Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will host a summit on the Syria conflict with the leaders of Russia, Germany and France on October 27 in Istanbul, his spokesman said Friday.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry announced Friday that Prime Minister Imran Khan will attend a Saudi Arabian investment conference, despite a string of cancellations from leading policy-makers and corporate chiefs over the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Libya and its north African neighbours are opposed to the EU's plan for "regional disembarkation platforms" to stem the flow of migrants entering the bloc, Tripoli's Foreign Minister Mohamed al-Taher Siala said in an Austrian newspaper interview Friday.

As dust whips up around them, families from Syria's Raqa ready their tents for the coming winter, still homeless a year after the Islamic State group was expelled from their city.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday it "certainly looks" as though Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is dead, threatening "very severe" consequences if the Saudis are found to have murdered him.

Trump, who has insisted that more facts must be known before making assumptions about Khashoggi, did not say on what he based his statement on the writer's demise two weeks ago. He commented as he left Joint Base Andrews for a political trip to Montana.

European Union and Arab leaders will meet in Egypt in late February for their first summit as part of efforts to forge a new European-African alliance and fight migrant smuggling, officials said Thursday.

The United States downgraded its main diplomatic mission to the Palestinians on Thursday, placing it under the authority of the U.S. embassy to Israel.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the consulate general, a separate office which handled dealings with the Palestinians, would be replaced by a new Palestinian Affairs Unit inside the controversial new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem.

Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas on Thursday pledged to launch an investigation into rocket fire at Israel the previous day, in an apparent bid to calm fears of a new war.

The United States has said it would appoint an ambassador to Qatar, after a 16-month gap during which Doha has been at the centre of a regional diplomatic crisis.

A day after the U.N. envoy for Syria announced his planned departure, the head of the humanitarian taskforce for the war-ravaged country said Thursday he would also resign next month.