Saudi Arabia's King Salman was discharged from a hospital in the capital Riyadh after more than a week following surgery to remove his gall bladder, the Royal Court said.

The court said in a statement late Thursday the monarch, 84, left the King Faisal Specialist Hospital after a recovery.

Yemen's Huthi rebels on Thursday freed six members of the Baha'i faith whose years of imprisonment had raised international concern, the community said.

A car bomb in northeast Syria targeting a checkpoint manned by Turkish-backed forces killed nine people, mostly fighters, near the border town of Ras al-Ain on Thursday, a war monitor said.

A gang rape allegation at a luxury hotel in Egypt stemming from a prominent social media account has triggered a new #MeToo wave in the deeply conservative country.

Masked pilgrims arrived Thursday at Mount Arafat, a desert hill near Islam's holiest site, to pray and repent on the most important day of the hajj, the annual pilgrimage in Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

The global coronavirus pandemic has cast a shadow over every aspect of this year's pilgrimage, which last year drew 2.5 million Muslims from across the world to Mount Arafat, where the Prophet Muhammad delivered his final sermon nearly 1,400 years ago.

A prominent Moroccan journalist and activist was Wednesday placed in pre-trial detention on charges of rape and receiving foreign funds for the purpose of harming "state security", the justice ministry said. 

The United States on Wednesday slapped sanctions on the son of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, extending efforts to block funds for the war-torn country's regime.

Hafez al-Assad, 18, named after his grandfather, will not be allowed to travel or maintain assets in the United States, the State Department said.

Moroccan farmer Hamid had pinned his hopes on selling his sheep for the Eid al-Adha feast, to make up for a year of drought and the economic paralysis linked to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Mass food poisoning in Jordan has sickened at least 700 people and killed a child, all of whom ate cut-price shawarma from a restaurant outside Amman, the health ministry said Wednesday.

Italy's coast guard said on Wednesday it had rescued nearly 100 migrants on a "half deflated" dinghy off the coast of Libya after authorities in other countries failed to intervene.