Israel and Hamas to agree a truce at once.

U.S. President Barack Obama vowed Saturday to help rescue thousands of civilians besieged by jihadists on an Iraqi mountain, as an MP warned they would not survive much longer.

He gave no timetable for the first U.S. operation in Iraq since the last American troops withdrew three years ago and put the onus on Iraqi politicians to form an inclusive government and turn the tide on jihadist expansion.

An Islamist protester was killed during a clash on Friday with Egyptian police who arrested 40 demonstrators, the interior ministry said.

The ministry accused the protesters, supporters of deposed Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, of confronting civilian opponents during a march and then firing birdshot and throwing petrol bombs at policemen, wounding an officer.

One of Iraq's most influential Shiite clerics, Moqtada Sadr, claimed Friday that jihadists were poised to attack Baghdad and he vowed to send his men to defend the capital.

"There are terrorist groups that have completed their preparations for a breakthrough into Baghdad," the cleric said in a statement.

He was elected on a promise to end America's "dumb war" in Iraq.

Now, in launching U.S. air strikes to counter a "barbaric" offensive by jihadist militants, a reluctant Barack Obama has reopened a chapter of recent American history he had once dared hope was finished.

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the leader of the world's Anglicans, said Friday the forced exodus in northern Iraq was part of an "evil pattern" of Christians being "persecuted for their faith".

The Church of England leader said Britain should open its doors to refugees fleeing the jihadist Islamic State advances and urged the international community to challenge the "culture of impunity" allowing the extremists' actions to take place.