Inside a dank clinic in the north of war-torn Syria, a girl covered in scabs wails and tries to wriggle out of her mother's arms to escape a nurse's needle.

Islamic State group jihadists have killed 35 pro-Damascus fighters in Syria, in what a monitoring group described Saturday as their deadliest operation since the fall of the "caliphate".

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Friday called for progress on a stalled buffer zone deal around jihadist-dominated Idlib region ahead of fresh talks aimed at ending his country's eight-year war. 

A Syrian man goes on trial Monday accused of a knife killing that sparked racist street violence and far-right protests in the eastern German city of Chemnitz last year.

The British government drew fresh criticism Saturday over its decision to revoke citizenship from a London teenager who joined the Islamic State group in Syria, after her baby died in a refugee camp.

Turkish and Russian patrols will begin in Syria's northwestern Idlib region on Friday as part of a deal agreed last year, Turkey's defence minister said. 

Kurdish-led forces supported by coalition air strikes readied for more evacuations of civilians held as human shields Monday after smashing their way into the jihadists' last bastion in eastern Syria.

Kurdish-led forces battled jihadists defending their last village on Saturday as the operation to flush out the Islamic State group from eastern Syria resumed after days of humanitarian evacuations.

The global chemical weapons watchdog said Friday it found "reasonable grounds" that chlorine was used as a weapon in a deadly attack on the Syrian town of Douma last year.

The determination was contained in a detailed report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons' fact finding mission that investigated the April 7, 2018 attack. Medical workers said at the time that the attack killed more than 40 people.

Hundreds of suspected jihadists and their relatives exited the last Islamic State group holdout in eastern Syria aboard 11 trucks on Tuesday, an AFP reporter said.