French, British and Dutch military authorities rushed aid to a devastated string of Caribbean islands Thursday after Hurricane Irma left at least 11 people dead and thousands homeless as it spun toward Florida for what could be a catastrophic blow this weekend.

Warships and planes were dispatched with food, water and troops after the fearsome Category 5 storm smashed homes, schools and roads, laying waste to some of the world's most beautiful and exclusive tourist destinations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has personally intervened to bar an Al-Jazeera journalist from a government conference on press freedoms that uses the pan-Arab broadcaster as a case study.

Bureau chief Walid Omary's exclusion from attending a seminar titled "Limits of free expression: the dilemma between national security and freedom of the press — Al Jazeera as a case study," comes a month after Netanyahu threatened to shut the Qatar-based outlet's Israel offices.

Journalists saw new fires burning Thursday in a Myanmar village that had been abandoned by Rohingya Muslims, and pages ripped from Islamic texts that were left on the ground. That intensifies doubts about government claims that members of the persecuted minority have been destroying their own homes.

About two dozen journalists saw the fires in Gawdu Zara village in northern Rakhine state on a government-controlled trip. Some 164,000 Rohingya from the area have fled across the border in Bangladesh in less than two weeks since Aug. 25, when Rohingya insurgents attacked police outposts in Gawdu Zara and several others, the U.N. refugee agency said Thursday.

French authorities say three men in custody in a probe into explosives found in a Paris suburb had talked about wanting to target banks and had spoken by phone with someone in Syria.

The Paris prosecutor's office said a third man was detained early Thursday after two others were detained the day before. The prosecutor's office said the men are between 36 and 47 years old but provided no further information.

Football Federation Australia said Thursday the World Cup qualifying second-leg playoff between Australia and Syria on Oct. 10 will be played at Sydney's Olympic stadium.

The first leg of the Asia Confederation decider will take place on Oct. 5, probably in Malaysia where Syria plays home games which can't be held in its war-torn homeland.

Syria's state-run news agency says a convoy of 40 trucks carrying 1,000 tons of humanitarian aid has arrived in Deir el-Zour after troops secured a corridor to the eastern city.

The land convoy is the first since Syrian government forces and allied militiamen breached a nearly three-year-old siege by the Islamic State group on government-held parts of the city on Tuesday.

Syria's army said Israeli air strikes on Thursday killed two people at a military facility in the country's west, and that the missiles were fired from Lebanon's air space.

The army said the air raid targeted a facility near the western town of Masyaf, close to the Mediterranean coast, a stronghold of President Bashar Assad.

Voters in Spain's prosperous Catalonia region will be asked to choose in less than a month if they want to secede from Spain, the region's pro-independence ruling government announced Wednesday in a move that puts it in open defiance of central authorities in Madrid.

Regional President Carles Puigdemont signed a decree that officially calls for a "self-determination referendum of Catalonia" to be held on Oct. 1. His entire cabinet, which includes politicians from various pro-independence parties, also approved the document to dilute responsibility in case of prosecution.

Aid agencies were struggling to cope with a nonstop flood of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh, where some 146,000 have arrived hungry and terrified after fleeing renewed violence in Myanmar — a crisis the country's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, dismissed as a misinformation campaign.

With the influx pushing existing Rohingya refugee camps to the brink, Bangladesh pledged to build at least one more. The International Organization for Migration has pleaded for $18 million in foreign aid to help feed and shelter tens of thousands now packed into makeshift settlements or stranded in a no-man's land between the two countries' borders.

Hurricane Irma has killed at least eight people and injured 23 in French Caribbean island territories as the dangerous Category 5 storm roared over the Caribbean, France's interior minister said Thursday.

Speaking on French radio France Info, French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said the death toll in Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthelemy could be higher because rescue teams have yet to finish their inspection of the islands.