The leader of the moderate Syrian opposition said on Friday that cuts to U.N. food aid for 1.7 million Syrian refugees amounted to "an execution order" overseen by the international community.

"This amounts to an execution order for killing 1.7 million people under famine, especially during this harsh wintertime," Syrian National Coalition President Hadi al-Bahra said at a press conference in Copenhagen.

Libya's internationally recognized government has given its backing to U.N.-brokered talks between warring factions aimed at halting unrest across the country, its foreign minister said late Thursday.

U.N. Special Representative Bernardino Leon in Libya chaired a first round of talks between rival politicians in the oasis town of Ghadames in September, and will lead a new round of negotiations on December 9.

Islamic State group jihadists are closing in on the government-held Deir Ezzor air base in eastern Syria, nearly surrounding its beleaguered garrison, a monitoring group said on Friday.

IS fighters seized the village of Al-Jaffrah, adjacent to the base, leaving it surrounded except for a narrow corridor to the west, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

France said Friday its fighter jets were conducting a "major" raid in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led coalition offensive against the Islamic State group, days after members said the strikes were having effect.

"At the moment, a major raid is taking place," Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told BFMTV, refusing to detail the targets or the number of jets involved.

Wealthy nations have only taken in a "pitiful" number of the millions of refugees uprooted by Syria's war, placing the burden on the country's ill-equipped neighbors, Amnesty International said Friday.

In a statement ahead of a December 9 donors' conference in Geneva, the London-based rights group blasted as shocking the failure of rich nations to host more refugees.

A Bahrain court has sentenced an opposition figure to three years in prison for insulting the king by tearing up a photograph of him, Amnesty International said Thursday.

Zainab al-Khawaja, the daughter of prominent rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who is serving a life term, was also fined 3,000 dinars (about $8,000/6,450 euros), said the London-based rights watchdog.

U.S. and Yemeni forces recently tried unsuccessfully to rescue an American journalist held by al-Qaida, which has now threatened to execute him, officials said Thursday.

President Barack Obama last month approved the rescue operation to free a number of hostages, including U.S. national Luke Somers, held by Al-Qaeda in Yemen, the White House and the Pentagon said.

Car bombs exploded Thursday on two busy streets of a Shiite neighbourhood of Baghdad, killing at least 15 people and wounding 47, police and medical sources said.

The blasts went off at around 6:30 pm (1530 GMT) near markets in two different parts of the sprawling northern district of Sadr City that are usually bustling with people on Thursday evenings.

A top American diplomat was back in Bahrain on Thursday five months after being declared "unwelcome" by the Sunni-ruled U.S. ally after he met with the Shiite opposition.

The official BNA news agency said Tom Malinowski, U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, was received in Manama by Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah al-Khalifa.

The EU offered 180 million euros Thursday to help Lebanon and Jordan cope with a massive influx of refugees from Syria, where there is no end in sight to the civil war.

The European Commission said the aid package would help deal with the longer-term problems of the 1.1 million refugees in Lebanon and 630,000 in Jordan.