France will start delivering military equipment to the Lebanese army in the first quarter of 2015 as part of a $3 billion contract to help the force fight jihadis from neighboring Syria, a French defense ministry source said on Wednesday.
Syrian Kurds welcomed the arrival in Kobani of Iraqi Kurdish fighters with their heavy weapons, hoping they might tip the balance in the battle to defend the town against Islamic State, as U.S.-led air strikes continued to bomb the ultra-hardline group in Iraq and Syria.
Islamic State, a Sunni Muslim militant group, has seized a third of Syria and large areas of Iraq and this year proclaimed a caliphate across the two countries in the heart of the Middle East.
A Twitter account run by an Qaeda member said the leader of the al Qaeda-linked Khorasan group was killed in a U.S. air strike in Syria, SITE monitoring service said on Sunday, following several days of uncertainty over whether he survived the raid.
A United Nations Security Council committee is considering requests by the United States and France to blacklist more than a dozen foreign extremist fighters, fundraisers and recruiters linked to Islamist militant groups in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Tunisia and Yemen.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday it was "not appropriate" for Iran to join talks on confronting Islamic State militants, as he appeared to play down how fast countries can commit to force or other steps in an emerging coalition.
Saudi Arabia's Specialized Criminal Court jailed six people for up to six years for security offences including traveling abroad to fight, adopting militant ideology and "breaking obedience to the ruler", state media reported late on Sunday.
The U.N. peacekeeping chief strongly denied on Wednesday allegations from the Philippines' army chief that Filipino peacekeepers in the Golan Heights were ordered to surrender their weapons to Islamist militants who had trapped them.
Al Qaeda-linked militants in Syria on Sunday freed an American writer missing since 2012 following what officials said were efforts by the Gulf Arab state of Qatar to win his release.
