Libya's internationally recognized Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thani said Wednesday he was ready to talk to militias who control most of his country if "all sides" made concessions.

Thani's government took refuge in the remote eastern town of of Tobruk in August after Islamist-led militia seized the capital Tripoli and then set up a rival administration.

Morocco has arrested three men -- a Frenchman, a French-Moroccan and an Algerian -- accused of planning to join the Islamic State jihadist group, the interior ministry said on Tuesday.

The French-Moroccan and the Frenchman were detained on Monday after allegedly "engaging in activism and propaganda" including disseminating press releases and video recordings "apologizing for terrorist acts," the MAP state news agency said, quoting a ministry statement.

The U.N. Security Council will hold an emergency meeting Wednesday to discuss Israeli plans to build more Jewish settlements in Arab east Jerusalem, diplomats said.

The urgent talks were requested by Jordan following a letter from Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour, who called on the 15-member council to "address this crisis situation in occupied east Jerusalem."

Caught between a slim hope and agonizing despair, Kurdish refugee Neriman waits in Turkey for news of her husband who disappeared five months ago fighting jihadists and is feared to be held in an Islamic State (IS) dungeon.

Muhammed, 38, went missing in the early days of the Islamist offensive on the Syrian border town of Kobane, now the subject of a brutal battle between IS militants and Kurdish fighters.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit back Tuesday at foreign attacks of plans for more than 1,000 new Jewish homes in east Jerusalem, saying the criticism was "detached from reality".

"I've heard the claim that our construction in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem distances peace," he said in remarks released by his office.

Heavily armed Kurdish peshmerga fighters set off from their base in northern Iraq Tuesday to support militia forces defending the Syrian border town of Kobane from the Islamic State group.

Military trucks loaded with weapons departed from the base northeast of the Iraqi Kurdish regional capital Arbil bound for the besieged town on the Turkish frontier, an AFP correspondent said.

Foreign observers on Tuesday praised Tunisia's landmark "free" elections, after the Islamists conceded defeat in a vote that raised hopes of a peaceful transition in the birthplace of the Arab Spring.

The Islamist Ennahda party, which had steered the North African nation through the aftermath of the 2011 revolution, congratulated its secular rival Nidaa Tounes which it said would be the largest party in parliament.

Saudi Arabia beheaded a Pakistani convicted of heroin smuggling Tuesday, the interior ministry said, bringing to four the number executed in two weeks.

It said a Saudi national was also executed in a separate case, raising to 61 the number of death sentences carried out in the kingdom this year, according to an Agence France Presse tally.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat visited the al-Aqsa mosque compound Tuesday, his office said, prompting criticism from the site's Muslim authorities following weeks of tension at the flashpoint shrine.

The early morning visit, which saw Barkat touring the compound with a group of police, followed weeks of intermittent clashes triggered by reports Israel was mulling a change in the status quo to allow Jewish prayer at the sprawling site inside the Old City.

Tunisia's first parliamentary election since the Arab Spring revolution of 2011 was transparent and credible, the head of the EU observer mission said on Tuesday.

"The Tunisian people have reinforced their commitment to democracy with credible and transparent elections that gave Tunisians of all political tendencies a free vote," Annemie Neyts-Uytterbroeck told a news conference.