Freed Australian Al-Jazeera reporter Peter Greste on Thursday called for the international community to continue supporting his colleagues in Egypt, stressing that they were still on trial.

Greste was detained along with two colleagues, Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohamed, in December 2013, before he was deported last month after intense diplomatic pressure.

Morocco, on guard against attacks like the Tunis museum massacre, prides itself on being a bastion against Islamist extremism with its anti-jihadist "FBI" and training of imams to preach tolerance.

More than 130 "terrorist cells" have been dismantled, 2,720 suspects arrested and 276 plots foiled since 2002, according to Abdelhak Khiame, director of the newly established Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations.

Syria has destroyed three of its 12 chemical weapons production sites but is unable to dismantle three other facilities because of security conditions, the OPCW chemical watchdog said in its latest report.

The report by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was released on Wednesday to the UN Security Council, which is overseeing efforts to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons program.

U.S. aircraft on Wednesday launched bombing raids to support Iraqi forces fighting to recapture Tikrit from the Islamic State group, after Baghdad issued a request for air power, U.S. officials said.

"Operations are ongoing. Bombs are falling," a U.S. defense official told Agence France-Presse.

Egypt's president called Wednesday for a "new chapter" in relations with Ethiopia, but nevertheless underscored his country's insistence on standing by its rights to tap Nile water.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's speech to the Ethiopian parliament marked the end of the first such official visit by an Egyptian leader in 30 years, and comes amid a major easing of tensions over Addis Ababa's controversial Nile dam project.

Former interior minister Habib al-Adly of ousted president Hosni Mubarak walked free from an Egyptian jail Wednesday after his acquittal last week of corruption charges, officials and his lawyer said.

"He has completed the procedures and he has come out," interior ministry spokesman General Hani Abdel Latif told Agence France-Presse.

French President Francois Hollande will travel to Tunis on Sunday to take part in a "march against terrorism" in the wake of jihadist attacks that killed 21 people, his office said.

"At the invitation of President Beji Caid Essebsi, the president of the republic will go to Tunis for the 'grand republican march against terrorism' organized by the Tunisian authorities," Hollande's Elysee Palace office said in a statement.

The world's chemical watchdog on Wednesday said it is monitoring "with serious concern" reports alleging that Damascus unleashed a chlorine gas attack in northwestern Syria earlier this month.

"We have been monitoring the recent reports suggesting that toxic chemicals may have been used as weapons in the Idlib province in Syria," Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons chief Ahmet Uzumcu said.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Wednesday formally tasked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with forming the next government.

"I have decided to give you the role of putting together the government," he told Netanyahu at a ceremony broadcast live on Israel's main TV and radio stations. 

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Wednesday took Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to task over an attempt to ramp up rightwing votes by playing the anti-Arab race card.

In a statement released shortly before he was to publicly task Netanyahu with forming the next government, Rivlin took aim at remarks in which he tried to galvanize rightwing voters by saying Arab Israelis were "going to the polls in droves."