Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi headed on Monday to Saudi Arabia, the first leg of a Middle East tour that will also include Iran and Kuwait, in a diplomatic effort to foster regional reconciliation, his office said.

The Iraqi army and Sunni tribal fighters have dislodged Islamic State from the al-Waleed border crossing into Syria, an Iraqi military statement said on Saturday.

Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi postponed a Saudi Arabia to avoid taking sides in the rift between the kingdom and Qatar, Iraqi officials said on Thursday.

The king of Saudi Arabia and the Iraqi prime minister will meet on Wednesday, a Saudi newspaper reported, their second meeting this year as the neighbours try to heal a rift over Iraq's alliance with Saudi arch foe Iran.

Iraq is opposed to the isolation of Qatar by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab neighbours because it hurts ordinary citizens, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday.

Iraq still has hundreds of millions of dollars sent by Qatar to secure the release in April of members of the Qatari ruling family abducted in 2015, Iraq's prime minister said on Sunday.

A woman suicide bomber killed at least 31 people and wounded 35 in a crowded market in the town of Musayab, 80 km (50 miles) south of Baghdad, on Friday, security sources said.

Iraq is not taking sides in the dispute that pits Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries against Qatar, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told a news conference on Tuesday in Baghdad.

Bahrain condemned the terrorist bombings that took place in Baghdad and Kabul that left scores of dead and injured people.

A suicide bombing at a popular Baghdad ice cream shop killed at least 16 people, officials said Tuesday, an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.

Iraq's Iran-backed Shi'ite paramilitary force said on Sunday it had dislodged Islamic State from a number of villages west of Mosul, scoring further progress toward the border with Syria.

Iraqi armed forces launched an operation on Saturday to capture the last Islamic State-held enclave in Mosul, according to a military statement.

Saudi energy minister Khalid al-Falih will meet with his Iraqi counterpart in Baghdad on Monday as the top oil producer seeks to convince others to extend output cuts for a further nine months ahead of an OPEC meeting on Thursday.

Two people were injured on Thursday when Kuwaiti coastguards confronted and foiled an attempt by an Iraqi vessel to enter Kuwaiti territorial waters, the state news agency KUNA reported.

Iraqi Shi'ite paramilitaries captured an air base from Islamic State militants on Thursday, gaining a strategic foothold in the western desert as they push toward the Syrian border.

Iraqi forces pushed further into Mosul from the north on the second day of a new push to speed up the nearly seven-month attempt to dislodge Islamic State, commanders said on Friday.

Iraq demanded the government of Bahrain to implement its commitments and promises in the previous 2012 Universal Periodic Review (UPR) cycle in Geneva.

Bahraini Interior Minister Rashid bin Abdulla Al Khalifa said in a joint meeting held with the GCC states in Riyadh on Thursday (April 27, 2017) that his country faces persistent threats coming from the Iranian and Iraqi territories.

Kuwait has approved a $100 million (77.89 million pounds) grant for Iraq to support humanitarian and reconstruction projects in areas retaken from Islamic State militants, an Iraqi official said on Tuesday.

Twenty-six Qataris, including members of the Gulf state's ruling royal family and two Saudis, were freed on Friday after being kidnapped and held in Iraq for nearly a year and a half, Qatari officials said.