Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways announced Thursday a suspension of flights to Iraqi Kurdistan's capital of Arbil because of fighting in northern Iraq.

The decision was taken for the safety of passengers and crew, the airline, which has four Abu Dhabi-Arbil flights a week, said in a statement.

The vast majority of rockets fired by Hamas at Israel over the past month were made in Gaza using civilian materials, a senior Israeli military official said Thursday.

The coastal Palestinian enclave was the setting for the 28-day conflict with Israel, during which Israel set out to seriously impair the Islamist movement's military abilities.

The United States warned Thursday a jihadist offensive in northern Iraq could provoke a "humanitarian catastrophe," amid reports that President Barack Obama was considering U.S. military action.

"It is a situation that we are looking at very closely," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, following reports that Obama was talking with military advisers about options for intervention.

A spokesman for Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, warned Thursday of renewed fighting with Israel if talks in Cairo to extend a 72-truce in Gaza collapsed.

"We appeal to the Palestinian delegation to not accept a ceasefire, unless it satisfies the demands of our people," a spokesman using the nom-de-guerre Abu Obeida said in a televised address, adding that Hamas fighters were "ready to return to battle."

French President Francois Hollande on Thursday pledged his country's "support" to forces battling Islamist militants in Iraq amid growing Western concern over an advance by Islamic State fighters.

"The president confirmed that France was available to support forces engaged in this battle," Hollande's office said in a statement, after the French leader spoke about Iraq by telephone with the head of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Massud Barzani.

Where are the Hamas fighters? In Gaza, armed Islamist militants are everywhere yet invisible. Instead they have made radio and social networks their weapon of mass seduction.

Never during the fighting did you see the gunmen of Gaza in this tiny, overpopulated Palestinian enclave.

The scale of civilian losses during the four-week conflict in the Gaza Strip must not happen again, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday.

Speaking to reporters after visiting Gaza, ICRC President Peter Maurer said he was "deeply distressed and shocked to see the impact of violence on the civilian population".

A Cairo court Thursday sentenced two men to life in prison for sexual attacks, in the latest example of the authorities' growing determination to tackle an epidemic of such crimes.

Egypt has been roiled by sexual violence since the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, with women regularly attacked by mobs at rallies in and around Cairo's Tahrir Square -- the focus of demonstrations.

When Fares Sinjari Abu Ivan saw the Iraqi military helicopter dropping the promised supplies, he thought he would have some food to give his mother for the first time in two days.

"But it seems God is angry with us," said the 45-year-old beekeeper, who together with thousands of fellow Yazidis, has been hiding from jihadist fighters in the northern Sinjar mountains.

Almost three quarters of Syria's entire chemical stockpile has been destroyed, the world's chemical weapons watchdog said on Thursday, after another 190 tons of agents were incinerated in Britain.

"The OPCW confirmed today (Thursday) that 74.2 percent of Syria's entire stockpile of chemicals has now been destroyed," The Hague-based Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons said in a statement.