U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Saudi Arabia on Friday for talks with King Abdullah about the crisis in Iraq.

Speaking on the sidelines of talks at NATO, Kerry announced the extra stop on his current whirlwind tour saying he would stress "the great urgency" of the conflict in Iraq and brief Saudi leaders on his visits to Baghdad and Arbil this week.

Speaker Nabih Berri has urged the rival Lebanese parties to unite against the dangerous security situation in Lebanon, saying they should elect a president and activate state institutions.

“The situation is very dangerous particularly after what happened in Iraq” and the freeze in the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, local newspapers quoted Berri as saying.

Gunmen opened fire on a passenger jet as it landed in Pakistan's troubled northwest, killing a woman passenger and wounding two crew in an attack staged as the military wages an anti-militant offensive.

The Pakistan International Airlines flight, landing in Peshawar from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, came under fire late Tuesday as it descended with more than 170 passengers on board, airline spokesman Mashud Tajwar said.

Saudi Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz and visiting British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond discussed Tuesday the latest turmoil in Iraq, which borders the oil rich kingdom, state news agency SPA reported.

Hammond's stop in Jeddah is the first on a Gulf tour that will also take him to the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait, amid uncertainty triggered by the Iraqi crisis.

Customs officers have seized half a ton of cocaine in Jeddah, on the west coast of Saudi Arabia, where drug trafficking is punishable by death, the interior ministry said Sunday.

The 526 kilos (1,160 pounds) of "pure cocaine" was found stashed in a container of paper, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.

A court in Saudi Arabia sentenced five young Shiites Sunday to jail terms ranging from three to six years for insulting the kingdom's flag during protests, an official source said.

They were prosecuted for lowering a flag from a school during demonstrations in Eastern Province and replacing it with a black Shiite banner.

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah visited Cairo Friday, on his first trip to Egypt since the 2011 ouster of dictator Hosni Mubarak, for talks with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Riyadh hailed last July's ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi by ex-army chief Sisi and has pledged billions of dollars in aid to Egypt's military-installed authorities.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is expected in Saudi Arabia late on Friday for talks about the Syrian conflict, on which Moscow and Riyadh hold diverging views, a Saudi official said.

Lavrov will meet Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal on Saturday in the Red Sea city of Jeddah "for talks on several issues, with developments in Syria at the top of the agenda," the official, who declined to be named, told Agence France Presse.

The Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which represents more than 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide, affirmed Thursday a commitment to unity in combating "sectarian" policies.

OIC members will stand "united in combating sectarian, confessional, and exclusion policies that have led to sedition in some countries and threatened their security and stability," said a statement issued at the end of a two-day meeting in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.

With Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fighters, flags and emblems everywhere, there is no mistaking who controls the north Syria city of Raqa.

Fighters from ISIL, the jihadist group that is now spearheading an offensive in Iraq, already regard the city that is strategically placed in the Euphrates valley as their "capital", activists say.