The U.S. military's top officer said Thursday that Iraqi forces had shored up their defenses around Baghdad but would need outside help to eventually regain territory lost to Sunni militants. 

Iraqi Kurdistan, whose President Massud Barzani aims to organize a referendum on a long-held Kurdish dream of independence, has been a de facto autonomous region since 1991.

Situated in the rugged, mountainous north of the country, the region of around 4.69 million people has long been at odds with the federal government in Baghdad.

After this week's murder of an east Jerusalem Palestinian, calls to inflict violent revenge on Arabs over the killings of three Israeli teenagers have gathered momentum on social media websites.

Such incitement, including by serving soldiers, has featured photos on Facebook and Twitter and prompted Israel's authorities to urge restraint and threaten the culprits with disciplinary action.

Women have been the victims of arbitrary arrest, torture, harassment and discrimination at the hands of government and rebel forces in Syria's three-year conflict, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.

The New York-based global rights watchdog, in a report, urged the international community to "hold those responsible for such abuses to account".

Gunmen attacked a government complex Thursday in Yemen's central province of Baida, an al-Qaida stronghold, sparking a firefight that killed two assailants and wounded three policemen, the defense ministry reported.

"An armed terrorist group" attacked the complex where the residence of Baida deputy governor Sinan Halqum is also located, the ministry's 26sep.net news website cited an army spokesman as saying.

The leader of Iraq's Kurds set the ball rolling Thursday for a referendum on their long-held dream of independence, another setback for international efforts to unite the country's politicians against a militant offensive.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki broadened an amnesty offer aimed at undercutting support for jihadists, whose onslaught has have overrun areas of the country and who proclaimed a caliphate straddling Iraq and Syria.

The United Nations said Thursday it sees no let-up in refugees fleeing war-ravaged Syria for neighboring Jordan, and appealed for funds to help the kingdom cope with the influx.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said it expects the number of Syrian refugees in Jordan to increase by as much as 33 percent to up to 800,000 by the end of this year.

The jihadist Islamic State seized control Thursday of a major Syrian oil field on the Iraqi border, as rival fighters withdrew, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

By seizing the Al-Omar oil field, IS now controls most oil and gas fields in the oil-rich Syrian province of Deir Ezzor, most of whose countryside is also under its control.

Islamic militants in Iraq have freed 32 Turkish truck drivers held hostage for three weeks in a mass kidnapping that shocked Turkey, the foreign minister said Thursday.

The truck drivers are now on their way back to Turkey through northern Iraq but a separate group of almost 50 kidnapped Turks remain in captivity, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters.

Baghdad's forces struggled Thursday to break a military stalemate with Sunni militants, as U.S. officials reached out to key leaders to push for an end to political chaos in Iraq.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki meanwhile extended an amnesty aimed at undercutting support for the militants who have overrun large areas of Iraq, after the new parliament's first session ended in farce, with MPs walking out instead of working on government formation.